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Disney adapted "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" as part of their film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. Not a popular story nowadays, but you have to admit, he's a cool -looking dude!
Oh hey, the original story is available for free!
—doctorlit swears 'til the day is dead
He'll show you that he can get ahead
...The actual rhetoric. Old-school ship wars tended to center around the idea that your interpretation of the character is Bad and Wrong and that my interpretation is way more true to canon and also better, and you actually need to go back and read the books/watch the films/re-experience canon to see what I mean. I mean, I've not been around fandom as long as some of you, so I could be wildly wrong here, but that's the sense I got.
And this is still definitely a thing (I've seen these fights and most definitely have Opinions in some cases. This will continue to happen for as long as two people in fandom interpret canon differently, and thus will go on forever). But what we see now is the increasing prevalence of the idea that your ship is morally wrong and there is something Wrong With You for writing it. Which... I mean that definitely existed since forever, but it seems to be a much more prevalent attitude. I distinctly recall the phrase "anything can be written well" being more common, and the PPC, even at our absolute worst and harshest, always came down opposite this by its very conception ("you can write bad fanfic, and we can write fanfic making fun of it" is kind of the inverse of "your bad fanfic should be erased from existence"—this is why the Anti-Plot Continuum would likely not really exist in a PPC-less world...).
Thanks to my search history, I have figured out the languages!
For the first section:
English -> Arabic -> Luganda -> Sudanese -> Twi -> Kazakh -> Esperanto -> Punjabi -> Chinese (Traditional) -> Japanese -> Icelandic -> English.
Not sure yet exactly where Xena first appeared.
—Ls
I tried to use a languages with non-English scripts, and African languages, because I assumed Google Translate would be less familiar, or more likely to induce punctuation mistakes. (Hence I think I used Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Ewe, etc. a lot.)
—Ls still can’t remember.
I'm trying to trace the key changes by playing with the following three lines:
1: "Lord of the Rings." Jay winced. "The massacre of Tolkien continues. We have... a Mary Sue." - ("The Lord of the Rings," Xena smiled. "Tolkien's execution continues. We are the . . . Mary Sue.")
2: Arwen smiled, a glassy look in her eyes. "Yes, you cannot wear your clothes. A gown would be much more suitable. Cole and Geoff will wear robes, of course. Until tonight, then..." - (Alvin smiled and looked in the mirror. "Yeah, no sunglasses. Clothes would be better. Of course Cole and Jeff wear suits. Until it gets dark, and . . .")
3: [Arwen Evenstar. Elf female. Canon. Out of Character 49.72%.] - ([Edited by Owen Evansted. A very large woman. A current classic. 49.72% were not men. ] .)
A quick hop through English > Malayalam > Chinese (Simplified) > English actually gets a lot of pieces in place:
1: "Lord of the Rings." Jia Yang smiled. "The Tolkien slaughter continues. We have a Mary Sue."
2: Alvin smiled, with a mirror in his eyes. "Yeah, you can't wear your clothes. The dress would be more appropriate. Of course Cole and Jeff will be wearing clothes. Until tonight, and then..."
3: [Alwyn Evanstadt. Elf female. Canon. 49.72% of properties. ]
We've got 'Alvin', we've separated the second 'Arwen' out (Malayalam turns it into Arween), we've got very close to Evansted. We need to turn 'a' into 'the' in #1, and change Jay somehow, before we hit Chinese, but at least we know it's part of the route.
Bambara is useful: it will often introduce the term "Tolkien's execution/assassination". Unfortunately it also likes to give "The Lord of the Congregation". I managed once to get it to turn Jay into Joy (I think by way of Russian, Bengali, and one other), but haven't managed to repeat it.
The work continues.
hS
Ship wars have always been a thing (I'm a veteran of the Ronmione vs Harmony ship wars from Fictionalley myself), but the dressing-up of fandom activity with the language of social justice activism is a slightly more recent (well, uh, started almost a decade ago) trend. But yeah, it really got going on Tumblr where the lines between activism/politics and fandom spaces were not so delineated as they were on, say, Livejournal. I actually wrote a paper about this!
ETA that my missions from 2013-2014 aren't exempt from current me's critiques. Christianne got a bit killjoy with the Tumblr-speak there for a while, even if the whole "Sues tend to give representation only to the most privileged class of women" thing still holds some truth to it.
They remind me of certain parts of Toyhou.se, the parts parts that frown upon people writing villain characters because that means you support the villain's actions.
It's kinda funny to hear that this behavior originated on Tumblr, and it makes me feel better that it's not just a TH thing lol.
-kA
A rare RC 🤘-only mission in which Inasuke has something to offer.
And the worst part is, I'm going to let you get away with it too. The Guardians of the Continuum, founded by Xena and Alvin (though you missed the opportunity to play on the once-appearing nickname "Ace"), will be making their appearance in the Multiversal Atlas soon enough.
I'm pretty sure the CAD messages support your interpretation, too:
[Written by Laurel. Women are legal. Written by Mary Sue.]
[This Boromir. He is a man.]
EDIT: The Anti-Plot Continuum, along with the Wild Wild Westverse, are both in the Atlas now. They still need their pictures, and I'm not 100% convinced the West isn't just an incarnation of the Fandemonium. We'll have to see.
hS
And why is Acacia using him to attack Jay (or, as it might be, Xena)?
"Camera." Acacia saw Jay. "Please. Make blueberry muffins!"
Yeah, Jay/Xena. Make blueberry muffins, ya flake.
I also adore Jay's A/N, which honestly doesn't sound too OOC for her. I guess she's half a glove; let's go play Rats of Egypt.
hS
Sauces and marinades for grilling. Usually for Mediterreanean/middle eastern cuisine.
You could also put it in smoothies.
--Ls
I was picturing the Anti-Plotters more as a group that hates all plots...and thus all fiction.
But this was pretty funny, and you wrote it well.
The CAD reading was my favorite. Just who is this Owen Evenstead anyway?
This is an interesting AU (though it should be AM) concept, and I'd love to see more.
--Ls
I have no idea how I got Xena.
See, Google Translate only translates 5000 characters (not ,words, sadly) at a time. And when I first ran this, I got a 5000-character chunk of Rambling Band and put it through maybe ten or twelve different languages, chosen at random...and not recorded. I used a completely different series of languages for each successive chunk. That is why Xena (And the gender-bent Alvin) only apears in the "Part One". I can try to check my browsing history tomorrow, but I don't think it'll work.
So, sadly, I don't know Xena appeared.
However, I will record languges in the future.
--Ls
And yeah, it's good straight. Why?
Though I prefer using it as an ingredient in sauces and marinades.
Wait, is the Headless Horseman a Disney villain? Never heard of that before.
What's it's best eaten with? Can you eat it straight up?