Today at exactly 10:00pm will be the fifty-fifth anniversary of the aforementioned, The Twilight Zone. Everyone knows a few of the iconic episodes, ‘the one with a crazy twist ending,’ ‘the one with the Shat man on a plane,’ ‘the one with the talking doll,’ ‘the cookbook one,’ etc. Some of you reading this might be thinking, “So what?! I care about new things: cool, modern and sexy things like Game of Thrones, not boring ole’ Rod Serling and Buck Houghton.” Well, for those of you thinking that, George R. R. Martin wrote on the 80’s reboot of TZ. It unlocked the floodgates for nerdy entertainment in pop culture like Game of Thrones.

The Twilight Zone ran for five seasons, 1959-1964. In the fourth season they experimented with the hour long format but reverted back to half hour format for the final season. Not every episode was amazing, there were a few stinkers here and there but they hit more than they missed. Rod Serling created, narrated, and wrote the show with a staff of other highly influential writers like Richard Matheson – I am Legend (1954) and George Clayton Johnson – Logan’s Run (1967). The show tackled important social issues like war, race relations, and love struck computers much to the chagrin of CBS. There were numerous cases of ‘before they were famous’; Billy the Shat man in Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Charles ‘No Dice’ Bronson in Two, Richard ‘Jaws’ Kiel in To Serve Man, Cloris Leachman in It’s a Good Life, Richard Donner directed Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Don Siegal directed Uncle Simon, and countless others.

On paper there is nothing mainstream about it. There were aliens, parallel universes, time travel, immortals, androids, monsters, and cowboys. Those things aren’t what most people are interested in but somehow Rod Serling and crew made it accessible. It hit at the exact right time at the exact right place. It wasn’t the first show like it however. Anthology shows had been since early radio. A few other TV shows laid the foundation. They were Tales of Tomorrow (1951-1953), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (This premiered exactly four years before TZ, October 2, 1955; 1955-1965), and One Step Beyond (1959-1961). All of these are on DVD, Hulu and Netflix, if you’re curious.

The show’s influence can be felt everywhere. TZ’s bizarre and enthralling sensibilities show up in The X-Files (1993-2002), Twin Peaks (1990-1991), Lost (2004-2010), Kolchak: the Night Stalker (1974-1975), Fringe (2008-2013), Star Trek (1966-1969), Planet of the Apes (1968), and too many others. Remember the Hugh Jackman classic Real Steel (2011), it’s based on the TZ episode, Steel. J. J. Abrams, Gene Roddenberry, and Joss Whedon were all hugely influenced by it. I could go on but that’s boring.

My personal experience with TZ is odd. As a kid I always caught it in passing. It was until very recently ‘that weird show my mom likes.’ The only episode I knew of was Eye of the Beholder. The pig faces were permanently branded onto my brain. At the time it registered as confusing, boring, weird, and for old people. I noticed earlier this year, it was on Netflix and figured why not give it a shot. I instantly loved it. It felt like when you get a gift from your grandparents but you dismiss it immediately then, a year later you realize just how awesome it is. It’s become my new go-to thing to watch and I discovered a whole new dimension of TV. So let’s celebrate this momentous day by joining Rod Serling in The Twilight Zone.

Here are my favorite episodes (Don’t get mad if I skip a classic, these are my favorites):

Number 12 Looks Just Like You – Season 5, Episode 17; This is similar to Eye of the Beholder. It’s about society’s standards of beauty and the pressures that come with it. Eye is too famous for its own good and lost some of its effectiveness. No. 12 takes the theme really runs with it in a cleverer way. It’s my favorite episode.

Judgment Night – Season 1, Episode 10; I have a soft spot for the military episodes. This is the story of a German soldier in WW2 that suddenly appears on a British civilian ship. As you watch you’ll learn how and why he got there. It’s like a Greek Myth with Nazis.

The Obsolete Man – Season 2, Episode 29; This is a beautiful episode much in the vein of Fahrenheit 451 and 1984. A librarian, named Romney Wordsworth, gets the death sentence for being reading books. He’s in a world run by smug Nazi jocks. He gets to choose his own style of execution. It’s the perfect example how to have a simple message with layers of meaning behind it. Warning, it’s very heavy-handed. However, I can look past that and really enjoy it.

