Fandom and Fanlib

I joined the fanficcing fen proper in 2001, but I'd been writing fanfiction long before then. Stingray, a cheesetastic action show from the 80's, was the victim of my first efforts, and the stories I turned out were vastly improbable feats of Mary Sue heroism that Mary Lou Retton couldn't have achieved, let alone a scrawny kidlet sidekick. To be fair, I was nine, and my characters were no more over the top than the characters of the show themselves. I was just trying to fit into the world as I saw it, and I got a high from finally finding something I could do with a modicum of talent, something not thwarted by the restrictions inherent to my disability. I couldn't walk or manipulate a pencil, but by God, I could pound those keys, and I did. Page after page and ream after ream of dot-matrix printer paper rolled off my presses. Forests were felled in the name of my fic, and I loved it.

Yes, the fic was awful, dreadful, in fact, but that was beside the point. The point was that I was doing something other than just sitting in my wheelchair and feeling sorry for myself because I couldn't play with other children. I was finally engaging with the world around me in a tangible, meaningful way. I was expressing myself and my desires through the characters created by others. I was co-opting their whole, healthy bodies to stand in for my own. It was, perhaps, unfair to the characters I used, but it was my first experience with true agency. I was no longer passive. I was creating, exerting my will.

Other fandoms followed: New Kids on the Block(shut up; I was caught up in the craze and hornier than a howler monkey on a Viagra high), Friday the 13th: The Series, pro wrestling fandom(Once again,shut up; men in spandex are my weakness. Actually men in anything make me weak in the knees, so never mind). These stories were equally bad in terms of plot and characterization, but the themes and subject matter were maturing. At thirteen, I wrote hilariously bad porn, but at the same time, the bad pornicatin' was a revolution because it was the first time I'd ever dared to express wants or even curiosity about sex and sexuality. My mother found it and showed it to my aunt. My aunt thought it was healthy; my mother called me a pervert and destroyed it. I didn't write fic again until I was in college.

2001, and my introduction into online fandom and fanfiction. Someone-siriaeve, maybe, or maybe eilan-directed me to Fanfiction.net, and I was off like a shot. I registered my account in August 2001 and have been posting ever since.

Since then, I've learned the intricacies of fandom, the rules of social discourse and currency in this wonderful, mad, endlessly paralleled world. But the first rules I learned were hard and fast and childishly simple: You always cited your source and credited the author or creator of the source material, and you never, ever tried to profit from what you wrote. Fail to adhere to the first rule, and you might get called a dumbass; break the second, and fandom would ride you out on a rail.

The third rule I learned was really a part-and-parcel corollary to the first. You could create derivative fic based on the characters and settings of other folks' worlds, but it had damn well better be your vision and not cribbed from another fanficcer. Homage was fine; homage was what brought us all to the party. Plagiarism, on the other hand, was not okay. It was strictly verboten, and if you got caught, you were free to go join the idiot profiteers in their excommunication corner.

( The Twopence on Fanlib That I Threatened Yesterday )