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shadowkatA bit of a personal history here - before November 2001 I did not know fanfiction existed. Bored at this horrible job I used to work at,
I decided to wander around the internet. Okay, I'll come clean - I had just seen the episode Once More With Feeling and went nuts, craving spoilers. Then Smashed and Wrecked happened and those were the last two episodes we got for almost two solid months. I wanted to know what happened next, dang it! Two months is an incredibly long time to wait when you're knee deep in a story. So online I went and discovered the wonderful world of fanfiction. (I also discovered the wonderful world of posting boards and essay writing but that's a whole other entry.)
Now, when I discovered fanfiction, I was in a weird place. It would I guess be synonymous to someone who specialized in music copyrights discovering Mp3 and Napster. I specialized in negotiating with writers and other people regarding permission to place their content online. This included trademarked material and copyrighted material.
My background taught me that using someone else's copyrighted or trademarked material was illegal. It was a policy I enforced at the company I worked and was part of my job as Manager of Rights and Permissions (no longer doing that right now, thank god!). So I felt a little hypocritical printing fanfiction off the internet and reading it on the subway. My colleague, who had not been to law school, railed at me about fanfic - seeing it as completely illegal (nothing worse than amateur lawyers). That's when it occurred to me that fanfiction really isn't illegal per se - it's not depriving anyone of income or polluting the work. The fanfic writer isn't selling their content - they are merely discussing their hopes and dreams and stories about the characters with other fans. Fanfic may even help a television show or movie gain fans or acclaim. Blair Witch encouraged fanfiction prior to its release. Setting up a site for people to exchange stories and the response taught the film and television industry a whole new method of promotion. A method that Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek figured out ages ago. So fanfiction actually helps the filmmaker or television creator. And since most TV creators do not own the rights to their product - they could care less. Heck, some fanfic is truer to the characters they've created than novels published as ancillary products. I never buy novelizations of the shows any more - fanfiction is so much better and it's free. (Also it can be NC-17...which is an added benefit if you're a horny adult like myself.)
Anyways, I briefly tried my hand at fanfic. Wasn't that great. But maybe it was because I attempted it as part of a collaboration?
(Loved the people, but I've never been good at creating a piece of art as part of a group...things just get diffused.) Although I will state that we did just as well in our attempt at fanfiction as ME (Mutant Enemy) did with their attempt at Season 7 BTVS. It's almost
frightening how closely they followed some of our flubs. Here's a short list of what we did and what ME did:
Our fic was called The Fanged Four and for those interested? Can
be found on www.atpobtvs.com at the fictionary corner.
1. Created a weapon but couldn't decide what it did until last minute
(Called it the Glaive)
ME created the scythe (and depending on your pov, they didn't know
what it did until the last minute either.) In our favor, we at least introduced the Glaive in the first 20 pages, ME waited until the last three episodes to introduce not one but two weapons : scythe and the amulet.
2. Creation of Mary Sueish slayer character, who isn't really likable.
We created two: Grace and Inez (I think that was her name). ME created at least 20. (five we knew by name)
3. Non-central characters who took away from fanfavorites. We created JAcob, Anna, The Mother of Grace, Grace, Inez, and Jacob's friend.
ME created Wood, Andrew, Kennedy, Rona, Amanda, Rona, Molly, Vi,
Chloe, Caleb.
These characters all managed to take up page and screen time, which could have been better spent on developing the relationships between core characters that fans and audience members were invested in.
4. When we ran out of stuff to do? We took off Spike's clothes and tortured him. When ME ran out of stuff to do, they took off Spike's clothes and tortured him. Of course we went one better than ME and
put Spike in a dress...but give ME time. (Actually I liked that part.
ME should copy us dang it!) It's hard for me to rail at ME for playing "kick the Spike", when I was the instigator of it in the collaboration. ;-) Be a little hypocritical, don't ya think?
Anyways...my intent was not to continue to criticize S7 of bTVS - if you want to read that you can go to the boards or my site. Back to discussing fanfic. Outside of the Fanged Four and a brief email to a friend, I've never really written fanfic. But this really weird fanfic that I've been reading has given me a germ of an idea. An idea I haven't really seen anyone try to do yet.
