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ARTICLES
Luke Skywalker Is Gay?
Fan fiction is America's literature of obsession.�
By David Plotz
Posted Friday, April 14, 2000, at 10:30 a.m. PT
Have you heard the latest dish from Hollywood? On Friends,
Monica and Rachel are both pregnant! Dr. Susan Lewis is
returning to ER, and she's going to marry Mark Greene. (You
always knew they belonged together.) Speaking of ER, Dr. John
Carter has a new love interest too: He's dating Walter
Skinner from The X-Files, who has just broken off his
three-way affair with Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.
Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, Luke Skywalker has gone
over to the Dark Side�and I'm not talking about his
infatuation with Han Solo, though that's as hot as ever. "Han
turned his head, tipped my palm up, pressed his lips to the
center of it. � His kiss connected with the core of me."
Sadly, we'll never see Luke and Han smooching on the big
screen. Their torrid romance is occurring only in the fevered
imagination of one pseudonymous Destina Fortunato
[http://thesleepydragon.com/archive/blurred.html], an acolyte
of one of the oddest and most delightful subcultures on the
Web: fan fiction. In "fanfic," as practitioners call it,
devotees of a TV show, movie, or (less often) book write
stories about its characters. They chronicle the alternative
adventures of Xena, warrior princess; open the X files that
Mulder and Scully don't dare touch; and fill in the back
story to Star Wars Episode I.
Fanfic, like so much weirdness in American culture, is rooted
in the '60s, though it has older antecedents. When Arthur
Conan Doyle stopped publishing Sherlock Holmes stories, his
readers wrote their own. Star Trek: The Original Series (or
"TOS," in fanspeak) kick-started the fanfic vogue in the late
'60s. Within a year of the show's debut, Trekkers were
scribbling their own tales of Kirk and Spock, binding them in
mimeographed zines, and handing them out at conventions.
Fanfic communities rewrote Star Wars and TV shows such as
Starsky and Hutch.
Fanfic used to be confined to fanatics who attended
conventions and mailed their zines to several dozen (or, in
rare cases, several hundred) subscribers. That zine industry
still exists, but most fanfic has decamped to the Web. The
Web has taken fanfic public, massively increasing the number
of writers and readers. Today there are fanfic sites devoted
to every TV show you have heard of and many you haven't. Star
Trek's "fandom"�the show's fans�maintains
hundreds of fanfic archives in every possible category: TOS
[http://www.ludwig.ucl.ac.uk/st/StarTrek/Stories/stories.html],
Deep Space 9
[http://treksearch.com/Fandom/Fan_Fiction/Deep_Space_Nine/], Ensign
Chekov [http://www.sentinelguide.com/chekov/links.html], Data
[http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2936/Data.html], etc.
Each archive may contain hundreds of stories. The Star Wars
and X-Files fandoms are nearly as prolific. The X-Files
fandom even issues annual literary awards�"The Spookys
[http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/6504/99archives/nominate.html]."
Dozens of fanfic archives pay homage to Xena: Warrior
Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Highlander, and ER.
Blake's 7, an old British sci-fi series, enthralls writers.
Due South, which concerns a Canadian Mountie, has a fanfic
cult. So do The A-Team and Miami Vice.
Most fanfic authors write short stories, but novels,
screenplays, poems, and even songs (called "filks") are
popular as well. (A "fan film" industry thrives, too: Click
Today In Slate
[http://slate.msn.com/Features/fanfic/SideB01.asp] to learn
more about it.) The quality of the writing varies. Some fics
brim with misspellings, grammatical lapses, and risible
dialogue. But many are surprisingly good, with excellent
character sketches and vivid descriptions. Fanfic writers
tend to be highly educated, and several fanfic writers have
graduated to careers as science fiction novelists.
Some fanfics fill in plot holes left by lazy producers: A
Spock half-brother appeared out of the blue in a late Star
Trek movie. Fanfic writers responded by inventing a credible
past for him. Other writers simply deliver extra episodes to
junkies: When Millennium was canceled, loyal fans posted a
whole new season [http://www.millennium-compendium.com/vs/]
of episodes. Still others explore alternate universes. What
would happen if Luke joined the Dark Side
[http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/1959/fanfic.html] ?
Fanfics frequently resurrect popular characters whom
producers had rudely killed off.
