Spinning Off From The Source: Alternative Fan Fiction Changes With The Seasons
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| Title: | Spinning Off From The Source: Alternative Fan Fiction Changes With The Seasons |
| Creator: | Christine Boese |
| Date(s): | October 1998 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | Xena: Warrior Princess |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Spinning Off From The Source: Alternative Fan Fiction Changes With The Seasons 1, Archived version; 2; 3; 4 |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Spinning Off From The Source: Alternative Fan Fiction Changes With The Seasons is an essay by Christine Boese.
The essay contains many screenshots of old websites. Topics include fanon, gafiation, uberfic, trends in writing, quality control in fic, The Lunacy Factor, and much more.
It was posted to Whoosh! #25 in 1998.
This author wrote The Ballad of the Internet Nutball: Chaining Rhetorical Visions from the Margins of the Margins to the Mainstream in the Xenaverse.
Topics
- Reflections
- Wow! Phase
- Meltdown Phase
- Novel Phase
- Maintenance Phase
- Themes and Trends in Alternative Fan Fiction
- Alt-Fanfic Character Themes
- Alt-Fanfic Setting Themes
- Alt-Fanfic Action Themes
- Genres in Alternative Fan Fiction
- Hurt/Comfort Stories
- First Time Stories
- Warlord/Slave Stories
- Uber-Xena Stories
- Xena Withdrawal Syndrome 1998
- Xena as Archetype
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Biography
Excerpts
As we enter the fourth season of the television program Xena: Warrior Princess (XWP), we ought to look back and reflect on this interesting phenomenon Hardcore Nutball Xenites have collectively created in cyberspace. For many Xenites, certain routine and comforting online habits have evolved over time: collecting Xenastuff; having intense discussions with other Xenites on the various discussion groups; going to Xena conventions and fests; creating idiosyncratic, colorful web pages and artwork; and, reading and writing fan fiction.
While participating in and studying all of the above activities in the online Xenaverse culture, I found that, for me personally, fan fiction became the most powerful magnet, specifically (and almost exclusively) alternative fan fiction. It drew me back again and again. I seemed to feed off it, never tapping the limits of the tension and intrigue it held. I found that many other Xenites also shared this habit: the nightly bedtime story. Every night I visited the huge fan fiction index sites. When I began, a year and a half ago, I went to the incomparable xenos Fan Fiction Index. After xenos left the Xenaverse, I regularly hit The Xenaverse Codex: The bardeyes & xenabat Library, the designated inheritors of xenos's code, and Shadowfen's Fan Fiction Index.
Aside from the apparently mundane and erotic appeal of the nightly bedtime story, something more profound and far-reaching about alternative fan fiction is happening, something I can only begin to describe in this article. It led me to write my doctoral dissertation on the online Xenaverse culture, in a quest of sorts to understand the different ways the online communities of the Xenaverse affect Hardcore Nutballs. One thing I noticed during my excursions into the fan fiction cyberscape was that my reading habits evolved over time in distinct phases. I did not realize until much later that elements of fan fiction were evolving as well.
This article examines my personal experience in alternative fan fiction immersion and explores the ways that alternative fan fiction has evolved in conjunction with the television show and independently of it. Reading fan fiction in online contexts is a highly personal and peculiar endeavor, and I cannot separate my personal experiences from the ideas, observations, and theories presented here. My experiences are not unique, and others have reported similar degrees of immersion.
Xena Withdrawal Syndrome 1998 has left us with an odd inheritance. More stories than ever are being posted online. On one hand, I think it is wonderful that the Internet, in sidestepping traditional publishers and hardened arteries of publishing power, is allowing a kind of folk art to develop in fiction-writing. I love that average people are finding themselves open to dabbling in Xena fan fiction, no matter what their occupation in real life. That means that the Xenaverse is a safe and nurturing environment for the sometimes scary and personally risky activity of writing. Clearly the Xenaverse shows that there is a lot of untapped talent out there, and I am amazed at the sheer numbers of talented people in the Xenaverse who are underemployed or in unfulfilling jobs, people who are finding a terrific outlet in the Xenaverse. More power to them.
That said, I must add that I have mixed feelings about some of the stories going online following Season Three. It has certainly gotten harder to find the good stories, and lately I have hit more bad than good. My experience tells me this is probably just a phase. The Xenaverse cannot be running dry yet. The main exception has been the present- day Uber-novels released online in serialized form over the summer ["Lucifer Rising" by Sharon Bowers, "Chicago 5 a.m." by LN James, "The Dangerous Truth" by Curiositee -- still unfinished, "Fire and Ice" by Friction, and "Persistence of Memory" by Paul Seely, just to name a few].
Alternative fan fiction has been evolving beyond the limitations of the Season Three source material. Some authors and readers have commented that the Uber genre allows writers to play with "First Time" stories in different timelines, because one can only write so many Xena and Gabrielle "First Time" stories. An interesting thing about the above stories is that they follow along in the psychological thriller tradition begun by Paul Seely and Jennifer Garza's "Surfacing", where the authors somehow create a Xena-character in the present time who is a b*d*ss criminal, assassin, drug dealer, or whatever on a scale equivalent with how b*d*ss Xena is in bastardized ancient Greece. In this way some of the same "Warlord/Slave" themes can be explored as well. LN James even places her characters undercover in a BDSM leather bar.
I am given to wonder what kind of life Uber-Xena stories could have in traditional publishing venues, outside of the Xenaverse. While the characters are recognizable to Xenites, Uber-Xena stories stretch out so far from the source that the copyright disclaimers to MCA/Universal and Renaissance Pictures are hardly needed. It remains to be seen what further adventures archetypal Xena and archetypal Gabrielle will have both within the Xenaverse and perhaps even outside of it.