Dex Farkin

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Fan
Name: Dex
Alias(es): Dex Farkin
Type: Fanwriter, Convention Organizer
Fandoms: X-Men, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Vertigo, Hellblazer, Invisibles, Firefly
Communities: CFAN, Outside the Lines, Subreality, X-Project, IMHO, ACFF, RACMX
Other: Mailing List (Wayback, captured Nov 17/19)
URL: Dreamwidth, comicfic.net,

AO3

DexFarkin.jpg
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Dex was a fanwriter in the X-Men fandom, originally on the Rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks and Alt.comics.fanfiction newsgroups and then as a member of Outside The Lines. In his own words:

Dex is a former comic book fanfiction writer. Spanning eight active years, Dex wrote in numerous comic fandoms and won 8 Creative License awards in the Comic Book Fan Fiction Awards (CBFFAs) during that period. Dex was also the writer of IMHO - a fanfiction review column hosted on CFAN and Themestream for five years, and Bloody Ink - a column on methods and techniques specific for fanfiction. Dex is the creator of DexCon, the largest comic fandom convention, which ran from 1998 to 2010. In 2005, Dex largely retired from fanfiction to concentrate on original fiction, but creates new work on an occasional and intermittent basis.


Dex is a full-time business writer and journalist in Toronto, who seems to be overly fond of using third person on the internet.

AO3 Profile for Dex F

Dex's X-Men fanfiction focused on a number of characters seen as less popular; he was hailed as the writer who "repatriated" Scott Summers/Cyclops from his reputation as a boring, stick-in-the-mud authority figure and one of the first to pair him with Emma Frost, a relationship that since became canon. He also had a knack for injecting the real world into comics canon with his knowledge of politics and history, plus his wide-ranging library of ideas. Besides personally winning CBFFAs for the 1999 Writer Hall of Fame and in 2000 for Writer of the Year, Dex ran the awards for several years and was responsible for organising the "floor show", short pieces written by various fanwriters in the form of an awards show set in the Subreality Café and starring various Fictives. Dex was also instrumental in the development of Subreality as a larger concept beyond the Cafe itself, exploring the limits of a shared universe and pushing the envelope for himself and for others. He and Lady Seraph were common figures in the Subreality Round Robins, with fictionalised avatars of themselves and he was responsible for starting many of the most popular threads.

As well as creating fiction, Dex was also respected as a reviewer and journalist. IMHO, his fanfic review segment, provided in-depth reviews of a variety of stories, not always the well-known or BNF pieces but also bringing attention to new writers. "Bloody Ink" began as a webpage and then became a mailing list in 2003[1]. He was also known for longer thought pieces on fanfiction and the fan community in his Livejournal, dexfarkin (later transferred to Dreamwidth around 2009), combining astute commentary with bizarre imagery and sometimes uncomfortable language.

Dex can now be found at X-Project, an X-Men Movieverse RPG on Dreamwidth. He joined in 2003, first playing Nathaniel Essex, and then Remy LeBeau, as well as encouraging many of the "old guard" of comics fanfic. to join as well. He is currently playing Kevin Sydney and Garrison Kane and is known as "The Plotmaster" for his ability to take elements of comics canon and turn them into RPG plots.

Notable Works

Fanfiction

Meta

Reviews

  • In My Humble Opinion - a regular review series focusing on comics fandom, both "BNFs" and new writers.
  • Bloody Ink - a series of articles, then a mailing list, with emphasis on writing and how to improve[1]. Unfortunately no examples of this series remain online.

Awards

CBFFAs

X-Day

Reviews and Recommendations

The theme for the featured fanfic this month is Dex. Simply put, I think he is the most overlooked writer of XMen fanfic around. I can't imagine why, but his work is rarely examined by others, and this is a shame, because he is surely one of the best writers gracing the fanfic community.

Maybe it's because he focuses on characters that are so easily written as one dimensional cutouts. People like Cyclops and Emma Frost, who are too often turned into shrill, brittle unsympathetic hysterics.

I think maybe Dex just doesn't get interested in the easy ones like Gambit or Rogue; there is no shortage of good fanfic about them. He seems to like the puzzles, the walking enigmas that most people can't quite decipher or comfortably classify. Fanfic is the richer for it.

FicWorld Main Page - Jelpy - December 10, 1998


Archives/Zines/Communities

Archives

As Contributor

Mailing Lists

As Owner

As Member

Communities

References

  1. ^ a b Bloody Ink - Livejournal, dexfarkin, Feb 27, 2003
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