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lilydalexf · 4 years ago

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Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Syntax6

Syntax6 has 17 stories at Gossamer, but you should visit her website for the complete collection of her fics and to see the cover art that comes with many of the stories (and to find her pro writing!). She's written some of the most beloved casefiles in the fandom. I've recced literally all of them here before. Twice. Big thanks to Syntax6 for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I’m delighted but not surprised because I’ve written and read fanfic for shows even older than XF. Also, I joined the XF fandom relatively late, at the end of 1999, so there were already hundreds of “classic” fics out there, stories that were theoretically superseded or dated by canon developments that came after them, but which nonetheless remained compelling in their own right. That is the beauty of fanfic: it is inspired by its original creators but not bound by them. It’s a world of “what if” and each story gets to run in a new direction, irrespective of the canon and all the other stories spinning off in their own universes. In this way, fanfic becomes almost timeless.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it? What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

(I feel these are similar, at least for me, so I will combine them here.)

First and foremost, I found friends. There was a table full of XF fanfic writers at my wedding. Bugs was my maid of honor. I still talk to someone from XF fandom pretty much every day. Lysandra, Maybe Amanda, Michelle Kiefer, bugs…these are just some of the people who’ve been part of my life for half my existence now. Sometimes I get to have dinner with Audrey Roget or Anjou or MCA. Deb Wells and Sarah Ellen Parsons are part of my pro fic beta team. I have a similar list from the Hunter fandom, terrific people who have enriched my life in numerous ways and I am honored to count as friends.

Second, I learned a lot about writing during my years in XF fandom. I grew up there. Part of this growth experience was simply due to practice. I wrote about 1.2 million words of XF fanfic, which is the equivalent of 15 novels. I made mistakes and learned from them. But another essential part of learning is absorbing different kinds of well-told tales, and XF had these in spades. Some stories were funny. Others were lyrical. Some were short pieces with nary a word wasted while others were sprawling epics that took you on an adventure. The neat thing about XF is that it has space for many different kinds of stories, from hard-core sci-fi to historical romance. You can watch other authors executing these varied pieces and learn from them. You can form critique groups and ask for betas and get direct feedback on how to improve. It’s collaborative and fun, and this can’t be underestimated, generally supportive. The underlying shared love of the original product means that everyone comes into your work predisposed to enjoy it. I am grateful for all the encouragement and the critiques I received over my years in fandom.

Finally, I think a valuable lesson for writers that you can find in fandom, but not in your local author critique group, is how to handle yourself when your work goes public. Not everyone is going to like your work and they will make sure you know it. Some people will like it maybe too much, to the point where they cross boundaries. Learning to disengage yourself from public reaction to your work is a difficult but crucial aspect of being a writer. You control the story. You can’t control reaction to it. It’s frustrating at first, perhaps, but in the end, it’s freeing.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

I participated in ATXC, the Haven message boards, and the Scullyfic mailing list/news group. For a number of years, I also ran a fic discussion group with bugs called The Why Incision.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I started reading XF fanfic before I began watching the show. I had watched one season two episode (Soft Light) and then seen bits and pieces of a few others from season four. I’d seen Fight the Future. Basically, I’d seen enough to know which one was Mulder and which one was Scully, and which one believed in aliens. An acquaintance linked me to a rec site for XF fanfic (Gertie’s, maybe?) so that I could see how fic was formatted for the web. I clicked a fic, I think it was one by Lydia Bower dealing with Scully’s cancer arc, and basically did not stop reading. Soon I was printing off 300K of fic to take home with me each night. I could not believe the level of talent in the fandom, and that there were so many excellent writers just giving away their works for free. I wanted to play in this sandbox, too, so I started renting the VHS tapes to catch up on old episodes (see, I am An Old). After a few months, I began writing my own stuff.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to The X-Files. I’m not a sci-fi person by nature. I think my main objection is that, when done poorly, it feels lazy to me. Who did the thing? A ghost! Maybe an alien? I guess we’ll never know. You can always just shrug and play some spooky music and the “truth will always be out there…” somewhere beyond the story in front of you. You never have to commit to any kind of truth because you can invent some magical power or new kind of alien to change the story. I think, by the bitter end, the XF had devolved into this kind of storytelling. The mytharc made no kind of sense even in its own universe. But for years the XF achieved the best aspects of sci-fi storytelling—narrative flexibility and an apotheosis of our current fears dressed up as a super entertaining yarn.

What eventually sold me on the XF as a show is all of the smart storytelling and the sheer amount of ideas contained within its run. At its best, it’s a brilliant show. You have mediations on good versus evil, the role of government in a free society, is there a God, are we alone in the universe, and what are the elements that make us who we are? If Mulder and Morris Fletcher switch bodies, how do we know it’s really “them”? The tonal shifts from week to week were clever and engaging. For Vince Gilligan, truth was always found in fellow human beings. For Darin Morgan, humans were the biggest monster of all. The show was big enough to contain both these premises, and indeed, was stronger for it. The deep questions, the character quirks, the unsolved mysteries and all that went unsaid in the Mulder-Scully relationship left so much room for fanfic writers to do their own work. As such, the fandom attracted and continues to attract both dabbling writers and those who are serious craftspeople. People who like the mystery and those who like the sci-fi angle. Scientists and true believers. Like the show, it’s big enough for all.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I look at it like an old friend I catch up with once in a while. We’ve been close for so long that there’s no awkwardness—we just get each other! I love seeing people post screen shots and commentary, and I think it’s wonderful that so many writers are still inventing new adventures for Mulder and Scully. That is how the characters live on, and indeed how any of us lives on, through the stories that others tell about us.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I ran the Hunter fandom for about five years, mostly because when I poked my head back in, I found the person in change was a bully who’d shut down everything due to her own waning interest. A person would try to start a topic for discussion, and she’d say, “We’ve already covered that.” Well, yes, in a 30-year-old show, there’s not a lot of new ground…

Most other shows, Hunter included, have smaller fandoms and thus don’t attract the depth of fan talent. I don’t just mean fanfic writers. I mean those who do visual art, fan vids, critiques, etc. The XF fandom has all these in droves, which makes it a rare and special place. But all fandoms have the particular joy of geeking out over favorite scenes and reveling in the meeting of shared minds. It will always look odd to those not contained within it, which brings me to the part of modern fandom I find somewhat uncomfortable…the creators are often in fan-space.

