Author:
Rachel Williams
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Date Posted: 00:59:12 05/01/01 Tue
Mad for Mulder? Got a Jones for Buffy? Juiced by 'JAG'? In the Fanfiction
Realm, You Can Make the Plot Quicken.
The lights are off. A bowl of popcorn and a can of soda rest on the coffee
table. The cat's curled up in a tight ball, watching the screen flicker as
the final scene plays out and the credits roll.
The average viewer may call it a day or catch the evening news, but this is
not the home of an average viewer. The TV still hums as she bolts for her
computer, eager to get down a few snippets of dialogue, flesh out a scene,
explore an emotion.
She is a member of a somewhat different species: people with a certain
creative itch, for whom a show's characters pose nagging questions that won't
let up until an answer is found. That answer often comes in the form of
"fanfiction" (or, as those in the know say, "fanfic"). For its practitioners,
a TV show and its characters are but the starting point for new flights of
literary invention -- conflicts, romances, whole story lines that the
series's actual creative team never dreamed of.
And on the Web, fanfic is a bestseller.
For practically every show on television, there's a segment of this Net
subculture devoted to penning prose about the characters' fates. "La Femme
Nikita," "ER," "Dark Angel," "Dawson's Creek," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer,"
"Star Trek," "JAG," "The West Wing" -- you name it, it's out there. Even
movies have inspired fans to write. "Star Wars" may belong to Lucasfilm Ltd.,
but in their own imaginations, the fans own the characters.
And they've taken Luke, Han Solo and Leia out for a spin.
Fanfic isn't new. The spinning of stories based on someone else's creations
began decades ago. Back then, however, stories were photocopied and bound
together in fanzines and taken to conventions where writers and enthusiasts
communed. You had to know about it to get it. You had to care. Above all, you
had to drive.
Now the only driving you have to do is with your mouse. Click and you can go
from one Web site to another, from one story archive to another. The Net has
beamed us up, making it easier to trace this new-and-improved culture.
Henry Jenkins, director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT and
author of "Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture," ought
to know.
He wrote "Poachers" in 1992 and thought he was "doing a great job because I
referenced like 30 fandoms, but now if you go to the fanfiction on the Web
sites, which I look at regularly, you've got like 200 different fan universes
that people are writing in at this point."
That's a lot of kilobytes. Imagine a Barnes & Noble filled with nothing but
Xena, X-Men and Buffy. Xander and Willow. Spock and Kirk.
www.FanFiction.net is a bit like that. It's a little virtual store filled
with musings, rantings and stories. "Unleash your imagination and free your
soul," urges the statement below the header. Below that are links to various
fanfic fandoms. Click on TV shows and you'll find more than 300 series
listed, each with its own set of fanfiction. The site has more than 41,000
stories in all, the work of 13,000 authors.
It's a culture that thrives on modern-day myth and seeks to wrench it free
from corporate hands, says Jenkins. And he sees ample precedent for it.
"Literature originates in the context of a folk practice," he says, "which is
to say there are certain stories, certain larger-than-life protagonists who
really become central to a culture. Think about the heroes and gods of Greek
mythology. Historically, those characters belonged to all of the storytellers
within that community."
From Photocopier to Now
Granted, it's easier to find fanfiction today than it was, say, 10 years ago.
But still, finding quality fanfiction can be daunting. First you have to sift
through the various categories and character pairings, find a plot that's
appealing and then read the first few paragraphs to see if the story is worth
your time.
"La Femme Nikita" has generated more than 4,000 stories that can be found on
a variety of sites. There are also thousands of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
tales floating around on the Web. The Gossamer Project (www.gossamer.org),
just one of many fan sites devoted to "The X-Files," has more than 25,000
stories archived. And FanfiX.com is just one site devoted to fanfiction about
"Star Wars." It has about 1,500 stories.
Then there are freshman shows. James Cameron's "Dark Angel" has already
started to generate fanfiction and has several Web sites in its honor.
