Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World

by Jamison, Anne

  Whedon tried to deal with the situation with humor, throwing out some less likely spoilers (everyone on Buffy will from now on be naked and gay, etc.), but his genuine frustration was palpable. He was fielding a lot of hate from homophobic fans and resistance from the network (in a show that could feature Buffy and her boyfriend going at it for most of an episode, the lesbians were not allowed to so much as kiss), while at the same time seeing posts from teens telling him how big a difference the storyline was making in their lives. Although fic doesn’t (or didn’t) usually involve the added level of media attention, this mix of reaction and interaction isn’t far from the experience of writing fic for an active audience.

  Pioneering fanfiction and media scholar Henry Jenkins argues that fic fandom is “born of a balance between fascination and frustration”66—but his insight doesn’t apply only to fic. As is obvious from a long track record of interviews and fanboard posts, Whedon loves television as a storytelling medium but is perpetually frustrated by its restrictions. At The Bronze, he posted gleefully about what he was able to get past network censors and about being in “hot water” with the WB. He shared viewers’ frustrations with broadcasts delayed when episodes were deemed too close to traumatic events (he agreed in the case of “Earshot,” a school-shooting-themed episode originally scheduled to be aired in the wake of Columbine; not so much when the season’s memorable graduation finale was delayed by months). Whedon registered dissatisfaction with how episodes were cut when rerun, with TV Guide and promo-spot spoilers, with foreign broadcast schedules, and sometimes with fan (or professional) critical reaction. The Emmy-nominated “Hush” was inspired in part by the standard praise/criticism of Buffy as being strong but dependent on snappy dialogue. Whedon also explains in the DVD commentary that he was concerned about becoming too reliant on the storytelling conventions of television (shot of one person talking, shot of other person talking, shot of two people talking together, etc.). So he had monsters come and steal everyone’s speech. Frustrations with critical reaction and the limits of television also inspired Buffy fic, especially of the “fill in the gap” or the “I can’t wait any longer” variety (fic!Willow/Tara faced no network restrictions). When, after two seasons of witchcraft-as-lesbian-love metaphor, season six burst into song and fans got to hear and see Willow make her girlfriend complete, fic, it goes without saying, had long been exploring the same territory (if not in song).

  Speaking of fascination and frustration, Buffy fans added a word to the pan-fandom fanfic lexicon: Jossed. It’s what happens when you meticulously plan a storyline over a broadcast hiatus only to have canon contradict it, often violently, when the show returns. Buffy fans loved a show created by someone avowedly dedicated to giving them “not what they want but what they need”—but it’s not as if they always agreed with him about what that was. Known for brutally killing off beloved characters (a secondary meaning of “Jossed”), Whedon seemed to revel in making characters and their fans suffer, as in a season three Bronze post on Willow/Xander: “it felt so right—give her what she’s always wanted just when it will make her miserable! That’s the JossY way. Purr.”67 It does sound like a Whedon mission statement.

  Not everyone loved that mission, and the boards weren’t always friendly. Many fans (and apparently the lead actress herself) rebelled at the kinky sex-, drug-, and gun-fueled darkness of the show’s sixth season. Whedon’s response to this fan criticism—on a later, fan-run, post-WB version of the board known as the Bronze Beta—led to a different kind of mission statement: a very serious, theoretical, and obviously genuinely searching meditation on the ethics of representation:

  All right, you get the “kept Joss From Sleeping” award. (The ceremony is televised oct 11th). Your question is well put, and it’s one I’ve asked since the only things I was writing were for my own 14 year old self to read. What is my responsibility? How dark should I get, how much should every one of my characters represent an ideal or a reality? How far can you delve into evil before you are actually propagating it? Is propagating a real word? These are questions that must be confronted every time out to bat, and every time the decision is different. We have to delve into uncomfortable and even awful places to find the heart of our stories (especially with the horror). These are fairy tales, not driving manuals. However, I have a mass audience, I have to show them something besides horror, I have to have values . . .

