Beyond ridiculous

October 19, 2003 12:50 PM

Star Trek: Voyager fanfiction.For years, people have asked themselves, what would happen if certain crewmembers hooked up? Endless combinations have been thought out and pondered, but perhaps the most popular of all, Janeway and Seven of Nine, has been given the full treatment here. Possibly not safe for work (especially the "R" rated stories), because you could be carried out as you laugh yourself to death. A look into the bizarre and often highly amusing world of fanfiction.
posted by insomnyuk (66 comments total)

There are screen captures from the show too, just Janeway and Seven. I don't know what to say.
posted by insomnyuk at 12:54 PM on October 19, 2003

Oh, god, if you're gonna talk slash, why use the dreadful Voyager as the basis for that talk? Don't you know there's endless Kirk/Spock, Worf/Wesley/Picard, and Kira/Mirror-Kira combos out there?

And hook me up with some Archer/Trip stuff. We all know that Bakula's reputation approaches Chaplin's in a certain department, and all those clingy undies on Enterprise show he's got a challenger to his title. Or something.
posted by WolfDaddy at 1:04 PM on October 19, 2003

This is reason #27,182,818 to destroy the internet.
posted by elwoodwiles at 1:14 PM on October 19, 2003

think that's bizarre, how about...

Trading Spaces Fanfiction
Iron Chef Fanfiction
posted by bobo123 at 1:21 PM on October 19, 2003

May I recommend Stiffy Makane: The Undiscovered Country? It's a text adventure created by the guy who brought the word "choad" back into the English language. Space Moose is in it too.

also
posted by donth at 1:27 PM on October 19, 2003

I thought Parker and Stone brought Choad back into fashion with Choader Boy from Orgasmo. No?
posted by dobbs at 1:56 PM on October 19, 2003

And there's fanfic for older shows, like Emergency! and CHIPS.
posted by keli at 1:58 PM on October 19, 2003

If this is the last thing I ever type, I want it to be known that I agree with elwoodwiles completely.
posted by i_cola at 1:59 PM on October 19, 2003

We all know that Bakula's reputation approaches Chaplin's in a certain department...

I thought that was Scott Baio.
posted by nath at 2:03 PM on October 19, 2003

I don't know what to say.

How about: Those wacky humans and their wacky imaginations! Truly, the universe is full of marvels, undreamt of in our philosophy!

Seriously, as someone who recently wrote a spirited defence of rock star fanfiction on the theory that it's an expression of a particularly female type of eroticism, I find it fascinating (I know there are all kinds of flavours of this stuff, but my overwhelming impression is that it is mostly written, and was first brewed up, by women--Star Trek fans, and pre-internet). Hardly any of it has any kind of literary merit, and the vast majority of it is in fact wretchedly written, but it is sometimes the only written expression that its authors have ever tried, which is interesting in itself: the level of engagement that our entertainments create for their audiences, for one thing. Another interesting thing is that it puts paid to the idea of passive reception of media; the audience that writes fanfiction is engaged with the narratives to the extent of reimagining them, and I'm sure that there are many people who create these fantasies but never write them down.

And then, of course, the sex. Reading straight women writing about sex between men is particularly odd: it's heterosexual sex recast as something that's not quite gay male sex (more like lesbian sex, in its orality). I'm kind of writing a paper on it (yes, my interest is purely academic, *cough*) but I'd never want to write it myself (parodies of same are okay, though. I've done a few of those).
posted by jokeefe at 2:04 PM on October 19, 2003

What a dreadful, dreadful Star Trek show.
posted by inksyndicate at 2:11 PM on October 19, 2003

An interesting study of fanfiction in general (and "slash" fiction in particular) can be found in Henry Jenkins' Textual Poachers.

As of yet, my Buffy/Willow/Tara/Anya/Faith/Drusilla/Darla ménage-à-sept stories remain under wraps (which is ironic, really, as in the stories none of the characters...errr, getting off track here).
posted by filmgoerjuan at 2:13 PM on October 19, 2003

insomnyuk, who needs fan fiction (arguably the lowest form of writing attempted by man) when mefi has its own dramas. Like your 2-month obsession and stalking of me. Perhaps I can turn that into a fun little fan non-fiction.

