Old School X Interview: Dreamshaper
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Old School X Interview: Dreamshaper |
| Interviewer: | Lilydale |
| Interviewee: | Dreamshaper |
| Date(s): | December 22, 2020 |
| Medium: | online, Tumblr |
| Fandom(s): | The X-Files |
| External Links: | at lilydalexf; archive link |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Old School X Interview: Dreamshaper was conducted by Lilydale as part of the series Old School X Interview Series.
Some Topics Discussed
- being a teenager in spaces with adults, and the benefits of this
- "I [strongly] disagree with the current age stratification in fandom – this idea of not interacting across artificial age divides is tragic to me."
- people becoming more and more open regarding their fannish activities and personal life
- hiding Real Person Fic so the BNFs wouldn't find out
- fandom as a place for the "wild intersection of the domestic and intellectual life of women, and the playful life of women"
From the Interview
Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?
I’m not at all surprised people are still reading X-Files fanfic! There’s a deep catalogue of good and interesting fiction there, and the X-Files still has cultural significance. And of course there were the recent seasons to bring it back to mind. I think if you had asked me in 2000, I might not have supposed that it had this kind of staying power. So now I’m thinking of this interview as a time capsule–what will my answer be in 2040?
My own fic was not designed to have staying power. If anyone is reading it now, bless them, they are kind and patient. I would only recommend probably reading the first and last things I posted just to see what kind of growth is possible. The first time I ever posted fic, someone told me to never write again. I was a teenager. I was crushed but I went on writing anyway, and I worked hard to improve.
What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?
I think of two things. As for the show itself, I still think of Mulder/Scully as the ultimate in romance. I can still picture certain moments from the episodes, from the movie. I look for pairings with tension that reminds me of theirs–an almost-regency level of UST, but with a modern element of danger.
As for the fandom itself, I grew up in it. My entire online life and the core of how I participate in fandom was formed here. I was 17 or so when I started writing and posting MSR. I was 18 or 19 when I started meeting fans in real life. I was fortunate enough to fall in with people who were equal parts gracious and nerdy, and while my own nerdiness is innate, I remember and emulate the kindness which was shown to me.
I have an entire side post to this question about how strongly I disagree with the current age stratification in fandom – this idea of not interacting across artificial age divides is tragic to me.
Social media didn’t really exist during the show’s original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?
ATXC, and mailing lists. I don’t actually remember the names of all the mailing lists! I can picture myself sitting in my kitchen on my computer, and what the emails looked like – the font, the signature lines – but not the names. I can even remember specific conversations we had! One of them must have been Scullyfic, because I remember the first meetup being planned. Is that right? Was it the Scullyfic meetup?... My mind was absolutely blown by the idea of a fan con. Now I’ve led panels at a dozen of them.
I remember some of the arguments, too. It’s funny that some of them are the same arguments I still see here and there, like whether or not criticism of a fanwork is valid. Real Person Fic being this unbelievably shameful thing you had to ask to be shown, and the doyennes of the fandom would have given you the cut direct at Almack’s if they’d found out, you know?
This was also the era of AIM and ICQ. mIRC too, right? I spent a lot of time in channels. I absolutely loved when people started to be more open about themselves in chats. I was always so interested in how fandom fit into people’s lives. Some people I talked to were moms, college students, people who had interesting careers, and they all just found ways to make fandom work for them. They had a need and were meeting it, despite the pressures of their offline life.
I don’t know how to explain the impression that made on me, but – it normalized fandom. That seems obvious, maybe, but I hadn’t known this was something you could integrate into your everyday life.
It also normalized the idea of women taking their own needs as primary, in a way that went beyond what I was exposed to in my home life, or through the feminism of the 1990s. There was this wild intersection of the domestic and intellectual life of women, and the playful life of women, just making itself known to me in a way I’d never seen before. That was enormous. Absolutely a foundational experience for me.
My experience was that ATXC and email lists were like, these surface-level interactions where people figured out, roughly, if your mind ran on a similar track to theirs, and then you were invited to make deeper relationships in more private corners of the internet. Social media filled both functions at once, I think, for a while. But the privacy was missing. I’m not surprised that Slack and Discord are starting to fill that private corner gap – everything old becomes new, etc.
[...]
Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?
I was. I’ve spent 20 years in fandom! I did some beta work for someone who’d started writing slash – The Sentinel. The actual Sentinel, not just an endless loop of Sentinel AUs based on Sentinel AUs based on etc. I had some idea at the time that I was queer, but this was my first real exposure to romances that weren’t straight. So I tore my way through the early 2000s slash fandoms as they developed: The Sentinel, Due South, Stargate Atlantis. Popslash, where a mix of good writing and absurdity ruled. Bandom, where I met my wife. Since then, many smaller fandoms.
It’s hard to compare any of these things to each other, let alone to the X-Files. In each one, I was lucky enough to find a circle of women who were strong beta readers and good friends. I never wrote as much or for as long as I did in the X-Files.