Cascade Library Interview with Meredith Lynne

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Cascade Library Interview with Meredith Lynne
Interviewer:	Cascade Library
Interviewee:	Meredith Lynne
Date(s):	March 19, 2000
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	The Sentinel
External Links:	interview is here, Archived version
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In 2000, Meredith Lynne was interviewed for Cascade Library.

Some Excerpts

I like watching TS episodes. And Stargate episodes. And Homicide episodes. And Sports Night episodes, and Buffy episodes, and West Wing episodes. And, and, and. But mostly, I like talking about fiction with my friends, and that includes all kinds of things -- fannish shows, sure, but also books, movies, fan fiction... I enjoy fandom as a whole -- the community, the freedom of it, and the values I tend to think of as a baseline for all fans. That's a gross generalization, of course, but to me fandom is about celebrating friendship. It's the friendships that draw me to various fandoms, and that's what I write about, that's why I watch. In that spirit, one of the things I enjoy most about fandom is the ability to give back some of what I get from it.

[I became a a Sentinel fan after] I read a crossover by Sarah on the slash archive. Highlander/Sentinel. She did a great job of describing the loft, and that's actually why I asked someone to lend me tapes -- I wanted to see what it looked like. I guess that makes me a loft-babe.

I turned on my computer and... Okay, seriously. I'd just finished two *long* stories in Highlander, and frankly I didn't care if I ever saw Duncan or Methos again. Gloria Ainsworth was kind enough to send me tapes, and I was stunned by what I saw. Where was Jim's heavy brow ridge? Where was his stupidity? Where were Blair's glorious raven locks and his ethereal fragility? I'd expected Blair to have this high, breathy voice. <grin> I was very pleasantly surprised by the voice he *does* have, which melts me right down to my toes. I wanted to write a friendship between two strong, adult men that could be sweet and funny and gentle and tense and real. That they could yell at each other and still care about each other, rely on each other and still be independent.

I think Leaving was my first Sentinel gen story, and I wrote it as soon as I'd seen all the episodes that had been aired up to that point. The summer between second and third season, specifically. Posting it was weird -- I'd been posting Highlander fiction for a while, but that was different. Highlander was a smaller fandom and I knew most of the people in it. When I posted Leaving, it was edited by Highlander friends who were just being supportive of what they saw as a minor episode of lunacy on my part. <g> I was worried about any number of things. Did I get their voices right? Was it too short? Was it boring? I'm always deeply afraid my fiction is boring. I wasn't sure if there should be a hug in there or not -- was a hug going overboard? If I'd known then what I know now. <g> I was playing at the shallow end of the smarm pool.

Actually, I wrote three [epilogues to "Sentinel Too"]. <g> Whistling in the Dark doesn't actually blip on most radars, though. Hard to take seriously a story where one of the main characters is squishy.

Hm. Okay, I suppose, technically, I wrote four. Kind of scary, now that I think about it.

Things Fall Apart resolved the most important issue for me: Get Blair breathing again. And it was kind of a schmaltz-fest, but I felt like that was warranted given Jim's reactions at the end of the episode.

Metaphysics was the sequel to that, and resolved the second most important issue for me: Get Blair back home where he belongs. I have an absolutely irrational need for Blair to be living at the loft, and I wasn't going to be able to go forward in fiction or in the series until I was sure that would happen. Maybe if Blair hadn't been living there to start with it never would have crossed my mind, but if he'd stayed away after Sentinel Too -- that would've been a distinct milestone all on its own, and one I didn't want to see.

Faith Shines Equal was a Sentinel, Too part 2 epilogue, and my friend Francesca accused me of being unforgivably preachy in that one. She's probably right. I wrote it during the height of the recriminations on one of my discussion lists, when Jim and Blair were both being reviled by different "factions" for their many flaws and praised by other "factions" for their perfect virtue. I've always been a little puzzled by that reaction from other fans, because I figure -- if the guys are okay with each other, who am I to blame either of them for things that go wrong? At the end of S2P2, Blair and Jim both seemed good with each other, and I wanted to say something about the bond I see between them -- a friendship that can encompass screw-ups, anger, fear... and survive all of it stronger than before.

Blair is easiest for me to write, because I've been in a lot of the places Blair has. I was college-girl for a long time, majored in anthropology, got my M.A. Blair's voice and his attitudes are usually right there at my fingertips. Jim's a tougher piece of work, but a lot of fun to write because he's such a snarky guy. They both are. Fun to write *and* snarky, that is. Least favorite? The bagel girl. She's always seemed *very* suspicious to me.

I wouldn't say I was *very* involved [in the fan campaign to bring the show back] ... mainly I was a cheerleader and talked to a *lot* of reporters. The hard stuff was handled by Kaz and Urs, who were absolutely unstoppable. They were the ones slaving away over a hot website, dealing with the flood of email, and squeezing information out of rocks for the benefit of the fans.

The campaign was definitely an experience. I feel really good about what we as a fandom accomplished, but I also felt like I learned a little *too* much from the process -- about fans and fandom as well as about the nuts and bolts of the TV business. I know Kaz and Urs fielded a lot of bitterness from fans over the course of that "hiatus" as well as a lot of stonewalling from execs, and I was glad to remain on the outskirts of the worst of it.

When we got word that there were going to be 8 more episodes, I was thrilled and relieved and exhausted. I was glad to step down along with Kaz and Urs and pass things off to a new SOS committee. I'm not quite sure at this point what can be accomplished, or even what *should* be accomplished. On the one hand, I'd love to see Jim and Blair on screen again in new episodes, but on the other hand - I really feel like TSbyBS was a good place to end things. I'm satisfied with the way those 8 episodes played out.

With the show no longer in production, there are bound to be changes in the fandom. They started when we saw the writing on the wall after third season. The mailing lists started to splinter, and I think that's a process that's going to continue. About a dozen different specialty archives have sprung up, and again, I think that's not something we're going to see the end of any time soon. In a way I think it's an expression of dissatisfaction, or maybe just boredom - people trying to get closer and closer to what they really want out of fiction and discussion, trying to mainline it instead of cull it from a larger list. What we all really want, I think, is for things not to have changed -- for Jim and Blair to still be on once a week in an all-new episode of The Sentinel. In the absence of that, I think fans are kind of scrambling to get close to whatever it was they liked most about the show. I think things will settle, eventually, and those who can't find what they're looking for will drift away. I'm hoping that will result in a smaller, cozier, more forgiving fandom than we've been in the past.

And there's my dissertation on the Future of TS Fandom.