LNH/META: To Reboot or Not to Reboot....

[Scott Eiler]

On 10/26/2011 5:02 PM, Arthur Spitzer wrote:
> This is a reply to a post on the LNH Authors Group...
>
>  >The reasons are: when is the last time we got a new writer?
>
> Well, Wil Alambre started writing LNH this year... although yes it's
> been awhile since we've gotten new blood.
>
>  >I think I'm not the last but the, well, last but one. For the LNH to
>  >survive as a concept it needs both new writers and new readers.
>
> I agree...
>
>  >And one of the reasons we get no new readers is because we're this
>  >obscure club on Usenet (really, Usenet?) and another is that it's
>  >intimidating, it's like picking up an X-Men book in the mid-90s, you
>  >know the funny parts are funny and you know the super-hero parts are
>  >interesting but 80% of them make no sense whatsoever if you haven't
>  >read everything in the archives.

Ah, but should we blame the imprint or the stories?  Rebooting the 
imprint will make no difference if the stories are still full of jokes 
the readers don't get.  Conversely, when the story is good, the imprint 
hardly matters.

> I don't think that's entirely true (well, the part about no one knowing
> about it is true)... the LNH kind of started out as a chaotic mess that
> wasn't the greatest prose and it developed a huge backstory in a very
> short time.

Complexity of the backstory is no crime, as long as you remember that 
every story is someone's first.

> I think the real reason it was popular in the 90s and not as
> popular now is simply there was less competing with the typical person's
> attention span back then. The LNH was cool back in the 90s because there
> was not much else to do on the internet.

Oh, but the Internet's just part of a slippery slope.  There are 
hardcover books, then paperbacks, then portable e-book readers, then 
wireless readers that can download from online repositories.  Then those 
repositories become accessible from web sites, then those web sites 
start offering wide-ranged content.  Including, say, writing clubs which 
publish free fiction.  That is to say, us.

-- 
(signed) Scott Eiler  8{D> -------- http://www.eilertech.com/ ---------

Turns out I'm an anally-fixated oedipal paranoid with 
south-of-the-border schizophrenic delusions...  But never mind, I've 
found me the ideal job.  I'm going to run for President!

- Major Honey, scripted by Grant Morrison, Doom Patrol #46, August 1991.