Excerpt
This is an excerpt from a nonfiction piece I've been working on about fanfiction. The first half is about Buffy, this second half here is about Liason.
I combined Liason and Hairspray in one story and I was put on the map at last! Now I didn’t do some ridiculous “Hairspray: Liason style” story. I came up with a whole plot, kept Jason as the mobster with the heart of gold and only did some real tweaking of Elizabeth’s character. I made her a bit of a bad ass with a soft spot for Hairspray. Much like me, it was her “happy place”. When her world was spinning out of control, she had Link and Tracy to count on to right her world again. That wasn’t too much of a problem, in fact most found it cute and interesting and more importantly, I even inspired my readers to rent Hairspray - and they loved it.
The anvil had to drop however, and it did when in an attempt to understand and get closer to Elizabeth, Jason took an interest in Hairspray. He didn’t break out in song or anything, he merely tried to understand her love of the movie, what it meant for her at a deeper level because as I said, when the chips were down, it was all about Hairspray for our girl. So why wouldn’t Jason, desperately in love with Elizabeth and wanting to understand the psyche and fragile ego of his lady love go to the source of her comfort? Why wouldn’t he try to “crack the code” of what the movie meant to her, how it spoke to her, and made her feel right with the world again? And when she had trouble saying the words “I love you” and used lines from the movie instead, why wouldn’t he try to speak her language in order to communicate with her?
Shudder, gasp! Alas, alack! Say it isn’t so - the mobster with the heart of gold had taken interest in a drag musical and even quoted lines to relay to Elizabeth his love for her? How could it be? How could I do that? What was I thinking?
Like I said, some liked it. A lot actually. They saw the story for what it was: a story. It had action, adventure, romance, witty repartee and all the good mixings of a good story. There were many that ate it up and enjoyed it - they loved the characterizations and understood the whole Hairspray concept in the story.
Of course there were the naysayers, the Puritans of Fanfiction, the “I Want My Liason Fanfiction to Resemble Actual Scripts from the Show” club. These fans hated my story. As it turned out they hated other fictions that didn’t resemble scripts too and took it upon themselves to make a set of “rules” about writing fanfiction.
I’m sorry, could you repeat that? Rules for fanfiction? Tell that to the girls that wrote N’ Sync fanfiction. “Sorry girls but you actually have to know Justin in order to write a fictional story about him. If you don’t know that his favorite color is blue and not red, I can’t help you.” To these people Jason and Elizabeth (fictional characters themselves!) had to fit in a specific mold - the mold set to them by the writers of the show - and one could not deviate from that mold. To do so was to go against the Holy Trinity, to contribute to Global Warming, to kick puppies and kittens and throw trash out of your car window. It was felon. A criminal offense - it was wrong.
Idiots.
The only “rule” of fanfiction is that there are no rules! To put rules on fanfiction is to basically tell a writer, “Look, we’re not looking for something fun and creative here. There will be no imaginations running amuck, all right? We’ve got stories to tell and they have to follow the show. We’re not writing to have fun here, this is a job people and if you can’t appreciate that, then we’re gonna have to ask you to leave and practice your ‘art’ somewhere else.” Or, as Jack Nicholson said in As Good as it Gets, they were saying, “Sell crazy somewhere else, we’re all stocked up here.” There was no thinking outside the box, no coloring outside the lines, which according to John Mayer, there is always something better on the other side. The whole thing went against anything I’d ever been taught about writing. It trumpeted lack of imagination, creativity and interpretation; in fact, those rules spit on such concepts and made them seem like ridiculous and outdated forms of expression and individualism.
Which, of course, I spat on right back.
I wasn’t so surprised to find that my adversary had been among that group of idiots. She was 23 after all and had her head up her ass. Perhaps if she had left the house to visit with the three dimensional people instead of the ones she found on her screen every afternoon - that’s including her computer - she’d have some kind of clue. I am still blown away by the whole thing and much time has passed since the incident.
These invented “rules” were made by the prissy veterans of Liason fanfiction that had long ago passed their primes were discovered. People that enjoyed the very stories they ripped apart were appalled - unless of course they were “friends” with the Puritan. Writers were insulted and hurt - and rightfully so. Even I was. How could I not be on some level? Even if I knew it was preposterous to make up rules for fanfiction, it still hurt to know that my story had been made fun of. As I mentioned before, I came to appreciate the Spuffy fans that would tell you straight out “I hate your story, you suck”. These diabolical Liason fans went behind everyone’s back and did it. They were like starter Nazi’s, not exactly a full Reich, but they had the beginnings of one. It all began with an idea that ran wild.
When I told my friend Mark about this set of rules and that I had made the list of people that had offended these queens and their delicate sensibilities, he congratulated me. “You made the list? Congratulations! Have you prepared an acceptance speech yet? I think you should start with Dr. Ruwe, Marguerite, Irene and Chola. I mean, they all encouraged you to write. Marguerite, Irene and Chola are writing you letters of recommendation for Grad school, so of course you have to thank them. Hey, when you get an acceptance letter, you should post that too. You could tell them that Grad schools are doing this crazy thing nowadays where they admit students with no talent.” My hurt that had been see-sawing with amusement immediately abated. How could I take what they had to say seriously? They obviously had no concept of what it meant to write and create and, oh, I don’t know, have an imagination. They didn’t know what it meant to “think outside the box”. In actuality, they were to be pitied. What a narrow and sad little world they must live in.
Upon browsing the internet on Oscar Wilde, one of my favorite authors and a man that had had his fair share of critics, I found a bon mot of his that I carried with me - that I even posted as my signature for all to see when they read my story: Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.
