The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Arlene C. Harris

Interviews by Fans
Title:	The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Arlene C. Harris
Interviewer:	The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index/Abby Goutal
Interviewee:	Arlene C. Harris
Date(s):	posted 05 February 2002
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Les Misérables
External Links:	an interview with Arlene C. Harris interview index
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In February 2002, Arlene C. Harris was interviewed for The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index.

Unlike previous LMFFI interviews, Harris was not a Les Mis fan writer but an author of a Les Mis "continutation" profic series. Harris also discusses her background writing fanfiction as well as her history with and changed views of slash fandom in the interview.

Interview Series

• The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Amy
• The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Arlene C. Harris
• The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Laura Waterstripe/Quiara
• The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Lonely Gamine
• The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Ponine Enjolras/Jenelin
• The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Stefanie
• The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Ursula

Some Experts

Q: What made you decide to write Pont-au-Change?
A: Well, right before I went to the WOTF [Writers of the Future] thing I had made plans for PauC to be, of all things, a zine, where I set up the whole "Valjean and Javert team up and do stuff" universe and people were going to contribute adventures--because I was too interested in writing about my own characters professionally, mainly in the Timeless universe, I wasn't thinking of them as anything more than fanfic fodder--and then at the library I ran into a copy of Cosette, The Book That Reads Like A Doorstop. I was floored by the idea, for one thing--and I also got on my "I can do better than that" horse. [...] Once I realized it could be done, just as there are new Sherlock Holmes books coming out every day it seems, why not do it? And thus the site came into being.

Q: You state very firmly on your website that Pont-au-Change is *not* a fan story. Have you ever written something about Les Mis that *was* fanfiction?
A: I would consider the Final Duet to be fanfiction, or at least fan-oriented. It's also musical oriented, but the two don't necessarily go hand in hand. I do have a little separate fanfic one-shot story, where the ghost of Javert finds himself paired up with the ghost of Sydney Carton, haunting Paris during the Nazi occupation... I don't know what to do with it though. It's called "Things To Do In Paris When You're Dead". Haven't much thought about it for awhile now... but then again, I have a slight problem with fanfic in general at this stage...

Q: What's your take on fan fiction in general?

A: You're familiar with Sturgeon's Law? Science Fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon once said, "Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud." Personally, when it comes to fanfic, I think Sturgeon was an optimist.

I'd have to say ninety nine percent is just plain unreadable, on two levels. The stuff that's decently written, technically, generally has a bad story idea behind it; the stuff that has a good idea behind it is poorly executed. I could cite examples from some of the LM fanfic I've read but I'd just get myself into trouble :-) (like that hasn't happened before) Suffice it to say that there have been a few LM stories that I've seen the premise for, which I thought rocked, but when I read the actual stories I was so disappointed I felt like throwing my monitor across the room. [...]

That's not to say that no one writes good fanfic, there is some out there, but finding it is nearly impossible amid all the slush around it, and I don't have the time or the inclination to wade through the sewer just to get to the one good story on the other side. In the good old bad old pre-internet days, zines were your best bet because more often than not you knew the authors by name if not by sight and people had to really work to get their stories printed out and distributed and stories were promoted by word of mouth. Nowadays anyone with a keyboard can anonymously throw up whatever they write onto the net and it sticks there... ick. (Which is why I refuse to use a pen name. I figure if I'm not proud enough of what I wrote to put my own name on it, I probably shouldn't be publishing it)

The problem with writing fanfic for me now is that it runs on quid pro quo; "I read your story, now read mine and tell me what you think." Lord, I can't tell you how many times I've gotten in trouble for telling people what I think of their stories. I basically got thrown out of mainstream Elfquest fandom because of a letter I wrote that ended up in the editorial of the comic book, and the zine editor got ticked off because the person I was writing about was his wife, who of course could write no wrong herself... let's just say I have bad luck with fan groups! (let's just say "Arlene does not work well with others" ;-) ) But I've served my fanfic reading sentence, I've done my fanfic writing apprenticeship. I voted myself off of Fanfic Island. Because if I have to read just one more Mary Sue--or Eponine Sue, in this case--or one more slash story, well, I'll just have to take some hostages or something.

I mean, it's not like I came across it on the web one day and got outraged, I used to write slash myself, I went to slash cons for years, I've been hip deep in fandom since college and I just finally came to a realization about it: characters on a page are much like real people in that they have parameters, they act "in character" or they are just not the same character, they are shadows of themselves, they don't "ring true". I came to the conclusion that forcing a straight character into a gay situation is as uncomfortable and objectionable, IMHO, as forcing a gay character to go straight--even when the "force" applied is simply that of the writer bending a character to his/her will and writing them as other than themselves. Speaking as the godmother of a gay person (who writes fanfic herself, btw--I used to publish her stories in my zine), whose mother has tried everything from guilt to shame to denial to conniving in order to "straighten" her out ("When are you going to give me a grandchild?" "When I can legally marry, Mom...") I can honestly say that there is no greater harm people can do to each other than to try to force them to be something they're not.

And I got into an argument with a very militant woman (the kind who believes that any combination of straight, white, and male is inherently evil--despite the fact that she's at least one of those herself, and I'm at least two of them) who writes tons of slash. She told me that it's her revenge for female pornography, that men are made uncomfortable by the very idea of slash and that makes her feel like she's "raping them back" (??!?!?!?) I realize that that's not the attitude of the majority of slash readers/writers but she's probably one of the most prolific and well known slash writers in the US right now and her attitude scares the bejeezus out of me. [...]

Anyway, that's why I don't do slash anymore. I'm not going to tell other people to stop doing it, I know a lot of PauC readers read (and write) slash, and what they do on their own time is their own busines, but that's why I got out of it. And now there's Harry Potter slash... and Pokemon slash... I mean come on, consenting adult is one thing, but how in hell do you possibly justify THAT?