In Hunter, the female lead joins fan groups and participates. This is more common now in the age of social media, where writers, producers, actors, etc., are on the same platforms as the rest of us. Fan and creator interaction used to be highly circumscribed: fans wrote letters and maybe received a signed headshot in return. There were cons where show runners gave panels and took questions from the audience. You could stand in line to meet your favorite star. Now, you can @ your favorite star on Twitter, message her on Facebook or follow him on Instagram. In some ways, this is so fun! In other ways, it blurs in the lines in ways that make me uncomfortable. I think it’s rude, for example, if a fan were to go on a star’s social media and post fanfic there or say, “I thought the episode you wrote was terrible.” But what if it’s fan space and the actor is sitting right there, watching you? Is it rude to post fanfic in front of her, especially if she says it makes her uncomfortable? Is it mean to tell a writer his episode sucked right to his face?

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I own the first seven seasons on DVD and will pull them out from time to time to rewatch old faves. I’ve shown a few episodes over the spring and summer to my ten-year-old daughter, and it’s been fun to see the series through her eyes. We’ve mostly opted for the comedic episodes because there’s enough going on in the real world to give her nightmares. Her favorite so far is Je Souhaite.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I don’t have much bandwidth to read fanfic these days. My job as a mystery/thriller author means I have to keep up with the market so I do most of my reading there right now. I also beta read for some pro-fic friends and betaing a novel will keep you busy.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

I read so much back in the day that this answer could go on for pages. Alas, it also hasn’t changed much over the past fifteen years because I haven’t read much since then. But, as we’re talking Golden Oldies today, here are a bunch:

All the Mulders, by Alloway I find this short story both hilarious and haunting. Scully embraces her power in the upside down post-apocalyptic world.

Strangers and the Strange Dead, by Kipler Taut prose and an intriguing 3rd party POV make this story a winner, and that’s before the kicker of an ending, which presaged 1013’s.

Cellphone, by Marasmus Talk about your killer twists! Also one of the cleverest titles coming or going.

Arizona Highways, by Fialka I think this is one of the best-crafted stories to come out of the XF. It’s majestic in scope, full of complex literary structure and theme, and yet the plot moves like a runaway freight train. Both the Mulder and Scully characterizations are handled with tender care.

So, We Kissed, by Alelou What I love about this one is how it grounds Mulder and Scully in the ordinary. Mulder’s terrible secret doesn’t involve a UFO or some CSM-conspiracy. Scully goes to therapy that actually looks like therapy. I guess what I’m saying is that I utterly believe this version of M & S in addition to just enjoying reading about them.

Sore Luck at the Luxor, by Anubis Hot, funny, atmospheric. What’s not to love?

Black Hole Season, by Penumbra Nobody does wordsmithing like Penumbra. I use her in arguments with professional writers when they try to tell me that adverbs and adjectives MUST GO. Just gorgeous, sly, insightful prose.

The Dreaming Sea, by Revely This one reads like a fairytale in all the best ways. Revely creates such loving, beautiful worlds for M & S to live in, and I wish they could stay there always.

Malus Genius, by Plausible Deniability and MaybeAmanda Funny and fun, with great original characters, a sly casefile and some clear-eyed musings on the perils of getting older. This one resonates more and more the older I get. ;)

Riding the Whirlpool, by Pufferdeux I look this one up periodically to prove to people that it exists. Scully gets off on a washing machine while Mulder helps. Yet it’s in character? And kinda works? This one has to be read to be believed.

Bone of Contention (part 1, part 2), by Michelle Kiefer and Kel People used to tell me all the time that casefiles are super easy to write while the poetic vignette is hard. Well, I can’t say which is harder but there much fewer well-done casefiles in the fandom than there are poetic vignettes. This is one of the great ones.

Antidote, by Rachel Howard A fic that manages to be both hot and cold as it imagines Mulder and Scully trying to stay alive in the frosty wilderness while a deadly virus is on the loose. This is an ooooold fic that holds up impressively well given everything that followed it!

Falling Down in Four Acts, by Anubis Anubis was actually a bunch of different writers sharing a single author name. This particular one paints an angry, vivid world for Our Heroes and their compatriots. There is no happy ending here, but I read this once and it stayed with me forever.

The Opposite of Impulse, by Maria Nicole A sweet slice of life on a sunny day. When I imagine a gentler universe for Mulder and Scully, this is the kind of place I’d put them.

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Bait and Switch is probably the most sophisticated and tightly plotted. It was late in my fanfic “career” and so it shows the benefits to all that learning. My favorite varies a lot, but I’ll say Universal Invariants because that one was nothing but fun.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I never say never! I don’t have any oldies sitting around, though. Everything I wrote, I posted.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I write casefiles…er, I mean mysteries, under my own name now, Joanna Schaffhausen. My main series with Reed and Ellery consists of a male-female crime solving team, so I get a little bit of my XF kick that way. Their first book, The Vanishing Season, started its life as an XF fanfic back in the day. I had to rewrite it from the ground up to get it published, but if you know both stories, you can spot the similarities.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

The answer any writer will tell you is “everywhere.” Ideas are cheap and they’re all around us—on the news, on the subway, in conversations with friends, from Twitter memes, on a walk through the woods. My mysteries are often rooted in true crime, often more than one of them.

Each idea is like a strand of colored thread, and you have to braid them together into a coherent story. This is the tricky part, determining which threads belong in which story. If the ideas enhance one another or if they just create an ugly tangent.

Mostly, though, stories begin by asking “what if?” What if Scully’s boyfriend Ethan had never been cut from the pilot? What if Scully had moved to Utah after Fight the Future? What if the Lone Gunmen financed their toys by writing a successful comic book starring a thinly veiled Mulder and Scully?

Growing up, I had a sweet old lady for a neighbor. Her name was Doris and she gave me coffee ice cream while we watched Wheel of Fortune together. Every time there was a snow storm, the snow melted in her backyard in a such way that suggested she had numerous bodies buried out there. How’s that for a “what if?”

What's the story behind your pen name?

I’ve had a few of them and honestly can’t tell you where they came from, it’s been so long ago. The “6” part of syntax6 is because I joke that 6 is my lucky number. In eighth grade, my algebra teacher would go around the room in order, asking each student their answer to the previous night’s homework problems. I realized quickly that I didn’t have to do all the problems, just the fifteenth one because my desk was 15th on her list. This worked well until the day she decided to call on kids in random order. When she got to me and asked me the answer to the problem I had not done, I just invented something on the spot. “Uh…six?”

Her: “You mean 0.6, don’t you?”

Me, nodding vigorously: “YES, I DO.”

Her: “Very good. Moving on…”

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

My close friends and family have always known, and reactions have varied from mild befuddlement to enthusiastic support. My father voted in the Spookies one year, and you can believe he read the nominated stories before casting his vote. I think the most common reaction was: Why are you doing this for free? Why aren’t you trying to be a paid writer?

