FayJay

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Fan
Name: FayJay
Alias(es): Pandarus, Fay
Type: author, podficcer
Fandoms: Buffyverse, Firefly, Harry Potter, Merlin, Smallville, Supernatural & many others
Communities:
Other:
URL: FayJay (AO3)
Pandarus (Dreamwidth)
podfic (Audiofic Archive)
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FayJay, aka Fay, aka Pandarus, is a well-known fan author in multiple fandoms since 2000. Her major fandoms include Buffyverse, Firefly, Harry Potter, Smallville and Supernatural, but she has also written widely recommended stories in a huge range of others. FayJay is also known for her popular podfic recordings (available at the Audiofic Archive), of which she has made over a hundred.

In fanfiction, she mainly writes gen and m/m slash, with occasional het and femslash. With a knack for writing crack premises and making them completely plausible, she's particularly praised for her ingenious crossovers. Espresso Addict writes that "Hell Money" was "the story that first made me realise that crossovers can be made to work."[1]

History

FayJay got into the Buffyverse in 1999, and her first fanfiction, which she describes as "gay vampire snuff porn",[2] dates from around 2000. She was associated with the Bugger This group, an influential collection of Buffyverse authors which also includes Chase, Herself, Kalima, NWHepcat and Salieri. FayJay then got sucked into Smallville -- surely the trashiest, slashiest show ever aired[2] -- and wrote a number of popular crossovers between the two 'verses.


Interview

In Her Own Words

In 2006 Pandarus wrote about her first experiences in fandom:

I've been fannish for EVER - I think my first obsessive fannish love was probably The Chronicles of Narnia, then The Dark is Rising, then the TV show Fame (I had the legwarmers and everything...) and then there would have been The Belgariad (which spawned its own wee fanclub at my All Girls' High School), and then, let's see - perhaps the TV show Beauty and the Beast came next - I recorded every damned episode. And when I was 17/18 I fell absolutely head over heels in love with ST:TNG - thought it was the best thing EVER, and come hell or high water, at 7pm I HAD to be in front of a screen watching it, regardless of what I was supposed to be doing.

I read masses and masses of Fantasy and SF in my teens. Masses.

...anyway, at University I *didn't* join the SF society, or do geeky things - I tried NOT being an anorak, and found it surprisingly easy and fun. However, once into my 20s I found myself more and more at ease with the fact that, despite being artsy and pretentious and all that shit, deep down I really WAS a great big SF geek, in love with space ships and dragons and shiny things that go vroom.

And then my One True Fandom ate me up. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'd seen several episodes and enjoyed them, but not become the show's bitch...and then I saw Halloween, and realised that I needed to go and buy the show on video, so I got ALL the backstory.

Buying a TV show on video struck me, at the time, as a really obsessive and crazy-ass thing to do. Oh, how much I've changed...

I fell into online fandom around, er, probably 1999 or 2000 or so, I suppose? I really wanted to find adults who could wield polysyllables AND wanted to discuss BtVS. I tried The Bronze, and got the impression that my grammar and punctuation and adult conversation were about as welcome as a flatulent leper with Tourette's.

Then I found that my newspaper of choice, The Guardian, had an excellent website with some excellent talk boards. And that some of these talk boards were all about film and TV - including Buffy! Lovely people, and very clever. I hung around there for a couple of years, and regularly went out to see random arthouse movies with the rest of the GU crew of aa weekend. It was cool.

Then a couple of things collided. I think I found fanfic because the long hiatus between seasons was killing me dead, and I craved more story. And at about the same time, from GU I found The Buffistas, a most splendid online community all about Joss Whedon's shows. This was my One True Fan Community, and still is.

The first fanfic I read was excellent Angel gen. But pretty soon I was reading Gen and Het and Slash, and then I had a crack at writing my own fic. It was Xander/Angelus, set during BtVS Season 2 - and although it was my first story ever, and thus is cringe-inducing, it's not that bad. You could certainly accuse it of being very Mills'n'Boon, I suppose, in its blatant sub/dom 'No no no yes' approach to teh sex, but I just - there was always that tension between Angel and Xander in canon, and in Season 2 Angelus spent a lot of time TALKING about torturing Buffy and her friends in terrible ways, and not so much time actually doing it. And Xander is, canonically, demon-bait, and everyone's buttmonkey. So...well, yeah.