"Then Daniel Greene, a student at Hillsdale college , decided to launch a cyber attack on me with all his drunken frat boy friends..."
posted by skallas at 2:20 PM on October 19, 2003

Oh great, skallas, you had to take a nice normal thread about fictional characters having sex and make it weird.
posted by RylandDotNet at 2:24 PM on October 19, 2003

Reading straight women writing about sex between men is particularly odd: it's heterosexual sex recast as something that's not quite gay male sex

jokeefe, if you're really writing a paper on this stuff with this statement in mind, I'd suggest for contrast reading/discussing "The Front Runner" ... I had no clue the author was a woman for, like, ten years after I read the book as a teen (and reading this book was a, um, seminal event in my life...).

And skallas, buddy please, let it go. Please. For all of us.
posted by WolfDaddy at 2:26 PM on October 19, 2003

Well I did mention frat boys, so there's some de-facto homoeroticism in there.
posted by skallas at 2:27 PM on October 19, 2003

>And skallas, buddy please, let it go.

I'll let it go when he pays for the damages he cost me. At my rate times the hours it took me to fix the damn blog thats $400. So where's the Mr. Personal Responsibility persona he plays on metafilter? Oh right he's a hypocrite.

Back on topic:

Yeah, Kirk on Spock: hot!
posted by skallas at 2:34 PM on October 19, 2003

I can't find my old Air Wolf (gay) fanfiction link, but it was one of the funniest damn things ever.
posted by Ryvar at 2:58 PM on October 19, 2003

bobo123: yikes! there were really categories of fanfiction that I would have preferred to know nothing about! ai! IronChef!slash - it burns us, preciouss.

(that said, I'll impose my own favourite category of slash fanfiction for all those who really didn't want to know: Frodo Baggins/Samwise Gamgee all the way, baby.)
posted by kate_fairfax at 3:00 PM on October 19, 2003

tv show fanfic?
posted by juv3nal at 3:13 PM on October 19, 2003

kate, You pervy hobbit lover.
posted by elwoodwiles at 3:14 PM on October 19, 2003

skallas, for the love of jeebus, take it offline.
posted by PrinceValium at 3:21 PM on October 19, 2003

Elwood:

I'm sorry - you did say you considered fanfic a reason to destroy the internet (and a lot of it _is_ really bad) - but I hope you don't consider my pervy hobbit-fancying a personal insult ;)
posted by kate_fairfax at 3:34 PM on October 19, 2003

I had no clue the author was a woman for, like, ten years after I read the book as a teen (and reading this book was a, um, seminal event in my life...).

Thanks, wolfdaddy... my basis for comparison is reading Alan Hollinghurst, which isn't really fair given the, um, limited writing chops of most slash, uh, authors.

Finally, I eagerly await Mefi slash: the touching love story between quonsar and Miguel. Wolfdaddy and donkeyschlong. fishfucker and, well, a fish.

And, pssst, elwoodwiles: it's pervy hobbit [i]fancier[/i].
posted by jokeefe at 3:49 PM on October 19, 2003

Crap. Sorry. Spending too much time on a board which doesn't use html formatting.
posted by jokeefe at 3:50 PM on October 19, 2003

What about cross-show/book slash? Like, say, Dr. McCoy and Grignr from ``The Eye of Argon,'' as written by Jim Theis.

It wouldn't just be the emeraud that was many-faucetted and scarlet, I tell you that now!
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:02 PM on October 19, 2003

skallas, you are the wind beneath my wings.

The thing about fanfiction that surprises me is its scope and intensity. I always knew there was Star Trek and anime fanfiction, but I had no idea it extended so far into live-action TV. Thanks for the links to the Trading Spaces fanfics, thats great.
posted by insomnyuk at 4:08 PM on October 19, 2003

oh, and mike, if you want to write a piece about me, here's some starter material. I'd love to read it.
posted by insomnyuk at 4:09 PM on October 19, 2003

"After another attack on skallas's website consisting on using large amounts of text in comments crashing greymatter and after sending a handful of threatening emails, Daniel Greene brags on IRC on what he is doing waiting for the mysterious and now angry skallas to appear...."
posted by skallas at 4:20 PM on October 19, 2003

*steel cage descends from the scaffolding*

OOOH YEAAAAH!!
posted by Stan Chin at 4:26 PM on October 19, 2003

No one's mentioned Harry Potter yet! Long live Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy!
posted by Hildegarde at 4:26 PM on October 19, 2003

*steel cage descends from the scaffolding*

And a crowd of bemused bystanders watches skallas the avenging chihuahua lift his leg and piddle on himself.
posted by MrBaliHai at 4:34 PM on October 19, 2003

insomnyuk:

The thing about fanfiction that surprises me is its scope and intensity.

