purging via fanfic

[boogieshoes]

you know, i consider myself fairly 'into' fandom, in that i read a lot of fanfic and am interested in dissecting tv characters and such. i know a lot of fanfic authors purge shock and despair via writing after a major disaster - certainly after 9-11, we got a *lot* of fics dealing with the aftermath in various ways. everything from characters onsite to help rescue efforts, to characters going to afghanistan to shoot the bad guys.

NO strikes me as similar enough in scope to produce the same effect. i haven't checked the recent postings, but has anyone who has an even passing familiarity with various fandoms seen/ heard/ read about the first offerings?

it'd be interesting to see how fast that stuff gets out. after 9-11, iirc, the first fic was published w/in days. in sendom, there is a yearly mag for post 9-11 stories. i'd have to check, but i think the profits even go to 9-11 related charities.

-bs

Comments

[briarwood.livejournal.com]

allow me to speculate that when people finally start writing fanfic on the issue, they'll write about characters as rescuers (because most of our characters tend to be in heroic profession of police, emts, etc),

Well, yeah, of course. At times like this we need heroes more than ever. What I remember from 9/11 was a lot of very reactionary political stuff in the days immediately after. I was heavily into Stargate fandom at the time and the military setup was perfect for it. I found it quite disturbing, actually; it was as if by portraying a loved character agreeing that the US should commit genocide in Afghanistan it somehow made that view okay, acceptable. But it's probably best that I not discuss the politics.

i find it interesting that you mentioned that HL was a prime fandom for post 9-11 fics. i haven't actually read any, as i am just getting 'back into' that fandom.

I don't know how many made it to mailing lists. There was some talk-about-it fic, not very successful attempts to use the older characters to get some perspective. There were looking-for-lost-people fics - either Duncan searching for Connor (who canonically lived in NY) or Connor searching for someone in what was left of ground zero. Interestingly I don't remember a single fic that placed a charater actually inside the WTC that day.

Most of it wasn't great as fanfic, but it didn't need to be. I didn't think that was the point.

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

cool icon :)

the important part of speculation comment was that the characters would be dealing with a lot of beaurocratic bs. just what i can observe from here, there seems to be a lot of high-level idiocy abounding right now, so i'm thinking that the characters will be portrayed as small competetent cogs in a vast incompetent machine, and a lot of the fanfic will have various chars-of-choice kicking butt and taking names in addition to doing rescue work as a response to that.

i could be wrong, tho. it's happened before.

I found it quite disturbing, actually; it was as if by portraying a loved character agreeing that the US should commit genocide in Afghanistan it somehow made that view okay, acceptable. But it's probably best that I not discuss the politics.

i doubt the authors really felt that genocidal behavior on the US' part was ok. i think we can both agree that fanfic-as-purging means that a lot of stories will have extremist reactions on the characters' parts in order to satisfy angry or despairing wish-fulfillment on the part of the author. i can see how it'd be disturbing. on the bar, (a collection of email lists i'm on, at baen.com) we were so noisily angry that it triggered purges. we had lots and lots of people calling for blood, yelling, 'hitting', and otherwise behaving very badly because they were pissed off. but that kind of intensity *is* frightening, because it's the same sort of intensity that precipitates mob violence, lynchings, maulings, etc.



There was some talk-about-it fic, not very successful attempts to use the older characters to get some perspective.

NO might be a better vehicle for that. i'm sure, frex, that methos has lived thru damn near everything in the disaster cycle, with both more and less loss of life. for that matter, everyone who's lived more than 200 years has probably been part of some great catastrophe or other, and stuck looking thru the dead praying to find loved ones, and hoping not to.

i was a student at texas a&m when bonfire fell. it was horrible, and hurt the aggie family in a very deep and personal way. and the way we expressed that was unique to a&m - tons and tons of personalized hardhats that people used while working on stack were left as memorials. those are all now in an anthropology study, and i think some of them are still on display in the memorial student center, as a reminder.

i look at purge fanfic the same way. you're right that it's not always good, nor is that the point. it's interesting from an anthropological point of view because you have people emoting through their characters. fanfic here is working as therapy, as well as political commentary and all the other things fanfic does. in terms of fanfic studies, if you will, how people use fanfic to purge, and what they choose to focus on for that purging, is an interesting subject.

-bs

[polly-b.livejournal.com]

I do recall at least one 9-11 HL story that placed Methos at ground zero. He underwent such a trauma (buried in the rubble, dying multiple times, dying people all around him, etc) that he ended up in an amnesiac state, forgot he was immortal, forgot who he was (and who he'd been); all causing Joe and Duncan some very anxious moments as they tried to track him down before something bad happened to him ... unfortunately, I can't recall author/title (and I sincerely apologize because I know from personal experience that's like dangling raw meat in front of a starving dog and then yanking it away, lol). It was a well-written and engaging story as I recall and I wish I had the URL for you.