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nbd guys i just logged back in to my 21-year-old livejournal account today

never forget your roots

fanfiction.net before they removed the NC-17 stories

going to fanfiction.net at all

going to adultfanfiction.net in the fallout of the great “purge”

figuring out that ain’t nobody actually monitoring NC-17 stories there anyway so just rate it “M”

“please R&R! concrit appreciated!”

warning: lemon

though it may be more on the limey side of lemon

“summary sux just read it”

replying to reviews in the author’s notes

author’s notes in which the characters talk to each other and the author

Sammy Interview

Before we get started, do you mind introducing yourself and telling a bit about yourself? 

My name is Sammy. I’m 34 years old, a college graduate with a background in cultural anthropology as well as women, gender, and sexuality studies. I’m particularly interested in queer and feminist methodologies. I live with my partner of some 15 years, who is also a fanfiction writer.

Q1: So, you told me that you’ve been writing fan fiction for 20+ years which is awesome! How did it all get started and what kind of fan fiction have you written in that time?

A1:  Like a lot of fangirls of my generation, anime was my introduction to fanfiction.  I grew up watching Sailor Moon when it first aired on American network television. It was love at first sight. There was nothing else like it on TV. At my local Blockbuster I discovered anime. It wasn’t as readily available then as it is now. Because the english dubs were so limited I ended up watching the same OVA rentals over and over - Ranma ½, RG Veda, Vampire Princess Miyu. First I wrote stories in my head, then I started writing them down. When I recieved my own computer and constant access to the internet, I went searching for fansites. Secreted behind unassuming links I found small clutches of fanfiction. This was before fanfiction.net first took off, and An Archive of Our Own was well over a decade away. Fansites had webrings, which took me to the next fansite, and so on.  It really was a matter of finding the right webring for a given show and following the thread.

I began with writing Sailor Moon fanfiction, and as Cartoon Network’s late night block of programming (Toonami) expanded, the more I wrote. Gundam Wing fandom introduced me to shipping and it blew my mind.

I moved away from anime when the Harry Potter movies happened. A lot of us made the transition to book and movie based fandoms when someone discovered Harry/Draco. After that I found DC comics, and then became very active in the Star Trek reboot fandom. I’ve written for Stargate: Atlantis, BBC Sherlock and Hannibal and so, so many other shows/books/video games. I’ve been an active participant in Yuletide, which is an anonymous holiday fanfic exchange, and multiple Big Bangs -another fanfic/fanart exchange- as well as a kinkmeme prompt filler for years.

Q2: What pushed you to begin sharing your fan fiction?

A2: The mailing lists. In the early days of fandom private yahoo groups and message boards were the main venue for posting and reading fanfiction. Most mailing lists were fandom based and created for specific content - like Gundam Wing Slash, GundamWingGEN and CRACKSHIP. These became high volume, tight knit communities. It wasn’t unusual to have your mail box refreshing on the left side of the monitor, while you chatted with members on AIM on the right side. There was a lot of encouragement, experimentation, and collaboration. You posted your fanfiction to the list, or board, and people cheered. It was all so exciting.  It’s hard to describe now how close we all were, and just how much fellow-feeling fueled hundreds of emails a day. This was my online family, my community. I didn’t need a push or moment of courage to post my early fanfiction - I was delighted to share, invited to share. It was an electrifying thing to be part of.

Q3: Were you scared to post it online?

A3: Not at all. I didn’t need to be scared - none of us did. No one outside these early lists and boards knew what we were doing. I really can’t emphasize enough how guarded the early fanfiction community was. We were incredibly insulated. Our families didn’t know, our teachers and co-workers were oblivious, popular culture wasn’t shitting on fanfiction writers because it didn’t know we were writing. I wasn’t scared to press ‘send’, but it did feel dangerous, a little rebellious. There was a sense of getting away with something.

Q4: Has writing fan fiction taught you anything? About writing? Reading? Something else?