Mr. Dingle, the Strong – Season 2, Episode 19; Usually the comedy episodes don’t work but this one is amazing. The scrawny and weak Mr. Dingle gets super strength from Martians for an experiment. Imagine if Milhouse was given superpowers from Kang and Kodos and that’s this one. If you don’t like your dish of TZ served goofy, you will not like this. It’s extremely goofy. Also Don Rickles is in it.

The Monsters are Due on Maple Street – Season 1, Episode 22; This is a classic episode. I don’t have much to add that hasn’t been said before. Just watch it if you haven’t and again if you have.

People are Alike All Over – Season 1, Episode 25; I don’t want to say too much besides a couple of astronauts go on a space mission and things take a crazy turn. It’s more fun if you go in with nothing to expect.

The Changing of the Guard – Season 3, Episode 37; Imagine Dead Poet’s Society (1989) in the Twilight Zone, it’s basically that. A young Donald Pleasance with terrible old makeup and a weird beard stars in this bittersweet Christmas tale. It’s one of the best sentimental episodes.

The Big, Tall Wish – Season 1, Episode 27; This is about simply believing in magic and the power of wishes. It’s also about alternate realities. This is a refreshing change of pace with a nearly all-black cast. It’s one of the most interesting episodes in that, it’s very grounded compared every other episode and exudes an infectious air of childlike innocence. It’s gravely underrated.

I am the Night – Color Me Black – Season 5, Episode 26; This is another heavy-handed one. It might be a little much for some but should give it a shot. A man is sentenced to death and the town excitedly waits for his death. The sky is getting progressively darker as they get closer to the hanging. Again, the message is very obvious.

The Mind and the Matter – Season 2, Episode 27; I knew I was going to love this one once I saw who was starring in it, Shelley Berman. He’s a fantastic standup from the 50s and 60s. Our hero, Archibald Beechcroft, learns how to change reality with only his mind. It’s similar to the movie Lucy (2014) but smarter, better and making a point.

Honorable Mentions:

-Execution – Season 1, Episode 26

-The Howling Man – Season 2, Episode 5

-Five Characters in Search of an Exit – Season 3, Episode 14

-The Masks – Season 5, Episode 25 *only episode directed by a woman and an actor/actress from another episode, Ida Lupino

-The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross – Season 5, Episode 16

-And When the Sky Was Opened – Season 1, Episode 11

-The After Hours – Season 1, Episode 34

-Where is Everybody? – Season 1, Episode 1

Not this:

Which, despite their similarities and frequent use in the perpetuation of senseless violence, are two very different things.

In general, when fans talk about canon, they’re talking about any official content related to a particular universe or franchise. In some cases, that just means one book or film, but other canons can be a little more expansive. With the Marvel Cinematic Universes, for instance, the core canon is the films released by Marvel Entertainment that officially share the same continuity¹. Also included in the MCU canon, however, are the Agents of SHIELD tv series, tie-in comics, novelisations, one-shots, and creator commentary. This gets even more complicated when you start talking about Marvel comics canon, which is a giant ball of wibbly-wobbly all on its own, but we’re not going to go there.

The word ‘canon’, in fan-speak, can also refer to any events, details, or facts contained in the canonical texts. Like, it is canon that Phil Coulson is an agent of SHIELD; it is not canon that he once took down an entire Hydra base with a pen². Canon, if you will, provides both the foundation and raw materials with which we build the nightmare structures and pretty pink castles of fandom.

So, say you walked out of the last Captain America movie (no spoilers!) thinking, “I bet Natasha changes her hair every few months. Like, I think that’s a thing she does deliberately because it’s a way of asserting control over her identity.”

A week goes by, you see the movie two or three more times, and you think about how Natasha must have done a shitton of recon before picking out a salon, about how it’s probably this old fashioned hole-in-the-wall kind of place and how she must have a whole cover created just to go get her hair done. It’s not a super important detail or something that changes how you see the movie, just something you like to think about that helps fill out the character in your head.

