Meta: Fanfic as Je me souviens
Jul. 8th, 2007 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alixtiiI was thinking of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in part because I've just finished reading the The Long Way Home arc and in part because it's come up in a couple of discussions I've been having lately. And it made me think of the way that for me, fanfic works as a sort of je me souviens--a way of saying "I remember" to the source canon.
Most canons sort of pummel forward without looking backwards. That probably was more true in the 90's than now, since serial storytelling seems to be coming back into vogue now and starting with a "Previously on" has become the norm rather than the exception. Something I loved about Veronica Mars was that the same set of supporting characters kept on returning in seasons one and two--and when that stopped being the case in season 3 I quickly lost interest in the show, because I wanted to know what Gia Goodman and Carrie Bishop and Madison Sinclair and Van Clemens and Trina Echolls were all up to.
And just ask any Voyager fan just what happened to Joe Carey.
Sometimes the new stories are worth telling in their own right. I'm not saying there's something bad about the new Who giving us Reinette and Sally Sparrow instead of using all its time making references to Romana and the Rani (whoever they might be)--because there isn't, not at all.
Regardless whether a canon seems to be suffering from massive long-term memory loss or is actually rather decent on referring to what has come before, fanfic is a way of hearkening back to those beloved times, of remembering them and saying that I love them. Or that I hate them. Or that I just think they're funny.
It's a way of taking minor characters--like Scott Hope from Buffy (who is, remember, canonically gay), or Reinette or Sally Sparrow from Doctor Who, or some forgotten character from old Who (which I haven't seen much of--most of my old Who knowledge comes from apocryphal audios)--and reaffirming one's love for them. It's a way of remembering that quirky piece of canon that everyone else seems to have forgetten and to bring it to the front and make something new with it. It's a way of returning to a favorite line of dialogue or a particularly stunning visual image. It's a way of saying "Remember when?"
And every "What if?" is also a "Remember when?" when you think about it.
It's a way of digging our fingers deep into the canon we already have and engaging with it. Fanfic can tell new stories using the characters we love, the same way canon does. But fanfic, IMHO, is at its best when it does all that and embraces where its come from in a way that the source text rarely does--rarely is able to, if we are honest.
This is why I write Amy Madison so much, because she exists in these odd corners of the text but never in its center, and by inhabiting I've invented new villains and new heroes and new demons and new mystical texts, because sometimes they are what the story I want to tell needs, but if I can reference something we've already seen in canon I'll choose to do that almost every time, because I love it and I want to bring it into my story, a metatextual whisper of ":Wasn't it great that one time when....?" to the reader. Remember that lame episode when a demon came from outer space? They're the catalyst in my Buffy/Torchwood crossover.Jurisdiction.
The entire premise of Divine Interventions was just to get Ethan, Amy, Dawn, and Cordelia in a room together, stir in Hecate, Janus, and Osiris (all deities mentioned in the show itself), resurrect Rack, and see what happened. Because these were pieces of what had gone before that I loved (or at least liked--I'm not really sure how Cordelia got in there) was interested in playing with in the present.
When "The Girl in Question" is bashed, retconned, and fanwanked, both my Buffy/Immortal fics (in which Buffy not only is dating the Immortal but marries and has a daughter by him) and The Ransom of Andrew Wells are my way of saying, yes, I did see that happen, and I loved it. I'm not going to forget it.
Each and every fic is, in its own way, a love song.
Through events like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
buffyverse1000 and femslash_minis, I was able to dig my fingers deep into the forgotten and underutilized corners of Buffy canon, inhabiting at times a wide arrange of characters who populate the periphery of the text. I can't think of a more potent way of saying "I remember" than writing Gwen Raiden/Nina Ash, as ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cadence_k did. Or, you know, Edna Mae Wilkins fic. *loves femslash_minis co-participants*
As many problems as I may have with The Long Way Home (even beyond one particular retcon), this is one of the things that I think Joss got right: the comic really does engage with the seven seasons of Buffy (and five seasons of Angel) that preceded it--indeed, to a degree that I don't think would have been possible in a television format. It's partly because the comics really are more like fanfiction than like canon that he can get away with it--he can have a character (I won't say which one so as not to spoil anyone) mention their mother and have us remember the one episode in which that mother appeared and understand the implications of the reference. (And it's not spoilery, because I can think of at least four characters off the top of my head who had parents appear in exactly one episode and I'm sure there are more). Also, comics don't have the practical considerations that make it necessary for canons sometimes to move forward; they don't have actors negotiating for money or the difficulty of arranging for certain guest stars to return.
Unfortunately, not all creators are Joss, and we're rarely so lucky.
In some ways, there's nothing more depressing than when a show you once loved seems to have forgotten its past completely, as sometimes VMars seemed to do in its third season and as Voyager seemed to do starting with its third episode, to the point that two seasons might seem to be entirely separate canons from each other, one open and the other for all practical purposes closed, that just happen to share some characters and/or settings. But even then fanfiction provides us with a way of remembering that past and proving that we at least, have not forgotten it.
