What I Believe: Fanfiction + "Gunn's Masterpiece"
Alright, time to fill this LJ with some substance!
First, I'd like to talk about fanfiction. Yes, fanfiction. It's something I thought I'd never be writing ever again. Of course, I also never thought I'd be contemplating the relationships between humanism and feminism, so I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's all Buffy's fault. :P
But I'm not here to rabble on about my long and tattered history with fanfiction. (Really, it is long and tattered. Like the Silk Road or something.) I'd like to talk instead about what I believe concerning fanfiction itself.
I believe that fanfiction is a deeply personal endeavor. Yes, I know - venues exist everywhere for people to openly post their deepest character desires on the Internets... and they do. A lot. But to me, fanfiction is less about the content and more about what the content says about the writer of the content. Good fanfiction, to me, will give an insight into what the characters in question really mean to the writers of the story, shedding a light on a dark and dusty corner of the established universe's fandom and revealing new possible angles to explore characters from.
In his essay collection Maps and Legends, acclaimed Jewish-American author (and personal favorite novel writer of mine) Michael Chabon writes about how truly important fanfiction is to an established universe, using Sherlock Holmes and the many and widely varied plot holes as examples. Without fanfiction, how could we truly know the progression of Dr. Watson's marital status? How could we properly document the various states of disarray Holmes was truly in? When I first read that essay, nearly a year ago, it enlightened me to a type of fanfiction I had yet to be exposed to - fanfiction that isn't merely about the flights of fancy of the rabid fans of an established universe, but rather turns a new leaf into the analytical investigations of the universe's continuum (or perceived lack of continuum) and of its characters and their ever-shifting relationships, both to themselves and to one another.
To that end, I would like to share with you a fanfiction I have written. Although I feel it is incomplete and needs tidying up in the details, I feel it is a prime example of what I mean. I wrote this fanfiction for a character in the ANGEL universe who has often been ignored or otherwise misused, both by the original authors of his character and by the flood of fanfic writers that followed: Charles Gunn. The events of the IDW comic continuation of ANGEL, titled AFTER THE FALL, made me fall madly in love with this character as he reached depths never before seen, even in the final few episodes of the TV show. To that end, I have tried to encapsulate his feelings of lost humanity, expressed in detail in ANGEL #23 which has the appropriate subtitle of AFTER THE FALL - EPILOGUE and the even more appropriate subtitle BECOME WHAT YOU ARE.
* Title: Gunn's Masterpiece
* Fandom: ANGEL post-#23 but pre-ONLY HUMAN
* Pairing/Characters: Gunn, Betta George, Drusilla
* Summary: Betta George (not a therapist) helps Gunn understand his nightmare about a certain ex-lover of Spike's.
* Rating: PG
* Warnings: none
* Disclaimer: All these characters are belong to other people and not me. Kudos to Joss Whedon for starting the whole thing and Brian Lynch for writing an awesome character like Betta George.
* Word Count: a short 'n' sweet 881 words
* Author's Note: I wrote about five different versions of this story, all revolving around the same concept. I'm submitting this one because I think it is the most direct about what I wanted to say with said concept. I hope you enjoy it.
Gunn's Masterpiece
Ticktickticktickticktick
“Gunn, let’s face it, you’re gonna wanna talk about it at some point.”
“No, I really don’t. And I don’t even have to talk to you at all. You’re in my head!”
“Well, okay, but telepathic fishy-ness aside, have you seen whose bed you’re laying in of late? I mean, I’m no therapist, but I don’t think it’s healthy to be sleeping in your kinda-dead ex-girlfriend’s sheets. Although I suppose I should be grateful that her body’s not IN the bed with you…”
“Alright, alright, I’ll talk about it, just please don’t go on.”
“Hey, that’s more like it! So first off I just gotta ask - DRUSILLA?!?”
“Do you want me to talk to you about it or not?”