In fan-speak, we call this headcanon, as in – you guessed it – canon that’s just in your own head. Now, say, the thing about Natasha’s hair is my headcanon, but you’re reading this and going, “Yeah! Yeah, that totally makes sense. I like that.” In that case, the appropriate response is HEADCANON ACCEPTED, typically communicated in all caps, as shown.

Sometimes, large portions of a fandom will collectively agree on a detail or idea that isn’t supported by official canon but seems to fit with the general understanding of the text. For instance, at no point anywhere in the MCU does Hawkeye crawl around in the SHIELD air conditioning ducts, but a quick search will find you scores of fics that feature or focus on Clint Barton’s dumb ass hanging out by a ceiling vent. When this happens – and it does, more often than you might think – the detail is considered fanon. Like, fan + canon, obviously.

Now, the really interesting thing about all of this is that, when it comes to fan fiction, what inevitably, invariably happens to any kind of canon is something like…

So what’s the point, right? Why spend all of this time and energy developing, cataloguing, and memorizing a million details if you know there’s going to come a day when you just say, “Fuck it”?

Well, for one thing, official creators throw shit out the window all the time. Like, everybody knows SHIELD, right? And everyone calls it SHIELD, even in the “Agent Carter” one-shot, which takes place before the organization even officially exists. However, according to Coulson in Iron Man, there is no acronym (“We’re working on it.”), and, in the tie-in comics, Director Fury is surprised to hear the shortened name³. Is that a totally reasonable retcon (retroactive continuity) to make in order to avoid the poor actors having to say “Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement Logistics Division” over and over? Absolutely. Still an inconsistency.

For another thing, it’s just not that important. Sure, it’s super distracting if a story can’t keep it’s details straight, but fan fiction – and any good story, really – is more concerned with character than consistency. For instance, we know that Falcon was a paratrooper before becoming a VA counselor and then hitching his wagon to Captain America, but what if I’m writing a pre-Cap 2 fic and realize that it would be made 1000% more awesome by the addition of Sam Wilson, Agent of SHIELD⁴? Do I scrap that idea just because it doesn’t quite mesh with Sam’s canon backstory? Fuck no! Dude can be a SHIELD agent in this story if I want him to be.

It’s also fairly common for unpopular or inconvenient chunks of canon to be dismissed entirely. One of the more notorious instances of this followed the release of the seventh Harry Potter book and it’s hotly debated epilogue⁵, which revealed the futures of several main characters after the end of the story. It was common to see fics tagged “Epilogue? What Epilogue?” (EWE) until recently, when Rowling herself said that she had changed her mind about most of the epilogue’s content. In MCU fan fiction, there’s a lot of “Not AoS-compliant”, usually indicating a dismissal of the explanation for Agent Coulson’s resurrection featured in Agents of SHIELD. Lately, we’ve been seeing some “Not TWS-compliant”, which means we’re going to pretend that The Winter Soldier didn’t happen until everything stops hurting⁶.

Sometimes, fan fiction deals with canon derivation more directly, in the form of “Fix-its” and Alternate Realities/Universes, but that’s a can of awesome to be opened another day.

Ultimately, official canon is like the rules of reality. Like, in the real world that we actually live in, it’s totally impossible to turn a ninety pound kid with asthma into six feet and two inches of badass supersoldier using a special serum and “vita-rays”, but we accept that premise in fiction without a second thought. In canon, maybe there’s absolutely no way for people to travel to an alternate dimension⁷, but a fic that opens with an alternate Coulson popping over through an interdimensional portal?  I guarantee none of the readers will bat an eye, and it’s probably the least weird thing that will happen in that story.

What this means for fic writers is that the possibilities for reimagining are boundless. As a rule, we pick and choose the parts of canon (and fanon and our own headcanons) that work for every individual story we want to tell, and, the bigger the canon is, the more we have to choose from, the wider our foundation and the more materials we have to build with. Sometimes, what we build has a lot of the same stuff as the canon we’re building on, and, sometimes, we write stories where one character is lichen. Anything is fair game.

