Five Things My First Fandom Taught Me

[selenak]

From penknife (who chose Star Trek) and kangeiko, who picked Babylon 5. It was a bit difficult to choose, because on the one hand, Star Trek was my first fandom (watched TOS, watched the movies, watched TNG and DS9, watched Voyager, was in passionate love with TNG and DS9 and attended conventions), but on the other, it wasn't the first fandom I wrote fanfiction for, joined forums or mailing lists, or participated in via the internet. That, somewhat later, was Highlander. (In the meantime, I had also fallen passionately for B5, but I didn't dare to write for B5 until only two years ago; I also read a lot of ST tie ins and some fanzines back then, but didn't write until two years ago, either). So, HL it is for full-fledged fannnishness.

1) Tv shows based on movies can actually be good, and more interesting than their source, especially if they make it beyond their mixed first season

I had watched the movie Highlander, mostly because Sean Connery was in it, and had been mildly fond of it. Watched the premiere of the series mostly because I had nothing better to do, wasn't bored but not impressed enough to stick around, either (the only other first season episode I saw the first time around was the Joan Jett one, which wasn't that great), but then tuned in again during the second season, saw Studies in Light and went, hmmmm. Maybe I'll keep watching.

2) Morally ambiguous characters capture the majority of fannish hearts, which on the one hand is nifty because it gets a lot of fanfic written for you to read, but on the other makes you realize the majority of same proceeds to whitewash said morally ambiguous character into a Misunderstood Woobie (tm)

Like many a fan, I felll for Methos when he showed up in season 3. Didn't get online until season 5, though. Once I had internet access and found all those archives, I naturally looked for Methos fanfic and pretty much read everything there was in those early days. And after a while... let's just say I noticed a certain pattern. This was the year of the Comes a Horseman two parter, which meant the majority of fanfic followed the following pattern: 1) Methos has teary breakdown. 2) Joe, Amanda or Mary Sue lecture MacLeod on how utterly mean and judgmental he has been on poor Methos. 3) Duncan repents and confesses he was completely in the wrong. In between revelations that Methos hadn't really raped Cassandra but had been the nicest master ever to the ungrateful woman, and an appearance by Cass in psychotic serial killer mode so she can get beheaded by either Duncan or Methos and not disturb their future bliss through their existence anymore were optional. Which leads me to:

3) Any female character who shows hostility, anger or contempt towards an object of fannish lust has a good chance of earning hatred from the majority of the fans; if she has a genuine reason to wish the object of fannish lust dead, this is pretty much a done deal.

In those early days, the Cassandra hatred was indeed spectacular, and when she showed up in a fanfic, you could pretty much count on the fact she'd be characterized as totally insane, torturing and killing innocents left and right and of course torturing Methos so whoever killed her in the story could feel really really good about killing her. Never mind that the only people this woman in the episodes that produced this wrath was trying to get killed were the four guys who had annihilated her tribe and subjected her to torture and rape as a by product of a millennium of, as Methos put it, "angry adolescence". Never mind she actually did let Methos go when MacLeod asked her to. This phenomenon more and more disturbed me. However, it also led to lesson 4.

4) If something in fanfiction annoys you, don't waste time bitching about it; do it better.

Up to that point, I had written one Joe Dawson story dealing his reaction to discovering Methos' true identity, and one Alexa (= sweet girl Methos was in love with, died early) story. Both were short. My above named disquiet led me to write one lengthy plotty story about Cassandra and Methos called "Incubus", set between seasons 5 and 6, which led to a trilogy. And then a short story about Cassandra and Methos back in the Horsemen days called "Death and the Maiden" which was the darkest thing I had written up to that point, bar none, and even all those years later, I think it's one of my best stories. (Save for something I co-wrote with a friend, it also was my last in HL fandom, not because I grew out of love with the HLverse but because I had said pretty much all I had to say in fanfiction.) It made honorh write me her third feedback mail, and we've been friends ever since, which brings me to lesson 5.

5) "We are the champions, my friends..." (imagine this sung by Freddie Mercury, to go with the HL theme, please).

Though I had attended ST conventions, HL internet fandom was where I made my first enduring friends based on shared interests, debates, writing, joking, the entire enchilada. The first time I experienced fannish generosity and enthusiasm for sharing - Blake's 7 and Buffy The Vampire Slayer were both shows I discovered because fellow HL fans had pointed me towards them. (I in turn could convert bimo to B7 and honorh to Buffy later.) All these years later, this seems to me still be one of the best things about any fandom: the impulse to share the delight and stimulation you take from something with others.

