Fandom Update: Veronica Mars, RENT, Star Trek: Voyager

[alixtii]

soundingsea sent me the first two episodes of Veronica Mars, and OMG--where was that show when I was watching TV last Wednesday? Because there is no way in Sheol that they were the same show. The difference was light and day.

Saw RENT last night and was more or less sobbing as the credits rolled. It's not difficult for a movie to make me cry, but I haven't cried that hard at a movie in a very long time.

Now, my first fandom taught me 3 major things:

1) There is such a thing as love at first sight. I don't know if I've told you guys this story, but the first episode of Star Trek: Voyager I ever saw was "Blood Fever," a pon far episode. (From "In the Flesh": "It's pon far night at the Vulcan nightclub.") It was a bit too adult for my taste--remember this was '97, so I was 13--and I decided that Voyager wasn't for me.

Okay, that's not exactly a story about love at first sight. But bear with me.

Some indeterminate time in the future, I'm bored and there's nothing good on, so I think about giving Voyager a second chance. Only problem is, even though the TV Guide channel said it was on Channel 7 (oh, how I miss the TV Guide channel), instead there was some historical drama on about German-occupied France. It was centered in a bar or restaurant that was managed by a woman named Katrine.

I looked in Katrine's eyes, and I knew that despite the presence of Nazis and singing and whatnot, I had the right show. Because my heart told me that a woman with that kind of fire in her eyes had to be a starship captain. And of course the episode was "The Killing Game" and the woman was Captain Kathryn Janeway under some type of technobabble memory control.

And I was hooked.

2) You can do it too. I don't remember if Star Trek was the first fandom for which I wrote fanfiction. Actually, now that I think about it I know it wasn't--I remember working on a sequel to A Little Princess called Ladies-in-Waiting, and I know that that was started before I began my thesaurus phase in sixth grade and turned it into Lasses in Deferment. (I kid you not. I wish I did.) But it was the first fandom for which I wrote fanfiction qua fanfiction, and considered submitting to the web. I didn't know about FF.net then (luckily!) but I remember The Starfleet Journal, which I considered the pinnacle of prestige.

And then The Starfleet Journal experienced a steady decrease in quality and my reaction went from "If I work hard, my work could be enshrined there!" to "I can do that in my sleep!" to "I'd be ashamed to see my name next to drek like that." And I realized that things on the web are imperfect institutions run by people, that fanfic writers were not some hallowed pantheon, that if I wanted to be involved and be noticed what was necessary was a little bit a talent and a lot of enthusiasm and commitment. I didn't need to be a god to become a fanfic writer, and I wouldn't become a god by becoming a fanfic writer.

3) It’s okay to move on. I haven't seen an episode of Voyager since the series ended. I have the strongest affection for the show, but I don't particularly miss it. If someone pointed me to a Naomi Wildman ficathon I'd join it in a heartbeat, but I don't think I'll be finishing the unfinished WIPs up at FF.net or on my harddrive.

Comments

[inalasahl]

I remember working on a sequel to A Little Princess called Ladies-in-Waiting, and I know that that was started before I began my thesaurus phase in sixth grade and turned it into Lasses in Deferment. (I kid you not. I wish I did.)
Awwww, that's the cutest anecdote ever. I would read that story.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I shudder to remember some of the travesties I committed armed with that thesaurus. Well, it was better to go through that phase then than later on in life.

As for the fic, it was an interesting enough premise (Miss Amelia marries Uncle Tom and Sara runs the school after Miss Minchin dies) but I wasn't all that great of a writer in sixth grader, and I hadn't quited learned how to, you know, plot.

[inalasahl]

As for the fic, it was an interesting enough premise (Miss Amelia marries Uncle Tom and Sara runs the school after Miss Minchin dies) but I wasn't all that great of a writer in sixth grader, and I hadn't quited learned how to, you know, plot.
That really does sound interesting. Hey, at least you were attempting literature-like things. All of my stories at that age were about sixth-graders, and my best friend and I didn't even know enough to consider that a bad thing. It was, "oh, and we're going to need a character based on [cool kid in math class]" etc.

I think we thought that the best way to write stories that were as true to life as the ones we read was to just stalk our classmates.

I'm just really, really glad I had no internet. Those stories are thankfully lost to the ages.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Oh, I had plenty of self-inserts, believe me. Indeed, my favorite plot was one where my fifth-grade class was kidnapped and replaced with cybernetic aliens who rebelled against their scientist master and....

...but the rampant Mary-Sueism was admittedly somehow more at home within the superhero genre; if I could remember those plots, I don't think they would be all that bad. They were composed walking around a tree at recess, though, and so sadly never got written down.

[inalasahl]

Indeed, my favorite plot was one where my fifth-grade class was kidnapped and replaced with cybernetic aliens who rebelled against their scientist master and....
Hee!