COCO CHANNEL Interview with Judith Gran

Interviews by Fans
Title:	COCO CHANNEL Interview with Judith Gran
Interviewer:	Karmen Ghia
Interviewee:	Judith Gran
Date(s):	September 1999
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	slash, fandom, The Good Old Days, zines, Star Trek
External Links:	Interview at COCO CHANNEL Interview at Judith's Webpage Interview at Oocoties Archive
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COCO CHANNEL Interview with Judith Gran is archived at The Society for Slash Diversity and The Committee of Chekov Obsessives Comparing Historical and New Narratives in Ensign Literature.

See List of Star Trek Fan Interviews.

Some Topics Discussed

• Gran's journey in fandom
• her current projects
• the use of the terms "printzine community," "webslash community," and "webizen"
• some observations on print zine fans and online fans, cycles of expansion and contraction in fandom, and fandom culture
• the "uptight and narrow-minded behavior of certain printfen"
• print zine editors as gatekeepers
• print fans are "more and more inbred" and conservative and insular
• print fans shouldn't "presume that contemporary K/S printfic is the lineal descendant of early fan fic, no matter how much the current crop of printfen would like to appropriate for themselves the status of heirs to the 'classics'"
• older print fans are "folks who stick around tend to be those with the deepest emotional and material investment in fandom itself. We all know of fans who don't have a lot going on in their lives apart from fandom"
• "the net medium is egalitarian and communitarian, the printzine medium is hierarchical and individualistic"
• "*Current* K/S print fandom has become so respectable and bourgeoisified that it seems to have little edge left. K/S printfen are not the underground any more, they are the mainstream, the nice straight housewives. So the freewheeling diversity and gender-bending of the net culture is not necessarily the printfan's cup of tranya."

Some Excerpts

Fannish Journey

Judith Gran: What blew my mind about Kirk was this: Here was this guy who had absolutely awesome responsibility, who was out there on the edge of the universe exploring the unknown, running the best ship in the fleet, making life and death decisions, dealing with terror and tragedy and trying to uncover the most profound mysteries of the galaxy, and--he was plainly enjoying every minute of it. This goes back to that elemental joy that I saw in the character.

Karmen Ghia: When did you get into K/S?

Judith Gran: About five seconds after I heard that people were actually writing K/S stories! This was in the summer of 1978, a few weeks after I started ordering zines.

KG: What was your earliest story?

JG: "The Body's Treason," a Gol angst-fest from Kirk's POV, written around 1979, I think, and published in the zine Matter/Anti-Matter in the early 1980s.

KG: How did you decide to start writing what was in your head? What was your motivation?

JG: I was really charged up about the K/S premise, which struck me as easily the single greatest advance in civilization since (at least) the Industrial Revolution. Then quite by chance, two friends of mine who had previously been heterosexual became lovers and told me all about it. Somehow, that made the K/S premise even more real and vivid to me, and I simply *had* to write K/S.

Karmen Ghia: How did Terminus come about? Can you recall the decision to write it or did you just wake up one day, face down on the keyboard, and there was the first 3,000 words? (This happened to me, that's why I'm asking.)

Judith Gran: Well, first of all, I had left the cinema after seeing ST:TMP for the first time (yeah, yeah, I know, we should have known how bad it would be when they couldn't even come up with a title for it) with about a half-dozen K/S scenarios in my head for Why Spock Went to Gol. Terminus was one of them. So like your experience, it just kind of happened.

Also, this was during the early Reagan years. I was bummed about the administration, about trickle-down economics, about the Christian Right, about the fact that people in authority were trying to impose their own narrow culture on the rest of the country. Putting those issues into a K/S context kind of helped me deal with them emotionally.

Print Fandom vs. Online Fans

Karmen Ghia: Me, I'm just a webizen so I know nothing of the printzine community, except for a brush or two with certain members. What is with those people? Are they really as uptight, narrow minded, hyper critical/sensitive and condescending as they seem or am I really just too fucked up to see their good points?

Judith Gran: I have a theory about cycles of expansion and contraction in fandom. It probably applies to all fandoms, but my empirical experience with it has been mostly in K/S, so when I say "fandom" here, I mean specifically K/S fandom. It's only a working hypothesis as yet, but to me it helps explain the uptight and narrow-minded behavior of certain printfen.

When fandom is expanding and new members are entering at a rapid pace, fandom's diversity also expands. People who are new to fandom are not mired in the existing conventions of fandom and instead, they tend to bring with them new and different perspectives and creative ideas. They also bring with them a wealth of experience outside fandom.

When fandom is contracting, it tends to become more and more inbred. The folks who stick around tend to be those with the deepest emotional and material investment in fandom itself. We all know of fans who don't have a lot going on in their lives apart from fandom; I believe that during a phase of contraction in fandom, the proportion of these fans tends naturally to increase.

