shadowscast

Every once in a while I feel moved to write an angsty "Oh god why do I spend so much of my time and energy writing fanfic?" post. I think about the thousands of hours I've spent on fic, and wonder if they'd have been better spent some other way—learning to knit or playing the piano or saving the world or something. I get frustrated with having a hobby (passion) that I can't tell my mother or my coworkers about. (Though, my aunt reads my fic and I've managed to discovered a couple of coworkers who I can talk about fandom with, so really I guess it's not so grim.) And finally there's the eternal siren song of "original" fiction: if I'm going to spend all this time writing, why not write things that are theoretically publishable?

I've never gone and written that post, mostly because the times when I want to write it are the times when I'm feeling most blocked and icky about writing, at which point I can't manage to get it together to post, either. I'm not writing that post today, either. Instead, I'm going with the upbeat: figuring out ways in which fanfic makes my life better.

The easy answer to "why do I write fanfic?" is "because it's fun!" The problem is, sometimes it really isn't. I'm sitting there rewriting the same damn sentence for an hour and a half, and it won't come out right, and my brain feels like mouldy cheese and my back is aching and I'm wondering why-the-hell-am-I-doing-this-to-myself but something in me just won't let me quit. You know?

The following list is for those times.


( 5 Reasons Why Writing Fanfic Is Good For Me )

So. About the S8 comics. Now that I've dealt with them in fic (in drabble form, anyway), I feel ready to talk about them.

This is not so much a review as a discussion of my own personal reaction, but it has review-like qualities as well. ( Spoilers ahoy! )

So, the "Is Andrew gay?" topic has come up again, this time in what passes for my Real Life.

I have a friend/coworker who is currently watching all of BtVS, in sequence. (And is unspoiled—go her!) As of today she'd seen up to and including 6.20, "Villains." ( We tend to chat about fannish stuff on the commuter train... )

ETA: I've just realized that today is exactly the two-year-anniversary of my last "Is Andrew gay?" post! How weird is that?!

So, here's the thing. My inlaws gave me the new Doctor Who, series one, for Christmas. I watched it a little at a time over a month or so. Then my friend rayaluna gave me series two, and after taking quite a while to get around to it, I watched it all over the space of a couple of weeks. And having got to the end of that, I wanted more (more! more!) and discovered that I could get the 2006 Christmas special, as well as all of Torchwood, on Youtube.

So that's what I've been doing for the past four days. (No school this week.)

Now I want to ramble for a bit. ( Spoilers for everything! )

I just posted to churchofjoss, and figured I'd link from here: a few thoughts about Riley's Christianity.

churchofjoss is a new community that was inspired by the Writercon panel on Religion in the Jossverse. (Because at the end of the panel, we all thought there was lots left to talk about!)

I hope nihilistbear will forgive me for linking to her post and my reply, which just sparked off my thinking about something. One-sentence summary: her post is about not being a nerd or geek, and my reply is about being one.

My brain being in fannish mode, this makes me think of the Buffyverse.

So? Willow's a nerd. Xander's a geek. Buffy, pre-series, is high-school popular, a cheerleader, the kind of girl who gets to be Homecoming Queen. When she becomes the Slayer and moves to Sunnydale, her social status drops, but she still has great hair and makeup and cares deeply about her pretty, girly clothes.

It's kind of an unlikely core friendship group for sixteen-year-olds. It's like the "one of these things is not like the others" game from Sesame Street. In fact, maybe that's one of the things that was cool and unusual about BtVS right from the beginning. In the midst of a whole lot of heavy metaphors for adolescent struggles, the core group of three accept each other exactly as they are. Buffy never tries to give Willow a makeover and "fix" her ala Clueless; Willow and Xander never question Buffy's devotion to fashion.

In a lot of ways it would've made sense for Buffy to befriend Cordelia and Harmony instead of Willow and Xander. (savoytruffle's recently-completed fic "There's Your Trouble" gives us an intriguing glimpse of an AU where that's exactly what happened.) In "Welcome to the Hellmouth" it nearly happens: Buffy meets Cordelia, she meets Willow, she likes them both, and then she's informed that she has to choose. She chooses Willow ... maybe because being the Slayer has taught her a little already about being an outsider, maybe because Cordelia's meanness is so over-the-top that Buffy can't help but realize there's something wrong with it, maybe 'cause by the time things have had a chance to settle she's already been through some serious life-or-death bonding with Willow and Xander, plus embarrassed herself so horribly in front of Cordelia that there's no hope of going down that road after all.