Well, having done both now, I can tell you that each kind of writing brings its own rewards. Fanfic is freeing because there is no pressure to make money from it. You can take risks and try new things and not have to worry if it fits into your business plan.

(Posted by Lilydale on September 15, 2020)

#new post #old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #syntax6

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angst-in-space · 6 years ago

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1, 2, 4-11, 13-18, 20-22, 24, 25, 27-35, 37-48, 50 👍💕💖

holy shit alex

1. What was your first fic and could you stand to reread it today?

my first fic was altea rising and yes i’d still reread it today bc 1) i’m still writing it lmao, 2) i only started it two years ago dkfdj

2. What’s your most recent fic and how far do you think you’ve come?

if we’re not counting fic updates i guess the most recent thing i finished was my piece for @extrasolarzine (WHICH I’M GONNA FINALLY POST A PREVIEW OF THIS WEEK...AAH)!! and well, again i’ve only been writing fic for a couple years but...hmm idk, i mean this piece is very action-y and that’s something i used to have very little confidence about, so i’d like to think that’s something i’ve improved upon!

4. In your opinion and without looking at any numbers, what’s your most popular fic?

ha i mean i know for a fact that “if the silence was a song” is my most popular fic both in terms of hits/kudos....it also seems to be the one people rec the most and the one i most often get the reaction of “wait, YOU wrote that??” sdkfjd

5. Is there any fic that makes you super happy to reread and remember you wrote that?

answered!

6. Is there any fic that makes you super embarrassed to reread and remember you wrote that?

nah not really, i’m pretty happy with all my fics lol...i guess there’s parts of them that could be better but none of them make me like Truly Embarrassed

7. What’s the fic you most want to continue (unfinished or no)?

answered!

8. What’s the oldest (longest since last update) fic you most want to continue (unfinished or no)?

i guess it’s altea rising since i haven’t updated it in like three months haha, but uhh don’t worry it’s coming! (as in i’m super close to Finally finishing a draft of the next chapter heh heh)

9. Have you ever written for a fandom without watching/reading/playing the source material?

nope! i’ve only written fic for voltron

10. Have you ever written for a fandom without reading other fanfic for it?

also no....i binge-read a ton of voltron fics the summer it came out and then started a fic of my own!

11. Have you ever written a fic for a concept you know someone else has done before? How did it impact your writing process or feelings after posting?

i figure everything has been done before in one way or another so that’s something i try not to sweat it too much about. i try to be original, but there’s also a lot of popular tropes i like so it’s fun to take those and try to make them my own somehow!

13. What’s the biggest change between your style when you started in fandom and today?

answered!

14. What’s the biggest change in your taste between when you started in fandom and today?

i’m not sure if this refers to reading or writing fic but...i guess in general i’m a lot pickier now than i was at the beginning of the fandom?? like i remember at the beginning i’d just kinda read whatever was popular but over time i’ve developed a much better sense of what i will and won’t like lol, and i p much only read things written by friends and/or rec’d to me by friends.

15. Have you ever purposefully written one fandom/fic idea over another because you knew it’d be more popular?

not really?? in fact i seem to gravitate more towards my super long complicated aus even knowing they’re not gonna gain as much attention lol.

16. Have you ever stopped writing a fic/for a fandom because it wasn’t receiving enough attention?

no i’m a masochist so i continue writing the aforementioned super long complicated aus even when it feels like i’m just dropkicking updates into the void lmao. but tbh even if literally no one was reading my multichap fics i’d probs still write them bc they’re fun to write and i love them a lot, so!!

17. In your opinion, what’s your most overrated fic?

ha i mean, again i like all my fics and i’m happy i wrote them all but...i guess probably “a truth in the blood”? dgmw i still like that one a lot and i’m glad a lot of people enjoyed it, i’m just not as like emotionally attached to it as i am to my other fics (probs cuz i wrote it in like two weeks haha).

18. What’s your most underrated fic?

ummm i’d say it’s defo “the stars are bound to change.” idk man like i really poured my soul into that one and it’s so rare someone tells me it’s their fave....i have this particular soft spot for it that whenever someone tells me they love that one i’m like *SOBS*...THANK YOU.

20. Have/Would you ever rewrite a fic? If yes, would you take the original down?

probably not?? there’s some things i’d probs change a bit in some of my fics but there’s nothing that i would rewrite completely.

21. If someone starts kudosing and commenting your fics in a spree and has a few works of their own, would you go look through theirs?

i gotta admit i don’t think i’ve ever done that...? i usually don’t start looking at someone’s fics unless they’ve been rec’d to me or like unless we’ve become friends and i then find out they write fic.

22. Has there ever been anyone who’s made you freak out because they read your work and followed/favorited/reviewed?

answered!

24. What’s the meanest review you’ve ever gotten? Do you think the reviewer intended it?

i’ve never gotten a truly mean review really. *knocks on wood* i think the only slightly negative one i can think of off the top of my head was someone who complained about the end of “the stars are bound to change” and said it was too abrupt but...i don’t think they intended it to be super malicious or anything, and like, i get it bc i wasn’t 100% happy with the ending either. but oh well can’t win ‘em all.

25. What constructive criticism, however well-meaning, always makes you feel bad when you see it in a review?

again i haven’t really gotten much negativity or criticism in comments so uh...*shrugs* and i’m p good at taking constructive criticism i was a creative writing major sdkdj

27. If you could only ever write crossovers or single-fandom fics ever again, which would you pick?

i’ve only ever written single-fandom fics and don’t have a desire to ever write a crossover fic so lol.

28. if you could only ever write for a single crossover or a single fandom again, which would you pick?

i mean i guess voltron bc it’s the only fandom i’ve written fic for anyway and klance still owns my ass, so...

29. Does the division of your writing across fandoms line up with your reading? What’s the biggest discrepancy?

....i only read/write voltron fic pretty much so uh n/a haha

30. Do you continue to write for a fandom after you’ve moved on or do you focus solely on the new one?

again i’ve only written voltron fic and yeah i’m still writing it even though i’m not watching the show anymore. what can i say, a bitch loves klance and that bitch is me!!

31. Who’s the one character you’ve just never managed to get perfectly right?32. Who’s the one character who shines without you even trying?33. Is there any particular character whose scenes always wind up being longer/more frequent than you expected? Does the quality hold up?

answered!

34. Was there any fic that you wrote that really surprised you in the fandom reaction? Was it just by the numbers or did they take it an entirely different way?

also answered!

35. Have you ever written a ship into a fic without meaning to?

not that i can think of...there’s been a couple times i’ve decided partway through a fic to include some side-pairing later on in the background, but it’s not really unintentional, just that i didn’t plan on it from the beginning.