The thing is, once you've discovered the cult of fanfiction in one fandom, it becomes an addiction and you can't help but look for homoerotic subtext that's absolutely not there in, like, everything you ever watch or read. And then you start thinking, Hmm. Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp are both really hot. And they're stuck on that ship together, and what if...

and then the whole thing just gets out of hand and you discover that you've written something in a new fandom.

Within, like, a day of Once Upon A Time in Mexico being released in the theatres, there was a livejournal community dedicated to fanfiction about Agent Sands.

As well as fanfiction about fictional characters, people seem to really like RPS (real-person slash) - into which category I suppose the Trading Spaces fic might fall. RPS seems like a bit of an invasion of privacy to me, and from what I've been able to gather the LOTR RPS fandom regularly goes through irreconcileable fractures based on the latest rumours about Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan (and even, believe it or not, about what they wore on particular occasions and its significance).
posted by kate_fairfax at 4:59 PM on October 19, 2003

Dukes of Hazzard incest slash.

No need to thank me. No, really. It's okay.
posted by eilatan at 5:06 PM on October 19, 2003

The motherlode is at FanFiction.net
posted by jengod at 5:38 PM on October 19, 2003

ff.net is only for the bad stuff, mostly the 14 year old girls who want to write romances for themselves with Orlando Bloom. It's completely non-peer-reviewed and it shows. From what I know, most fandoms have more "serious" (that is, higher quality) archives elsewhere, although LOTR is so fractured that there are at least 50 billion other archives.
posted by kate_fairfax at 5:45 PM on October 19, 2003

For those of us perverts with a literary bent, may I recommend the following...

- The Holmes/Watson slash site "Sacrilege!" is temporarily offline, but its Google cache is here.
- P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster are featured in a number of slash stories, with this one and its sequel being standouts.
- There's less Great Gatsby slash out there than you'd think. For what it's worth, Truman Capote's screenplay portrayed Nick as gay, and IMHO, it's obvious that he's pining for Gatsby and feels as little for Jordan as she does for him.
- The Count of Monte Cristo has some new interest, thanks to the recent movie adaptation.
- L. M. Montgomery's "Emily of New Moon" series has a number of slash stories written about Emily and Ilse, and I think there may be some about Anne (of Green Gables) and Diana out there somewhere. But that's what you get when you have your female characters prattle on about deep, intense friendships of the late Victorian variety.
- Oscar Wilde's "Picture of Dorian Gray" has a new slash archive. I think Oscar would approve.
- Dante's "missing canto" from The Inferno, in which he gets slashed with Virgil, actually fits right in with the canon, as the author's copious endnotes makes clear.
- And finally, Bible slash! Both Old and New Testaments. There's Sarah/Hagar, Jonathan/David, Jesus/Judas, and yes, even God/Lucifer.

Note that the vast majority of these stories are actually rated G or PG. Slash doesn't necessarily imply smut, per se, but rather the transgression of author-imposed heterosexuality (or, in the case of characters like Holmes or Dorian Gray, one obvious conclusion from their canonically "bohemian" and women-avoiding behaviors).
posted by Asparagirl at 5:55 PM on October 19, 2003

Kate Fairfax- For decent-quality LOTR slash, LibraryOfMoria.com is your friend. Besides the usual Sam/Frodo and Legolas/anyone-and-everyone pairings, we're talking minor hardcore-Tolkien-geek characters like Saelbeth and Ulmo and Durin and Miriel getting stories. Even Lurtz gets some action. (Ew.)
posted by Asparagirl at 6:10 PM on October 19, 2003

Asparagirl: eek! I would beg to differ. There are some good fics on LOM, but there is a lot more of the badfic. Although, LOM does have some redeeming features, like the random pairing generator...

As far as Lurtz goes, there exists (and no, I didn't save the URL, because I couldn't imagine wanting to read such a thing, evar) something like orcslash.com... XP
posted by kate_fairfax at 6:19 PM on October 19, 2003

How come there's no Sanford & Son slash? You just know Fred & Grady (ntm Lamont & Rollo) had some hot man-love buried deep within them.
posted by jonmc at 6:30 PM on October 19, 2003

Found it. That's just so, so wrong. But at least that's also the actual title of their page: "So Wrong: The OrcSlash Archive". I think perhaps the only thing worse would be Ent slash.
posted by Asparagirl at 6:31 PM on October 19, 2003

posted by moonbiter at 6:37 PM on October 19, 2003

You just know Fred & Grady (ntm Lamont & Rollo) had some hot man-love buried deep within them.