¹This is the Avengers films, for those who haven’t ventured out of their caves in a while.

²Reports are unconfirmed. There is supporting evidence, and similar incidents have been recorded.

³See Marvel’s Iron Man 2: Agents of SHIELD. Yes, I have read all the tie-in comics. Don’t judge me.

⁴Everything is made 1000% more awesome by the addition of any version of Sam Wilson.

⁵Friendships were ruined. Forums burned. The interwebs trembled.

⁶Hail Hydra.

⁷MCU canon. It’s totally possible in pretty much every other Marvel canon.

I put a hand on her shoulder and replied, “You’ve taken your first step into a larger world.”

If the word “shipping” makes you think of incoherent sobbing, overwhelming emotions, and really dirty porn, I imagine you’re probably nodding and making noises of agreement, right now. If, on the other hand, you’re confused about what feelings and porn have to do with FedEx and handling fees, this post is for you.

Say there’s a TV show that you like, and the Protagonist has a boring and lazy will-they-won’t-they romantic thing with the Love Interest. You and most of the people who watch the show cannot wait for Protagonist and Love Interest to get together, and sometimes you talk to other viewers about the romance and what you’d like to see happen between the two characters. When the almost-couple shares a moment on-screen, you squee.*

That, my friend, is shipping at its most basic. You’re a fan of a text (show, movie, book, etc.), and you’re invested, to whatever extent, in the romantic relationship between two characters. Congratulations, you are a shipper.

Okay, now, wait a second. I can hear you rolling your eyes and saying, well, obviously I’m invested in that relationship; that’s what a story’s supposed to do. Sure, okay, if the writers are doing their job, then of course you should be pulling for those characters to get together.

How about this: the Protagonist on your show also has a Best Friend, with whom they spend a lot of time and go on lots of adventures. They have really great chemistry, and, as the show goes on, you start to wonder if maybe it would be cool if they weren’t just friends. Maybe they could be friends and make out, too. Maybe you spend a lot of time thinking about this. Maybe it gets to the point where you have a hard time imagining either character hooking up with anybody else.

You have now discovered your first One True Pairing, or OTP. Well done.

But wait! In season three, Love Interest also develops more of a personality and is allowed to grow as a character, renewing your interest in seeing Love Interest and Protagonist live happily ever after! You don’t want to let go of the great love between Protagonist and Best Friend, though, so maybe you start to imagine… things… like the three of them… together. At this point, you might be having a shipping crisis, but, at times like this, it helps to remember the fannish saying: The only resolution to a love triangle is a threesome.

Sound good? Good. You now have what we like to call an OT3. Feel free to increase the number as needed.

At this point, some of you are probably wondering if I’ve lost touch with reality. Sure, I admit, a polyamorous relationship isn’t likely to show up on mainstream American television any time soon, but that’s the point of shipping.

As of a casual study run in August of 201, out of the twenty-five most-written relationships on the Archive of Our Own (AO3), all but two were romantic relationships between two men. I probably don’t have to tell you that there’s not a lot of gayness running around in most mainstream western media, and, of those twenty-three ships, only two are explicitly canon (i.e. featured in the published text). So that gives us twenty-one sets of boyfriends with hundreds of thousands of words written about them and little-to-no official basis for even existing.**

So, why? Why do we invest so much time and energy in something that will probably never be acknowledged outside of a relatively small community? The simplest answer, in general, is because we can, with the additional justification: because we want to. Fan fiction gives audiences a space in which to express and play with ideas and desires that can’t or won’t be given a voice elsewhere, often because they focus on marginalized types of relationships.

There are a lot of factors at work in the wonderful world of shipping, but one I want to mention is the ladies. That is, the vast majority of fan fiction writers and readers (and the simple majority of media consumers) are women. By contrast, the vast majority of media creators and producers are men, which means, however you slice it, that women’s perspectives straight up aren’t getting shown in any significant way. The answer, obviously, is for women to take the stories we love and make them into whatever we want them to be.

Apparently, what we want them to be is lots of attractive men crying and giving each other blow jobs. Which, y’know, there are worse choices.