It allows us to say: I remember. Je me souviens.
And I'm damn well not going to forget.
Most canons sort of pummel forward without looking backwards. That probably was more true in the 90's than now, since serial storytelling seems to be coming back into vogue now and starting with a "Previously on" has become the norm rather than the exception. Something I loved about Veronica Mars was that the same set of supporting characters kept on returning in seasons one and two--and when that stopped being the case in season 3 I quickly lost interest in the show, because I wanted to know what Gia Goodman and Carrie Bishop and Madison Sinclair and Van Clemens and Trina Echolls were all up to.
And just ask any Voyager fan just what happened to Joe Carey.
Sometimes the new stories are worth telling in their own right. I'm not saying there's something bad about the new Who giving us Reinette and Sally Sparrow instead of using all its time making references to Romana and the Rani (whoever they might be)--because there isn't, not at all.
Regardless whether a canon seems to be suffering from massive long-term memory loss or is actually rather decent on referring to what has come before, fanfic is a way of hearkening back to those beloved times, of remembering them and saying that I love them. Or that I hate them. Or that I just think they're funny.
It's a way of taking minor characters--like Scott Hope from Buffy (who is, remember, canonically gay), or Reinette or Sally Sparrow from Doctor Who, or some forgotten character from old Who (which I haven't seen much of--most of my old Who knowledge comes from apocryphal audios)--and reaffirming one's love for them. It's a way of remembering that quirky piece of canon that everyone else seems to have forgetten and to bring it to the front and make something new with it. It's a way of returning to a favorite line of dialogue or a particularly stunning visual image. It's a way of saying "Remember when?"
And every "What if?" is also a "Remember when?" when you think about it.
It's a way of digging our fingers deep into the canon we already have and engaging with it. Fanfic can tell new stories using the characters we love, the same way canon does. But fanfic, IMHO, is at its best when it does all that and embraces where its come from in a way that the source text rarely does--rarely is able to, if we are honest.
This is why I write Amy Madison so much, because she exists in these odd corners of the text but never in its center, and by inhabiting I've invented new villains and new heroes and new demons and new mystical texts, because sometimes they are what the story I want to tell needs, but if I can reference something we've already seen in canon I'll choose to do that almost every time, because I love it and I want to bring it into my story, a metatextual whisper of ":Wasn't it great that one time when....?" to the reader. Remember that lame episode when a demon came from outer space? They're the catalyst in my Buffy/Torchwood crossover.Jurisdiction.
The entire premise of Divine Interventions was just to get Ethan, Amy, Dawn, and Cordelia in a room together, stir in Hecate, Janus, and Osiris (all deities mentioned in the show itself), resurrect Rack, and see what happened. Because these were pieces of what had gone before that I loved (or at least liked--I'm not really sure how Cordelia got in there) was interested in playing with in the present.
When "The Girl in Question" is bashed, retconned, and fanwanked, both my Buffy/Immortal fics (in which Buffy not only is dating the Immortal but marries and has a daughter by him) and The Ransom of Andrew Wells are my way of saying, yes, I did see that happen, and I loved it. I'm not going to forget it.
Each and every fic is, in its own way, a love song.
Through events like
buffyverse1000 and femslash_minis, I was able to dig my fingers deep into the forgotten and underutilized corners of Buffy canon, inhabiting at times a wide arrange of characters who populate the periphery of the text. I can't think of a more potent way of saying "I remember" than writing Gwen Raiden/Nina Ash, as cadence_k did. Or, you know, Edna Mae Wilkins fic. *loves femslash_minis co-participants*As many problems as I may have with The Long Way Home (even beyond one particular retcon), this is one of the things that I think Joss got right: the comic really does engage with the seven seasons of Buffy (and five seasons of Angel) that preceded it--indeed, to a degree that I don't think would have been possible in a television format. It's partly because the comics really are more like fanfiction than like canon that he can get away with it--he can have a character (I won't say which one so as not to spoil anyone) mention their mother and have us remember the one episode in which that mother appeared and understand the implications of the reference. (And it's not spoilery, because I can think of at least four characters off the top of my head who had parents appear in exactly one episode and I'm sure there are more). Also, comics don't have the practical considerations that make it necessary for canons sometimes to move forward; they don't have actors negotiating for money or the difficulty of arranging for certain guest stars to return.
Unfortunately, not all creators are Joss, and we're rarely so lucky.
In some ways, there's nothing more depressing than when a show you once loved seems to have forgotten its past completely, as sometimes VMars seemed to do in its third season and as Voyager seemed to do starting with its third episode, to the point that two seasons might seem to be entirely separate canons from each other, one open and the other for all practical purposes closed, that just happen to share some characters and/or settings. But even then fanfiction provides us with a way of remembering that past and proving that we at least, have not forgotten it.
It allows us to say: I remember. Je me souviens.
And I'm damn well not going to forget.