Joined LJ because many Buffistas were doing so, as an emergency communications fallback for the occasions when our posting board crashed (before we built our own board and moved in).

Wrote several stories in BtVS and AtS - didn't have an OTP mostly was interested in exploring canon. Then Smallville came along and swept me off my feet, and I was actively posting to ClarkLex on yahoo for a while, and waxing pretentious with the meta. And then I ended up writing a 98,000 word Harry/Draco novel, rather randomly. And now I'm just all kinds of polyfandom.

The vasty vast majority of my fannish involvement is still through LJ and the Buffistas.[3]

I slash. I am a slasher. I read and write the stuff. Not exclusively - I do write gen too, and sometimes femmeslash or het, and I'll happily read anything that's well written and in-character - but when I engage with texts, I have my slash goggles on, and whilst I may enjoy the canonical relationships depicted, I also notice the potential for others where there's sparkage, whether it's between a guy and a girl, or two guys, or two girls. (Or other permutations, for that matter - threesomes et al.) I'm far more liable to read and write stories with noncanonical relationships than with canon relationships (even when I enjoy the canonical relationships) because I best like fanfic to be transformative in some way. In fact, upon reflection what appeals to me about slash is also what appeals to me about crossovers; taking the details of canon and putting a spin on them that makes perfect sense, even if it's not the lens through which canon is intended to be viewed. With my recent Sherlock/HP crossover, which posits that Sherlock is a squib and Mycroft a Slytherin high up in the Ministry of Magic, I find myself looking at canon through this lens in exactly the same way that I look at canon through the lens of seeing Smallville's Clark and Lex as bitter starcrossed lovers.[4]

Also, see a 2009 interview with FayJay at Ask the Author: FayJay (Pandarus). In 2010 she wrote Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls...: My Thoughts About (Yaoi) Slash, a post discussing gender identity, fic and labels, yaoi, manga, and other issues.

Podfic

FayJay has recorded over a hundred podfics, including her own stories and those by other authors. She describes her motivations: "I podfic for completely selfish reasons, not out of some sense of service-to-the-community or whatever. I actively enjoy reading aloud, and getting to play different roles. It's fun."[5]

Who’s FayJay?

So glad you asked. FayJay, also known as Pandarus, is a fanficcer and more notably in this post, a podficcer beyond compare. You may have heard of the BBCMerlin fic Thr Student Prince - they wrote and recorded it. Or perhaps the Paradox series by Thermodynamics series for Sherlock fandom which they recorded or if your a Bandom person the steampunk epic Gerard Way’s Vampire Detective Agency. Truly they’re one of the best to ever grace the medium, leaving a mark on several fandoms so deep we never truly recovered. With a voice that should be on a BBC radio drama, honey wouldn’t stick in FayJay’s mouth, their accent is amazing and their delivery is impeccable.[6]

She supports recording multiple versions of the same work: "I do subscribe to the multiple-performances philosophy, as both a listener and a performer. Because different styles appeal to different listeners, so it seems a shame to say that, no, This Is The One True Version. ... People want to play Hamlet because it's a brilliant role and exhilarating to perform, not because they think that all previous versions fucked it up, you know? And with covers of songs, it's because they think that they have something fresh to bring to it - or even just because it's a lovely song to sing, whether they're doing anything innovative or not?"[5]

Her most recently uploaded podfic on the Audiofic Archive is from 2010, but mentioned making a new podfic in August 2012.[7]

Podfic Reviews

rhea314:

Fayjay (pandarus) has a wonderful skill with eliciting voice, varied and true. Of her stories my favorite for the voices is Homo ex Machina. I am enthralled by her use of accent and intonation in this story it adds completely another dimension to the original fic, which was already very good. She breathes life into the characters through their unique voices, and leaves the reader with a better understanding of the story for it.[8]

cellardoorpodfic:

