Those were the days
Nov. 19th, 2009 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakLessons learned from transferring my Alias stories to AO3: I must persuade nomadicwriter to post there as well, otherwise I'm pretty much the only one using an Arvin Sloane character tag (so far, with just one exception).
Also: Alias is a fandom where I get a headache nearly each time I have to decide whether or not to use the pairing handle. Because while most of my stories have Arvin/Jack subtext, there is no actual sex (or even as much as a kiss) going on, so indicating a pairing would probably mean raise wrong expectations.
Lessons learned from transferring my Highlander stories: first of all, Seventh Dimension had changed its URL again. Never mind, I tracked the new one down. Secondly: awwwww, first internet fandom. I feel ever so nostalgic. First ever fanfiction written in English! The one that madehonorh write to me! The one that made kathyh write to me! First ever agenda story! (The agenda being: I'm ticked off at parts of fandom for their character bashing, have a point to make, and am also literary ambitious.)
Oh, nineties. You know, I think Highlander the Series (never mind the movies) holds up pretty well, all in all. The other month I was talking withkathyh about how HL handled the whole "immortal falls in love with mortal" concept way better than certain younger products, not to mention much of fanfiction in many a fandom. For starters, the show doesn't do the "one true love" concept, but rather sensibly makes the point that people who live for centuries, even millennia, will fall in love more than once. (Unless they're psychopaths.) Which doesn't devalue the relationships; of course they're not all presented with the same intensity, but they are all presented as important to the immortal in question. As for immortal/immortal relationships, one example from a comedy episode aside the general impression you're left with is that living together or centuries is not a good idea, whereas periods together and periods apart and willingness to switch between friendship and more according to the situation is.
Back then, that wasn't actually the thing I thought about first when being fond of the show. I liked the moral dilemmas, I liked the friendships, I liked some of the romance, sure, and the slashy subtext, and I definitely found the whole universe inspiring. And the online fannish interaction was fun. However, it also introduced me to the less fun and more infuriating side of fandom: the double standards for male and female characters, the way female characters can get demonized and bashed to no end if they're a) perceived in any way to stand beween a slash pairing, or b) hostile towards a fandom woobie, the way a morally ambiguous character promptly gets whitewashed in much fanfiction so that nothing ever is his (and mostly it's "his", see above re: double standards) fault, characters who don't forgive him immediately are judgmental assholes (if male) or deserving to die (if female)... like I said, it was the first time I encountered all of this. But by no means the last. The above mentioned very first agenda fic came into existence by one Misunderstood!Woobie!Methos story too many. (The example that pushed me over the brink into writing it went somewhat like this: Duncan and Joe found out that not only was Methos the perfect gentleman with Cassandra in his Horseman days - that rape talk was evil exaggaration by that bad woman - but he sent his personal physician from Egypt after her when she run away in the desert, and then the poor guy - Methos, not the Egyptian physician - was raped by Caspian on a regular basis so clearly he was the victim of victims; mean old Duncan - "that's what Mac gets for listening to the bitch, thought Joe" - can't even begin to apologize for his harsh, harsh words.)
Mind you: I thought reconciliation between Methos and Cassandra was possible, but not by her being told she should forgive him because he's such a charming guy these days (and certainly not by her turned into a villain and killed off). It had to earned through careful build-up and without belittling what he did to her, which is what I tried to do via the Covenants trilogy. Incubus was the first lengthy fanfiction - in any language - that I wrote, with a genuine plot instead of just dialogue and inner monologue which was and is my default option. Same with Transferences, which was also great fun to write because I got to flesh out Joe's daughter Amy and explore just what it means to be a Watcher in the HLverse, and Once out of Nature, which brings the whole thing to a conclusion. (And, I realized, is dated in one particular way - one gag depends on Methos being able to use a Lord of the Rings derived pseudonym; as soon as Peter Jackson's film versions were released, the general awareness of those names would have been far too high for him to use one, of course. Also, I had just discovered Yeats and let it show a bit too much.)
nomadicwriter to post there as well, otherwise I'm pretty much the only one using an Arvin Sloane character tag (so far, with just one exception). Also: Alias is a fandom where I get a headache nearly each time I have to decide whether or not to use the pairing handle. Because while most of my stories have Arvin/Jack subtext, there is no actual sex (or even as much as a kiss) going on, so indicating a pairing would probably mean raise wrong expectations.