The fanfic is called Summer Son by redrover. The story takes place in two time periods: late 1950s-60s and the late 1970's early 80's. All the metaphors have been stripped away. A girl named Buffy Summers lives with her single Mom in a small two story ranch style home in a small town named Ephesen. Her next door neighbor is William Strickland James - a white blond haired boy and his police Chief Father and neatly prim mother. The boy looks and acts like Spike, except without the vampire bit. Point of View is Buffy's. Buffy is 35 and has just returned to her home town to bury her mother, and settle her mother's affairs. She'd been away for approximately 19 years, married to Riley Finn who she's recently separated from - b/c she is still in love with the memory of William, the boy she grew up with, was close friends with, but insisted he could never love her back.
Buffy flashback to different periods of their highschool experience.
In the flashbacks we meet other characters, including Angel "Peaches" Liam O'Connor, Xander Harris, Faith Wilkins, Father Caleb, Mr. Rupert Giles (Buffy's father's partner in the two-man law firm), Drusilla
Wolfram, Andrew, Jonathan Levinison, HArmony KEndall, and Warren MEers. But these are all normal people. The supernatural/fantasy metaphors are gone. And that is what intrigues me. It reminds me of an idea I had last year when Normal Again aired. What if everyone in Buffy's vampire slayer universe is her mental counterpart of the people in her real life? What if Buffy's way of dealing with her world was by putting these people in roles? When I was a child, I remember making up stories and putting my friends and nemesis in different roles in them. It's a way of dealing with our frustration towards someone in a non-violent way. So as I'm reading this fic, I'm wondering if this is what the writer may be doing, albeit subconsciously - putting the characters into real life counterparts?
(Not necessarily her's but maybe one's the writer envisions Buffy
would do? Of course the time period is completely off...but it is an interesting idea.)
So this got me to thinking...who would each of these people be in Buffy's life if she wasn't a vampire slayer and there weren't vampires? Would Angel be the older boy she slept with then dumped her
for a prettier girl? Would Spike be the bad boy who she fought with, traded insults since a kid, picked on, but secretly had a crush on?
Would Xander - be the class clown or the kid who was like her brother?
How would each episode of BTVS play in Normal Again universe and the BTVS universe simultaneously? Is it possible she finally retreated
to the BTVS universe - one where she could literally slay her enemies and was a hero, important, b/c it was easier than the real universe?
Isn't that why we create myths? As a means of dealing with our world?
It's an intriguing idea. Hmmm...maybe I'll use my live journal to play around with it. That way I can hide the stupid stuff, only reveal it to friends, or delete...and not clutter up my site or a posting board with it. (Not that posting boards allow fanfic). Also
since it's relegated to live journal, I'll be safe from the Bad Fanfic
critics. (Whom I live in fear of. ;-) )
Wonder if anyone has tried this idea with fairy tales or anything else? I know Gregory Maguire (sp?) did something similarly subversive by re-writing Cinderella from the Wicked Stepsister's pov and Wizard of OZ from the Wicked Witch of The West's pov. But has anyone tried to strip the metaphors away? From Cinderella? The Lord of The Rings?
Is it even feasible?
I decided to wander around the internet. Okay, I'll come clean - I had just seen the episode Once More With Feeling and went nuts, craving spoilers. Then Smashed and Wrecked happened and those were the last two episodes we got for almost two solid months. I wanted to know what happened next, dang it! Two months is an incredibly long time to wait when you're knee deep in a story. So online I went and discovered the wonderful world of fanfiction. (I also discovered the wonderful world of posting boards and essay writing but that's a whole other entry.)
Now, when I discovered fanfiction, I was in a weird place. It would I guess be synonymous to someone who specialized in music copyrights discovering Mp3 and Napster. I specialized in negotiating with writers and other people regarding permission to place their content online. This included trademarked material and copyrighted material.
My background taught me that using someone else's copyrighted or trademarked material was illegal. It was a policy I enforced at the company I worked and was part of my job as Manager of Rights and Permissions (no longer doing that right now, thank god!). So I felt a little hypocritical printing fanfiction off the internet and reading it on the subway. My colleague, who had not been to law school, railed at me about fanfic - seeing it as completely illegal (nothing worse than amateur lawyers). That's when it occurred to me that fanfiction really isn't illegal per se - it's not depriving anyone of income or polluting the work. The fanfic writer isn't selling their content - they are merely discussing their hopes and dreams and stories about the characters with other fans. Fanfic may even help a television show or movie gain fans or acclaim. Blair Witch encouraged fanfiction prior to its release. Setting up a site for people to exchange stories and the response taught the film and television industry a whole new method of promotion. A method that Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek figured out ages ago. So fanfiction actually helps the filmmaker or television creator. And since most TV creators do not own the rights to their product - they could care less. Heck, some fanfic is truer to the characters they've created than novels published as ancillary products. I never buy novelizations of the shows any more - fanfiction is so much better and it's free. (Also it can be NC-17...which is an added benefit if you're a horny adult like myself.)