Anyway, Cordelia joins the group later, and we all know how that turns out. Even Harmony gets depth eventually. Kinda. And Buffy proves that she's back to herself at the end of "Earshot" by making fun of Jonathan behind his back. (That scene bothers me, actually, but is redeemed by Giles walking into a tree. Hee. And thus I prove that I can appreciate slapstick after all.)

Willow comes into her own in season 4, when she starts university. Her blossoming there is a joy to behold. Xander comes into his own in season 5, when he gets a real job. Buffy never really has a moment like that; her struggles to reconcile Slayerhood and normal life ebb and flow, but as far as being normal goes she was most successful in high school. The last we ever see of her, in "The Girl in Question," she's almost back where she started: dating some sexy mysterious guy, looking pretty dancing in a night club.

Hm, where am I going with this? Maybe nowhere at all. This isn't a well-planned essay, it's just thoughts spilling out of my fingers as I think them. I don't have a conclusion. I feel like resorting to aphorism: It takes all kinds to make the world, or something like that.

I could never identify with Buffy. It was Willow and Xander who drew me in. But the friendship amongst all three of them is strong, and realistic, and fascinating.

I've been a slasher for about seven years now. (Dear god, where does the time go?) By "slasher," I mean: I read slash. I write slash. I enjoy watching for slashy subtext in movies and TV shows. I enjoy talking about it with other people.

I do sometimes read and enjoy het (especially Spike/Buffy) and gen, but my main fannish interests have always centred around slash.

I've never been entirely sure why.

When I first discovered slash online, I was both thrilled and surprised. When I realized how huge it was, and when I realized that the majority of slash authors were actually straight women, I was even more surprised. I'd reached the age of twenty without really being exposed to the idea that women could have/create/share sexual fantasies; porn had always seemed to be the exclusive domain of men.

Right away, I started wondering what exactly they/we/I found so appealing about the concept. I've read a lot of people's essays over the years in which they try to explain why they like slash—or, equally interesting, why they don't. Most recently, tonight I read speakr2customrs's mini-essay "Gay Now?" in which he talks about why slash doesn't make sense to him, although (to my utter glee) he singles out my Fragments series as an exception.

Tonight, I feel like it's finally time to try to explain to myself why I like slash. This is going to be an entirely personal response, with absolutely no attempts to generalize into ideas like "why slash is so popular."

( I think it all started when... )

Okay, here's what I've got.

The ones of him onstage turned out pretty crappy and dark, which is about what I expected, which is why I only took a couple: ( see the pictures )

Anyway, they're enough to give me the "Hey, I was there!" thrill when I look at them.

The one the nice woman behind me in line took of me meeting with James came out really nicely, though! Yay!

( see me with James )

Okay, so here's my report on seeing James Marsters in Toronto. ( LJ-cut because it's very long! )

Having just recently re-watched "What's My Line?" parts 1 and 2 ... I've been thinking about Kendra.

I think Kendra may seriously be the least popular re-occurring character in the whole Buffyverse. Not that I've ever met anyone who has a big hate on for her—it's just that most people (including me) don't think about her much at all. I've never seen a fic in which she occurred even as a minor character. I have to keep pinching myself to remember that there was another Slayer in the line between Buffy and Faith.

Okay, sure, she was only in a few episodes—but Ethan Rayne, for instance, appeared just as seldom and yet made a much bigger impression on us all. He sure shows up in fic.

Kendra was important. She was a frikkin' Vampire Slayer! Just like Buffy and Faith! And it's funny to watch how Buffy's conflicts with Faith are kind of foreshadowed with Kendra; as the ultimate by-the-book girl, Kendra is totally the opposite of Faith, and yet like Faith she fights with Buffy over Angel (okay, for a different reason) and raises the 'but I'm supposed to be the only one!' Slayer-envy issues.

