Dorinda
| Fan | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Dorinda |
| Alias(es): | |
| Type: | Fan Writer, list moderator |
| Fandoms: | I Spy, The Persuaders!, Man from U.N.C.L.E., Professionals, Life on Mars, Sherlock Holmes, Ocean's 11 and others |
| Communities: | |
| Other: | |
| URL: | Dorinda on LiveJournal Dorinda on Dreamwidth Dorinda's bare bones page (website) Dorinda at AO3 podfic of Dorinda's fic at Audiofic Archive |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Dorinda is one of the best writers in media fandom, and yet she is not one of the best known, since she often writes in smaller fandoms; some very small indeed, such as Isaac Asimov's Robot novels. Much of her recent work was written for the Yuletide challenge.
Her hallmarks are deep understanding of canon (whichever canon she's writing), flawless character voices, detailed research, and subtle writing; readers often react to Dorinda's stories by saying, in effect, that they've become canon in their minds.[1]
Dorinda's Ocean's 11 Danny/Rusty story Confidence Men was the impetus for thefourthvine to start posting her popular story recommendations on LJ:
- My first click took me to Confidence Men. I was stunned. It was beyond good, beyond great; it was perfect. And I felt, welling up inside, something very familiar to me and every religious weirdo on this earth: the urge to proselytize.[2]
Dorinda's character insights are invaluable in the fandoms she's in. While these are most often simply posted to a list as part of a general discussion, in one case she wrote up an essay, about George Cowley, the head of CI-5 in The Professionals. The essay is called When the Cow Was a Calf, and was Dorinda's attempt to reconstruct Cowley's early life (hinted at a bit contradictorily in canon).
In a more general sense, her character insights led to the development of the clam theory somewhere around 2000, when she identified the "clam" personality type among fannish BSOs -- characters who are deeply emotional but who strive (and usually succeed) not to show it, until some extreme emotional stress triggers an outpouring of some sort.
She's also one of the driving forces behind I Spy slash fandom; her story Wheat From Chaff is perhaps the best-known slash story in the fandom, and Dorinda is also the moderator for the I Spy slash mailing list, True True. She's drawn several newbies into the fandom, pointing them at fic, screencaps, and episodes, and has helped to keep the fandom alive. (Small, but kicking!)
Dorinda is also involved in vidding fandom; while she's not a vidder herself, she's been a member of the Vividcon concom for several years.
Notable Works
- Wheat From Chaff - the best-known story in I Spy slash fandom, responsible for drawing many fans into the fandom.
- The Buried Treasure Racket - a novella-length The Sting slash story written for the 2006 Yuletide challenge.
- Nom de Coeur - a Casablanca slash story written for the 2004 Yuletide challenge.
- C/FE - a slash story set in Isaac Asimov's Robots universe, written for the 2005 Yuletide challenge.
References
- ^ Pretty much every comment thread on every story Dorinda has written in the Yuletide archive.
- ^ My Fannish Evolution, Part One post in thefourthvine's LJ, 8 Oct 2006. accessed on April 3rd 2009