Fanfics often celebrate peripheral characters who don't get
the screen time they deserve: Writers have lavished millions
of words on Boba Fett
[http://www.frii.com/~joe/stories.html], the bounty hunter
who cameos in the Star Wars series. Skinner
[http://www.slashaholics.org/wsf/index.shtml], the minor boss
on the X-Files, has won a rabid fanfic audience. "Crossover"
fanfics drop characters from one show into another's
universe. Mulder and Scully visit Buffy to investigate
vampires. Benton Fraser, the Due South Mountie, teams
[http://www.icon.co.za/~blven/tommy/mm&n.htm] with U.S.
Marshal Sam Gerard�Tommy Lee Jones' character in The
Fugitive�to hunt Canadian villains. In some fics
reviled by veteran authors, fans act out their
fantasies�seducing Obi-Wan Kenobi, for example�by
inserting themselves into their stories. These stories are
called "Mary Sues."
One surprising aspect of fanfic is its indifference to plot.
The vast majority of its writers are women, and Deborah
Tannenism pervades it. Most stories are much more attuned to
emotional dynamics than narrative. MIT professor Henry
Jenkins, the leading scholar of fanfic, notes that fans
usually choose shows with a pair of closely bonded leads:
Kirk and Spock, Mulder and Scully, Xena and Gabrielle,
Starsky and Hutch. Fanfic writers pore over the relationship
between the pair. One popular subgenre is "hurt-comfort,"
which explores what happens when one lead gets hurt and the
other has to help him. Some X-Files fans write�only "MSR
[http://www.msu.edu/~hamil129/xfic.html] " fics, their
acronym for "Mulder-Scully Relationship."
The obsession with emotional intensity has spawned "slash,"
the most flamboyant genre and perhaps the weirdest prose in
America today. "Slash" fanfic describes, in vivid detail,
homosexual relationships between characters such as Starsky
and Hutch or Kirk and Spock. (Click here
[http://slate.msn.com/Features/fanfic/SideB02.asp] for a
history and discussion of "slash." Definitely click.)
Fanfic writers are not nutters or losers or lowlifes. A slash
fanfic writer whose pseudonym is WPAdmirer
[http://slasharchive.simplenet.com/cd/499.htm] (for "Walker
Percy Admirer") told me that her circle of writers includes a
lawyer, a linguist, a computer specialist, an insurance
executive, and a mystery novelist. She, like most of the 20
other writers I interviewed, is well-employed. Many have
spouses and children.
So why on earth do normal people spend their lives writing
fantasies about TV characters? Almost all fanfic writers hide
behind pseudonyms. They rightly fear ridicule, because fanfic
invites mockery. Though the United States admires sports
fans, it treats TV and movie junkies derisively. America's
most famous movie fan: John Hinckley. Pop culture fans are
pinned by caricature: Spock-eared Trekkers or loon-bird
stalkers. Fanfic seems to confirm every stereotype about
fans: They are obsessive. They can't separate fantasy from
reality. Their lives are so empty that they fixate on banal
TV shows. (What kind of loser writes story after story about
Quantum Leap or The A-Team?) They don't even have the
imagination to make up their own characters.
But this condescension misses the point. In his superb Textual
Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, MIT's
Jenkins argues that fanfic represents a flowering of modern
folk culture. For thousands of years, we have shared stories
about mythical popular heroes, from Prometheus to Paul Bunyan
to Brer Rabbit. Each storyteller embellished the tale,
inventing characters, adding details, rewriting the ending.
In the 20th century, however, folk culture has been
privatized. The characters we share today are TV icons and
movie heroes. Paul Bunyan has been supplanted by Xena. These
characters don't belong to the public. They are literally
owned by studios and producers, who run the character's
"life" and expect us to accept their decisions gratefully.
Fan fiction rebels against the private folk culture, Jenkins
argues. Writers reclaim folk heroes by creating new stories
about them. They embellish the myth. Viewed through Jenkins'
lens, a fanfic writer keen on Capt. Jean Luc Picard is no
different from a 19th-century folksinger who paid tribute to
John Henry. Fanfic writers assert control over a pop culture
designed to be passively consumed. "I wanted to make the show
mine," explains Kat of her Friends fanfics, echoing the
battle cry of fan writers. By writing fics about Monica and
Chandler, Kat is insisting that they belong to her as much as
to NBC. Fan fiction puts the pop back in popular culture.