“Well yeah, but man, Drusilla?! I mean, I get it, it’s been kind of a slow year but-“
“Yeah, OK, we’re done now.”
“Oh, fine, I’ll shut up. Please, tell me what you were thinking of.”
“I guess… it just started as a dream. I was back at Wolfram & Hart, doing… something probably not good. Getting a demon away from 100 years of jail time on a technicality or something. I was standing in the lobby and I hear… her voice.”
“Creepy much? Seriously, you and Dru never met before, right?”
“As far as I can remember, yeah. But suddenly she’s there… and she said… she said…”
“’Lil’ pretty made me my own dollhouse!’ Or something to that extent.”
“You know, it’s not much fun telling a story to someone already knows the ending.”
“I’m flattered you consider me a ‘one’ and not a ‘thing’.”
“It’s just… so freaky how happy she seemed. All of a sudden, the place is up in flames, there’s this whole gang of vamps around us… and she just stood there, smiling that creepy little smile…”
“Well, duh. This is DRUSILLA we’re talking about here. If she’s not wearing a creepy smile, something’s up.”
“And if she starts dancing…?”
“…You’d better grab your coat. We should go for a walk!”
“You don’t walk.”
“Details, Gunn, details! Now get your coat.”
“Ahh, the fresh Texas summer nights… don’t they just taste delicious?”
“You’re no ordinary telepathic fish, are you?”
“Again with the details, Gunn. Speaking of, how about you? Last you talked of your dream, W&H was burning to the ground!”
“And so was Los Angeles. It was the Fall all over again. Hell took a vacation to the City of Angel and decided to make the move permanent. And then there were two vampire gangs and they started gangbangin’ and she just kept dancing like the world wasn’t there anymore.”
“You know, for a woman you’ve never met before, you’re oddly obsessed with her. ‘Course, she does have mind control powers…”
“Now you tell me. All I know is, people kept dying around me, and I tried to cry out, tried to help, but my mind… I was just not in it. And then she dances over to me and she whispers in my ear ‘you’re such a pretty bird now’ and then I vamp out again, and I want to smash her face clean off her body, but… I can’t. I just can’t do it. My arms feel like lead, my legs feel like bags of sand, and my heart just plain don’t feel.”
“And then I woke you up.”
“And then you woke me up. And here we are now… one person and one seriously deranged fish. On a walk.”
“So you got spooked by one little dream. So what?”
“I am not spooked.”
“Yeah, that’s TOTALLY the reason you’re talking to a telepathic fish 5,000 miles away, on a walk in the city where your rotting corpse of a girlfriend grew up. Once again, not a therapist, but Gunn, have you ever thought maybe you have… issues?”
“I don’t like you anymore.”
“Granted. Now stop deflecting.”
“YES, okay? I’m an idiot, I’m a complete and total fool. I indirectly caused a girl I love to get brutally murdered by an ancient demon, I used the Fall of L.A. for my own selfish purposes, and yes, it’s weird that I live in HER house with HER body and NOT HER!”
“And so you dreamed of Drusilla.”
“And so I dreamed of Drusilla. So you gonna tell me what it all means, or can I go back home now?”
“Okay, final time - not a therapist. So don’t blame me if you suddenly decide yoga is a good idea.”
“I haven’t ruled it out yet.”
“Gunn, Drusilla is nuts. We’re talking barebones, no-holds-barred, out-of-the-gutter-schizophrenic nuts. She thrives on death and chaos and all manner of destruction. To her, Hell-A is/was heaven. And not heaven the way Spike saw it, but honest and true redemption. She was sired for no other reason than to be Angelus’s Guernica or Mona Lisa. Evil begets evil.”
“So that’s your roundabout way of telling me Drusilla is symbolic of how I felt during the Fall of L.A.?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, you’ve never met her before, so why else would she be there? I mean, you don’t still miss it… right?”
“…”
“You know what? Forget it. I don’t wanna know. Go back to your dead corpse and get some rest. Stay in touch, yeah?”