"Survivor," believe it or not, has fans writing their own versions of the
Outback quest for $1 million.
That's a lot of fic. All for free.
The World According To Fic Writers
They toil in front of their computers for hours on end, reworking scenes,
changing adjectives, debating the merits of adverbs.
While the Web can be a storage facility for dreck, it also houses the
occasional gem. And some fanfic writers are revered. They get "stalked" by
avid readers and are the envy of newbies.
They are stars. But back in the real world, they're just everyday people who
put in 40-hour workweeks and deal with office politics.
But what's the point of cranking out reams of story line devoted to . . . a
television show? Especially when there's no money in it? Was William Shatner
right when, during a "Saturday Night Live" skit, he told his fans to "get a
life"?
"There's a stereotype that anyone who sits around and writes stories about TV
characters for Internet consumption must be a clueless, lonely dork with no
friends and no life," says a 32-year-old "X-Files" devotee who goes by the
pen name DashaK. "But I've met over 30 writers in real life and I have to say
that that stereotype is utterly untrue."
It's impossible to attach a label to fanfiction writers. That person sitting
in the next cubicle may have a thing for Xena and Gabrielle, or maybe Josh
and Donna on "The West Wing." You never know.
What these writers do know is that in their universe, they control the
characters and the outcome of the story. If a show's creator takes a series
in a direction they perceive to be wrong, they can fix it.
For instance, because some "X-Files" fans were upset this season by the
absence of Agent Mulder, they disregarded the Season 8 narrative and created
a virtual Season 8, with writers taking turns at the helm. The same thing
happened when fans were disappointed with the third season of "Beauty and the
Beast."
"Fans are doing their own alternative series now," says MIT's Jenkins. "Shows
that are canceled, shows where producers deviate from what the fans wanted,
fans organize themselves. The earliest example I saw was 'Twin Peaks.' When
it was on the air and it looked like it was going to be canceled, fans
started writing their own alternative version."
Even if a series ends, fans keep the characters alive via fanfiction. "La
Femme Nikita" may have ended by sending its two star-crossed operatives in
different directions, but that doesn't mean the fans are willing to let it go
at that.
"I think it very likely that the show will live on through fanfiction for
quite some time," says South Carolina fanfic writer Katherine Gilbert, 32.
And then there are the larger universes such as "Star Trek," which has spun
off so many series that writers are likely to be penning prose for years to
come.
Loyalty, passion and a touch of obsession keep characters in these shows
alive and well on the Net, saving the day, getting in trouble or lusting
after another character . . . be it male or female.
Zak Zandarah, 28, of Minneapolis became fascinated by "Buffy" during the
show's first season. But what drew his attention were the show's secondary
characters, especially Xander (Nicholas Brendon).
"I'm more interested in writing about the sidekick characters, the ones whose
destinies weren't the 'Chosen One' and yet for whatever reason choose to stay
with her and put themselves in danger again and again," he says.
Zandarah has told most of his friends and relatives that he spends a lot of
time dreaming up "Buffy" plot lines. But other fanfic writers find that the
anonymity of the Web allows them to blossom. There are no recriminations to
be faced at the office, no smirks or giggles. They can post a story under a
pen name and lurk behind the monitor as people read.
DashaK, BoneTree, Shrift, Robyn the Snowshoe Hare: Pen names come in all
forms. In public, these fans may admit to taping their favorite shows, but
getting them to talk about writing fanfiction is another matter.
"I'm not ashamed I do it, but I do write some stories that are high in sexual
content," says DashaK. "I wouldn't want some weirdo to show up on my doorstep
one day. Sadly, this has happened to a few writers I know. Or I would hate
for my boss to cruise the Net one day and find what I've written. I know a
writer who had a co-worker find her stories and maliciously 'out' her to the
entire office."
Those who do talk about it are often teased.