*If I have to explain to you what “squee” is, you have no joy in your life, and I pity you.

**My personal OTP comes in at number nineteen, and the two characters have had a grand total of one interaction on-screen. Forty-seven seconds FTW!

Let me explain.  Individual sports in which a person is judged can make a day really drag on.  What better way to spend a Saturday than sit through about twenty girls for an hour waiting for the one girl to compete for about two minutes, and then repeat through about four teams?

Needless to say, adults, teens, grannies, and anyone who needs to keep their sanity during the down times come prepared with fully charged electronic devices.  Kindles are all ablaze with the fiery passion of 50 Shades of Grey that middle-aged women are craving, teens are taking selfies as if their lives depended on how good their duck faces are, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one reading status updates and news links on the Facebook.

Imagine if you will, a slightly bored man in his early 30’s, cellular phone in hand, perusing articles on the most popular social media website known to man.  Now imagine an article that starts with “In case you missed it…” appears as an update from a regional publication.  What follows that simple beginning is enough for the man to barely contain his pure excitement, only read through part of the article before sharing it, and then tag as many of his friends as he can who will appreciate the content.

It was all I could do to not stand up on those ass-chapping bleachers and shout to the heavens, announcing that a Wizard World Convention was coming to our frozen wasteland of Minnesota!  I feverishly texted most of the very same people I had just tagged in said shared article, alternating between text and Facebook, updating as I read more of the details, including the guests that would be attending the inaugural event in Minneapolis.  I decided right then and there I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to attend my first convention- saaaaay WHAT???

That’s right, a 32-year-old nerd and I have never been to a convention.  I have been to the now defunct Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas (I wanted to work at Quark’s Bar!), I’d been to another Star Trek traveling exhibit when I was just a young lad in the 90’s, a traveling exhibit featuring the dinos of Jurassic Park, and theme parks like Disney World and Universal Studios.  But never a convention.

Not that it wasn’t for a lack of trying.  Once again referring back to my bachelor, apartment living days, there were actually a few occasions that plans were made as well as hotel reservations.  Red-Haired Roommate, Sickly Looking Roommate, and myself were going to go to Wizard World Chicago.  It was going to be a road trip, Chicago a mere 8 hour or so journey, depending on traffic, speed, and caffeine.  As happens in those bachelor apartment years, funds were not there to support the plans.  And so the meeting of celebrities, the buying of exclusives, and the camaraderie of like-minded people was lost.
I do know that Red-Haired Roommate and Sickly-Looking Roommate made the trip one year with a local comic book storeowner, helping him in exchange for passage.  However, Sickly-Looking Roommate had a tendency to exclude me from things so I did not go.  Wizard World Chicago has long been a Holy Grail for me, partly because I’ve never been to any convention and partly because of the failed attempts in the past.  However, the arrival of this convention to my home state can wash away that unfulfilled wish.  And it’s a Wizard World production to boot.

Who cares if it’s Wizard World?  I do, actually.  Back when magazines weren’t available on screens, Wizard was a comics publication that covered various aspects of nerdery and all that could go with it- comic books, movies, television, gaming, toys and collectables- you name it.  They also had offshoots specific to some categories like ToyFare magazine that dealt with, you guessed it, toys.  I read these zines and enjoyed the brand of humor employed in their articles.  So going to what seemed to me to be a physical, three-dimensional representation of the periodical I enjoyed would be a dream come true.

Minneapolis is no stranger to conventions.  There have been some regional things usually taking place in and around the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and even a Star Trek Convention.  But this is certainly big news, and I fully expect to make a big deal out of it.  I’ve already taken the Thursday and Friday off from work the week of the convention and have already been offered accommodations in the area by Red-Haired Roommate who is now married to Blonde-Haired Wifey, who I in no way intend to reduce to a mere appendage to Red-Haired Roommate by calling her that (she offered, actually- thanks, by the by).  All I need now is some less-expensive advance tickets and I’m set!

