Fanfic of the damned

News Media Commentary
Title:	Fanfic of the damned
Commentator:	Annalee Newitz
Date(s):	5 June 2002
Venue:	The San Francisco Chronicle
Fandom:	multimedia
External Links:	Fanfic of the damned, Archived version
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Fanfic of the damned is a 2002 article by Annalee Newitz.

It is primarily mean-spirited and is an example of fansplaining. The article mentions Chillingeffects (a website with a section devoted to the legal issues that plague fan writers), mentions a Star Trek fan site that was served with a cease-and-desist notice from Viacom's attorneys for posting a plot synopsis of the latest Star Trek movie, the Star Wars Chicks Web ("Who knew that Darth Maul could be an object of desire"), an ALF porn fanfic site, and noted that "even sweet Anne McCaffrey" has sicced her lawyers on people who draw pictures of dragons inspired" by McCaffrey's work. It also proclaims Staked Blake to be the oddest fanfic ever.

This article was reprinted in full in DIAL #22, a Pros letterzine.

Excerpts

CHARLES likes to play a little game when he goes online to avoid working; it's called "find the weirdest fanfic." When you're as jaded as Charles is, the game can get pretty hard. He's one of those hardcore fans who knows every Buffy plot arc weeks before I see it unfolding on television. Although Charles swears that he hates Star Trek: Enterprise, he still reads the episode plot synopses on message boards every week. That's how devoted he is: he even reads the plots of shows he despises, just because they're there. If we ever catch a glimpse of an episode while flicking through channels, he instantly recognizes it. "Oh yeah," he'll say, rolling his eyes. "It's that episode where they find out about the Vulcan terrorist plot." Yes, friends, things are that bad: you can actually avoid absorbing the beauty and transcendence of a television show by... reading!

Hence the seductive lure of weird fanfic. As you may already know, fanfic is a genre of writing in which fans of a show, book, or movie write stories about the characters in it. Sometimes it's great stuff, better than what David Gerrold could do for Star Trek. (Shut up! I like Tribbles!) Often it's erotic. Kirk does Spock! Scully does Mulder! Xena does Gabrielle! Yoda does Obi Wan! But no matter how good or bad an individual piece of fanfic might be, it's always just a little bit cool because it shows that fans have enough imagination and talent to extend the fantasy worlds of their favorite shows.

Fanfic is also dangerously illegal. When the stuff was distributed the old-school way, in xeroxed pamphlets at S.F conventions, it was harder for companies to crack down on it. Now that most fanfic is on the Web, however, bored attorneys can do a Google search and come up with 16 potential lawsuits in ten minutes.

But just a few days ago Charles found the Strangest Fanfic Known to Earthlings. Let us now praise Staked Blake, a fanfic zine that so far no entertainment conglomerates have dared to call a derivative work. Who would want to admit that their show could have spawned such terrifying offspring?... Some demented fans have combined the characters from dark British S.F. show Blake's 7 with the characters from Buffy. Not surprisingly, most of the episodes involve time travel and Blake's leather-clad master of sarcasm Avon. A typical plotline: "When the crew of [Blake's ship] Liberator encounter a temporal warp, history is not what they expected." Judging from some of the other plotlines, I'm pretty sure Willow is going to get it on with Avon. It's not the kind of thing I'd ever have imagined in a zillion years, and yet now I can't get it out of my mind.

I get shivers every time I imagine a world without fanfic, a world whose creativity has been so stymied by copyrights that Willow will never meet Avon and Kirk will never look dreamily into his lover Spock's eyes. What would I do without fanfic? Shit, I might start having to watch TV again.