wolfshirts
| Journal Community | |
|---|---|
| Name: | MAKE SHIT UP. |
| Date(s): | created 7 November 2007 - Last updated on 20 October 2010 |
| Moderator: | blondiusmaximus, mcee |
| Founder: | mcee |
| Type: | crack plotbunnies, etc. |
| Fandom: | MCR, Bandom |
| URL: | http://wolfshirts.livejournal.com/ |
Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
wolfshirts is a LiveJournal community for sharing Bandom crackfic ideas. From the profile page:
Tell bandom of crucial AUs and crackfics and sundry stories missing from our collective oeuvre. And then discuss them ad nauseam. Primarily MCR-centric, but all satellite bands, sundry hangers-on, and significant others also welcome. Feel free to write stories based on anything here, just link back to the original discussion post. You can post such stories here, or link to them.[1]
A sister community, thnksfrthjzz, was created for PATD crackfic plotbunnies in January 2008. Another plotbunny community for all bandom, bandom_abandon, had been created before wolfshirts, in September 2007. Neither thnksfrthjzz nor bandom_abandon were as successful as wolfshirts.
The community started out wildly popular, with dozens of posts on some days in November. Posting slowed starting in 2008 and petered out in 2010. As of 2017, the community has 434 posts; 11,128 comments; and 394 members.[1]
The Name
wolfshirts is a reference to a much maligned fashion trend.[2] In particular, "It's a loving ode to the fact that Gerard was totally the kind of basement-dwellin' dude to wear those wolf shirts with the big rainbows and moons and screenprinted trees on them. As wolfshirts is the metaphorical basement-dwellin' place of cracked out AUs and fic scenarios of fandom! Or something like that."[3] (There does not appear to be any photographic evidence that Gerard Way ever wore wolf shirts, but community members later noticed with delight that MCR had a wolf shirt for sale[4].)
The wolfshirts fanon may have been more widely discussed in Bandom at the time.[5] For example, the fic Forever, Now has a scene where Gerard objects to a wolf sweatshirt, and that scene was originally posted 21 October 2007, two weeks before the comm was created.
See also Basement!Gerard.
not!fic
Although the term not!fic is not mentioned anywhere in the community, the group brainstorming in the comments sections resembles the style of not!fics, which were slowly emerging as a distinct genre. For example: Frankie wants to serve you cherry pie and top off your coffee., Archived version (November 15, 2007) Fans also posted chatfic in the posts and in the comments. For example: Firefly AU, anyone?, Archived version (November 25, 2007)
Fics Inspired
Many posts described AU ideas that later appeared in bandom fic, but in some cases the comm seems to have been merely reflecting common tropes in bandom at the time. (For example, wolfshirts was not the only place people remarked upon the resemblance between Gerard Way and Paul Gross.[6]) However, a few stories were explicitly inspired by the comm.
A post on November 21, 2007, Archived version was one inspiration for Skin of the Canvas by sinsense in 2008.[7] Gerard-as-an-artist AUs are fairly common, but Frank-as-a-model isn't.
December 2007: untitled ficlet by moneyes, Rest Stop by kitsune_tsuki
Keeping Time, a Doctor Who/Panic! at the Disco crossover by akire_yta, June 2008[8]
A February 2008 wolfshirts post may have been an indirect inspiration or encouragement for The Fall and Rise of the Black Parade; the author commented on the post to say "If I don't talk myself out of it in the next few days, I may be writing a Black Parade AU for bandombigbang."[9]
References
- ^ a b wolfshirts - Profile, Archived version (Accessed 23 April 2017.)
- ^ See Three Wolf Moon on Wikipedia.
- ^ comment by blondiusmaximus in a post by eleanor_lavish in wolfshirts. Um... you guys?, Archived version, 28 January 2008.
- ^ Um... you guys? - MAKE SHIT UP., Archived version, posted 28 January 2008. But one commenter was surprised: "I SAW THAT AT PROJECT REV AND I THOUGHT THAT WAS WHERE THE COMM NAME CAME FROM! Like, I knew it referred to the basement-dweller-past, but also, I thought you all KNEW."
- ^ Example: kalpurna wrote in December 2007, Lyn-Z continues to be a major fucking hotass in an amazing band and I honestly don't understand how GWay pulled that. Maybe Brian hid his wolf t-shirts out of kindness? I don't need to ride yours, I got mine right here [kalpurna], Archived version, 30/12/2007.
- ^ not!fic: Gerard is Fraser's Illegitimate Son pt 1, posted by shoemaster in August 2007. Gerard Way, long lost sibling to Benton Fraser?, Archived version, posted in wolfshirts in December 2007. Dopplegangbanger, posted by Bexless, date unknown. Only Going One Way by ataratah & jjtaylor, posted in June 2010.
- ^ "This story was, oddly enough, partly inspired by a prompt by immortal_lights for Gerard/Brian Molko. The other inspiration was from a wolfshirts post, specifically this one." Skin of the Canvas, by sinsense., Archived version, posted to bandombigbang, 2008-06-17.
- ^ akire_yta. Fic: Keeping Time (PatD/DW), Archived version, posted to wolfshirts, Jun. 27th, 2008.
- ^ comment by jezrana in a post by chebonne in wolfshirts. Seriously, these boys. They invent our AUs for us., Archived version, 5 February 2008.