Twin Peaks
| Fandom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Name: | Twin Peaks | |
| Abbreviation(s): | ||
| Creator: | David Lynch, Mark Frost | |
| Date(s): | 1990-1992 | |
| Medium: | tv, film | |
| Country of Origin: | United States | |
| External Links: | wikipedia imdb | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | ||
| ||
Twin Peaks was a cult tv series that ran for two seasons in the early 1990s, created by noted surrealist director David Lynch. A film prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, was released in 1992. There were also a few spin-off books.
Crossoverman describes it: It was soap opera melded with surrealist cinema. It was detective story weaved through a story of grief. It was an epic symphony, as Lynch put it, interrupted by other people's jingles. And it redefined television.[1]
Twin Peaks inspired several other "weird" (but more accessible) American tv shows in the 90s that developed fandoms of their own, including Northern Exposure and The X-Files.
Canon
The show spirals out from the murder of high-school homecoming queen, Laura Palmer, to encompass the entire small American logging town in which she lived. On the surface everything is as wholesome as cherry pie, underneath sex & drugs are just the beginning... Uncanny owls, talking logs, dwarfs & giants, mysterious lodges, evil lurking in the woods, Lynch didn't hold a lot back.
The cast was huge, but fandom mostly focuses on FBI agent Dale Cooper, aka "Coop", a rationalist who also employs Tibetan philosophy to solve his cases, his fellow agent & forensics expert, Albert Rosenfield, the local sheriff, Harry S. Truman, and the gorgeous school girl, Audrey Horne, who quickly falls in love with Coop and gets embroiled in the investigation in an attempt to impress him.
Fandom
Twin Peaks was extremely popular when it first showed, and has retained a loyal fanbase over the intervening two decades. Most fannish activity is in discussion of the various mysteries of the show, however, rather than creating fanworks. The main creative activities are fanfiction, vidding and icon making.
Fanfiction
A fair amount of fanfiction has been written for the show, initially in printzines in the early 1990s (most of which is not archived online), and more recently online. The Bookhouse Boys Yahoo Groups mailing list was founded in 1999 as a venue for adult fanfiction, and the first Twin Peaks livejournal followed in 2001. Yuletide, where the fandom is a perennial request, has thrown up a lot of high-quality stories since 2003. The much-delayed release of the second season of the series on DVD in 2007 also seems to have sparked a resurgence in interest in writing.
The great majority of fanfiction centres on Cooper. The most common het pairing is with Audrey, which many fans loved but the show backed away from. Slash is somewhat rarer, but Coop's pairing with Albert Rosenfield -- fanonically gay -- has a substantial following. There's also a little Cooper/Truman to be found, and a smattering of non-Coop slash pairings. There's a little femslash, mainly featuring Laura. A common trope is fix-it fic for the second season finale. As Twin Peaks author X-parrot writes, We're talking one of the worst cliffhangers ever inflicted on fen, with no canonical closure ever granted. I need fic. I crave it.[2] Dale in the Lodge is another common theme. There are also lots of stories set before canon. Some of these draw on the extra background from the various spin-offs, Coop's stint undercover in a gay bar being a popular bit of spin-off canon. Crossovers with any investigative show are another common genre. The X-Files is particularly popular, perhaps fuelled by David Duchovny playing a transvestite agent in Twin Peaks.
Bookhouse Boys is a slash archive for the Bookhouse Boys mailing list, with stories dating from 1999-2005. There is a little fanfiction at the Twin Peaks Online fansite. Fanfiction can also be found at Archive of Our Own, fanfiction.net, Silverlake and Witness List. Recs have appeared at Crack Van, which has a very detailed overview by Laughing Academy.
Notable works
- Last Dance, by DBKate -- Coop/Rosenfield pre-story (1999)
- Black, White and Red All Over, by Yahtzee -- Coop/Audrey (2003)
- Otis Redmund's Great Whopper, by CJ Marlowe -- Coop/Truman (2004)
- Blue Velvet to Moon River, by Gabihime -- Coop/Audrey (2005)
- Victory, by X-parrot -- gen futurefic (2005)
- always music in the air, by bossymarmalade -- Dale in the Lodge (2008)
- I'll Take a Quiet Life, by smercy -- unusual insider/female perspective (2009)
- And the Devil Makes Three, by Nemo the Everbeing -- long pre-series casefic, with Albert & Coop (2009)
- Untying, by astolat -- Coop/Audrey futurefic (2010)
- More pre-Yuletide stories required
Fanzines
- Conjunction
- Cooper's Dream
- Dreams Unwind
- Fish in the Percolator
- Secrets of Twin Peaks (newsletter and gen fanfic)
- Twin Peaks Gazette
- Wrapped in Plastic
Vidding
Vidding is an important fannish activity. [Examples needed]
Communities
Livejournal
- twinpeaks -- fanfiction & discussion
- twinpeaksfic -- fanfiction of all genres
- tp-femslash -- small femslash comm (inactive since 2007)
- twinpeaks-icons -- icons
Yahoo groups
- Bookhouse Boys -- adult fanfiction list
Dreamwidth
- twinpeaks -- an "anything goes" Twin Peaks community
References
- ↑ Twenty Years of Twin Peaks (accessed 10 October 2011)
- ↑ Twin Peaks fic (accessed 10 October 2011)