I feel like the ME writers failed Kendra. She's interesting in theory, but they failed to make her interesting in practice. Her character comes out strangely cardboard. And where the hell is she supposed to be from?

So what I'm wondering now is, has anyone adopted Kendra and written fanfic about her and made it good, and made her into a real person I can care about?

Since my post about Andrew's sexuality sparked so much fun discussion, I figured I'd stick with the theme for a bit.

I was thinking about Willow. And about what her canonical sexuality could be said to be. And, okay, unlike in Andrew's case, canon gives us explicit statements about Willow's sexuality. She's "gay now." She likes breasts.

Only...no force on this earth is going to convince me that she wasn't in love with Oz in seasons 3 and 4. And for that matter, it wasn't just a "gosh, he's a nice person and fun to hang out with" platonic kind of love; they were sexually active, and she enjoyed that aspect of their relationship. Oh, and plus there was the years-long unrequited crush on Xander.

So why does no one in the show ever use the word bisexual?

Okay, that was kind of a rhetorical question, in that I can come up with a number of answers myself. And anyway, there was one answer in the article that sparked my original post; Cox writes: "Biphobia is an actual issue in both the het and queer communities, and those of us stuck in the middle get no respect from either side." And hey, we can say it was the writers who had the biphobia issue, or we could fanwank (one of my favourite hobbies) and say it was the characters. I'm going to take the position that Willow herself, and all her friends, were more comfortable thinking of sexuality as an either/or proposition than wondering where they fall on Kinsey's 0-6.

And honestly, I'm not in any position to cast stones. When I was eighteen I was madly in love with a boy who loved me not. When I was nineteen I dated another boy. When I was twenty I dated a girl, identified as a lesbian, convinced myself that I'd never been interested in guys in the first place, came out to my mother amid drama and tears, and marched in a gay pride parade.

And when I was twenty-four I married a man. Um. Yeah. Not casting any stones here.

(I'm also a redhead and good at math, but I promise that's the end of my Willow parallels. I have no plans to destroy the world any time soon.)

Er, where was I? Oh yeah. Admitting that Willow's choice of self-definition has a ring of authenticity. But I still wish someone in twelve seasons of Buffy and Angel had used the word "bisexual." Just to confirm the concept exists in the Jossverse, y'know?

Which brings me back to the problematized idea of "canon": if the text tells one thing but shows another, which is canon? Can I say Willow is canonically bi?

***

I also got to thinking about gay stereotypes. And how Andrew is flaming, but that's not the reason I think he's gay (though I do find it endearing). So then I asked myself "Who else in the Buffyverse embodies gay stereotypes? And what does canon say about their sexuality?"

And I came up with: Lorne.

Lorne is ... God, I don't know. A drag queen without the breasts. He's so flaming you could roast marshmallows on him. However, I think he's also completely asexual in canon. He flirts with everyone, male and female, but I don't think I've ever seen him express true sexual attraction or romantic love towards anyone at all.

Of course, the fact that he's a bright green demon, plus comic relief, may play into this somewhat. But, hey, Star Trek made us consider Worf in serious romantic relationships, and he's just as funny-looking as Lorne. (Um, please don't tell Worf I said that.)

So is he asexual because he's really gay, and ME just couldn't honestly deal with a gay male main character? Or is he asexual because being flaming doesn't mean you have to be gay, seriously folks?

I just read the article "my lezbian is pastede on yay: An Open Letter to Joss Whedon", found through a link on mutant_allies. I enjoyed the analysis and found myself nodding my head a lot. It also made me feel like sharing some impressions from my own experience of Andrew's arc.

I wonder if there are still people who are Angel S5 spoiler-avoidant on my flist? Hm...better cut, just in case. Btw, the article linked to above also has spoilers through Angel S5.

( Here we go... )

I just watched a bunch of late S3, early S4 eps with a friend who hasn't seen most of the series before. (Yay, sucking in another one!)

I'd forgotten that in "Living Conditions," when Buffy and her pre-Willow roommate are going through all that stuff, Buffy is apparently missing "part" of her soul. So, hey, maybe a little insight available here on what a soul's supposed to mean in the Jossverse! We mostly worry about it in the context of vampires not having them (or having them, as the case may be). What happens to Buffy when she's missing part of hers? She doesn't have a demon in her, just a partly-missing soul. And she becomes...bitchy. Irritable. She drinks the milk right out of the carton just to annoy her roommate.

