When I was 14, I had several AOL screennames, because the service allowed for 7-or-something and my dad, being an adult who had a life in his hometown of New Orleans, only needed one handle. The screenname I used most frequently was JustBrethe, spelled that way out of necessity because AOL only allowed us 10 letters. Then they changed their policy to allow for 12 letters, and I received an insulting Instant Message from someone with the handle JustBreathe asking me why I couldn’t spell. (Clearly, I’m still not over it.)
But the most well-honed purpose behind any of my screennames was Buffy the Vampire Slayer roleplaying. When engaged in this spectacularly nerdy activity, I was WillowRose, signifying Willow Rosenburg, Buffy’s brilliant and terminally cute-awkward redheaded friend, who later became a hot lesbian witch and even later an evil hot lesbian witch, but we were years away from that. A flattering IM I received out of nowhere that stuck with me just as unfailingly as that insulting one was in regards to the profile I’d filled out for WillowRose, in which I had poured all my teenage writerly effort and passion into capturing her voice exactly. Someone who was getting a “cast” together found me through that profile and said,
“I’m looking for someone to play Willow for my Buffy group, so I was going through all the Willow profiles. There are a lot of them, but yours is the best.”
It’s the only time in my zero-confidence teenagehood I can remember thinking, “Damn right,” but even so, I never told anyone at school that my known obsession with the then-new TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer went to these depths. At that time, it was not considered cool to watch Buffy, at least not in New Orleans where every adolescent except me was having sexual supernatural adventures that rivaled that of Buffy and her friends. I discovered fanfiction around then, too — something else no one was to speak about — and I did read Buffy fanfic, but mostly I read Velvet Goldmine stories in which a guy with the pen name Nick Fairy who had an inordinate impact on my life and consciousness detailed the film-implied gay sex between Brian Slade and Kurt Wild to an impressively graphic degree. (The fact that I never got caught reading any of this, in that shared Computer Room at the back of our high-ceilinged duplex where I lived with my dad, is something of a miracle.)
In my day it was understood that we read fanfic for the same reasons normal people watch porn, even though I ran with the virtual crowd that demanded literary merit. There was no pretense about it being anti-capitalist or inherently subversive. Masturbation is arguably a lot of things but it is probably the least-subversive act in human nature, hence the ease with which it’s become a hypercapitalist industry that’s only gained in profit guarantees.
But, the-Fic as-Revolution crowd will argue, fanfiction is not exclusively about sex, it can be about elaborate crossovers between this TV show and that book, wild alternate-universe plots in which genres are dynamited to create an explosion of wild explorations combining elements of one universe with the contradictory moods and motives of—
Ugh, sure, if you must, but I have no interest in any of that. And I have mixed feelings about the Literary Legitimazation of fanfic because I remember the raw forbidden joy of having one aspect of my literary mind that was consciously reserved for imagining this character with that one, nothing less, and nothing more, because nothing more was needed. Housewives getting off on their gay Star Trek fanfic in the 60’s was not revolution. Even if they were subverting a number of cultural expectations, it was still an affirmation of the simple fact that Eveybody’s Got Drives, but by the time I got to grad school, IT’S ART IT’S REAL ART had started to gain momentum in my Children’s Literature program. By insisting that fanfiction belongs in the same realm as capital-L literature I think we’ve deluded both literature and rapturous imaginative sexy romps.
But rant over, it’s confession time: When I was clinically depressed in December of 2021 and grasping for something, anything, to reignite my will to live, I opened an account at fanfiction dot net and I posted a couple of things to it. I started with a letter from Pride and Prejudice’s Charlotte Lucas to proto-punk icon Elizabeth Bennet, confessing her lifelong devotion to her friend (because no one who believes Charlotte is in any way hetero has read Pride and Prejudice) and I was surprised to see a Greek Mythology category because I write retellings of those all the time so I added a few to my public output. Occasionally, I’d receive notifications that these stories had been Favorited or recieved annoymous gushing reviews. I hadn’t actually known that was a process at the site, but it was a welcome jolt to find out.
Then a few days ago, for reasons I cannot remember but they’re certainly no longer depression-related, I was back to Buffy again for a pairing I’ve never seen or thought about before (though others have), Faith and Tara. It was short, as realistic as I could make it, and stopped with Willow’s entrance before anything actually happened. A couple days later, I received a surprising notification in my inbox: someone had not only Favorited that story (validation on par with a starred Kirkus review, honestly), but had “started following” the story, meaning they were waiting for follow-up installments and had signed up to be notified when I add them.
I can’t remember when I’ve been more flattered. Someone wants a sequel? To this? You’re that sure that there’s more to this story? I will never know who this person is, but they knew what I needed. I’ve got a novel in the works that means more to me than is healthy, I’ve got a memoir draft soon-to-get-properly-critiqued that’s more vulnerable than can be justified, I’m leaving the state in less than 3 weeks with yet more calls to make and things to do to find out where exactly we’re taking our stuff to, life is full and stressful and truly overflowing and what I needed to do after stepping out of a much-needed hot bath was come back to my little desk-office which suddenly felt like the Computer Room in our New Orleans duplex and write, if it can be so called, Chapter 2.
The voices of these characters have been embedded in my consciousness for the majority of my life. I can write them. I’m surprised how well it works and how nearly-effortless it is. It’s absolute dessert-writing and it’s the perfect ingredient for balancing out life. It’s also a fulfilling way to work out commitment issues and relationship complications, given that Willow and Tara are one of television’s most devoted monogamous couples and Tara has no business messing around with Faith, but Faith has a history of messing with people and come on, who wouldn’t?
Perhaps my dedicated foray into lesbian slash as opposed to the gay-guy stuff that formed my initial sexual consciousness has to do with how weirdly petrified I was to come out as bi as a teenager. Not for, it turned out, any demonstrable reason, but we lived in a homophobic age, for all that the 90’s championed itself as the decade at the end of history that had gone beyond all that.
And, to entirely contradict my previous points, this story is not about sex, not yet. It appears to be building up to that, a skill I’ve got but one I usually don’t employ in the art of dragging buildup to Juiciness out for too long. Now that I’ve got at least two dedicated readers, though, it’s only fair to mess with them, Faith-style, the way all my favorite TV writers have so enjoyed messing with me.
Oh, and I stand with the WGA, and for their being paid reliably and in proportion to this age’s crazy cost of living so that they can continue the grand artistic tradition of messing with us.