37. Have you ever purposefully bashed a character/ship in a fic?

i wouldn’t say “bashed” per se but uh i do often really stress on shiro & keith having a brotherly relationship although that’s more out of the fear of people interpreting it the wrong way... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

38. Have you ever purposefully written something you know your readers would find uncomfortable/would not enjoy? If yes, why?

i....no. why would i do that?? dlkfjdk

39. Do you consider yourself to have a readership?

a sort of small one but yeah!

40. Do you feel like you put out enough content?

yes and no...i write a lot but it’s mostly just piling more and more into my multichaps. kinda wish i wrote more short oneshots but oh well.

41. If you cross-post your fics on multiple sites, do you have a favorite? Are there certain fics you would only post on certain site?

i only post on ao3 so yeah.

42. How many views has your most popular fic gotten?

“if the silence was a song” with 23,744 hits whew!!

43. Your least popular?

“a million little pieces” (the fic i wrote for lancito) it only has 349 hits rip.... (i mean it’s a gen fic and only like 2k words long so i get it but sdlkfjd)

44. Do you follow/favorite/kudos/comment/review more stories than you have received?

i’m a little confused by the wording of this lol, but uh if i’m understanding the question correctly...i think it’s about even? although tbh i’ve been slacking a lot in my fic reading lately, but in general i try to support other fic authors as much as i can!

45. If you had to call yourself an author of a single genre (besides fanfic) what label would you give yourself?

answered!

46. Do you consider yourself a diverse author?

i’m not sure if this means like in terms of diverse content/genres or in terms of like character diversity but i’d like to say yes to both?? i like moving around between different genres, also i care a lot about character diversity and representation so yeah!

47. If someone you know in real life who isn’t involved in fandoms asked to read your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you recommend they read first?

i mean this has happened to me before and i’m like “sure lol.” it depends on the person but probs i would have them read “a million little pieces” or maybe “a truth in the blood” since those are the shortest and uhhh the least shippy lol.

48. Does anyone you know from outside of fandom know you write fanfic? Are they involved in the same fandom too?

yeah i’m an annoying bitch who can’t shut up about writing fic so p much all my friends/fam know i write it hahaha. and uhh i have a couple irl friends who are in the same fandoms as me but not a lot.

50. Has writing fanfic had a significant impact on your life? Would you say it’s entirely positive?

answered!

aaaaand now i think i’ve officially answered all the questions for this meme lmao

fanfic author ask meme

#sorry it took me forever to get through these askdfjd #ask memes #fanfic author ask meme #alfyrion #brigidanswers

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caffeineivore · 7 years ago

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On Review Etiquette

So, lately, I have been participating in @sailormoonreviewevent and it brings back some of my best and worst memories of fandoms, not just SM but fandoms in general, and the people who populate them.

Background information: I’ve been around since dinosaurs still roamed the Earth and geocities sites with animated word-art headers and the like were still the norm. In the case of Sailor Moon as well as other fandoms in which I have participated, I seem to always end up in a peculiar sort of capacity-- on the one hand, I’d pretty much stick to a very small corner of the fandom wherein my ship and/or character preferences kept me mostly away from the vast majority of the riff-raff and the fandom politics, but maybe because I have an inherently bossy and super type-A personality, I’d still end up in some sort of organizational capacity. The whip-cracker, as it were, amidst a bunch of creative types. For instance, in Sailor Moon, I pretty much stuck exclusively with senshi/shitennou. I paid very little attention to fanfics not about senshi/shitennou, and don’t really know people outside of that group. However, for all that, I ended up organizing ficathon for a few years, as well as moderating a writing community and planning meet-ups between members. In this role, I get to see a lot of the nuts and bolts which go on behind the scenes, and, unfortunately, also have to play the bad guy in certain sticky situations, which brings me to the point of this post.

Now, as a fanfic writer myself, I can say definitively that reviews make the world go round. Much as we write for fun, and we write to please ourselves, there is nothing quite so uplifting and encouraging as a genuine, sincere, detailed positive review. You know the type-- the ones that tell you exactly what they liked the most about your fic, in such a way that shows that not only did they read it, but it truly had an impact on them-- maybe it made them reconsider a facet of a character they’d never considered before, or maybe it mentions their favourite lines, or maybe it subconsciously reassures the writer on some point or another which they were uncertain about. Obviously, these are like the gold standard of reviews, and somewhat rare and far between. However, you’ll also get a bunch of “omg i <3 this fic MOAR PLZ”, which is okay too. You’ll probably even get a few with constructive criticism, which may sting at the time, but if the reviewer 1. means well and 2. has a point, it’s definitely worth your time to take their words into account.

However, then you get one of these other types of reviews:

1. “Why did you write about [character] and/or [ship] they suxxxx [other character/ship] IS SO MUCH BETTER!!!!!”

2. this fucking fic is dumb. you suck. die in a fire. flame flame flame flame flame. trollololol I have no life I live in my parents’ basement and wank over how hard I am even though I need to put people down behind a meaningless screen name to feel better about myself. Not in a million years would I have the balls to say this sort of thing to someone’s face, but on the internet I am a Grade A Certified Prime Asshole and proud of it. [guest review anonymous]

3. So yeah this fic is great and I know it’s marked complete but could you add another chapter? Perhaps with [very specific plot and character requirements to cater into my personal whims] plzkthxbai!

4. Ummm... so why are you writing [characters] in [AU setting] or [different version of canon-- manga/anime/pgsm/etc.]?? MY PREFERRED CANON IS BETTER. WHY CAN’T YOU DO WHAT I WANT YOU TO DO??

5. Update faster plz!!! I need the next chapter NOW!! Actually I needed it YESTERDAY!! WTF ARE YOU DOING WHY ARE YOU NOT WRITING?!?!!?!!

Annnnnnnnd... you count to ten, resisting the impulse to chuck the phone or computer out the window. Take a deep breath, count to ten again, backward this time, and remind yourself that this is just fanfic. Just fanfic. Fandom’s bound to have a few idiots. You want to reply to the reviewer: “Look can u not” but that would be validating them, making them more important than they should be. You tell yourself it’s just a troll, but nonetheless, it hurts. And when you pick up that fic again, you’ll probably remember that one review in the back of your mind, taunting, more vivid than a dozen “gr8 job hope to see more soon!”’s.

And it’s sad. So I’m about to give everyone who has experienced this (which, in all likelihood, is everyone who has posted a fanfic in any fandom ever) a voice. A loud, stridently snarky one.

Reviewers: CAN U NOT?? with the trolling????