Comments

[hobsonphile.livejournal.com]

Your fourth lesson should be everyone's personal motto.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Of course, I'd be a hypocrite if I wouldn't admit that I don't occasionally bitch and rant anyway, but I try to keep it to a minimum and do the creative channelling instead.*g*

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Lord, but you are so right about people wanting to white-wash the characters to remove all the things that made them interesting in the first place.

I used to get *so* fed up of 'Saint Avon'. And of course, Blake had to be evil, because what else would justify Avon disagreeing with him?

I once had to compile a list of all the times Avon had canonically abondoned his shipmates or deliberatly placed them in danger, because some fans refused to believe that he ever had. It was a fairly good list covering most of the other characters at least once.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Lord, but you are so right about people wanting to white-wash the characters to remove all the things that made them interesting in the first place.

And I really don't understand that, especially since it often gets done by the same people who complain that the hero is so dull for not having flaws. And then they make what was originally an ambiguous character far more flawless than the given show's hero ever was.

Saint Avon and Evil Blake: amen. Did you ever read the "You Big Bully!" essay by Rachael Sabotini which satirizes this trend in fanfic, picking Blake and Avon, Duncan and Methos and the two main characters from "Sentinel" as examples of how this usually works in fanfic.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

And I really don't understand that, especially since it often gets done by the same people who complain that the hero is so dull for not having flaws.

I sort of get the impression that what they often mean by "doesn't have flaws" is "isn't misunderstood by everyone but me (what we have is special)". For a lot of people, ambiguous is great mental exercise, but only fun as long as it masks a heart of gold, and the appearance of actual flaws is often a deal-breaker. (For instance, the number of people who loved flakey and unreliable and injustice-fighting Doctor Who, but bailed as soon as they hit a portrayal where he was really being manipulative and letting people die in the course of being unreliable and fighting injustice, ignoring that he started out as a guy who wasn't too unwilling to kill innocent bystanders for his own convenience.) You can be ambiguous, but you must also be noble, or the viewer too often considers the contract broken. But then, always noble isn't very ambiguous, and there's the conflict.

Which is a damn shame for B7, where the central point was that every one of them was flawed, and not one was noble, most especially the ones who claimed noble reasons for themselves - they were the ones who sowed the most harm and considered the most people expendable.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

You're dead on about flaws, methinks.

Which is a damn shame for B7, where the central point was that every one of them was flawed, and not one was noble, most especially the ones who claimed noble reasons for themselves - they were the ones who sowed the most harm and considered the most people expendable.

*feels devious*

You mean like Cally in Pressure Point where as opposed to Star One she argues strongly that taking out Control is worth any danger and sacrifice and that Federation rule cannot be allowed to continue?

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

Exactly. She could be a bloodthirsty little fanatic (which is a tiny bit disturbing, when you realize it wasn't even her own fight she was fighting, but it was aliens she went out of her way to go kill) - she had this great line in Volcano about how the natives had won by commiting suicide, like she admired them - and had weird and embarrassing bouts of depression and passivity. Not quite mentally balanced at all, however good she might have looked in comparison to her friends. :)

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I haven't read it, but I can certainly imagine Duncan getting the same treatment that Blake does.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

*awww -- loves*

especially number 5, so true.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Glad you like!

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Yours are two fandoms I don't know (I think our instrests cross in ST:DS9 and to some extent in Star Wars) but your lessons SO apply to the ones I know (HP, Mary Renault...)

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Yes, as watervole mentions above with Blake's 7 characters as examples, these are patterns to be found in many a fandom.

What was your first fandom, Star Wars? (I didn't get really fannish about SW until much later, though of course I did see it in the late 70s and early 80s.)

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Definitely Star Wars - I started writing fragments of what I did not know was fanfiction after seeing ESB - had to fill in the blanks. (It was truly, truly terrible, with the worst OC Mary Sue EVAH. My only excuse was my very young age. And of course I made Vader a lot nicer than he ought to have been, although not entirely woolly. Euch.) I found other fans online on Compuserve around 1995 and embraced fandom like my long-lost family. Ah, and Greedo shot first.