“Gets harder every day, George.”
First, I'd like to talk about fanfiction. Yes, fanfiction. It's something I thought I'd never be writing ever again. Of course, I also never thought I'd be contemplating the relationships between humanism and feminism, so I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's all Buffy's fault. :P
But I'm not here to rabble on about my long and tattered history with fanfiction. (Really, it is long and tattered. Like the Silk Road or something.) I'd like to talk instead about what I believe concerning fanfiction itself.
I believe that fanfiction is a deeply personal endeavor. Yes, I know - venues exist everywhere for people to openly post their deepest character desires on the Internets... and they do. A lot. But to me, fanfiction is less about the content and more about what the content says about the writer of the content. Good fanfiction, to me, will give an insight into what the characters in question really mean to the writers of the story, shedding a light on a dark and dusty corner of the established universe's fandom and revealing new possible angles to explore characters from.
In his essay collection Maps and Legends, acclaimed Jewish-American author (and personal favorite novel writer of mine) Michael Chabon writes about how truly important fanfiction is to an established universe, using Sherlock Holmes and the many and widely varied plot holes as examples. Without fanfiction, how could we truly know the progression of Dr. Watson's marital status? How could we properly document the various states of disarray Holmes was truly in? When I first read that essay, nearly a year ago, it enlightened me to a type of fanfiction I had yet to be exposed to - fanfiction that isn't merely about the flights of fancy of the rabid fans of an established universe, but rather turns a new leaf into the analytical investigations of the universe's continuum (or perceived lack of continuum) and of its characters and their ever-shifting relationships, both to themselves and to one another.
To that end, I would like to share with you a fanfiction I have written. Although I feel it is incomplete and needs tidying up in the details, I feel it is a prime example of what I mean. I wrote this fanfiction for a character in the ANGEL universe who has often been ignored or otherwise misused, both by the original authors of his character and by the flood of fanfic writers that followed: Charles Gunn. The events of the IDW comic continuation of ANGEL, titled AFTER THE FALL, made me fall madly in love with this character as he reached depths never before seen, even in the final few episodes of the TV show. To that end, I have tried to encapsulate his feelings of lost humanity, expressed in detail in ANGEL #23 which has the appropriate subtitle of AFTER THE FALL - EPILOGUE and the even more appropriate subtitle BECOME WHAT YOU ARE.
* Title: Gunn's Masterpiece
* Fandom: ANGEL post-#23 but pre-ONLY HUMAN
* Pairing/Characters: Gunn, Betta George, Drusilla
* Summary: Betta George (not a therapist) helps Gunn understand his nightmare about a certain ex-lover of Spike's.
* Rating: PG
* Warnings: none
* Disclaimer: All these characters are belong to other people and not me. Kudos to Joss Whedon for starting the whole thing and Brian Lynch for writing an awesome character like Betta George.
* Word Count: a short 'n' sweet 881 words
* Author's Note: I wrote about five different versions of this story, all revolving around the same concept. I'm submitting this one because I think it is the most direct about what I wanted to say with said concept. I hope you enjoy it.
Gunn's Masterpiece
Ticktickticktickticktick
“Gunn, let’s face it, you’re gonna wanna talk about it at some point.”
“No, I really don’t. And I don’t even have to talk to you at all. You’re in my head!”
“Well, okay, but telepathic fishy-ness aside, have you seen whose bed you’re laying in of late? I mean, I’m no therapist, but I don’t think it’s healthy to be sleeping in your kinda-dead ex-girlfriend’s sheets. Although I suppose I should be grateful that her body’s not IN the bed with you…”
“Alright, alright, I’ll talk about it, just please don’t go on.”
“Hey, that’s more like it! So first off I just gotta ask - DRUSILLA?!?”
“Do you want me to talk to you about it or not?”
“Well yeah, but man, Drusilla?! I mean, I get it, it’s been kind of a slow year but-“
“Yeah, OK, we’re done now.”