So that's it! The soul is what makes you a good roommate.

No wonder Spike got on Xander's nerves.

Um, well, that was deep. I guess I'll go to bed now.

After a discussion in the comments of my last post, I've decided to post an essay I wrote a couple years ago for a course I was taking in the process of getting my teaching degree. The course was called "Gender and Sexuality," and the essay is autobiographical and fairly informal. The assignment was to write about an event which had got me thinking about either my own privilege, or my marginalization.

( I chose to write about my wedding. )

Those of you with fantastic retention for trivial facts may remember me mentioning that I watched many Buffy episodes with E, a straight male friend of mine who refuses to see the Spike/Angel slashy subtext. Even after the intimate quote! "He didn't mean it that way," insists E.

As soon as I read Joss's quote about Spangel on LJ, I emailed E. Then I decided our exchange was funny enough to share with the world, and he gave me permission. (With, y'know, our real names edited out.)

***

From: Shadowscast
To: E
Subject: Ha! :)

"Spike and Angel; they were hanging out for years and years and years. They were all kinds of deviant. Are people thinking they never... ? Come on, people! They're opened-minded guys!"

- Joss Whedon, commentary to A Hole in the World

:)

-Shadowscast

***

From: E
To: Shadowscast
Subject: Re: Ha! :)

"So Joss, you and David Fury are open-minded guys and you've been hanging out for years and years..."

;)

-E

***

From: Shadowscast
To: E
Subject: Re: Ha! :)

So what you're saying is, you're running off to start writing Whedon/Fury real-person-slash?

-Shadowscast

***

From: E
To: Shadowscast
Subject: Re: Ha! :)

Joss: "Don't sing to me about mustard unless you mean business David, you tease!"

-E

My husband* had a wonderful surprise for me when I got home from work today: a taped episode of "Andromeda" with Spike in it! Er, well, James Marsters really, but the character was pretty darn Spike-like on the surface, what with the bleached hair and the kinda British accent. Hee! I squealed and everything.

How is it that I didn't know this existed? I mean, I'm an obsessed fangirl. Shouldn't I know about James Marsters having appeared in other sci fi series? (Andromeda's a show I've seen enough eps of to be intrigued, but not enough to really understand what's going on.)

*use of the term "husband" not meant to imply that I'm straight

One of the great things about LJ and fandom is the venue it gives us for exploring our own understanding of friendship, sexuality and other such personal things that might otherwise just get buried in everyday life.

What I mean to say is, I'm about to write a long and self-indulgent personal post, making reference to various themes or wanks or whatever-you-call-them that are running about LJ right now.

( About friendship, friending, and LJ 'friends.' )

( About ::licking::, ::hugging::, and LJ flirtyness. )

( About my own sexuality. )

Thinking tonight about one of the things that bugs me about BtVS/AtS:

BtVS was supposed to subvert the cliché of the helpless female victim. Right? This is why Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a petite blonde chick. I'm still in love with the way the series opens - with the timid girl going into the empty school with the sexually-agressive male, and we're all thinking "Oh no, honey, don't go in there with him!" and then she kills him. Woot! Not cheering the violence, but the subversion. That was not what I expected.

But how often was that scene repeated? A female vampire with a male victim? Very, very rare. The vast majority of the vamps we see Buffy dust on her nightly patrols are male. The vast majority of the non-human demons she slays are male-shaped. The important villians are female about as often as not, it's true (off the top of my head: Darla, Drusilla, Faith, Dr. Walsh and Glory vs. the Master, Angelus, the Mayor, Adam, and Warren), but the continual parade of fangy, violent masculinity cannot be ignored. Sure, Buffy always dusts those guys pretty effortlessly - but that's only because she has superpowers. It's clear that if a normal chick were wandering through the graveyard, she'd be a midnight snack for the big, bad, male vampire.