A4: On a basic level, fanfiction taught me how to write. Structure, pace, dialogue - I was taught those things in a classroom, but I learned them by writing fanfiction. We all taught ourselves to write by writing for each other. We created an entire literary movement without an MA in literature, or a structured pedagogy. Fanfiction writers generated new narrative traditions, like the Five Things + 1 format (a breakaway from the three-act story), Hurt/Comfort, and a language of tagging that defies classical genre rules - all because we were messing around.

Writing fanfiction has taught me the value of questioning western literary rules and conventions, that writing for myself and my own pleasure is valid.  It’s also taught me that I don’t like to write alone. One of the things that makes fanfiction so special for me is that so much of it happens in conversation with other writers and readers. My best writing experiences have been in simpatico with total strangers, on AIM, in livejournal comment threads, gchat.  I’m not writing “original fiction” because I lack imagination; it’s just too lonely.

Q5: Do you ever want to be published in a professional capacity one day?

A5: I do, though I feel like this is a bit of a fraught subject for fanfiction writers.  There’s an compulsion to say yes, of course I plan to publish one day, as if that end goal legitimates the fanfiction I write. I don’t want to contribute to the idea of fanfiction as a lesser form of literature- a stepping stone to Real Writing - but yes. I started writing creative nonfiction in community college.  That writing comes from a very different place than fanfiction. It satisfies another hunger.

Q6: How you feel about the stigma surrounding fan fiction and fan fiction writers? Or, do you not feel any stigma at all?

A6: I think the stigma towards fanfiction is pushback from multiple sociological and institutional sources.

In the beginning we had the sense that fanfiction - slash fanfiction - wasn’t something to bring up outside of those digital spaces we made for ourselves. We knew it would be considered an auteur kink at best, or downright perverted plagiarism at worst (I think this is largely still the case). Before the community found the language to discuss slash and fanfiction as transformative works - as deconstructions of conventional media, gender roles, and sexuality - there was an ethos of compartmentalization to the whole thing.

Q7: Do you think that stigma is warranted? (Whether or not you have personally experience it?)

A7: No.

I touched on this earlier, but I believe the stigma and hostility towards fanfiction is firmly rooted in gender and non-normative sexuality. The writing we do is generally characterized as a feminine endeavour, which immediately marks it as inferior to a literary canon that values the masculine so highly. The perception that fanfiction is a plagiarism of male authored source material makes it all the more egregious.

Equally as foundational, is the reduction of fanfiction to gay porn written by straight cis women for straight cis women - fanfiction is not only shit writing, it’s perverted and weird.

I’ve never been ashamed of the fanfiction I write, or read. Embarrassed maybe, of those first earnest attempts at writing. But fanfiction does not have a monopoly on bad writing. I can just as easily find the same trash in Barnes & Noble. So, quality is not and never has been a valid criticism.

Q8: What’s your favorite piece of fan fiction you’ve ever written? Why?

A8: A gen fic I wrote for Star Trek (AOS). I’m a leisurely writer, and stories don’t just hit me whole and complete in one go. But this one did. It took three hours to write and I didn’t have to think about where I was going after finishing a paragraph, the next was already there, I just had to type it out. It’s never come that easy before or since. It’s not my most popular piece of fanfiction, but I can go back and read it and not feel like I need to change anything.

Q10: Do you write outside of fan fiction?

A10: I do - until recently I was writing up lesson plans for classes I was co-facilitating. Generally, when I’m not writing fanfiction I’m working on creative non-fiction. I use the frame of gender analysis and sexuality studies (among others) to write about my life.

Q11: What site do you prefer to write and post your fan fiction on?

A11: An Archive of Our Own (AO3). The tagging system is superior and the site is far more user friendly than ff.net, which is an absolute dumpster fire.  

Q12: What’s something you want people outside the fan fiction community to know about the fan fiction community?