Dude. Seriously, I'm eating a sandwich with Mayo. Way to fuck up dinner.

Oh, the glee, the glee
posted by WolfDaddy at 6:41 PM on October 19, 2003

How come there's no Sanford & Son slash?

"I'm comin! It's the big one!"
posted by Stan Chin at 6:43 PM on October 19, 2003

Asparagirl:

The Fanfic Lounge: The Two Towers makes passing, and very tongue-in-cheek, reference to Treebeard/Gwaihir interspecies BDSM: "So you tie the eagle to the tree, and then what?"

(why aren't you using your LiveJournal account? I thought I'd friend you but it's like you're not there - come join the insanity! My username is wenchopinions)

eta: Moonbiter - eek! Kate likes to read about Frodo and Sam but she is traumatized by photomanipulations...
posted by kate_fairfax at 6:43 PM on October 19, 2003

"Fanfiction is like dental work: when it's done badly, it's excruciating. When it's done well... it's still pretty bad."

I read this incredibly apt quote years ago and can't remember where. Any MeFi'ers know who said this?
posted by Shoeburyness at 6:49 PM on October 19, 2003

Stan Chin: no coffee, but there is, in fact, a tiny bit pretzel now stuck on my monitor.


PS--Bob Dole likes kate_fairfax!
posted by NortonDC at 6:58 PM on October 19, 2003

Kate likes to read about Frodo and Sam but she is traumatized by photomanipulations...

You're not the only one...
posted by Tenuki at 7:04 PM on October 19, 2003

here's an image to go with the Janeway/Seven beatfest.

NSFW.

My kudos to the (unkown) author.
posted by scarabic at 7:18 PM on October 19, 2003

why aren't you using your LiveJournal account?

Eh, it's hard enough keeping a blog updated these days.

And yes, the photomanipulations are usually quite disturbing; the one moonbiter posted is actually one of the more tame ones.

And we've already established that I'm a freak, but to me it looks like Peter Jackson may actually be trying to cash in on the slash appeal of the Frodo/Sam storyline. Check out this e-card you can send from the official LOTR website, or the desktop wallpaper version of the same. It's even one of the official posters for "Return of the King", and I can't think of many major studio film posters with that same kind of eyebrow-raising same-sex (especially male/male) intensity. No other couple or grouping in the film gets that kind of marketing attention, including Arwen/Aragorn. I guess this is the legit version of all those photomanipulations?

I'm also curious to see if Jackson leaves in Sam's canonical kiss after the Shelob encounter, or how he handles Sam's eventual reunion with Frodo in the Grey Havens. Jackson's earlier work on the brilliant "Heavenly Creatures" shows that unlike a lot of writers/directors, he has no problem portraying homosexuality realistically on screen, so who knows?
posted by Asparagirl at 7:30 PM on October 19, 2003

I wonder if there is any juicy stories about the Lost in Space characters? I have always wondered whether Dr Don West and Judy ended up bumping uglies.
posted by dg at 8:21 PM on October 19, 2003

Well, any apart from this one, because Dr Smith does not figure in any of my potential alternative Lost in Space episodes.

that should be Major West, too
posted by dg at 9:05 PM on October 19, 2003

Pssst. Dick. Bruce. Together. As it was meant to be.
posted by WolfDaddy at 9:10 PM on October 19, 2003

"We all know that Bakula's reputation approaches Chaplin's in a certain department, and all those clingy undies on Enterprise show he's got a challenger to his title"

Are we talking about the Captain's log here?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:24 PM on October 19, 2003

I'm also curious to see if Jackson leaves in Sam's canonical kiss after the Shelob encounter, or how he handles Sam's eventual reunion with Frodo in the Grey Havens.

I know a lot of fans will be upset, but I have it on the strictest authority that they reunite in the Gay Havens.
posted by dhartung at 10:03 PM on October 19, 2003

NortonDC: why would Bob Dole like me?

Asparagirl: I don't care about the kiss - although I'd be surprised not to see it, Aragorn did kiss Boromir in approximately the same fashion and under the same (apparent) circumstances in the first movie. I will, however, be extremely disappointed if Sam and Frodo don't hold hands in the tunnel.