And it seems like in AtS, Joss threw out that whole subversion plan. That series opens with Angel (big, strong, manly) rescuing a couple helpless female victims from evil (big, strong, manly) vampires. A disproportionate percentage of the helpless Angel helps are female. Did ME think we wouldn't be properly worried about men in peril? Maybe. I fear that ME chose an anonymous male victim to die in "The Price" (as a result of the moisture-sucking slug beastie that came around because of Angel's spell) because nobody would care very much. If it had been a woman that got killed, even a woman they didn't know, it seems to me like the AI crew would have reacted much more strongly - and maybe the same was expected of the viewers. Now, maybe it's not clear why I'm complaining that valuing the lives of women more than the lives of men is anti-feminist...but it's the women-and-children-first syndrome. Protect the helpless.

The character Fred fought this trend. Remember Fred with the flamethrower, all butch and post-apocalyptic, dealing out firey death to those bugs? Remember Fred getting shot in "Lineage," and then getting pissed off at Wesley for being mad at himself for letting it happen?

WESLEY I should've done a better job protecting you.
FRED (stares in disbelief) What?
WESLEY (sighs)That didn't come out...
FRED Do you realize how patronizing that sounds? Protecting me?
WESLEY I just meant you shouldn't have been there in the first place.
FRED That's not for you to decide.

And then when she got sick with what turned out to be a fatal case of Illyria, remember how she insisted on going into the lab and working on her own cure, not just lying around waiting to be rescued?

When she got too weak to stand, when she was lying in bed with Angel, Gunn, Lorne, Spike and Wesley all standing around swearing very masculinely (and uselessly) to protect her, I realized: this show has completely given up on girl power.

Oh well.

Buffy's still the strongest character in either 'verse, and Spike's still the sexiest.

Since eliade asked for it, and since it's fun: What I love about them.

Spike/anyone. Had to be said. I love Spike beyond all reason, and I love him (potentially, at least) with absolutely anyone. I've never felt this way about another character, and sometimes I fear that I'll overdose eventually and stop caring, but for now...yeah. I've read and loved everything from Spike/Joyce to Spike/Dawn, and if that juxtoposition isn't creepy I don't know what is. But anyway. It has to be well-written (I have standards, yo!) but I've read and enjoyed Spike/Giles, Spike/Tara, Spike/Willow, Spike/Andrew, Spike/Anya, Spike/Riley, Spike/Angel (duh), Spike/Angelus (double duh), Spike/Fred, Spike/Illyria, Spike/Cordelia, Spike/Harmony (hey, that one actually is canon), Spike/puppet!Angel, and of course Spike/Buffy (my favourite canon pairing in any show ever), and the one I actually write: Spike/Xander.

I've never seen any Spike/Lorne but if someone pointed out a good one I wouldn't say no.

Is Spike/rock just a running joke, or has someone made an attempt at writing it? 'Cause based on the evidence above, I'd probably read it. *g*

Anyway. Just for a change of pace, I'll try to explain what I love about some couples that don't have Spike in them.

Willow/Tara. This is an awkward one, actually. I came to S4 already knowing about the Gay Thing, so there was no chance to watch the development of their relationship and wonder if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, and squee over the slashiness only to have my wildest dreams actually come true for once. (See, this is what I imagine would have happened if I'd watched S4 unspoiled.) And then there's the politics of it: I kind of felt like I had to love Willow/Tara, no matter what, just for solidarity. Silly, maybe, but present on a gut level.

And then there's the unfortunate fact that one of the handful of eps I saw during the original run, back when I had no idea who any of the characters were, was "The Gift." So you see, the first time I met Tara she wasn't at her best. I was sort of confused. Is this Willow chick really dating the severely mentally challenged girl? That's...um...progressive. Um. Or creepy.

I've come to love Tara through the fanfic. Ironically (or unsurprisingly, giving my obsession) I've mostly met her in Spike/Tara fics...but the Tara I meet there is one I can project back onto canon and realize that she is strong, smart, compassionate, brave and interesting in her own right, and then I can appreciate the Tara/Willow sweetness.

I just watched the stargazing scene in "Into the Woods," and it was friggin' adorable. Willow and Tara, during the good times, are absolutely the sweetest, cutest, warm-and-fuzziest pairing in the Buffyverse. They even adopted a kitten! (Poor Miss Kitty Fantastico.)

And now I have to go to bed. But hey, this is fun; maybe I'll do another installment tomorrow.