Look, I’m so glad that you have the time and the means to sit around and chill and read fanfic. It’s a luxury that requires a lot of first world amenities that not everyone has, so kudos to you. But that means, also, that you have a lot of freedoms not afforded to everyone, such as, y’know, the ability to pick and choose what you decide to read and comment on. There will be fics about every possible permutation of character ships in a fandom. There will be fics in every genre, which run the gamut of writing skill from novice to expert. And pretty much every single fic site, be it something privately owned or some behemoth like ff.n or AO3, will separate their fics into categories by character, genre, length, rating, etc. etc. The internetz is a wonderful thing. You can pretty much find anything with a few clicks. Like you can literally probably search for “I want a fic featuring [character A] and [character B] in a high school AU with angsty undertones and make it a one-shot less than 5000 words because I am on lunch break”, and it will take only the minimal amount of effort to get exactly what you look for to fall into your lap.

We all have our fic preferences. We also all know what we do not like. So, let me ask, why the hell do people insist on not only reading but flaming stuff that they KNOW they’re not going to like?? I am a diehard senshi/shitennou shipper and manga is my preferred canon. I KNOW that I do not ship Rei/Yuuichirou for example, so I won’t go out of my way to read fics featuring them. I’m not crazy about fics which feature tons of violence or porn, or lots of OCs, and I tend to dislike fics which make light of serious issues such as self harm or drug abuse, and I draw a very hard line at rape and sexual assault, especially if it features characters below the age of consent. Like, serious, trigger warning, PTSD, nope nope nope nope at Planet Nope. Now, what do I do if I come across a fic featuring any of these things?

I DON’T FUCKING READ IT. Really. That’s all there is to it. I scroll down onto the next thing. And in the event that, say, I accidentally clicked on something that I figure out isn’t my cup of tea, it does not take any sort of effort to click right back out. Why give yourself grief? But even more, why give the writer grief? Even if it’s totally not your thing, they put effort into it-- far more effort than you did, clicking on their work. THEY are into what they wrote.

Now, once upon a time, when I was organizing one of the senshi/shitennou ficathons, one of the submissions happened to feature something that NOPED with me very hard. And as ficathon mistress, I had to read it. So I did. And then replied to the author that it was very well written but I could not review it for personal reasons. Then I sent it off to another moderator to read it and give them an actual review. And that is an extenuating circumstance. Most people would not ever be in the position to have to read a fic that they would otherwise not read, or say anything to the writer of said fic. Even in that circumstance, it is not hard to deal with it in a respectful manner. So, why the fuck would someone willingly and knowingly inflict something they know they’re not going to like on themselves and then punish someone else for it? That makes NO sense.

As far as harassing authors to follow your own niche or write more on a topic or story that they feel as though they’re done with? Dude, write your own fic. You have total control over only one person in this world: yourself. Sure, validating what a fanfic writer does is very nice and gratifying, but they are not trained monkeys there to do your bidding and perform for your personal amusement. Unless you’re paying them good cashy money (which, since it’s fanfic, you’re not), you don’t get to have a say in what they write, when they write it, where they post it (if anywhere), any of that. They are under no contractual obligation to cater in to you in any way. And furthermore, when you try to dictate to them what to write and how to write it, the message is this: I Know Better Than You. Do As I Say. You Don’t Know Shit. What You Do Is Not Good Enough For Me. What You Do Doesn’t Matter. The Only Thing That Matters Is What I Want.

That’s nothing but a goddamn put-down. And when you put down someone who probably put in a whole lot of thought and effort into something which brings them no possible reward but personal satisfaction and maybe others’ enjoyment, it’s really kind of a sucker-punch. If, say, this was the type of interaction between a boyfriend and girlfriend-- the put-downs, the belittling, the dictating, the insults-- we’d all recoil and call it a toxic, abusive relationship. We’d tell the person receiving those comments to get out of there, to get help, to leave.

So, when you make those types of comments, that’s the message you’re sending that writer. Leave. Get out of here. Go away, for your own good, for your own sanity and health and happiness.

Now think about it, as you’re scrolling through ff.n or ao3 or wherever, looking for that next undiscovered gem. Think about it, when someone shyly asks you to review their fic, or signs up for the first time for a fandom event such as a ficathon or a big bang or a secret santa exchange. Is that the message you want to give them? That they should leave and never look back?

Now think about it again, and remember when you first discovered fanfic, or your preferred fandom, and wrote your first fic. Maybe it was campy and featured every trope on the TV tropes page. Maybe it was a shameless Mary Sue. Maybe it was ridiculously OOC and featured eye-gougingly purple prose. Maybe it was riddled with typos. Maybe you, yourself, looking back at it now, shake your head at how you could’ve written such a monstrosity. But would you have stayed, I wonder, if nobody at all encouraged you? Countless writers fade into oblivion after one fic, or disappear forever, deleting their fics off the internet. Countless people get fed up with fandom and throw their hands up and dismiss it as a lost cause. These things are going to happen regardless, sure.

But why the hell would you encourage that?

#fanfiction #fanfic #writing #sailor moon #sailor moon review event #sm review event

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oh-nostalgiaa · 7 years ago

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What got you into fanfic?

way back when your friendly neighborhood lauren was but 11 years old (the dark ages of 1991), there was no internet where you could have the entirety of human knowledge (and smutty fanfic) at your fingertips. so i started writing my own.

not smutty, though, not at that age. i started out by writing little ‘plays’ starring my oc’s (oh yeah, i started creating oc’s at a VERY young age) against people from tv that i thought were cute. so ... ranging from actors from the new mickey mouse club to the original power rangers lineup. i’m literally cringing because i can absolutely pull lines that i wrote off the top of my head even now and think ‘good god, woman, you have always been a terrible writer’.

there wasn’t really anyplace that i could share my writing, later on in high school when we did first get the internet - mostly because the connection was H O R R I D and i wouldn’t have known where to look for those sorts of things, anyway. so when i did write, i mostly shared those stories with like-minded friends which meant, at that time, one friend who i think only read them to make me feel better about myself high school was a rough time for me man a rough time indeed. by then, i’d graduated to original vampire fiction (and please let’s talk about the fact that my ‘friend’ STOLE an entire novel length hand-written draft that i’d written and tried to pass it off as her own liz if you’re reading this i remember and i don’t forgive, and backstreet boys x me, because reasons.

junior year of high school, i was accepted into the upward bound program and was taught cool things like CHATLINES and FAN FORUMS. i wandered into a backstreet boys chat, where i met some of the best friends i’ve ever had and scammers who tried to get me to believe they WERE the backstreet boys, but the author is a smart cookie and didn’t buy it, not for a minute. i was pointed in the direction of an erotic fic archive, where i could read all sorts of stories! and by erotic, they meant REALLY RAUNCHY.

