boldly going where no smut had before
Jul. 17th, 2015 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
veronica_rich"Brent is SOOOO hot!!"
Such was the reply that introduced me to Rose my sophomore year in college. One of the women on my dorm floor who watched TNG with me told me about her, upon learning Data was my favorite character. "She likes him, too," said Kay. "Send her an intramail and tell her I mentioned her."
Campus intramail was a fairly new addition to our technology; to use it, I had to book time in the computer lab in the lobby of our five-story dormitory. (My roommate was one of the few students who had her own personal computer, which was roughly the same size and weight of a Vega, and she guarded it jealously if I ever suggested perhaps I could use it for five minutes in exchange for some favor.) Communicating this way was sort of impersonal, so I wasn't sure how to approach someone I'd never met by email ... so I settled for probably the most formal introduction anyone in the history of fandom has ever come up with. (Something like "Hello, I like Data. Do you like Data too? I like Star Trek." Ad nauseam. Like that Wizard-of-Oz-loving kid in line to see Santa in "A Christmas Story.")
Keeping to the kind of character that would make us friends for at least 23 more years, Rose's reply was only four words and immediately to the point. Bonding over the frankly unquestionable attraction of Brent Spiner has undoubtedly brought together more women than garden clubs.
After I met her in person, we started hanging out each late night in the basement lounge of her dorm hall, where we could catch up on reruns of TNG and talk about them in peace. It emerged that not only did we both like Data, we were pretty fond too of the Data/Tasha pairing, seizing on every winking clue and opportunity to shove them together in the show's canon and in our discussions.
One day, Rose handed me a packet of papers. "You can borrow these," she instructed, "but I want them back. So only for a little while; make copies if you want them." Inside were 'zines full of material by other fans mailed to dedicated fangirls who had each taken on the task of becoming a sort of central editor sifting through submissions and printing them in cheap stapled or bound booklets and selling each for a few dollars to offset paper, printing, and mailing costs. There were letters debating plot points and character from what seemed almost all women (or girls, depending on age), science concepts in both TNG and TOS; short parody stories and poems; filk lyrics set to well known songs as well as original pieces ("Banned from Argo," anyone?); and ... other stories.
I started reading one that was about Data and Tasha. It seemed to be an original story, and I was about halfway through when I got to the sex scene. WHOA, I thought. What is THIS. Fanfiction, Rose explained to me - written by fans who wanted a little more out of their canon than the Federal Communications Commission and Paramount were willing to show even on late Saturday night CBS.
At first I was uncomfortable with the idea of it, invariably picturing the actors doing these ... things, with each other. I squinted as I watched first-season TNG reruns that week, trying to picture the characters doing those things and trying to decide if I could live with that. After a few days, I gradually came to terms with it, read a few more stories, and realized I was watching the show just as I had before, albeit while formulating some new ideas in case I wanted to try writing some of that fanfiction myself. After all, I'd spent some formative teenage years trying to write bad original romances (seriously - I found one in storage earlier this year from when I was about 14 that makes 50 Shades of Grey look like Rowling); how different was this, except that it had settings ready-made and seemed to be more fun?
Fanfiction, I thought, was a genius concept. But was it something every fan was doing?
Such was the reply that introduced me to Rose my sophomore year in college. One of the women on my dorm floor who watched TNG with me told me about her, upon learning Data was my favorite character. "She likes him, too," said Kay. "Send her an intramail and tell her I mentioned her."
Campus intramail was a fairly new addition to our technology; to use it, I had to book time in the computer lab in the lobby of our five-story dormitory. (My roommate was one of the few students who had her own personal computer, which was roughly the same size and weight of a Vega, and she guarded it jealously if I ever suggested perhaps I could use it for five minutes in exchange for some favor.) Communicating this way was sort of impersonal, so I wasn't sure how to approach someone I'd never met by email ... so I settled for probably the most formal introduction anyone in the history of fandom has ever come up with. (Something like "Hello, I like Data. Do you like Data too? I like Star Trek." Ad nauseam. Like that Wizard-of-Oz-loving kid in line to see Santa in "A Christmas Story.")
Keeping to the kind of character that would make us friends for at least 23 more years, Rose's reply was only four words and immediately to the point. Bonding over the frankly unquestionable attraction of Brent Spiner has undoubtedly brought together more women than garden clubs.
After I met her in person, we started hanging out each late night in the basement lounge of her dorm hall, where we could catch up on reruns of TNG and talk about them in peace. It emerged that not only did we both like Data, we were pretty fond too of the Data/Tasha pairing, seizing on every winking clue and opportunity to shove them together in the show's canon and in our discussions.
