Television's afterlife
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| News Media Commentary | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Television's afterlife |
| Commentator: | Malene Arpe |
| Date(s): | May 22, 2004 |
| Venue: | Toronto Star |
| Fandom: | Multifandom, Fanfiction, it mentions several television fandoms |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Television's afterlife is an article about fanfiction. It is about the history of fanfiction and an introduction to the concept, focusing on television series fandoms. It also interviews some fanfic writers. The article provided links to FanFiction.Net, AdultFanFiction.Net, and The Television FanFic Webring.
Excerpts
When a show dies it's comfort- ing to know that, just a click away, in the world of Internet fan fiction, many of the compel- ling characters continue to have long lives, great adventures and, at times, wild monkey sex of the kind not allowed on television.
Making no money from his or her writing, a fan fiction writer is a hybrid of pure storyteller and creative borrower. There are thousands of these more or less anonymous writers on the Internet - although there is no way of knowing precisely how many there are out there, even
Fan fiction at its best exhibits the qualities of "original" prose: strong characters, inventive plotting and fine pacing, with the added value of being a fan's methadone, both in between ep- isodes and when the show is gone.
But what of that "original" writer? How does he feel about having his ideas and thoughts used by others? Ronald D. Moore has written. for and produced Ros- well, Star Trek (Voyag- er and Deep Space Nine), Battlestar Ga- lactica (he's now work- ing on the new B.G. se-ries), Touching Evil and Carni- vale. Like Whedon, Moore has nothing but praise.
"I think it's great. I think it's an expression of people's love and affection for a show. The fact that people would take the time to sit down and write entire sto- rylines, wrapped around back story and characters that are es- tablished, do elaborate plots and write serials, it's a remarkable tribute to the appeal of those shows," he says.
"I honestly don't think I've ev- er loved another show as much as Buffy and Angel," says Okla- homa's Jean Cousins, 31, who only uses characters from Joss Whedon's Buffyverse in her sto- ries. "Past shows that have come close include Firefly, Farscape, The X-Files and Lois & Clark. I think the reason I never felt compelled to write fanfic about those shows was because I pret- ty much got what I wanted from them.... But Joss Whedon has that whole 'don't give them what they want, give them what they need' philosophy and he never lets his characters really be happy."
Like countless other fanfic writers, Cousins (random- thought.addr.com/redemption- ista) continues telling stories of the characters she loves.
"I do think fan fiction helps to fill the void left behind in the ab- sence of new episodes. For me, there is no substitute for getting to watch the show. But reading and writing fan fiction does keep the characters alive, and keeps us from having to say goodbye."