Welcome!

[st_crispins]

This journal is friends locked. Sorry, but I don't want my blog entries ending up on those blog collection sites. I talk about communication, popular culture, metafandom, media, Man From U.N.C.L.E. and occasionally, some personal stuff. If you want to read this LJ, feel free to friend me but please introduce yourself first. I usually friend back.

Comments

A question about Solo's boat

[wendiez]

Were you the original person to use "Pursang" for the name of Solo's boat?
Would it be all right for me to use it (more like in passing) for a story? I know you are very generous in that respect, but as always, I like to ask.

Wendie Zearfoss

Re: A question about Solo's boat

[st_crispins]

Nope, not me. It came from David McDaniel. I and other folks [I assume] used it as a homage and it's become sort of fanon.

So, no permission needed. David McD is gone but several of his contributions [like Technilogical Hierarchy etc.]live on.

At this point, if you named the boat something else, folks might wonder why.

[catcrazy5]

Hi -- I would like to be friended so that I can read all of your Man from UNCLE stories. I have been a fan since watching the show in the 60's and now am a big fan fiction reader. I read fic in a lot of different fandoms - Starsky & Hutch, Stargate Atlantis, The Sentinel ... - and am currently on a MFU kick. -- Laurel

[st_crispins]

Done! Welcome aboard.

[carabele]

Just a quick question for you...

I know you've been writing MFU fanfiction a lot of years. (Since the mid-eighties?) And I know you have set up a single continous timeline for your main stories. (I know you also coauthor an alternate MFU universe, but talking about the main stories here). Yet, after so many years writing toward a certain inevitable end for the characters, do you find yourself tempted to change a particular turning-point or life-altering incident for one or the other of the guys? An event that you were sure at the onset of the series was set in stone within your mental outline?

Over the years outlooks and perspectives do change, and I just wondered how that kind of thing affected a series you've had set up in your head for so long.

[st_crispins]

I've been writing since the early 1980s actually. I wrote the Sleeping Beauty Affair first [actually as a pro novel on the advice of an agent who then couldn't sell it.]. I then revised it several times, before I began writing fanfic seriously. The timelines actually emerged from Prisoners' Dilemma and I've been keeping it every since

[carabele]

Thanks for replying!

I wondered because I was involved in an interactive fantasy fiction world for a dozen years and I definitely did have a "life design" for the main character.

Thing is in that world what your character did was often affected by the characters of others. And that did throw me for a loop a couple of times.

And then there was an unexpected major event in the character's life, instigated by others, which kind of took her off in another direction.

I don't regret that it did, even though in the end she finished her life rather sadly, but sometimes I do wonder, if I had been able to keep to my original storyline, what the result would have been.

The character did become something of a legend in that fantasy world, so I guess I couldn't have asked for more (though I have to admit I'm a sucker for happy endings and didn't get one in this case).

I do realize it's a different type of scenario though.

[st_crispins]

I experienced something like that writing the Escape/MFU series with Nan. We do it interactively and although we maintain a story arc with a beginning and end, so many things are up for grabs inbetween. Characters do or say things and it can change the flow of a story in an instant.

So, yeah, I know what you're talking about. When the control of the story is in the hands of more than one writer, things can get interesting. That's the attraction to writing like that: the uncertainty. But you have to be prepared to give up control.

But with the St. Crispin's universe, I'm pretty much God.

[teldreaming]

I would be interested in reading your journal - I've been wandering through the back archives of the various Man from U.N.C.L.E. communities and have on several occasions been impressed with your insights. I've been slowly working my way through your fanfic, too, all of which is pretty spectacular, and would love a chance to read the rest.

[st_crispins]

Sure. I was away but I just friended you.

Welcome.

[greenygal]

Hi! I'd like to friend you; I've read and enjoyed your unlocked MFU fic (and at least one zine) and I'd very much like to read the rest.

[st_crispins]

No prob. Welcome aboard. I'll friend you back.