  And so on. The fact is, if you are worried about these issues, you’re probably worried enough. Too much of our culture today is controlled by people who don’t give a rat’s *** about their message, who just churn out crap. I don’t like most slasher films because they don’t like people—they’re just kill fodder. Now there’s also people preaching one thing while glorifying another, there’s what [film and horror theorist] Robin Wood calls the “Incoherent Text” of so many seventies movies, where peace and understanding may be the underlying desire, but horror and violence is the structure—or the fun . . .

  I guess the point is, the best texts are incoherent. They EMBODY the struggle you describe. Horror is reactionary. I’m liberal. But we get along.68

  It’s clear this was no glib response (and in what is perhaps a nod to the critic discussed here, a central character in the following, final season is named Robin Wood). Whedon’s genuine intellectual and creative engagement here seems quite profound. While he hardly panders to fans (lots of characters would be less dead if he did), his Bronze postings show he takes fan response very much to heart and, what is more, engages it intellectually. In an interview for NPR, he explained how his thinking changed on encountering a fan interpretation he hadn’t intended:

  I became irate. A fan—somebody wrote—because I checked the posting boards all the time back then because, you know, it was a new way to hear from the audience, and it was still very fresh and exciting. And somebody said, oh, there’s lesbian subtext. And I just blew up. I was like, you guys see lesbian subtext behind every corner. I mean, you know, when Buffy’s mom had a friend over, you’re all lesbian subtext. I’m like, guys, you just want to see girls kissing. It’s not lesbian subtext, and get over it.

  And the person who wrote it said, we would like you to go to our Web site where we have dissected every episode and written our treatise about the lesbian subtext. I went on it, and came back and apologized. It was like, everything you said is true. It’s all right there. And you know, it’s where I first coined the phrase, BYO subtext, because . . . I realized that, you know, part of art is going to be people bringing—it’s got to touch everybody in a way that’s totally personal.69

  As a writer and director Whedon is famously exacting that his lines be spoken as written to the letter. For all the creative collaboration of television writing, Whedon is the rare writer/director who attained auteur status for his television shows. Fans and writing staff alike tend to fall over themselves to give him credit for all the best lines, plot points, and concepts. He hardly has a reputation as an artist with no interest in control. Yet the limits of his creative control seem to feed and fascinate him also—which helps explain his supportive interest in fanfiction.

  It’s clear that Whedon and the other show writers were fascinated, as well as sometimes frustrated—even angered—by fan reaction. Sometimes they come off as defensive—one reason we see less of this kind of unguarded interaction as the internet has grown up. Joss sniped that “he wasn’t aware of the evil/dead lesbian cliché”; fellow writer David Fury demanded that Angel viewers recognize that “it’s the WRITERS who bring humor to the show” and even pulled rank, telling a fan “when you address the CREATORS, it’s MR. Whedon and MR. Greenwalt” and to “show a little respect” (Fury apologized almost immediately). Marti Noxon was clearly stung that fans accused the show of “getting all ‘Buffy’s Creek’”: “You’re just now getting bothered by the amount of sex on the show? Guess all that S&M and bondage stuff we did last season flew under your radar.” But for all that, the writers wanted to know. Time and again, the wr
iters’ eagerness for feedback and reaction was palpable: “Speak out, postifers! For or against? (not that this will change anything—I just want to know).”70

  This kind of give-and-take around serially unfolding stories is the coin-in-trade of fanfiction. In their online reactions, these professionals were not so different from the many unpaid writers unofficially writing for Joss Whedon’s characters. As I hope should be clear, I don’t mean this as any kind of insult to the Buffy writing staff. Today, writers everywhere are still adjusting to the mixed blessing of immediate feedback and interaction the internet made available—and if this writing staff were pioneers in that endeavor, fan writers were pioneering right along with them. I recall similar musings about the ethics of representation from, for example, a devout Christian housewife posting Spike/Angel slash stories she believed reflected an ethos of love and acceptance in keeping with her religion, or defending violence or coerciveness in fic and on the show itself because such behavior represented real struggle and had real consequences. Instances of such searching critique and self-reflection in response to reader reaction are everywhere in fic fandom.