Writing fanfic, Jenkins argues, is an act of "fascination and
frustration." Writers are fascinated by the characters but
frustrated at the cavalier way producers treat them. Fanfic
is a "way of repairing the damage done to the core mythology
by producers who mess up. The fanfic folk culture pulls it
back into realignment." When producers make a beloved
character disappear or end a love affair that should
continue, fanfic restores the mythology. "Even though I love
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there are times when the show
doesn't go my way. So I use fanfic to create the outcome I
want," says Buffy fanfic writer Carrie Cook. The actor George
Clooney has left ER for a movie career, but fanfic writers
adore his character, Doug Ross. They also know that Doug and
Nurse Carol Hathaway belong together. So they write story
[http://www.jsentertainment.com/gilbert/terffa/erfanfics/dougncarol/index.htm]
after story about the characters' continuing romance. (The
Clooney/Ross split highlights the first commandment of
fanfic: Thou shalt not write >Chat real people. Click here
for here [http://slate.msn.com/Features/fanfic/SideB04.asp].)
Fanfic also can be a political act, a way to elevate
marginalized minority characters. Fanfic writers worship Lt.
Uhura, the neglected black woman on the original Star Trek.
In fanfic, she has been promoted, given her own starship, and
made the mistress of a torrid threesome with Lt. Sulu and
Ensign Chekov. ER's producers overlook crippled, irritable
Dr. Kerry Weaver. Other characters lead glamorous, romantic
lives. She goes home alone. But fic writers have corrected
that with stories
[http://www.jsentertainment.com/gilbert/terffa/erfanfics/kerryweaver/index.htm]
about her love life.
Fanfic seems odd in part because it defies modern convention
about what writers do. In the individualistic United States,
the author is supposed to be an untethered brain: Her ideas
and characters and plots are her own. By this standard, fan
fiction looks like a cop-out. Writers too lazy to invent
their own characters rip off plot, dialogue, and ideas from
the boob tube.
But fanfic turns writing into a communal art, as folk culture
has always done. Writing and reading become collaborative. We
share the characters and work together to make them
interesting and funny and sexy. Write a short story about
your crazy uncle and post it on the Web, and no one will read
it. Write a short story about Dr. Who, and hundreds of folks
will flock to your site. Fanfic writers meet at conventions
("cons"). Thanks to the Internet, writers communicate
constantly on e-mail listservs. They invite e-mail responses
and crave feedback. MedianCat, who writes Buffy fanfic, says
he has heard from more than 400 people about his stories. Of
the two-dozen-odd fanfic writers I e-mailed about their work,
only one did not respond. (The Internet is also changing
fanfic by opening it to kids. Click why
[http://slate.msn.com/Features/fanfic/SideB05.asp] for how
the Backstreet Boys became literary heroes.)
Having juiced fanfic, the Internet may now cripple it. Studios
own the characters and shows that fanfic borrows, a fact that
is never lost on writers. Every fanfic opens with a
disclaimer noting Paramount or Fox or whoever's copyright and
renouncing any intent to profit from the story. (All fanfic
writers are amateurs by necessity.) But since fan activity
has migrated to the Web, studios have grown anxious about
trademark and copyright protection. (Trademark law requires
holders to police their trademarks by preventing unauthorized
use.) Sites hosting fanfics also usually have transcripts,
audio and video clips, screen captures, and logos. Studios
don't like this. Fox recently sent cease-and-desist letters
to Buffy sites ordering them to remove show transcripts. Fox
also warned Millennium sites to remove logos and clips.
Lucasfilm cracked down on audio clips and logos from Star
Wars, and Paramount has been similarly protective of Star Trek.
The studios have treated fanfic more gently, so far. No court
has ever addressed the legality of fanfic but, unlike
transcripts or clips, it could be protected as "fair use." A
1997 article [http://www.tushnet.com/law/fanficarticle.html]
by Rebecca Tushnet in Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law
Journal concludes that fanfic constitutes fair use because it
is noncommercial�(no writers try to profit from their
work)�because it sufficiently transforms the original
work, and because it does not damage the market for the
original work. (On the contrary, fanfic keeps viewers engaged
during the six days a week the X-Files is not on.) Perhaps
mindful of their dubious legal standing, studios tend to
leave fanfic alone. Lucasfilm has suppressed Skywalker slash
on the grounds that it harms the Star Wars image, but it
allows PG-rated fanfic. Fox ignored fanfic when it went after
the Buffy sites.