Lessons learned from transferring my Highlander stories: first of all, Seventh Dimension had changed its URL again. Never mind, I tracked the new one down. Secondly: awwwww, first internet fandom. I feel ever so nostalgic. First ever fanfiction written in English! The one that made
honorh write to me! The one that made kathyh write to me! First ever agenda story! (The agenda being: I'm ticked off at parts of fandom for their character bashing, have a point to make, and am also literary ambitious.) Oh, nineties. You know, I think Highlander the Series (never mind the movies) holds up pretty well, all in all. The other month I was talking with
kathyh about how HL handled the whole "immortal falls in love with mortal" concept way better than certain younger products, not to mention much of fanfiction in many a fandom. For starters, the show doesn't do the "one true love" concept, but rather sensibly makes the point that people who live for centuries, even millennia, will fall in love more than once. (Unless they're psychopaths.) Which doesn't devalue the relationships; of course they're not all presented with the same intensity, but they are all presented as important to the immortal in question. As for immortal/immortal relationships, one example from a comedy episode aside the general impression you're left with is that living together or centuries is not a good idea, whereas periods together and periods apart and willingness to switch between friendship and more according to the situation is. Back then, that wasn't actually the thing I thought about first when being fond of the show. I liked the moral dilemmas, I liked the friendships, I liked some of the romance, sure, and the slashy subtext, and I definitely found the whole universe inspiring. And the online fannish interaction was fun. However, it also introduced me to the less fun and more infuriating side of fandom: the double standards for male and female characters, the way female characters can get demonized and bashed to no end if they're a) perceived in any way to stand beween a slash pairing, or b) hostile towards a fandom woobie, the way a morally ambiguous character promptly gets whitewashed in much fanfiction so that nothing ever is his (and mostly it's "his", see above re: double standards) fault, characters who don't forgive him immediately are judgmental assholes (if male) or deserving to die (if female)... like I said, it was the first time I encountered all of this. But by no means the last. The above mentioned very first agenda fic came into existence by one Misunderstood!Woobie!Methos story too many. (The example that pushed me over the brink into writing it went somewhat like this: Duncan and Joe found out that not only was Methos the perfect gentleman with Cassandra in his Horseman days - that rape talk was evil exaggaration by that bad woman - but he sent his personal physician from Egypt after her when she run away in the desert, and then the poor guy - Methos, not the Egyptian physician - was raped by Caspian on a regular basis so clearly he was the victim of victims; mean old Duncan - "that's what Mac gets for listening to the bitch, thought Joe" - can't even begin to apologize for his harsh, harsh words.)
Mind you: I thought reconciliation between Methos and Cassandra was possible, but not by her being told she should forgive him because he's such a charming guy these days (and certainly not by her turned into a villain and killed off). It had to earned through careful build-up and without belittling what he did to her, which is what I tried to do via the Covenants trilogy. Incubus was the first lengthy fanfiction - in any language - that I wrote, with a genuine plot instead of just dialogue and inner monologue which was and is my default option. Same with Transferences, which was also great fun to write because I got to flesh out Joe's daughter Amy and explore just what it means to be a Watcher in the HLverse, and Once out of Nature, which brings the whole thing to a conclusion. (And, I realized, is dated in one particular way - one gag depends on Methos being able to use a Lord of the Rings derived pseudonym; as soon as Peter Jackson's film versions were released, the general awareness of those names would have been far too high for him to use one, of course. Also, I had just discovered Yeats and let it show a bit too much.)