Anyways, I briefly tried my hand at fanfic. Wasn't that great. But maybe it was because I attempted it as part of a collaboration?
(Loved the people, but I've never been good at creating a piece of art as part of a group...things just get diffused.) Although I will state that we did just as well in our attempt at fanfiction as ME (Mutant Enemy) did with their attempt at Season 7 BTVS. It's almost
frightening how closely they followed some of our flubs. Here's a short list of what we did and what ME did:
Our fic was called The Fanged Four and for those interested? Can
be found on www.atpobtvs.com at the fictionary corner.
1. Created a weapon but couldn't decide what it did until last minute
(Called it the Glaive)
ME created the scythe (and depending on your pov, they didn't know
what it did until the last minute either.) In our favor, we at least introduced the Glaive in the first 20 pages, ME waited until the last three episodes to introduce not one but two weapons : scythe and the amulet.
2. Creation of Mary Sueish slayer character, who isn't really likable.
We created two: Grace and Inez (I think that was her name). ME created at least 20. (five we knew by name)
3. Non-central characters who took away from fanfavorites. We created JAcob, Anna, The Mother of Grace, Grace, Inez, and Jacob's friend.
ME created Wood, Andrew, Kennedy, Rona, Amanda, Rona, Molly, Vi,
Chloe, Caleb.
These characters all managed to take up page and screen time, which could have been better spent on developing the relationships between core characters that fans and audience members were invested in.
4. When we ran out of stuff to do? We took off Spike's clothes and tortured him. When ME ran out of stuff to do, they took off Spike's clothes and tortured him. Of course we went one better than ME and
put Spike in a dress...but give ME time. (Actually I liked that part.
ME should copy us dang it!) It's hard for me to rail at ME for playing "kick the Spike", when I was the instigator of it in the collaboration. ;-) Be a little hypocritical, don't ya think?
Anyways...my intent was not to continue to criticize S7 of bTVS - if you want to read that you can go to the boards or my site. Back to discussing fanfic. Outside of the Fanged Four and a brief email to a friend, I've never really written fanfic. But this really weird fanfic that I've been reading has given me a germ of an idea. An idea I haven't really seen anyone try to do yet.
The fanfic is called Summer Son by redrover. The story takes place in two time periods: late 1950s-60s and the late 1970's early 80's. All the metaphors have been stripped away. A girl named Buffy Summers lives with her single Mom in a small two story ranch style home in a small town named Ephesen. Her next door neighbor is William Strickland James - a white blond haired boy and his police Chief Father and neatly prim mother. The boy looks and acts like Spike, except without the vampire bit. Point of View is Buffy's. Buffy is 35 and has just returned to her home town to bury her mother, and settle her mother's affairs. She'd been away for approximately 19 years, married to Riley Finn who she's recently separated from - b/c she is still in love with the memory of William, the boy she grew up with, was close friends with, but insisted he could never love her back.
Buffy flashback to different periods of their highschool experience.
In the flashbacks we meet other characters, including Angel "Peaches" Liam O'Connor, Xander Harris, Faith Wilkins, Father Caleb, Mr. Rupert Giles (Buffy's father's partner in the two-man law firm), Drusilla
Wolfram, Andrew, Jonathan Levinison, HArmony KEndall, and Warren MEers. But these are all normal people. The supernatural/fantasy metaphors are gone. And that is what intrigues me. It reminds me of an idea I had last year when Normal Again aired. What if everyone in Buffy's vampire slayer universe is her mental counterpart of the people in her real life? What if Buffy's way of dealing with her world was by putting these people in roles? When I was a child, I remember making up stories and putting my friends and nemesis in different roles in them. It's a way of dealing with our frustration towards someone in a non-violent way. So as I'm reading this fic, I'm wondering if this is what the writer may be doing, albeit subconsciously - putting the characters into real life counterparts?