  One Buffy writer from this era at The Bronze has been particularly encouraging to aspiring writers, including, explicitly, fan writers. Jane Espenson was enthusiastic about fic in her Bronze postings: “BTW I love fanfic . . . not really allowed to read the Buffy fanfic, I do read in other fandoms . . . there’s some great stuff out there. (also some crappy stuff, but people should feel free to read/write that as well).”71 She explained that reading fic in other fandoms could help her with research: “I love writing both Spike and Giles, although I find that I have exhausted my supply of British slang . . . I better read more ‘Professionals’ fanfic, that’s where I find the words!”72 Espenson was the guest of honor at the first Writercon, a gathering of fan writers in 2004, where she made her support of fanfiction and its writers abundantly clear. She has been consistent in offering concrete advice to aspiring writers and sharing about her own process—her Bronze posts on writing, scripts, dialogue, voice, and how to get started in television writing are extensive and detailed.

  Notably, Buffy fanwriting communities were also full of groups and posting boards devoted to issues of writing, style, fictional devices, scriptwriting, guides to British and American slang—and to Buffyisms. Criticism of language and style could be stringent. Some archives screened for quality. Popular fan writers were recruited to discuss tricks of the trade and their own writing processes on boards; there were complex awards and recognition systems in place. The blogging platform LiveJournal was very active as a forum for posting and discussing fics, fanon, research, and clichés, gently (or not so gently) mocking bad fic, and complaining about bad grammar.

  Many Buffy fan writers were not present in the relatively small circle of posters at The Bronze in its heyday. But the show’s sense of common cause with the broader culture’s disparaged margins—geeks, losers, queers, women, and, yes, fanfic writers—remained long after the Bronze board’s demise. Another side effect of this culture was that the show’s writers had fans—had online fan clubs, even—and acted genuinely as fans of each other. Television staff writers didn’t usually have fanbases, but in the Buffy fandom, they were rock stars. Fans paid attention to writing credits, knew and cared who had contributed what, and repeatedly asked after and were educated on the collaborative ways of television writing. Buffy left a legacy of mutual fan-creator respect that included fan writers even when other fans derided them. In a 2012 interview, Espenson reflects on parallels between the fic-writing and television-writing processes:

  To get a job as a writer in Hollywood—you write episodes of television shows [someone else has created]. And actually, the eventual job you get in television is writing for characters you didn’t create. I write fanfiction every day when I sit down to write something for the characters of Once Upon a Time in a way because I’m writing for characters that I didn’t create. I’m putting myself in Adam and Eddy’s shows and writing in as close to their voice as I can do. And that’s the same thing that fanfiction writers do.73

  Espenson goes on to say that fanfiction is “the best training you could have to be a working professional television writer” and agrees with Whedon that fanfiction is a huge compliment to a writer: “It is a sign that a character has been created that seems to the viewer to have a life beyond the edges of the screen. Nothing could be a bigger compliment to a writer than a character that other people feel that they can write for.”

  People are still paying that compliment to Buffy, but The Bronze is long gone. It’s a virtual space from a different virtual era; the online world has changed. Some of that fan–creator interaction has moved on to Twitter, but most television writers know to keep it a little more guarded—or very quickly learn. Most shows now try to have fanboards, but The Bronze looks a little like the Wild West compared to what you’d find on officially sanctioned boards today. One of Jane Espenson’s sign-offs offers an aptly (in)appropriate epitaph: “All right. We’ve had our fun. A little history. A little filthy sex talk. A lot of Syphilis.” Could be an AU fic prompt.

  In the fic world of the early naughties (appropriately enough) NautiBitz was a legend: as fellow fic writer Stultiloquentia describes her on Fanlore, “The queen of smutty comedy. Hot, hilarious, zippy, conspiratorial. Very much ‘genre’ writing—Spike’s idealized—but if you’re worried about that, you’re a dope.” In those days, Nauti was known for writing “gateway fic,” the kind that came up near-universally on rec lists and Google and drew people into the fandom. She wrote the fic that other writers wrote fic for. She inspired new writers to start posting: “Nauti[B]itz was the first Spuffy [Spike/Buffy] fanfic I read, and a huge inspiration, so I really wanted this to be the first one i posted, even though I have started writing others” (BloodEnvy, writing in response to a review of her fic posted on the Bloodshedverse, a popular archive).