I combined Liason and Hairspray in one story and I was put on the map at last! Now I didn’t do some ridiculous “Hairspray: Liason style” story. I came up with a whole plot, kept Jason as the mobster with the heart of gold and only did some real tweaking of Elizabeth’s character. I made her a bit of a bad ass with a soft spot for Hairspray. Much like me, it was her “happy place”. When her world was spinning out of control, she had Link and Tracy to count on to right her world again. That wasn’t too much of a problem, in fact most found it cute and interesting and more importantly, I even inspired my readers to rent Hairspray - and they loved it.
The anvil had to drop however, and it did when in an attempt to understand and get closer to Elizabeth, Jason took an interest in Hairspray. He didn’t break out in song or anything, he merely tried to understand her love of the movie, what it meant for her at a deeper level because as I said, when the chips were down, it was all about Hairspray for our girl. So why wouldn’t Jason, desperately in love with Elizabeth and wanting to understand the psyche and fragile ego of his lady love go to the source of her comfort? Why wouldn’t he try to “crack the code” of what the movie meant to her, how it spoke to her, and made her feel right with the world again? And when she had trouble saying the words “I love you” and used lines from the movie instead, why wouldn’t he try to speak her language in order to communicate with her?
Shudder, gasp! Alas, alack! Say it isn’t so - the mobster with the heart of gold had taken interest in a drag musical and even quoted lines to relay to Elizabeth his love for her? How could it be? How could I do that? What was I thinking?
Like I said, some liked it. A lot actually. They saw the story for what it was: a story. It had action, adventure, romance, witty repartee and all the good mixings of a good story. There were many that ate it up and enjoyed it - they loved the characterizations and understood the whole Hairspray concept in the story.
Of course there were the naysayers, the Puritans of Fanfiction, the “I Want My Liason Fanfiction to Resemble Actual Scripts from the Show” club. These fans hated my story. As it turned out they hated other fictions that didn’t resemble scripts too and took it upon themselves to make a set of “rules” about writing fanfiction.
I’m sorry, could you repeat that? Rules for fanfiction? Tell that to the girls that wrote N’ Sync fanfiction. “Sorry girls but you actually have to know Justin in order to write a fictional story about him. If you don’t know that his favorite color is blue and not red, I can’t help you.” To these people Jason and Elizabeth (fictional characters themselves!) had to fit in a specific mold - the mold set to them by the writers of the show - and one could not deviate from that mold. To do so was to go against the Holy Trinity, to contribute to Global Warming, to kick puppies and kittens and throw trash out of your car window. It was felon. A criminal offense - it was wrong.
Idiots.
The only “rule” of fanfiction is that there are no rules! To put rules on fanfiction is to basically tell a writer, “Look, we’re not looking for something fun and creative here. There will be no imaginations running amuck, all right? We’ve got stories to tell and they have to follow the show. We’re not writing to have fun here, this is a job people and if you can’t appreciate that, then we’re gonna have to ask you to leave and practice your ‘art’ somewhere else.” Or, as Jack Nicholson said in As Good as it Gets, they were saying, “Sell crazy somewhere else, we’re all stocked up here.” There was no thinking outside the box, no coloring outside the lines, which according to John Mayer, there is always something better on the other side. The whole thing went against anything I’d ever been taught about writing. It trumpeted lack of imagination, creativity and interpretation; in fact, those rules spit on such concepts and made them seem like ridiculous and outdated forms of expression and individualism.
Which, of course, I spat on right back.
I wasn’t so surprised to find that my adversary had been among that group of idiots. She was 23 after all and had her head up her ass. Perhaps if she had left the house to visit with the three dimensional people instead of the ones she found on her screen every afternoon - that’s including her computer - she’d have some kind of clue. I am still blown away by the whole thing and much time has passed since the incident.
These invented “rules” were made by the prissy veterans of Liason fanfiction that had long ago passed their primes were discovered. People that enjoyed the very stories they ripped apart were appalled - unless of course they were “friends” with the Puritan. Writers were insulted and hurt - and rightfully so. Even I was. How could I not be on some level? Even if I knew it was preposterous to make up rules for fanfiction, it still hurt to know that my story had been made fun of. As I mentioned before, I came to appreciate the Spuffy fans that would tell you straight out “I hate your story, you suck”. These diabolical Liason fans went behind everyone’s back and did it. They were like starter Nazi’s, not exactly a full Reich, but they had the beginnings of one. It all began with an idea that ran wild.
When I told my friend Mark about this set of rules and that I had made the list of people that had offended these queens and their delicate sensibilities, he congratulated me. “You made the list? Congratulations! Have you prepared an acceptance speech yet? I think you should start with Dr. Ruwe, Marguerite, Irene and Chola. I mean, they all encouraged you to write. Marguerite, Irene and Chola are writing you letters of recommendation for Grad school, so of course you have to thank them. Hey, when you get an acceptance letter, you should post that too. You could tell them that Grad schools are doing this crazy thing nowadays where they admit students with no talent.” My hurt that had been see-sawing with amusement immediately abated. How could I take what they had to say seriously? They obviously had no concept of what it meant to write and create and, oh, I don’t know, have an imagination. They didn’t know what it meant to “think outside the box”. In actuality, they were to be pitied. What a narrow and sad little world they must live in.
Upon browsing the internet on Oscar Wilde, one of my favorite authors and a man that had had his fair share of critics, I found a bon mot of his that I carried with me - that I even posted as my signature for all to see when they read my story: Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.