“Oh, fine, I’ll shut up. Please, tell me what you were thinking of.”
“I guess… it just started as a dream. I was back at Wolfram & Hart, doing… something probably not good. Getting a demon away from 100 years of jail time on a technicality or something. I was standing in the lobby and I hear… her voice.”
“Creepy much? Seriously, you and Dru never met before, right?”
“As far as I can remember, yeah. But suddenly she’s there… and she said… she said…”
“’Lil’ pretty made me my own dollhouse!’ Or something to that extent.”
“You know, it’s not much fun telling a story to someone already knows the ending.”
“I’m flattered you consider me a ‘one’ and not a ‘thing’.”
“It’s just… so freaky how happy she seemed. All of a sudden, the place is up in flames, there’s this whole gang of vamps around us… and she just stood there, smiling that creepy little smile…”
“Well, duh. This is DRUSILLA we’re talking about here. If she’s not wearing a creepy smile, something’s up.”
“And if she starts dancing…?”
“…You’d better grab your coat. We should go for a walk!”
“You don’t walk.”
“Details, Gunn, details! Now get your coat.”
“Ahh, the fresh Texas summer nights… don’t they just taste delicious?”
“You’re no ordinary telepathic fish, are you?”
“Again with the details, Gunn. Speaking of, how about you? Last you talked of your dream, W&H was burning to the ground!”
“And so was Los Angeles. It was the Fall all over again. Hell took a vacation to the City of Angel and decided to make the move permanent. And then there were two vampire gangs and they started gangbangin’ and she just kept dancing like the world wasn’t there anymore.”
“You know, for a woman you’ve never met before, you’re oddly obsessed with her. ‘Course, she does have mind control powers…”
“Now you tell me. All I know is, people kept dying around me, and I tried to cry out, tried to help, but my mind… I was just not in it. And then she dances over to me and she whispers in my ear ‘you’re such a pretty bird now’ and then I vamp out again, and I want to smash her face clean off her body, but… I can’t. I just can’t do it. My arms feel like lead, my legs feel like bags of sand, and my heart just plain don’t feel.”
“And then I woke you up.”
“And then you woke me up. And here we are now… one person and one seriously deranged fish. On a walk.”
“So you got spooked by one little dream. So what?”
“I am not spooked.”
“Yeah, that’s TOTALLY the reason you’re talking to a telepathic fish 5,000 miles away, on a walk in the city where your rotting corpse of a girlfriend grew up. Once again, not a therapist, but Gunn, have you ever thought maybe you have… issues?”
“I don’t like you anymore.”
“Granted. Now stop deflecting.”
“YES, okay? I’m an idiot, I’m a complete and total fool. I indirectly caused a girl I love to get brutally murdered by an ancient demon, I used the Fall of L.A. for my own selfish purposes, and yes, it’s weird that I live in HER house with HER body and NOT HER!”
“And so you dreamed of Drusilla.”
“And so I dreamed of Drusilla. So you gonna tell me what it all means, or can I go back home now?”
“Okay, final time - not a therapist. So don’t blame me if you suddenly decide yoga is a good idea.”
“I haven’t ruled it out yet.”
“Gunn, Drusilla is nuts. We’re talking barebones, no-holds-barred, out-of-the-gutter-schizophrenic nuts. She thrives on death and chaos and all manner of destruction. To her, Hell-A is/was heaven. And not heaven the way Spike saw it, but honest and true redemption. She was sired for no other reason than to be Angelus’s Guernica or Mona Lisa. Evil begets evil.”
“So that’s your roundabout way of telling me Drusilla is symbolic of how I felt during the Fall of L.A.?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, you’ve never met her before, so why else would she be there? I mean, you don’t still miss it… right?”
“…”
“You know what? Forget it. I don’t wanna know. Go back to your dead corpse and get some rest. Stay in touch, yeah?”
“Gets harder every day, George.”