i was still writing, but never posted there, mostly because i still didn’t write smut and had only just gotten into writing fade to black scenes. but one of the girls that i met on the chat became one of my very best friends in the world, and we started writing fic together.

but writing, i mean WRITING. long, handwritten chapters sent back and forth by snail mail. i didn’t have the internet, or even a computer at home, so that was really the only thing we could do. she thought it would be cool to start a website to put our fic up, so i agreed. she put one up at geocities (oh god if any of you actually remember it i will DIE) and it became one of the most popular fic sites at that time, even though our main characters were ourselves oh my god i wrote self-insert fic. fictional lauren was the lauren that real life lauren always wanted to be i mean banging various backstreet boys DUH.

that ended, and i didn’t write anything for a while because i was busy getting married and working and moving a lot and eventually having a baby and trying to navigate living in tucson with just a newborn. rented a computer from rent-a-center, got some internet, and ended up stumbling into lotr fandom hell. oh lord, the wank. i wrote a little rpf there, but when the fandom became toxic, i noped right on out of there and onto ...

livejournal! i met some of the best friends of my LIFE on livejournal. i wish it wasn’t the hellhole that it is now, because i miss those days something fierce. 2005 ... i was definitely into the bandom scene. or ... i mean, it’s not like i was popular or anything, but i had a lot of friends and i read a lot of fic, and i tried my hand at writing some, too, but nobody ever read ICKY HET STUFF so it’s not like any of that was successful for me.

after that ... i took a few requests for different fandoms - eureka ... i’m trying to remember the others but really only that one comes to mind. i’ve had my ao3 account since the livejournal days, but never used it for anything, including reading fic. it’s only in the past few years that i’ve even been pointed there to specific pieces, mcu stuff and whatnot, and it’s only been, what ... a year since i started writing again, when @poealsobucky bullied me into writing jyn x cassian and the rest of you have inexplicably continued to encourage me to write more literally i have no idea WHY but i like doing it and i REALLY like making you happy, so here i am.

ask me things!

#hey nonny nonny #lauren replies

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lodelss · 5 years ago

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Samuel Ashworth| Longreads | September 2019 | 13 minutes (3,389 words)

Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) are nestled in one another’s arms, sweat glistening on their muscled chests. They kiss softly and tenderly. It’s the middle of the night in a hotel somewhere on the campaign trail, and they are in love.

“So, if you were an animal, which would you be?” asks Ted.

“Let me think,” says Marco. “A manatee.”

Welcome, friends, to the glorious world of congressional fan fiction. If you’ve always associated fan fiction with the kind of people who hand-sew their own Star Trek jumpsuits, think again. Since going online in the late ’90s, fan fiction — a fan-created spinoff (sometimes way, way off) of an already-existing pop culture presence — has exploded. Its protagonists range from fictional, like Han Solo, to real, like Ariana Grande or members of the British Parliament. Published stories, which can range from a few hundred words to a few hundred thousand, number in the tens of millions, and boast an immense readership. The genre also remains one of the few resolutely not-for-profit corners of the internet: Since the work often involves trademarked intellectual property, fair use rules forbid fanfic authors from making money off their writing, unless they change all recognizable details, as E.L. James did with her BDSM Twilight fanfic story, Fifty Shades of Grey. Stories about congress fall under the penumbra of “Real-person fiction,” which isn’t bound by copyright laws in the same way.

For as long as people have been telling stories, people have been telling stories about those stories. It’s a basic human impulse: The Greeks wrote fan fiction about the Trojan War; the Chinese wrote it during the Ming Dynasty; the Spaniards wrote it about Don Quixote; the Victorians about Sherlock Holmes. Typically, we date its modern iteration from the late ’60s, when Star Trek fans began to circulate mimeographed zines full of their own adventures aboard the USS Enterprise. It was the punctuating backslash in “Spock/Kirk” that created the genre for stories which literalize unspoken sexual tension between same-sex characters: slashfic.

While not all fan fiction is erotic or romantic, a lot of it is. Pop culture mega-properties like Harry Potter or the TV show Supernatural have the biggest constituencies, but niche fandoms abound (for example, there is even one — mercifully chaste — story devoted to my favorite podcast, NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour). One growing niche is political fan fiction; the influential fanfic site Archive of Our Own (AO3), with more than 2 million users, has a thousand stories dealing with 21st-century American politicians alone.

Fanfic is inherently delightfully goofy, but it’s also worth taking seriously. Fandom has become one of the driving forces of American pop culture. When provoked, fans can rescue a TV show like Brooklyn 99 or One Day at a Time from cancellation, or they can kill a project in its infancy, as numerous young adult novelists have found. Even though fan fiction is necessarily noncommercial, the world of fandom is an economic behemoth, and with economic power, inevitably, comes political power — whether it’s wanted or not.

Most political fanfic features world leaders: AO3 features dozens of erotic romances between Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau, or David Cameron and a rotating harem of male British MPs, while the past two years have seen a proliferation of meme-ready “Trump/Shrek” slashfic. Sample line: “Donald Trump was building a wall. No, not to keep out the Mexicans. He built it around his heart, to keep anyone from getting there and breaking it like Shrek did.”

But since the 2016 election, as American political engagement has boomed — the 2018 midterms had the highest voter turnout percentage for any midterm in 104 years — fan fiction scholars have noted a spike in stories featuring the U.S. Congress. What makes this boomlet strange is that at its core, fan fiction “is about genuinely liking a person,” says Dr. Amber Davisson, coauthor of Politics for the Love of Fandom: Fan-Based Citizenship in a Digital World. And historically, well, not many people like Congress. As of August of this year, the institution’s average Gallup approval rating was 17 percent — somehow an improvement over the first half of this decade.

And yet, the more I spoke to authors, the more congressional fan fiction began to make perfect sense as a response to our high-strung political moment. To Ehren Hatten, a prolific fanfic author living in Austin, Texas, people gravitate to fanfic because it’s “writing something you want to see.” During the Obama administration, Hatten wrote a series of stories modeled on the “Hetalia” universe — a Japanese webcomic turned manga and anime series featuring nations personified as broadly stereotypical characters (France, for instance, hits on every woman who crosses his path). In her tale, the embodiment of America storms onto the floor of Congress and delivers a scorching tirade against the Affordable Care Act, which he calls an unconstitutional attack on the “will of the people.” The law, he warns direly, will bring about another Civil War — and a justified one at that.

Even though fan fiction is necessarily noncommercial, the world of fandom is an economic behemoth, and with economic power, inevitably, comes political power — whether it’s wanted or not.