One day, Rose handed me a packet of papers. "You can borrow these," she instructed, "but I want them back. So only for a little while; make copies if you want them." Inside were 'zines full of material by other fans mailed to dedicated fangirls who had each taken on the task of becoming a sort of central editor sifting through submissions and printing them in cheap stapled or bound booklets and selling each for a few dollars to offset paper, printing, and mailing costs. There were letters debating plot points and character from what seemed almost all women (or girls, depending on age), science concepts in both TNG and TOS; short parody stories and poems; filk lyrics set to well known songs as well as original pieces ("Banned from Argo," anyone?); and ... other stories.
I started reading one that was about Data and Tasha. It seemed to be an original story, and I was about halfway through when I got to the sex scene. WHOA, I thought. What is THIS. Fanfiction, Rose explained to me - written by fans who wanted a little more out of their canon than the Federal Communications Commission and Paramount were willing to show even on late Saturday night CBS.
At first I was uncomfortable with the idea of it, invariably picturing the actors doing these ... things, with each other. I squinted as I watched first-season TNG reruns that week, trying to picture the characters doing those things and trying to decide if I could live with that. After a few days, I gradually came to terms with it, read a few more stories, and realized I was watching the show just as I had before, albeit while formulating some new ideas in case I wanted to try writing some of that fanfiction myself. After all, I'd spent some formative teenage years trying to write bad original romances (seriously - I found one in storage earlier this year from when I was about 14 that makes 50 Shades of Grey look like Rowling); how different was this, except that it had settings ready-made and seemed to be more fun?
Fanfiction, I thought, was a genius concept. But was it something every fan was doing?
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no subject
Date: 2015-07-17 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-17 08:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-18 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-18 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-18 11:54 am (UTC)I'm only middle-aged, but with technology changing faster than I think it did for any of our ancestors, I feel old if I talk about, say, remembering life before MP3s and flash drives, let alone before microwaves and VCRs. So ditto on the intramail; one of the first fanfics I ever read was on intramail from some California school, a comedy with Trek actors switching places on the transporter with their characters.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-19 04:15 pm (UTC)I first discovered fandom around 1995, through my internet account at grad school. I remember reading Usenet groups while eating dinner and procrastinating about the night's work. My first fandom was Star Wars, from when I eight and saw the first movie. I obsessed about it for years but had no idea that 'zines or fanfic existed. I was so excited about all the new EU novels that started coming out when I was in college -- they were like pro fanfic. But they were still lacking both the sex and the deeper character exploration you find in good fanfic, so my discovery of fanfic was a huge milestone for me. I vaguely remember there were scattershot collections of fic posted on various pages and I read them all. Then a little later I went back, things were a little more organized with yahoo groups and other forums. Those were the days of fanfic.net. Then I discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom and Live Journal happened and my fandom life really began. BtVS was a much better fandom in terms of quality of fic and meta. It made me realize how good fanfic could really be, and I met some very smart people who remain my friends. to this day.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-21 12:19 am (UTC)I'm curious about two things: First, do you think deeper character development and sexual situations that go beyond a little sexytalk are tied together? I'm not saying one has to have sex to have deeper development, but do you think the sex calls for that in the better fics? Second, do you still read any authorized novels for a show/series, to be able to say if they have more sex and/or deeper character development than in the old days, in order to keep up with fanfic sensibilities in the fans compared to 20 years ago? (I don't mean the original novels, like Hunger Games - I mean if someone else was hired to write an official Hunger Games novel, for example, who isn't Suzanne Collins; or Trek novels; Star Wars; etc.)
This sounds a mess, but hopefully I phrased it somewhat decently. LOL
no subject
Date: 2015-07-21 09:49 pm (UTC)Personally I am much more into sex scenes that tell me what sensations and emotions the characters are feeling, so you definitely need character development for that. Scenes where it could be anyone having sex bore me. Interestingly i find that there are authors that can write PWP that incorporates character development -- with just a few words they manage to capture they individual character traits, quirks, turn-ons, etc. That's impressive. Otherwise PWP increasingy bores me. I can only read about tongues battling for dominance so many times. ;D
Based on my experience reading Star Wars Expanded Universe novels (I think I last looked at one about one-two years ago, but I kept up with them pretty regularly over the years) I would say things are very much still PG-13. some authors will manage to make things a little more sensual, actually refer to sexual attraction here and there, stuff like that, but it's still generally very sterile IMO. And I would say that the character development depends on the author, but I do think that the better authors manage somewhat deeper character development than you used to see.