(Not necessarily her's but maybe one's the writer envisions Buffy
would do? Of course the time period is completely off...but it is an interesting idea.)
So this got me to thinking...who would each of these people be in Buffy's life if she wasn't a vampire slayer and there weren't vampires? Would Angel be the older boy she slept with then dumped her
for a prettier girl? Would Spike be the bad boy who she fought with, traded insults since a kid, picked on, but secretly had a crush on?
Would Xander - be the class clown or the kid who was like her brother?
How would each episode of BTVS play in Normal Again universe and the BTVS universe simultaneously? Is it possible she finally retreated
to the BTVS universe - one where she could literally slay her enemies and was a hero, important, b/c it was easier than the real universe?
Isn't that why we create myths? As a means of dealing with our world?
It's an intriguing idea. Hmmm...maybe I'll use my live journal to play around with it. That way I can hide the stupid stuff, only reveal it to friends, or delete...and not clutter up my site or a posting board with it. (Not that posting boards allow fanfic). Also
since it's relegated to live journal, I'll be safe from the Bad Fanfic
critics. (Whom I live in fear of. ;-) )
Wonder if anyone has tried this idea with fairy tales or anything else? I know Gregory Maguire (sp?) did something similarly subversive by re-writing Cinderella from the Wicked Stepsister's pov and Wizard of OZ from the Wicked Witch of The West's pov. But has anyone tried to strip the metaphors away? From Cinderella? The Lord of The Rings?
Is it even feasible?
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Re: Reading fic for canon
Date: 2003-09-09 12:58 pm (UTC)As a gay woman, I find slash anywhere from unsatisfying to disturbing. The unsatisfying part is, "But this isn't real. These characters would never do this." You get tired of turning on the TV and never seeing gay characters. I want canonical gay characters, not somebody's secret uncanonical fantasy. So I try to content myself with Willow, Tara, Kennedy, and Larry. Joss did good that way. Most shows don't.
Disturbing I guess happens when there are match-ups that I just could never see, or when the sexual relationship is depicted as exploitative or something else that seems OOC to me.
I haven't read much slash fic. I read a little when I first heard about it, just because the idea of it being so widespread amazed me. I stopped reading it fairly soon after. Most times, I can't get beyond the phony doctored-up photos of the pair in passionate embrace, I'm laughing so hard!
Re: Reading fic for canon
Date: 2003-09-09 01:42 pm (UTC)I wondered how the non-hetero readers/viewers regarded slash. Did it come off as realistic? Or was it just disturbing or exploitive? I agree, seldom do we see realistic non-hetero relationships on TV or elsewhere. I've seen very few well-done. Whedon's depiction of Willow and Tara, and Larry being one of those. Actually Willow may be the best one I've seen. In fanfiction? Most of it seems to be on the exploitive side - mostly about titilation and NC-17 sex. There's one on eliade's live journal called Subtleties - a spander group of fics - which actually pushes past that and seems to attempt to explore an actual loving relationship between two men. It's one of the very few I've seen actually do that. But it is still heavy with the S&M.
I know I wouldn't attempt to write it. Haven't read enough of it to be comfortable. But I do find it's existence rather fascinating, particularly since it seems to be more from the hetero end than the non-hetero end of fandom. Why do male hetero fanfic writers love femslash with Buffy/Faith and female hetero writers love Spike and Xander? Or Xander and Angel? Pairings that would never ever happen on screen.
Slash
Date: 2003-09-09 02:16 pm (UTC)The phenomena of straight women writing gay male slash was actually kind of refreshing when I first heard about it, because it showed women can be just as sexual as men in that regard.
After a while, though, I started to get uncomfortable with it as well. It seemed to turn gay men into sexual objects or objectified the idea of gay male sex. I wondered how many of these women even knew any gay men in real life and were friends with them. For female slashers, it's just like this silly game where they indulge their sexual fantasies and giggle about it. I can only imagine what RL gay men think of that.
I suppose it may be hard to get why this would bug a gay person. After all, I could read a straight sex scene, canonical or not, and be titillated by it, but you see straight sex depicted in all manner of ways in the media: as sexploitation, as titillation, as a sacred union, as a private matter between consenting adults.
Gay sex is almost always depicted (if depicted at all) as a curiosity for ogling at. I guess on the day when it is depicted in all manner of ways in the media at large, I won't be bugged by hetero creation and consumption of slash anymore.
But I still won't want to know about it, really.