ST I got interested in at the time of DS9, but I left that fandom abruptly after 9/11, whern one of the good writers, Sandra Necchi, who'd been working in downtown UN offices on that day, wrote a long account of the day justifying the reasons for the attack, if not the act itself. I was incandescent with rage - that woman was raped because she was wearing a short skirt, America's "crimes", yadda yadda yadda, all this from someone working at Oil-For-Food-Central, mind you - and since most of that fandom was liberal, I just threw up everything rather than be involved in arguments with people who in my opinion deserved to be repeatedly slapped with a wet codfish. (Star Wars is a much more conservative fandom.)

One of my CompuServe old mates - we'd created our own site, Echostation.com, since - threw LJ invites at me; another wrote a SW/HP crossover, and the HP fandom dragged me under. I shudder to add up the hours of day now spent on LJ...

[kathyh]

In those early days, the Cassandra hatred was indeed spectacular

And I don't think it's changed. I bet you that somewhere on the internet the fingernails discussion is still ongoing.

even all those years later, I think it's one of my best stories.

Yup, I think I'd agree with that. I still remember first reading it and nearly forgetting to breathe.

And if I've got the right icon it's tongue in cheek *g*.

[kathyh]

Oops, no, I hadn't got the right icon. I meant to use this one. That will teach me to try and use clearer keywords!

[selenak.livejournal.com]

No problem.*g*

[spikendru.livejournal.com]

2) Morally ambiguous characters capture the majority of fannish hearts, which on the one hand is nifty because it gets a lot of fanfic written for you to read, but on the other makes you realize the majority of same proceeds to whitewash said morally ambiguous character into a Misunderstood Woobie (tm)

Exactly! That's the one thing I never *got* about some of the fanfic written about both Spike and Angel. The reason both were such compelling characters (along with Methos - Duncan came across as too much of a Boy Scout to really interest me) was because of their shades of gray. I loved the idea that chipped Spike turned to Xander in Triangle and, in all seriousness, asked "What d'you think? The hospital?" when Olaf the Troll asked where he could find babies to eat. I loved that although his friends really tried to think of Angeland Angelus as two separate people, it was souled Angel who locked the lawyers in the wine cellar with Darla and Dru. I loved that both Spike and Methos didn't give a piss about atonement, that Methos hid as a Watcher in charge of researching "Methos" to assure that "Methos" was never found, and that Methos was able to kill -- what's-her-name - the modeling agency Immortal? -- because he knew Duncan couldn't. I love that Giles killed Ben for the same reason. I love this essay.

*off to track down your fanfic*

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Kristin was the name of the modeling agency Immortal.

Most of my fanfic is here (http://www.fanfiction.net/u/6273/).

[spikendru.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I bookmarked the link, but didn't see any Highlander fic there - is your HL stuff elsewhere? I intend to check out your BtVS/AtS fics, but if you have any HL available, I'd be interested in that, too.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Yes, my Highlander stories are elsewhere, here:

http://users.erols.com/darkpanther/HL/selena.html

[spikendru.livejournal.com]

Oh, great! Bookmarked that site, too. Thanks. Also, I don't know if you have any interest in cross-overs, (I know some people just don't like them - period) but I wrote a Spike/Amanda Spike's Date (http://www.angelfire.com/vamp/swordandstake/Spike's%20Date.htm), and to fulfill a Slashfest request, I also did a Spike/Methos The Rhymer and the Ancient Mariner (http://www.angelfire.com/vamp/swordandstake/rhymer-Spethos.htm). But, if they're not your cup of tea, it's fine.

[astridv.livejournal.com]

2) Morally ambiguous characters capture the majority of fannish hearts, which on the one hand is nifty because it gets a lot of fanfic written for you to read, but on the other makes you realize the majority of same proceeds to whitewash said morally ambiguous character into a Misunderstood Woobie (tm)

*nodnod* And on that note... I don't know if I ever left feedback for your DS9 story "Paths not taken". This morning I stumbled over printouts of the first two chapters, re-read them, and hurried to ffn to print the remaining three chapters again. Not that I didn't enjoy reading the occasional G/B fluff fic but. I don't think I've ever read a fic that does this complex character better justice - you don't hesitate to show what Garak capable of.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Thank you. No, I hadn't received feedback from you on that one before, and I feel very happy to get this. Garak is another character who often gets the woobiefication treatment, that's true.