But fear is mounting among fans that the studios are getting
too pushy. Lucasfilm lit a brushfire last month when it
offered fans free pages on its cherished www.starwars.com
[http://www.starwars.com/] site. Fans would be allowed to
post all their Star Wars hagiography there, including
stories, songs, messages to other fans, and essays. But the
small print says that Lucasfilm retains all copyright to
anything placed on the site. If I were to write a great story
about how Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader and post it on
my starwars.com fan page, George Lucas would own my idea.
Lucasfilm is flexing this muscle for obvious reasons. It fears
a lawsuit by some fan claiming that Lucas stole her plot for
his next movie. But fans believe Lucas has gone too far and
have launched an online rebellion
[http://www.miscellanies.net/]. Their complaints resonate.
They adore Lucas and his movies. But Star Wars is theirs,
too. After all, they think about it, write about it, talk
about it, and care about it as much as Lucas does. "Legally,
it's theirs. But emotionally we feel we have a right to
participate in the story," says Elizabeth Durack, a fanfic
writer who is leading the starwars.com protest. Lucas
jury-rigged Star Wars from a hundred myths that he heisted
from Joseph Campbell. Fanfic writers are borrowing it back.
They don't want a dime in return. They just want to be left
alone to write their own, very modern myths.��
RELATED ON THE WEB
This [http://members.aol.com/ksnicholas/fanfic/index.html] is
one of the best general fan fiction indexes, with special
entries for slash, X-Files, Star Trek, parody, and more.
Belynda's slash archive
[http://slasharchive.simplenet.com/fandom.htm] tracks 132
slash fandoms, including one for, believe it or not, The Iron
Chef. Slash writers workshop their stories in this
[http://egroups.com/list/slash-writers] discussion group.
Here [http://www.whoosh.org/issue25/lee1.html] is a brief
guide to copyright law for fanfic writers. If you missed
Rebecca Tushnet's law review defense of fanfic, this
[http://www.tushnet.com/law/fanficarticle.html] is it. A
couple of Henry Jenkins' articles on fanfic can be found on
the Web. A Technology Review piece
[http://www.techreview.com/articles/ma00/viewpoint.htm] deplores
the corporate crackdown on fans. "The Poachers and the
Stormtroopers [http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/1998/The.Poachers.and.the.Sto.html]
" is a longer discussion of fan activities. You can buy
[http://bn.bfast.com/booklink/click?sourceid=&ISBN=0415905729] Jenkins'
wonderful book Textual Poachers. �
RELATED IN SLATE
If you missed the sidebar on "slash," the X-rated subculture
of fan fiction, click here
[http://slate.msn.com/Features/fanfic/SideB02.asp]. This
[http://slate.msn.com/Features/fanfic/SideB03.asp] link
describes how slash writers get their characters into bed.
This [http://slate.msn.com/Features/fanfic/SideB04.asp]
explains the taboo against fanfic about real people. This
[http://slate.msn.com/Features/fanfic/SideB05.asp] sidebar
tells how kids and the Backstreet Boys are changing the
culture of fan fiction. Here
[http://slate.msn.com/Features/fanfic/SideB01.asp] is a brief
discussion of "fan films."��David Plotz assessed
the Backstreet Boys and mentioned their fanfic cult in "Boy
Bands and Girl Vixens
[http://slate.msn.com/Assessment/00-02-23/Assessment.asp]." David
Edelstein yawned at Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace,
but found no homoerotic subtext to the movie, in this
[http://slate.msn.com/MovieReview/99-05-19/MovieReview.asp] review.
Bruce Gottlieb's "The Merchant of Menace
[http://slate.msn.com/HeyWait/99-05-26/HeyWait.asp] "
deplored the film's racism.
----------------------------------------------------------------
TODAY IN SLATE
David Plotz on Fan Fiction, Where TV Characters Do What You Want
[http://slate.msn.com/Features/fanfic/fanfic.asp]
Ralph Reed's Great Microsoft Swindle
[http://slate.msn.com/code/BallotBox/BallotBox.asp?Show=4/12/00&idMessage=5085]
Anarchists Organize on the Web for "A16"
[http://slate.msn.com/netelection/entries/00-04-11_79804.asp]
American Psycho: It's Not Just for Sickos
[http://slate.msn.com/MovieReview/00-04-13/MovieReview.asp]
[]
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