"Other professionals tend to think I'm crazy for admitting I do fanfic at
all," says novelist Roxanne Longstreet Conrad, who writes fanfiction for
"Pretender," "Prey" and other shows. "There are also purists who don't
believe there is any such thing as good fanfic . . . that it's all
essentially garbage. That kind of perception can lead people to prejudge your
professional work."
But still she writes. "I did it in the beginning partly to become comfortable
with writing existing characters in television series settings, in the hopes
of someday writing either media tie-in novels or television screenplays.
"However, once I started doing it I found it was immensely relaxing for me --
fun, challenging and emotionally rewarding."
Producers and Fanfiction
In the fanfic world, when something happens to a well-known author, word
spreads fast.
When a popular "X-Files" fanfiction writer was battling a recurrence of
melanoma, an online friend sent a letter to co-executive producer Frank
Spotnitz, asking him to write to her. Spotnitz did.
When he learned this year that she had died, he was preparing to write an
episode about a young FBI agent who knows and loves everything about the
X-Files and Agents Mulder and Scully.
"I hadn't decided if it was a man or a woman yet. But when she passed away,
it felt like too perfect a way to pay tribute to her," he said of his
decision to name the character Special Agent Leyla Harrison, after the woman.
(The episode, "Alone," will air next Sunday.)
Spotnitz says he feels flattered that fans are writing about the show's
characters. "I think it's an incredible compliment. When people are writing
fanfiction, it's a very sure sign that these characters have become
dimensional enough to them that they justify that sort of time and thought,"
he says.
Marti Noxon, an executive producer of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," says
staffers on "Buffy" and "Angel" know better "than to disrespect the creative
process of any of these people. . . . It's flattering because something
you're creating -- a universe you're a part of -- has inspired people to go
off and continue imagining."
She says that she hasn't read fanfiction but that some staff members have
checked out some of the more titillating stories on the Net. However, if a
story line starts to lean toward something that may appear on the show, they
have to bow out because they don't want to be accused of stealing someone's
story.
"We're in a weird position with fanfiction. . . . Because of legal stuff, we
have to be really judicious about how much we read," she says.
Noxon, who has penned 19 "Buffy" episodes, admits feeling creeped out by some
of the stories she's heard about, stories that take the characters to "a
really dark or gratuitously dirty place. Sometimes you feel protective of
your characters and you don't want to see them sullied. I've heard about some
stuff that's going on, and I feel like saying, 'Use your own nubile girls.
Get away from my girls. These girls are not like that.' "
Asked whether it's possible for a fanfiction writer to step out of the
Internet shadows and land a gig on a series, Noxon recounts the story of one
fan who transformed herself from a disembodied voice on the Internet to a
staffer at "Angel."
Mere Smith, 26, was living in Brooklyn when she discovered "Buffy."
She spent hours on an Internet posting board called the Bronze and wrote
fanfiction that she stored on her hard drive. When a yearly gathering for
Bronze members came up in 1998, she hopped a plane to Los Angeles. Among the
150 or so attendees, she met someone who helped her land a job as an
assistant to a co-executive producer for the short-lived ABC show "Strange
World." After it was canceled, she joined "Angel" as a script coordinator. A
year later, she turned in a spec script and was offered a dry run. Now she's
an official writer for the show.
Her two worlds have merged. "It's just so odd because I've been in both
places," she says. "I've been in the office at 7 in the morning on the board
in New York. . . . And I've done the part where I stand over [executive
producer Joss Whedon's] shoulder as he reads the board. It's very strange."
According to Spotnitz, to get a job writing television, "you have to make it
your goal in life." So Smith looks like the exception to the rule. And she's
pretty happy. You can hear the excitement in her voice as she talks about her
job.
"Every time I write a script now, I feel like I'm writing fanfic," she says.
"I get to actually make the characters do what I want them to do. It's like
fanfic but 10 times better because you actually get to see it on-screen. I
feel like I'm writing fanfic, it's just that they're paying me to do it now."
And about that check?
"I've told people before, I filled up my quota of dreams come true."
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