  Buffy’s was the first fic community I looked in on, and as I kibbitzed my way around the fandom, NautiBitz came up repeatedly as a gold standard, someone to be learned from. Nauti even participated in communities that gave writing advice and technical help. (There were a number of these, such as slaymesoftly’s riters-r-us on LiveJournal, in the Buffy fanfic world.) Like so many writers, readers, artists, and even researchers, NautiBitz saw giving back to the community that helped fuel and teach her as an integral part of her process.

  As she explains in her essay, she was learning, too. While other writers (such as myself) have endured or enjoyed (or both) hours of writing workshops with this or that Very Serious Writer, NautiBitz’s workshop was the chorus of fans reading her snark-filled sex (or sex-filled snark). Nauti paid close attention to the writing of Joss Whedon, Jane Espenson, and Marti Noxon and, to the best of her ability, transposed those voices into extremely explicit sex scenes. In time, she even discovered . . . plot.

  Fic U: Higher Education through Fanfiction

  (Or, How Several Years of Writing Sex Stories about Television Characters Can Be Just as Valuable as—and Way Cheaper than—a College Education)

  Jen Zern (NautiBitz)

  Fanfiction. When I first heard of it, I thought it was a laughable, shameful expression by the nerdiest of nerds. I was way too cool for something like that—I lived on the Lower East Side! I partied with the art-house crowd! I sang in a band that played CBGBs!

  And yet, somehow I ended up writing stories about Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the better part of a decade—and as an unforeseen consequence, I earned an (unofficial) education that set me on a career path I’d never before considered.

  Let’s rewind to November 2000. I was still in a band (and still cool, of course), but my longtime partner and I had tied the knot, rescued a couple of scruffy mutts, and moved to a house in the ’burbs. Every Tuesday night, she and I made sure to stay in, cuddle on the couch, and catch our all-time favorite show, Buffy.

  We loved everything about Buffy: the kickass female lead, the comedy, the pat
hos, the romance, the supporting cast, and I, in particular, had a soft spot for Spike. Not only because (his lookalike) Billy Idol’s video for “Dancing with Myself” may have jump-started my puberty, but also because he was hilarious and charming and had a surprising range of emotions for a sociopathic vampire.

  This was no ordinary Tuesday night, however. This episode ended with the twist that would rock my world: a so-wrong-it’s-right kiss was shared in what turned out to be a dream, and Spike awoke with the horrifying and shocking realization that he was in love with the woman who had been trained to kill him. Bad boy falls for good girl—what a great direction for the show! Of course, Buffy would never give him a chance—she was much too moralistic—but boy, did I want to see it happen! Immediately!

  Yes, something broke in me that evening. And the only way to fix it was FANFICTION.

  Of course, I didn’t know that yet. Sure, I heard fanfiction’s distant digital siren call, but surely that path would only lead to disappointment—terrible writing by sex-starved nerds, right? Instead, I tried comics, tie-in novels, everything I could get my suddenly Spuffy-hungry mitts on, but none of it was enough. Eventually, the siren got so loud and so insistent, and I got so desperate, that I succumbed. One morning after walking my dogs, I fired up my laptop, ran a search, and lo and behold, there at my fingertips were not one, not two, but hundreds of sexcapades starring Buffy and Spike. People had been writing about them getting together since season two! I had three whole seasons’ worth of stories to read!

  Ignoring everything that wasn’t rated NC-17—because I had only one goal, really—I quickly devoured everything there was to read. Several times. I got OCD about it. I downloaded each story, graded it like it was a feature in Entertainment Weekly, filed it by grade, and cross-referenced it by author. I even fixed the typos so I could read them without distraction. I was officially insane.