The whole weekend sounds like it will be worth the price of admission.  My MN sensibilities had me skeptical of the talent that would be brought in.  Knowing our luck, we’d get that guy from Critters 4 and Steve Guttenberg.  But to my amazement, the guest list is on par with the other Wizard World Conventions, and I am impressed. Dean Cain (Teri Hatcher’s Man of Steel in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman), Jason David Frank (the original green Power Ranger), Ralph Macchio (The Karate Kid), and James Hong (all around go to elderly Asian guy) are some of the special guests that will appear.

Joss Whedon alums James Marsters and Nicholas Brendan (Spike and Xander of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Sean Astin (Rudy, The Lord of the Rings), and Lou Ferrigno (TV’s The Incredible Hulk) are a few of the heavy hitters to be showing up.  There are also several actors from The Walking Dead (yay!) that will be there, including the always badass Michael Rooker, the adulterer everyone loves to hate Jon Bernthal, and Laurie Holden.

While I’m freaking out at the aspect of being in the same building as Ferrigno, the marquee guest, the main attraction, the big kahuna of the con will be Captain Kirk himself William Shatner.  If I even catch a glimpse of that guy, I pretty much guarantee a hug for the closest person.  Some of the comics talent I’m looking forward to is Crow creator James O’Barr, Neil Adams, and Ethan Van Sciver.

What helps to really make sure I get there is nowadays social media and blogs and forums like this are around to help hold us accountable.  By the very mention of going to the event I will be asked questions about the particulars.  Like telling everybody you’re on a diet on the Facebook.  The delay for this column had started to worry me.  Would I make it to the convention as I’m having a hard enough time declaring my intent?

What I’m saying, if I’m saying anything at all, is that large and small, the comic book convention is the mecca for nerds of all shapes, sizes, and persuasions.  They are a place for all who worship at the feet of superheroes, elves, and creative types across multiple medias to congregate, celebrate, salivate, and purchase.  From the local comic book shop to the hallowed halls of San Diego, these are a must for nerds, geeks, and fanboys.  But I have never been to one.  That is, until now. Like a true pimp (or really lazy person), I made the convention come to me.

The countdown to May begins…Until then, what are your favorite convention memories or aspirations?  Let me know, especially if you have any tips for how to survive.

Like, how do you not know about fan fiction? How do you not know about Rule 34? How do you not know that there are millions of people producing trillions of words all over the world because just consuming stories isn’t enough? How do you not know about this practice that is literally as old as storytelling itself?

Then I remember that not everyone spends as much time on the internet as I do, and I calm down.

From the inside, fandom looks like a complex series of interlocking sandboxes filled with interesting and innovative people; we see discourse, creativity, the occasional clique, and the kind of talent that makes us want to punch something. From the outside, though, I imagine it looks more like a bunch of weirdos stealing shit and playing in abandoned buildings.

Honestly, it’s probably a little of both.

To the fan-adjacent outsiders who are at least aware that fan fiction exists, it’s often associated with high-profile examples like the bad-fic-turned-bad-novel Fifty Shades of Grey and, well, Harry Potter erotica. Those more in-the-know might mention Cassandra Clare or Naomi Novik, both fan writers before publishing original work, or bring up Diana Gabaldon or Anne Rice, both notoriously opposed to fic based on their work. At some point in this hypothetical conversation, someone will probably mention Star Trek.

The shape of fandom as it is today owes a lot to the communities that formed around Harry Potter and anime in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s and to the increasing accessibility of the internet over the past decade or so. The shape of those fandoms, in turn, was due to those that migrated out of meatspace onto the brand new baby internet, which of course owed their structure to the zine-based fandoms of the ‘70s and ‘80s. All of which can be traced back to – you guessed it – Star Trek.

Star Trek (The Original Series) is often looked to as the origin of modern fandom, and many of the networks and communities those fans established continue to influence fan interactions to this day, as does the example they set in using fandom as a means of social awareness and political action. It is also, for a number of reasons, one of the most well-documented and closely studied fandoms ever.

Well… okay, in a sense, that’s not strictly true, but I’m getting to that.

