The Fan Fiction Thread

[katiebear3]

Maybe it's my limited Sapphic perspective, but staight women writing slash? Not getting it.

Strange the only fem-slash is written about canon pairings like Tara/Willow or Xena/Gabrielle. They never seem to just pluck two random female characters to pair.

Real Person Fic. Icky. Scary.

[dwanollah]

Aw, I think it's (mostly) fun, as long as the people writing it aren't freaks. Of course, I'm friends with a bunch of folks who [write Duran Duran slash.

I actually argued at a lit. conference a few years ago that the glut of (primarily) straight, college-level (or higher) 30something women who write LOTR slash took a primarily masculine text and, via homoeroticism, reclaimed it for a feminist/feminine perspective. Woo!

[Deleted]

Aw, I love to read good fan fiction. It's not something I'm proud of, but as long as it doesn't hurt anybody, right?

Real people stories is a huge turn-off. I was searching around for some fan fiction after watching Murder By Numbers, and came over a story about Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt. Not as the characters they are playing in the movie, but as themselves. It kind of freaked me out. A lot of people go crazy and become obsessed with actors after seeing them in a movie or TV show, and I think it gets even harder for those people to know the difference between fiction and reality if they read a lot of stories about the persons, not the characters. (Whew, long sentence!)

Anyway, I once stumbled over stories involving Michael Jackson and a young Justin Timberlake. EW! Poor, poor Justin Timberlake.

[Deleted]

As a relative fanfic newbie, could someone please explain real person fic? Is it fic about the actual actors and not their characters, or is it fic about "civilians" (non-actors) and actors or their characters? I feel stupid asking, but I must know.

[Deleted]

BagOfBones, don't feel stupid. It's actually a good question when you're not that into it all.

I think real people fan fic can be both of your suggestions, if I'm not totally wrong. I mostly think of two celebrities (or more) that fans make up stories about. It can be an established or broken up couple, like Britney and Justin. There's a lot of fan fic about them out there. Especially about their sex life and / or how they broke up / got together again, etc. It can also be stories about people the writer / fans want to be together. I've seen a lot of Nsync and Backstreet Boys fan fic, but also LoTR, Harry Potter etc. I guess that qualifies as Real People Slash since it's mostly about boys gettin' it on.

There's also the stories where the author writes herself as the object of a celebrity's desires. I think that's called a Mary Sue. I've seen lots of examples of that as well. It's horrible.

And for the record: I don't read all these stories I have knowledge about. It's just that you stumble upon a lot of things you're not interested in while searching for what you want to read. Britney and Justin's sex life is something I'm not interested in. (Ew.)

I read fan fiction when I want to see other people's take on how things went from there, or how things could've been if something else happened in a situation. I'm very picky about what I read, and I'm only interested in stories with good grammar and realistic and intelligent stories. And the story has to be about characters from a show I like.

[queequeg]

I've always found the concept of women writing slash interesting (for want of a better word) although I have to say I come at it from the same perspective as katiebear3 . It seems to be something that people didn't really consider before the advent of the internet and I don't really understand it (not that I think there's anything wrong with it), although Dwanollah's feminist explanation does make sense.

I always found the Buffy/Faith fic quite entertaining and it's incredible how much fic for almost every conceivable pairing there is out there.

I agree that the Mary Sue stuff is just scary.

[pepper67]

Even scarier than Mary Sue is :: drum roll::

Spanking fanfic. I kid you not. I nearly wet myself laughing when I first came across it (in The Sentinel fandom, btw) and I thought it had to be a joke. Since then I've discovered it's a huge genre called Domestic Discipline.

Tons and tons of stories relating to various adult characters getting into trouble and getting spanked for it by another character (presumably because talking about whatever they did is just so passé).

It's just...bizarre.

[katiebear3]

The weird thing about a lot of slash is that female characters are the enemy, by trying to get between the boys. These women have a real love-hate relationship with their gender.

[franticjoy]

I am an adult female who writes slash fanfic, and I'm not ashamed. Okay, I'm a little ashamed, but only because I really should be working on my book and not concentrating on the romantic habits of two completely fictional characters not created by me.

Anyway, I write it because their story fascinates me. I've never been interested in slash fanfic from any other fandom, or any other two characters, only these two, and I have no earthly idea why I've been sucked into this particular fandom. I try as hard as I can not to feminize my characters (it's kind of difficult because I've never been male, so there's only so much I can do). I like writing slash because...well, I like to write about this relationship, and I find the physical aspect of it sexy. Which makes me a bit of a hypocrite for making fun of guys who think lesbians are hawwwwt, I suppose.

Tons and tons of stories relating to various adult characters getting into trouble and getting spanked for it by another character (presumably because talking about whatever they did is just so passé).

*feels vaguely paranoid* I absolutely can't believe I'm admitting this, but I wrote one just the other day. Has nothing to do with punishment or being in trouble or anything, just spanking for spanking's sake. I think maybe a lot of the fandom I belong to, or maybe it's just the specific community, tries really hard not to fall into fandom cliches, like tossing in a token female character to despise or feminizing the male characters.

As for femme-slash? Get thee to the Harry Potter fandom. You'll find it a-plenty, and there's no canon there, believe me.

[Deleted]

Thanks for clarifying, ane. I wrote some fanfic for Carnivale that basically told what a character's thought processes were after a blow-down arguement w/ another main character. I guess that's what you're talking about?

I think the line being crossed between people's fantasies and their taking the time to write them out and post them online for the world to see is what makes some fanfic creepy. It's one thing to run a little movie in your head of what would happen if so-and-so got together, or what some actor/character would say if the protagonist met them IRL, but to type it all out, w/ decent grammer and spelling checks, and then post it online for the world to see seems like it can get a bit fanatic. I think that's what the problem I have w/ some Live Journals.