Many of the most active members of the current K/S printzine community became active in K/S in the early 1990s, a period when K/S was in a state of contraction following the Great K/S Expansion of the 1980s. The average K/S zine circulation had fallen from up to 1,000 to slightly more than 100. So, the "typical" member of the current crop of printfen began writing at a time when K/S fandom consisted of a small number of women, mostly in the US, mostly straight and married, who all knew one another and read and reacted to one another's stories...*Current* K/S print fandom has become so respectable and bourgeoisified that it seems to have little edge left. K/S printfen are not the underground any more, they are the mainstream, the nice straight housewives. So the freewheeling diversity and gender-bending of the net culture is not necessarily the printfan's cup of tranya.

But I don't want to stereotype printfen or lump them all in the same basket. Actually, some of the "older generation" of printfen -- those who have been in fandom since the early 1980s or so -- are very open to the net. Some of the K/S zine editors who have been in fandom the *longest* have been the most accepting and embracing of net fiction. But that fits my hypothesis, I think.

I don't think we can view print fandom as a monolithic entity that stands against net fic and vice-versa. Nor can one presume that contemporary K/S printfic is the lineal descendant of early fan fic, no matter how much the current crop of printfen would like to appropriate for themselves the status of heirs to the "classics." If you will forgive the Protestant perceptive, that is a bit like the Pope of Martin Luther's era claiming to be the heir of the martyrs of the Early Church.

Karmen Ghia: You've had experience in the printzine community and the webslash community. In what ways do their inherent strengths cause them to be inherently antagonistic? Or do I think that because I'm an asshole? (Okay, it's an awkward question, rephrase at will.)

Judith Gran: Good question! The most obvious and easiest answer is that they are two different communities, two different groups of people who each became a community in a different time and place. Like any community, each has its own dynamics, norms and values.

For me, though, the two communities differ in that they represent two different paradigms of interacting and writing. I see the net community as egalitarian and communitarian. Communication on the net is immediate, highly interactive, and non-hierarchical. As a result, net fiction tends to be idea-driven, collaborative and interactive (see, e.g., the "challenges" and the multi-part stories written by different authors as an idea grabs hold). It cuts into deeper levels of emotional and sexual truth.

If the net medium is egalitarian and communitarian, the printzine medium is hierarchical and individualistic. Writing is a more a solitary pursuit, with reinforcement tending to come from editors and the small number of readers who write reviews in the K/S Press. Editors have the power to decide what gets published and what doesn't. People take the time to write long stories, novellas and novels, and long LoCs (when they write them at all). Emphasis is less on ideas, more on how the writer handles the characters' emotions. I think there's probably also a generational difference between the two media that reflects and has contributed to overall social change. As we move into the 21st century, society as a whole is becoming more interactive, less hierarchical. The focus in industry is shifting away from top-down management to self-organized teamwork and collaboration. Diversity is actively valued because we have come to see it as a strength. So the net community is a 21st century organism, I think.

Tupper Trek

Karmen Ghia: What's your thinking on chicks with dicks and Tupper Trek? I don't find it interesting, but my tastes are more, um, graphic. (I actually have trouble figuring what's going on [sexually] in much of K/S, it's way too subtle or something for me.)

Judith Gran: As a long-time K/S fan, I have rotted my brain with a large quantities of Tuppertrek. It is extremely liberating to have more choice of K/S reading matter thanks to the net community.

Current Projects

Karmen Ghia: What are you working on these days?

Judith Gran: K/S wise, on a story in which Kirk, post-ST VI and "bonded" to Spock for many years, is talked into running for Federation President. During the campaign, Kirk turns out to have a Bill Clinton problem. (Although, as my friend Mary Ellen points out, it might make more sense to say that Bill Clinton had a James T. Kirk problem.)

I'm also trying to write a K/S Legend story which some will probably consider super-blasphemous.

Reactions and Reviews

[Raku]

Awfully good musings on printfen/netfen, Judith. Dunno if your generalizations are true, having seen almost no printfic, but I've heard similar things from a couple other switch-hitters like yourself.

I'm glad there are those around like you, with longer memories. Very valuable comparisons and analyses of the strengths of the media.

Kirk and Kirk, what is Kirk? I like that.

Hope you've seen the qy on ASC from someone trying to authenticate Kirk-props. I figure you or Jungle Kitty could spot them in a moment. See post titled "pottery."

[Scarlet]

Oh yes, my thoughts exactly. I will carve your words on a runestone and raise it in my garden. Thanks for all your insights, Judith. It's always a pleasure to be able to share your knowledge.