See, even though Star Trek fandom has been extremely influential in fan culture, and even though it’s one of the earlier examples of how contemporary fandom works, It’s nowhere near the first or the most influential. For that, we need to go back… pretty extremely far, actually, but for now we’ll just take one step back to Star Trek fandom’s direct predecessor: Sherlock Holmes.

I expect a few eyebrows are going up, at this point, but bear with me. The Sherlock Holmes stories were serialized in periodical publications and were followed by a large and devoted readership. Readers often wrote to the author and to each other with questions, encouragements, and speculations. When Doyle killed off the character, it was pressure from his readers that caused him to bring Holmes back to life. 1934 saw the formation of two fan groups: The Sherlock Holmes Society and the Baker Street Irregulars, and the Irregulars remain active to this day. And yes, Holmes fans wrote fan fiction, even back in the 1880s.

Now, we’ve reached the point in this hypothetical discussion where most people are nodding and “hmm”-ing and saying “Well, that’s interesting”. This seems like a good time to pause and ask what fan fiction actually is, rather than defining the term at the beginning of the essay like the trained academic that I am.

If we take the nebulous concept of “fan fiction” and define it, a bit loosely, as any work of fiction which openly borrows major elements from another work of fiction, then we can start finding examples and figuring out when exactly this shit got started.

So we’ve got Sherlock Holmes in the 19th century, but a little hop-skip back to the 16th gives us another massive example: Shakespeare. I’m not talking about the groupies at the Globe Theatre – though they were definitely there – I’m talking about William “Fanboy” Shakespeare, himself. Pick a play at random and bet your bottom dollar that it’s based on myth, legend, or historical anecdote, with a liberal splash of that Shakespeare je ne sais quoi. (Okay, it’s not je ne sais quoi; it’s iambic pentameter. Shut up.)

Yes, hypothetical conversant, I see you waving your arms in consternation, protesting that myth, legend, and historical anecdote aren’t fiction. Okay. Fair enough. So what are they?

No, it’s okay. Give it some thought. I’ll wait.

Not coming up with anything? Okay, how about this: Myths are stories that we tell to explain how the world works. Legends are stories that we tell to make sense of the past. Histories are stories we tell to explain how we go to where we are. However much these stories might be rooted in fact, they are, for all intents and purposes, fiction, and written works that draw on their specific elements in order to create new stories are, according to our definition, fan fiction.

Okay? Okay.

So Shakespeare wrote fic, but that’s just one example. The thing is, the whole idea of “original fiction” and intellectual property wasn’t even a thing until the 18th century. That might seem like a long time ago, but, given the span of human history and how long we’ve been telling stories, it really isn’t.

The truth is, the idea of taking someone else’s story and doing something new with it didn’t start with Star Trek fans or the Baker Street Irregulars or Shakespeare. It started when the first storyteller sat beside a fire on the bank of an ancient river and spoke, and, the next night, one of her listeners sat beside a different fire and told the same story in a different way. The tradition continued when early Rabbis recorded the stories of their people and added just a little bit of commentary. It influenced history when Augustus was like, Dude write a story about Aeneas where he’s all patriotic and shit, and Virgil was like, omg I totally will. It was canonized in literature when a Christian scribe decided that the legend of Beowulf would make more sense with a few lines about God. It appears in every history book, every retelling, every interpretation.

It you’ve taken an English class in America, you’ve almost certainly been assigned fan fiction to read, not just in the form of Beowulf and Shakespeare, obviously, but also in the form of books like Johnny Tremain, Wide Sargasso Sea, and Paradise Lost. If you’ve been in a bookstore, you’ve seen popular and widely-marketed fan fiction in the form of, say, Gregory Maguire’s Wicked series, the slightly puzzling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or the shelves upon shelves of novels based on Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Dungeons and Dragons, and a host of other franchises.

Ironically, even Anne Rice has had her hand in the fan fiction game with a trilogy of BDsM novellas involving the fairy tale figure Sleeping Beauty and another on-going novel series about Jesus. For all her righteous ire over intellectual property, the biggest material difference between Rice’s fairy tale porn and the Lestat fic I wrote ten years ago is a price tag.