I haven't really spent a lot of time thinking about the marketing angle (I'll leave that for the Dataloungers and the tinhats thanks, I'm interested in the movies not the actors' personal lives) but you could be right. I've certainly noticed that even people who are otherwise what you might call completely non-slash-aware, like my ex's football-loving cousin and mainstream news sources, have picked up on Frodo and Sam's apparent relationship.
posted by kate_fairfax at 11:38 PM on October 19, 2003

oh, yeah - forgot to comment on the Grey Havens: I think it won't make the theatrical release at all. I predict the last scene will be Sam coming home to Bag End and picking up his daughter (played by Sean Astin's real life daughter Alexandra), just like it is in the book.
posted by kate_fairfax at 11:40 PM on October 19, 2003

My God, who let fandom out on metafilter! I'm freakin' out here!

I am Katemonkey, and I am a self-confessed fanfiction writer. I present myself for mocking, staring, and general zoo-like behavior.

Yes, a lot of it is dreck, and yes, a lot of it doesn't really make sense, but, for me, it's about two things:

1. Taking the media presented to me by major corporations and spinning it my way.

2. Writing dirty dirty porn about pretty pretty people.
posted by Katemonkey at 12:48 AM on October 20, 2003

kate_fairfax - why would Bob Dole like me?

Bob Dole would like kate_fairfax better if kate_fairfax would ask Bob Dole "why would Bob Dole like kate_fairfax?"
posted by NortonDC at 4:34 AM on October 20, 2003

Confirming once again and for all to see, kate_fairfax, that the true hero the The Lord of the Rings is actually Samwise Gamgee, because it is he who completes the circle and returns to the real world, changed but appreciating it all the more.

(Phew! Did I just come out as a fanboy or what?!)
posted by JollyWanker at 5:41 AM on October 20, 2003

Somebody got my MetaFilter in my fandom! Somebody got my fandom in MetaFilter! And to think nobody believed me in the Superheroes thread last spring, when I said Clark Kent's plainly in love with Lex Luthor and vicey versy.
posted by headspace at 7:07 AM on October 20, 2003

One significant factor behind all of this X-porks-Y fan fiction is simple. The Puritanical producers who produce all this spec-fic dreck (specifically, Enterprise and Voyager) are afraid to deal with a very simple concept: people in the future are going to be randy.

But the sex that you see in the Star Trek universe is largely subtextual, if even there at all. And in fact, on the whole, there's a sizable part of the human character missing in all of these knockoffs. You never see people running around with their pants down on the Enterprise. You never see drug addicts. Or belligerent drunks. Or vagrants. Or people who have dealt with the seamy underbelly of life. You never see outright deviousness, clear hypocrisy and other dark conflicts that make up hard-hitting drama. What you see instead are bland by-the-book officers who wouldn't know how to pull a prank or fuck a green-skinned alien even if Kirk came by to offer an easily comprehensible ten-day seminar.

The attitude on Enterprise and the Star Trek franchise is: Don't Rock the Boat. Rick Berman and the other monkeys who run this show are more interested in the lowest common denominator. "Sexing" the show up in a Charlie's Angels half-tits-flying-in-the-wind sort of way, rather than studying the politics of copulation within the plots.

So, within this rather limited environment, you can't really expect much in the way of narrative. And fans, in their own way, react. As such, I hope dearly for an end to the entire Star Trek franchise, if only to end this narrative bankruptcy. Give me Blake's 7 anyday before the Crap That Berman Wrought.
posted by ed at 7:07 AM on October 20, 2003

You never see drug addicts. Or belligerent drunks. Or vagrants. Or people who have dealt with the seamy underbelly of life. You never see outright deviousness, clear hypocrisy and other dark conflicts that make up hard-hitting drama.

this is why i so love futurama. dig it: bender in the closet, jacking on. zoidberg on the beach, not. and did you ever wonder why kiff is that sick green color? only zap knows.
posted by quonsar at 10:20 AM on October 20, 2003

NortonDC: Kate understands and thanks you for your explanation, but doesn't think that she would like Bob Dole ;)

JollyWanker: no, that wasn't very fanboyish at all, that was more like real LitCrit.
posted by kate_fairfax at 10:23 AM on October 20, 2003

And to think nobody believed me in the Superheroes thread last spring, when I said Clark Kent's plainly in love with Lex Luthor and vicey versy.

This seems pretty clearly portrayed on Smallville.
posted by rushmc at 1:10 PM on October 20, 2003

Once upon a time, I wrote a story based upon the appearance of the same actor in the role of an enterprising teenager on a cult-popular Fox sitcom, and in the role of an enterprising plague survivor in an actually-popular ABC miniseries. This story was never completed and the parts I wrote were lost to antiquity in a system upgrade at college. Thank Christ.
posted by britain at 7:10 PM on October 23, 2003