I’ve been sitting around, thinking about the convention in Dearborn, MI next month (I’m so desperate to go, I’m considering taking applicants for a ride as I lack both a car and a driver’s license), and feeling both mildly depressed and very in touch with my inner Xenite. I recently pored through my collection of tapes, and have been re-living the adventures of warrior and bard, tissue in hand as I mourn my inability to travel even halfway across the state. As a result of this creative inspiration and inner turmoil, I’m in a quilling mood.
In an attempt to get things going, I think I’ll discuss fan fiction. I was recently perusing some of the fan fiction instructional sites available on the internet (as I do so often), and it struck me how few of them are devoted to Xena: Warrior Princess. It’s an extremely popular fan fic, with countless thousands of “bards” swarming the internet, but very little technical reference material is availabe (save perhaps Lunacy’s site, and even that’s divided between Xena and Star Trek). Heck, I’ve even seen a site devoted to the technicalities of writing Hercules fan fic, and that’s a far smaller fan base than Xena.
It’s not out of lack of community. Xena fan fic authors tend to be very close, with a great sense of comraderie. They freely trade advice and poke fun with each other. Or so I hear, since I’ve never been that deeply involved in the fandom. I know a great deal about the show, and I’ve heard of the majority of fans, but I’ve always been “on the outside looking in”. Aside from a lengthy term spent in Xena Palace a year or so ago, rare’s the opportunity for me to communicate with fellow Xenites. I’ve had the occasional uninformed acquaintance talk to me about the show (“Didn’t that girl, you know, with the stick, Gwendolyn, get her hair cut or something?” *sigh*), but that’s about the limit of my exposure to discussion of my obsession.
And it really is an obsession. It was my first, my greatest, my introduction to geek things. I would have never been interested in Star Wars, role-playing, Labyrinth, or the like if I hadn’t become aware of a geek sub-culture. I’ve wanted to go to an official Xena convention--not just a sci-fi convention, with “Oh yeah, and we have Xena stuff too!” on the side--for the past five years. Ever since I knew what the fandom was, when I first began exploring the internet. I’ve been a Xenite for seven years--count ‘em! I started taping at first run episode number 12, Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts. Not watching--taping. Yes.
I saw Alexandra Tydings and Hudson Leick at GenCon last year, and while I was really more a fan of Hudson, I swore that if Alex was ever at a convention within driving distance, I’d make a point of going. She’s such a wonderful, kind, generous person. An absolute sweetheart. I’ve heard that all the Xena staff is that way...supportive of the fans, connecting with them, generously donating to charities at the drop of a hat. And I’ve met fellow fans...two of them, named Sharon and Beth, at GenCon. Real HCNB (Hard-Core Nutballs). The only other time I’ve been around people that enthusiastic about the show I love was on Xena Palace, and you just can’t recreate a face-to-face fan experience online.
I miss being a HCNB. I miss talking to other Xenites about my undying love of the show. Over the past couple of years my involvement has steadily dwindled, due to newer, younger, shinier hobbies catching my interest, but my love of Xena: Warrior Princess still remains. Even over a year after its cancellation, it still burns brightly as the first time my mom and sister called me over to the telly to catch a few minutes of “this incredibly stupid show”. I can still remember what Mom said: “Honey, this is about mythology. You’ll like it.” I saw, I liked, I was enchanted. I taped for nearly two years before finding out that, hey, there are other people out there who like it too!
My first exposure to the fan community is something of a blur. I do remember looking up spoilers for the third season on Whoosh!, and reading every single episode synopsis in a matter of a couple weeks (you think that’s a long time? You haven’t seen their synopses...). I found sites that have probably vanished into oblivion by now, or have long been abandoned by their owners: Barron’s episode commentaries, Hope’s Cocoon, the Xena Coalition, and of course Tom’s Xena Page, rarely updated any longer but still bursting with goodies, not the least being Jeanette Atwood’s Battle On! comic strip, which I would eagerly check every week for updates. And, I discovered fan fiction...more importantly, I discovered alt fic.
Before I became an internet Xenite, I had a mildly uncomfortable opinion of gays and lesbians, verging on prejudice. Let’s just say I disapproved, and was slightly repulsed at the idea. Then I innocently wandered onto a piece entitled Lao Ma’s Kiss, by one Elaine Strutherland (okay, with a title like that, maybe not all that innocently). Being an intellectually curious person, I wanted to find out what that “alt fic” thing was all about. I was left feeling slightly unsettled at the fact that I did not feel more unsettled than I was feeling. You know? :)
I dipped a toe into the alt fic pool, then dived in headfirst. While not finding the stories personally appealing to my respective orientation, I thought they were entertaining and well-written...certainly far better than any cheap paperback romance novel you would pick up at the grocery store. The sheer novelty of the format kept me interested. You can’t find this stuff at Barnes and Noble! And the additional appeal of reading about my favorite characters hooked me. I was an alt-ficcer for life.
It wasn’t until I ventured upon the tales written by a lady named Melissa Good that I began to have true respect for lesbians as a whole. She drew realistic characters involved in a deeply committed relationship that had little to do with physical attraction. These people were true soulmates who happened to share many things, including gender. And in her Dar and Kerry Uber stories, the characters were daily faced with the difficulties involved in an alternate lifestyle...coming out to friends and family, facing prejudice at work and home. They were human.
Since then, I have expanded my fan fiction habits into the genres of X-Files, Star Wars, Labyrinth, the occasional Star Trek, and some Buffy. I firmly maintain that Xena fan fiction holds the standard which all other fan fiction must meet. It’s the most consistently well-written of any genre available. This is probably due to the fact that the show is mainly viewed by educated adult women, usually ranging from mid-20s to 40s, while the rest of the fan fiction (save Trek, perhaps, but that’s just all over the board) attracts kids. Labyrinth in particular has a high teenybopper quotient, resulting in some of the worst fan fic I’ve ever personally laid eyes on. X-Files is probably the next-best, in terms of consistent quality.
I haven’t read any “new” or even newly popular genres (Lord of the Rings, Angel, anime programs, nine million little Star Trek clone series etc) at all. (Though I did read an immensly entertaining “How to spot a Mary Sue/Legolas story” quiz for LoTR.) Since immersing myself into fan fic, I’ve been mainly reading up on “how-tos”--instructions for writing fan fiction, which are surprisingly helpful. For example, my grammar and punctuation skills have actually improved online due to those sites. As I understand it, most people have the opposite experience...their language skills devolve thanks to sheer osmosis. However, when you seek out literate, intelligent sites focused on improving language skills, you become a literate, intelligent person. Fan fic instruction sites are particularly useful, because they don’t explain the structure of the English language in an overly scholarly, tedious way. They tend to be clearly-written in an entertaining manner. If only my high school textbooks could have been produced by these same people!
Along the way, I’ve picked up fan fiction terms and can easily throw about words like beta, Uber, fanon, filk, and the ubiquitous Mary Sue. I know about SongFic and why it is to be avoided at all costs. I’ve read slash, though as a general rule I don’t actively seek it out (no offense meant to slash-fans, it just isn’t my cup of Earl Grey). I’ve acted as an amateur beta to budding fan fic authors of various genres. And I’ve even copied down literally thousands of pages of fan fiction onto my hard drive (I hate to think how many deforestations would occur should I print them out!).
My own personal forays into penning fan fic? Well, I’ve written very, very few fan fictions myself. The resulting efforts can be mostly viewed on this site. I do have a few others squirreled away, but they shall never see the light of day, due to their, mmm, questionable content. I’m such a shrinking violet, I could never post them. Mmm-hmm. *nods*
Well, maybe to Sith Chicks. :)