My suggestions in the Sherlock fandom would definitely be: Anything — I mean anything — read by Fayjay. Amazing character voices, beautiful accent, good production, etc. She’s the best, and she’s produced something like 300 podfics. Definitely download her wordstrings stuff, such as Entirely Covered in Your Invisible Name, The Death and Resurrection of the English Language, and The Paradox Suite.[9]

maskedfangirl, asking for non-FayJay recs:

I’ve got mostly FayJay in my podfic collection at the moment, and while I adore her work, I’ve listened to “The Consequences of Falling” so many times that whenever I watch season 4 of Supernatural I wonder why Ruby speaks with an American accent.[10]

yourrighteye:

Fayjay (or pandarus, as she is known to the fandom writing community) is probably one of the best-known podficcers, and writers, out there, not only to the Supernatural fandom, but to Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Sherlock, Merlin, SGA, Death Note, James Bond, Pirates of the Caribbean, Good Omens, The Lord of the Rings, Firefly, Smallville...the list goes on and on! Because, my friends, not only does she read like a dream, but she also writes like a cracktastic phenom unafraid to shove in some angst with the humour from time to time. I have to say that her voices have to be the absolute best part in listening to her—you can always tell who she’s speaking as, and her comic timing is IMMACULATE. Her accent (British, very classy :D) adds so much to the story, especially her inflections, and I’ve given up trying not to burst into laughter halfway through one of her podfics—I think it’s actually physically impossible.[11]

Fire Juggler:

pandarus (FayJay) is rather insanely well-known in the podficcing world, and for good reason. She's a tremendous reader and has read in many, many fandoms and produces tons of podfics. I have followed her from Harry Potter to Merlin to SPN to Sherlock and I have no doubt that she will lead me into more new and different fandoms.[12]

katikat:

Fayjay has an amazing voice. Seriously. I can listen to it for hours. Literally. Her podfics are loud and clear, with no background noises or annoying humming and buzzing. And she's willing to read LONG stories![13]

Notable Works

Fanfic

Podfic

Beltane podfic cover by cybel, read by FayJay

References

  1. ^ Espresso Recommendations: Crossovers (accessed 11 October 2011)
  2. ^ a b Bugger This: About the Authors (accessed 11 October 2011)
  3. ^ Source: posting to when we were newbies... , dated June 16, 2006.
  4. ^ Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls... (accessed 12 October 2011)
  5. ^ a b The ethics of multiple recordings and calling dibs (accessed 11 October 2011)
  6. ^ Who's FayJay post by dancinbutterfly, 2019
  7. ^ pandarus. Teen Wolf blathering & podfic. Dreamwidth post 7 August 2012. (Accessed 18 September 2013) The podfic itself was unavailable due to Mediafire tagging it for copyright infringement.
  8. ^ rhea314. Podfic Rec Post of Doom. Posted to Amplificathon 25 March 2011.
  9. ^ cellardoorpodfic. Tumblr post, 20 March 2012.
  10. ^ maskedfangirl. Tumblr post, 12 December 2011.
  11. ^ yourrighteye. Podficcer Appreciation Post and Recs! Part One. Posted to spnroundtable 1 February 2012.
  12. ^ fire-juggler. Pod_Aware Day 2: Podfic Recommendation-Entirely Covered in Your Invisible Name. Insanejournal post 8 November 2011.
  13. ^ katikat. Rec a podficcer - day 1. Dreamwidth post 23 April 2011.
  14. ^ As of 18 September 2013: "3460 reads" for the mp3 version and "7183 reads" for the m4b version. Number of actual downloads unknown.
  15. ^ Locked post to personal livejournal dated 7 August 2009
  16. ^ pandarus. audiofic: 'The Crown of The Summer Court', 06 August 2009. (Accessed 18 February 2010)
  17. ^ pandarus. Podfic - 'In Time of Trial', 18 February 2010. (Accessed 18 February 2010)
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