“I was trying to point out how wrong and out of touch Congress has been for years,” Hatten told me. What she wrote was mostly “a way for me to get ideas out of my head,” but at the same time, she was annoyed by other Hetalia-based fan works “that would portray things like America being a superfan of Obama.” In the climax of her story, America triumphantly punches Obama in the face.

Similarly, Amanda Savitt, an ACA supporter, said writing fan fiction “made me feel like I had a little bit of control.” In her story, Steve Rogers is divorced from his role as Captain America’s alter ego and is now a young diabetic art student. (This is typical of the “alternate universe” genre of fanfic, which takes characters from one world and reimagines them in another, often with completely different characteristics. One such story features Rand Paul as a high school goth tormented by/in love with rich bully Donald Trump.) Afraid the Republican Party will kill the ACA and take away his access to health care, Steve and his best friend Bucky Barnes decide to marry so Steve can secure health insurance. Eventually, Steve and Bucky attend a town hall led by a Paul Ryan–esque figure. Steve delivers a scorching tirade against the repeal of the ACA. In the climax of her story, Steve triumphantly punches the Paul Ryan–esque figure in the face.

For many political fanfic writers, this catharsis is the main point of the exercise — to blow off steam. While William Wordsworth defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility,” fan fiction omits the tranquility part, which may explain the sheer ferocity of a lot of the eroticism. One author in Alaska who wrote a story about Mitch McConnell (R-KY) having intense and almost feral sex with Paul Ryan (R-WI 1) after failing to repeal Obamacare told me they banged the whole thing in an hour when they were feeling ground-down and angry.

***

Somewhere in Washington, rain is pouring outside as a young person curls up under a blanket with their girlfriend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY 14). Suddenly, a blackout ripples across the city, plunging them into darkness.

“Don’t be afraid,” she whispers. “I’m here.”

Yet for all the rage that has soaked into our political rhetoric lately, stories wherein characters physically attack politicians are rarer than you might think. Instead, most congressional fan fiction, even the really out-there stuff, is all about the romance. In one story, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA 12) get intimate after a spirited game of one-on-one basketball. In another, Paul Ryan and former Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL 18) long for each other from across the House floor. The exception to this rule is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose stories, so far, are loving but pointedly nonsexual. This has much to do with the fact that fanfic authors are overwhelmingly female, making sites like AO3 something of a refuge from the male gaze. “When the media reports on AOC and ‘girlifies her,’” Davisson explains, “they’re diminishing her. … [Her fans] care about her as a person.”

All of which brings us to Rubio and Cruz nuzzling, flushed with the thrill of new love and discussing their spirit animals. There are no fewer than 24 separate stories under the “Crubio” tag on AO3, but one of the first, “Fifty Shades of Red,” was written in 2016 by two high schoolers, who asked, not unreasonably, to remain anonymous in this article.

“Fifty Shades of Red” runs over 15,000 words long and chronicles a sweet but relentlessly raunchy (a phrase that could capture fan fiction at its core) senatorial affair, culminating in the two men admitting their love on a debate stage. They then exit stage right to apologize to their wives — who, in a classically Shakespearean twist, have also fallen in love with each other. “Our first taste of politics was Trump,” said one of the young writers, who collectively published the story under the nom de fan MikeRotch. “So it was kind of fun to turn the shitshow that was that election and make it into something more funny, and try to imagine that there’s something else inside these men aside from terrible policies and homophobia.”

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Both writers describe themselves as left-leaning and queer, and their story began as a dare during a sleepover. “We were just spiteful,” they said, but as they kept going, something unexpected happened. They became profoundly attached to their characters — Cruz as the gruff, masculine daddy, and Rubio as the besotted, timid younger man. A narrative which began as pure raunch turned into Cruz tenderly reading his favorite W.S. Merwin poem to Rubio, and Rubio confessing that “every day, I wake up questioning everything. Who I am. Who I want to be. Who I should be.” Their farce evolved into a real romance, fueled by an empathy that the authors never expected to feel for two men representing everything they loathed. That empathy stayed with them even after the story was written, and many of the other writers who wrote their own Crubio slashfic preserved it in their stories, too. On March 15, 2016, when Marco Rubio dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination, one of the MikeRotch authors called the other, crying.

Fan fiction is no different from any other kind of fiction: Empathy is its fuel, its AllSpark, its galvanic jolt. Without the writer’s willingness to probe the motivations of each character, good or evil, the story will not go. The plot will sit there, limp as wet cereal, and convince no one. This is why so much overtly political fiction is lousy: Instead of empathizing, the writer sets out to convince and condemn. The story groans under its own seriousness. But resonating fan fiction revels in humanizing its villains — there are 33,995 works on AO3 wherein Harry Potter hooks up with his nemesis Draco Malfoy. “I think there are a few reasons for that,” Savitt told me, “one of which is the fact that in popular media, unfortunately, villains tend to be queer-coded.” Just look at Disney: Ursula from The Little Mermaid was deliberately patterned on the immortal drag queen Divine. In Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent’s magical powers are just an outlet for her overflowing top energy. Male villains from Jafar to Hades to Scar (the Jeremy Irons version, not Chiwetel Ejiofor’s butch performance) are heavy-lidded, louche, effete. In fan fiction, authors have the power to overwrite that coding, to rethink the knee-jerk contempt we’re supposed to feel for these characters and depict them instead with an empathy the source material rarely affords.

This empathy makes congressional fan fiction remarkable in a political reality so divided that empathy isn’t just rare, it’s almost impossible. According to “The Perception Gap,” a 2019 study from the nonprofit group More In Common, the more politically engaged an American citizen is, the more likely they are to be wildly misinformed about the other side. Democrats flail around trying to divine the humors of the Trump voters, and Republicans believe that half of all Democrats are ashamed to be American.

Fan fiction is no different from any other kind of fiction: Empathy is its fuel, its AllSpark, its galvanic jolt.

Fanfic authors, on the other hand, tend to delve into objective research about characters and their worlds. Most stories about congresspeople feature direct quotes from speeches (in “Fifty Shades of Red” Cruz makes Rubio read one of his speeches while they have sex — something the authors spent “an embarrassing amount of time” researching), nuanced conversations about policy, and often, strikingly honest presentations of the villains’ arguments. In Ehren Hatten’s stories, Democrats assail America’s embodiment with real talking points (uninsured people “drain the system when they end up in the emergency room”). America has his answers ready, of course, but Hatten’s congresspeople are far from straw men. “I’ve been called a bigot and a racist more times than I really thought possible,” Hatten told me. “However, I still feel humans in general want to remember that the people they disagree with are still human and not some creature from the black lagoon. At least that’s my hope.”