This is a rather involved hypothetical conversation and a long way around to make my point, so thanks for sticking with me. In the end, all of this is really just to say that, yes, Harry Potter erotica is a thing, and it’s not new.

-Jo

Okay, so the wacky aren’t the most common variety of fan videos. Romance, Recaps, Drama, Humor are all popular genres of music videos. If fans can think it, they can spin it. But where fan videos really excel, is expanding on the theme of unrequited love; the underdog character who yearns for something they can’t or at least don’t yet have. After all, what is vidding without a tiny bit of emotional masochism?

Take 5 clips of a character longing, throw in dash of beautiful music and a pinch of lighting, text, voice over or effects and you’ll have a powerful music video to watch on repeat that will hopefully sustain your need for that sweet sweet pain until the end of hiatus (or better known as “hellatus”.)

One of the most surprising and fabulous characters to emerge on the small screens in 2013 is the latest incarnation of Lucy Westenra in NBC’s “Dracula”. In this version of the classic we discover that Lucy is in fact, in love with her best friend Mina. Tragically, Lucy is trapped in the social properness of the Victorian era and by fear of rejection by Mina.

In this video titled “Lucy + Mina | Angels” by YouMadeMeSeeIt, the vidder encapsulates Lucy’s hidden passion.

By beginning the music video with a black screen and moving text to match the echo-filled voice overs, the vidder brings the dialogue into deeper focus, setting the story up for the rest of the video to come. The gentle notes of the music sets the tone for Lucy’s sad perspective.
The vidder does a wonderful job of working with her chosen music sample by correlating the lyrics to her clip choices such as at :23 to :25 with “You move through the room” as well as the closing clips of Lucy’s crestfallen expressions in :48-:52.
By why does this video encapsulate the underdog? While this is a “vidlet” (meaning a fan video that is not the full length version of the selected music and totaling less than one minute), the vidder tells a complete story. Lucy’s point of view is perfectly described through voice-over, not only telling of her feelings for Mina, but WHY she has those feelings for Mina.

Ah. So good in that wonderfully painful way.

When shows just aren’t delivering enough of your angsty needs, you can always count on a show based on a comic series to deliver the goods. On Arrow, Oliver Queen’s chemistry sizzles with sidekick/friend Felicity Smoak, and though the comic canon dictates he’ll end up with Laurel Lance, fans have taken “Olicity” by storm (rightly so, I must say since Laurel has all the personality of an ironing board.)
In “If I Lose Myself“, xostelenaforeverox uses beautiful typography and lighting effects and excellent beat use to create a clean, clear and concise story.

Another reason to love this video is that canonically, neither character has openly stated feelings for the other. It’s all read between-the-lines comments, looks or touches which the vidder captures very well. I’m very fond of the line: “You can feel the light start to tremble, Washing what you know out to sea” at :40-:46 while Oliver & Felicity work side-by-side setting up the heartbreak that we love. She bookends the video with quotes from Oliver that lend themselves to proving his unrequited emotions and fills in-between with unspoken expressions of unreciprocated love from Felicity. It’s a two-for-one, people, all with that “I’m the fan, so I’m making this the way I want it to be” awesomeness.

Not wiping away any tears yet? Okay, let’s add the possible death of a sweet and vulnerable character. One vidder took an episode from Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. where we find the endearing Jemma Simmons’ life is at stake after contracting an unknown disease and in her moments of distress subtley lets it show that she loves her lab co-worker/partner-in-crime/best friend, Leo Fitz (sidenote: FitzSimmons. It’s a pre-made shipper name, gentle viewers!)

The video “When Everything Is Wrong, You Make It Right” by adrianmarcano122 stays within one episode, nearly one scene actually, and captures the character’s turmoil quite well playing along with lyrics of “I feel so helpless here, watch my eyes all filled with fear” and then at :36 you witness the impact of Jemma’s non-verbal tell on Leo while the singer croons “Tell me do you feel the same?”. It’s a shipper’s set-up and it works.

Convinced yet that underdogs with unrequited love are the best thing ever to hit YouTube? Start watching and building your playlists to get you through the barren days of TV holidays. Come back here and tell us what your favorite unrequited love fan videos are.