We’re not a monolith. Teenage girls are the cultural face of fanfiction, but so many of us are in our 30s and 40s, old fandom queens from those first private mailing lists, boards, and LiveJournal accounts. We have soul sucking jobs. We have degrees in STEM. We teach college, have kids and debt, and friendships that have lasted decades.. We are not, and never have been a homogenous group of straight cis women. Asexuality and gender fluidity abounds. Plenty of us experience disability and chronic illness.  And we aren’t a small group of weirdos obsessed with Johnlock. We’re an enormous and diverse group of weirdos who have created a literary movement.

Cairo city lights seen from the top of Cheops Pyramid, Egypt

Someone recommended to me this fanfic on livejournal.

It was over 80k words. It was beautifully written. Tragically wonderful. Angst, fluff, hurt/comfort, great OCs, amazing story. I spent all yesterday until 4 AM to read it and I finished it today.

There is one problem though.

The fic is incomplete.

Not only the fic is incomplete, it is left at the lowest low that the couple ever had. The one where you can’t even imagine “it’s all gonna be alright for them in the end” because things are bad BAD between them.

Worst thing? Last time it was updated was in 2008.

2008?!?

Who in their right mind recommends an incomplete fanfic from 2008 which ends with ANGST.

Do you wanna what’s written at the beginning of the last published chapter?:

I wanna die.

„Thiel ist doch unsterblich in Boerne verliebt.“

Mit diesem Satz beantwortet Axel Prahl in einem Interview 2016 die Frage, ob in Thiels Leben irgendwann noch einmal eine Frau vorkommen würde. Es ist ein Beispiel von vielen, in denen die Schauspieler:innen über die Folgen hinaus Anspielungen auf eine mögliche homosexuelle Beziehung zwischen dem Hauptkommissar Frank Thiel und dem Rechtsmediziner Karl-Friedrich Boerne machen (oder gar ihren Darstellern Jan Josef Liefers und Axel Prahl selbst).

Ein Essay, in dem ich nachvollziehe, weshalb das als Queerbaiting gewertet werden kann und warum niemandem damit geholfen ist, wenn sich zwei heterosexuelle Männer als queer darstellen.

wohin willst du ◦ fanmix ◦ thiel/boerne

Sprechendes Tier - Marcel Brell // 5 Meter Mauern - Elen // Fahrrad - Juli // Vielleicht - Josh. // Von grau zu dir - Hi! Spencer // Nichts - Sarah Lesch // Ich und deine Freunde - BRUCKNER // Mond - Lina Maly // Das Ende vom Anfang - Florian Paul & Die Kapelle der letzten Hoffnung // Wohin willst du - LEA // Ultraleicht - Andreas Bourani // Du machst das Licht aus - BRUCKNER

Anhören auf ◦ Spotify ◦ Youtube

Dieser Fanmix ist das 05. Türchen des Livejournal-Adventskalenders 2021.

Finally got a LiveJournal account and I don't know how to use it....

I fully empathise. I've been reading fic in this fandom for nearly 20 years, but a lot of that time was back on LiveJournal. I just didn't keep rec lists back then! Now so much has been lost to memory and LJ purges and deleted or locked accounts. Once that stopped being the home of fandom, I mostly read on AO3 but didn't actually sign up for an account until 2022, so my bookmarks are very sparse. I could kick myself for not being more diligent about keeping track of my faves.

But like you said, our fandom is absolutely blessed with talent, and also with people who will generously make time to share recommendations when asked, so it's not all lost. 🥰

Also, you're the sweetest and I'm a gooey little puddle over here. 🥹💖🥹

y'all the wincest hyperfixation has got to me again (summer RUINED.) please recommend your favourite ao3 authors 🙏 I can only reread applecrumbledore and candle_beck's whole body of work so many times

Cairo city lights seen from the top of Cheops Pyramid, Egypt

i will redo this at some point but hi its me clem. this blog mainly runs on a queue. i rb lots of things that im familiar with, but it’s not necessarily because im in the specific fandom & whatnot (esp hyv games). i just really enjoy art

i sometimes make personal posts tagged with #talks which i usually delete after a while as to not clog up my blog.

IM ALSO NOT SPOILER FREE IM SORRY ok that’s all kthxbye