That hope — the hope that maybe some of it isn’t fictional — is what drives people to write stories about Congress. Authors who write humanizing stories about politicians “are hoping in some sense that they are that human,” says Anne Jamison, an assistant professor of English at the University of Utah. If you can imagine a world where all Mitch McConnell needs is the love of a good man, or one where Susan Collins has a backbone, then you can convince yourself that maybe, just maybe, it could be true.

***

On the senate floor, senators are voting on whether or not to end the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. Dean Heller (R-NV) weeps in the strong embrace of Mark Warner (D-VA), torn between his desire for moderation and his fear of a primary challenge.

“Be brave!” Warner urges him. Heller sniffles into a handkerchief.

Ten years ago, it might have seemed ludicrous to think that people would be penning heroic epics about members of the U.S. Congress. But troubled times are fertile soil for heroes. In Bertolt Brecht’s play The Life of Galileo, Galileo says, “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.” Judging by our recent cultural diet, we live in an unhappy land. In the movies, heroes flourish: The Avengers, Star Wars, The Fast and the Furious. These blockbusting franchises depend upon the absolute, indisputable goodness of the hero’s quest (and, in the case of The Fast and the Furious franchise, the limitless redeemability of villains). Meanwhile, we’re living in the new golden age of television, which derives its popular and intellectual voltage from daring us to fall in love with charismatic antiheroes: Game of Thrones, Fleabag, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Succession. The West Wing is dead, long live Veep.

In our fiercely divided time, the politicians we agree with aren’t just leaders, they’re held up as saviors. It’s not enough to just support them; we want to love them. We’re fans of them. This distinction is crucial: “Fandom is perverse,” says Davisson. “I mean that in the best possible way. Fandom is about love, and love is seldom a rational thing.” Rather, love is blind, jealous, obsessive. What it really wants is more — more access, more story, more flesh, more time. More content.

As Davisson points out, “we’re very aware that everything we’re seeing is being produced. A lot of [fan fiction] is about wanting to see behind the curtain. [People] want to see that these politicians that they see on TV have real passion — something genuine.” It is this perceived sense of genuineness which gives us permission to trust — and therefore permission to love. And increasingly, the savviest politicians — like movie studios and TV networks — are learning how to operate the levers of that love.

Much of Donald Trump’s appeal as a politician is the way he offers completely transparent, un-stage-managed access to his inner thoughts. Being a fan of Trump is probably delightful, even addictive. At all hours of the day — or in the dead of night — his fans have access to his unfiltered inner monologue, stripped not only of the political calculus with which virtually every other politician speaks, but of any inhibition or caution whatsoever. In essence, Trump is a fountain of glittering content; he is pure fan service. He is the triumph of quantity over quality. And his fans are hammered drunk with love.

Few politicians have understood popular love better than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose Instagram feed offers fans an unprecedented level of access to a politician’s personal life. From her first days in Washington, she has created a self-produced reality show. She brings followers (that word is significant here) into the madcap world of a freshman congresswoman. She takes them on trips up to her roof garden where she asks for advice on how to harvest her spinach plants, and she offers long, thoughtful reflections about shifting from a bartender’s salary to a congresswoman’s (she can now afford oat milk). She is perhaps the most relatable politician in the country. In addition to the tender, puppy-love-like stories about her on AO3, there is also a comic book, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Freshman Force. The cover features her in a gleaming suffragette-white pantsuit, standing astride the prone form of a red elephant, holding her phone in one hand and beckoning the reader to join her with the other. “New party,” she says, “who dis?”

The politicians we agree with aren’t just leaders, they’re held up as saviors. It’s not enough to just support them; we want to love them. We’re fans of them.

Drawing an equivalence between AOC and Trump is common to the point of cliché, and to do so ignores a crucial distinction between them: the nature of their fandoms. Fandom, at its best, is what patriotism should look like — loyal, welcoming, but not infinitely forgiving. Good fandom, according to Ashley Hinck, an assistant professor at Xavier University, “will hold you accountable.” But at its worst, fandom looks like patriotism at its most toxic: hostile to outsiders, utterly entitled, deaf to criticism. And increasingly, it’s getting harder to tell the difference.

On any given day in America, the president might signal-boost a doctored video of Nancy Pelosi. Theories floated on Fox News find their way into White House policy. Tweets intended as parody are accepted as legitimate. An echo chamber of commentators swiftly warp political developments whose audience does not care if they are accurate, so long as they are angry. In this world, the fear that fictional narratives — even those meant as jokes — can overwhelm the actual facts is well-founded. But for better or for worse, we are in an age of political fandom, and there’s no going back.

“We’ve entered a world in which fan identities matter,” says Hinck. “And if we underestimate fandom — and the importance of fan identities — it’s dangerous.” According to Hinck, the old demographics are outdated. The political world populated by easily targeted union members and soccer moms and Rockefeller Republicans is gone, and it is not coming back. The internet has broken the old molds of identity, and now we are gluing the shards back together into shapes that fit us better. “People are looking for new sources of belonging,” says Hinck. “People are members of these fan communities in the millions. These are huge voting blocs.”

“That’s true,” agrees Amber Davisson, but she points out that “the day you organize fandom, you destroy it. Creative work exists at the margins because they’re exploring the thing we don’t want to talk about. Fans need to exist at the margin because they need to push the rest of us. There will always be people pushing at the edges. And sometimes people pushing at the edges win.”

* * *

Samuel Ashworth is a regular contributor to the Washington Post Magazine, and his fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Hazlitt, Eater, NYLON, Barrelhouse, Catapult, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Rumpus. He is currently working on a novel about the life and death of a chef, told through his autopsy.

Editor: Katie Kosma Fact-Checker: Samantha Schuyler Copyeditor: Jacob Z. Gross

#IFTTT #Blogger

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lodelss · 5 years ago

Text

McDreamy, McSteamy, and McConnell

Samuel Ashworth| Longreads | September 2019 | 13 minutes (3,389 words)

“So, if you were an animal, which would you be?” asks Ted.

“Let me think,” says Marco. “A manatee.”

Even though fan fiction is necessarily noncommercial, the world of fandom is an economic behemoth, and with economic power, inevitably, comes political power — whether it’s wanted or not.

***

“Don’t be afraid,” she whispers. “I’m here.”

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Fan fiction is no different from any other kind of fiction: Empathy is its fuel, its AllSpark, its galvanic jolt.

***

“Be brave!” Warner urges him. Heller sniffles into a handkerchief.

The politicians we agree with aren’t just leaders, they’re held up as saviors. It’s not enough to just support them; we want to love them. We’re fans of them.

* * *

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