An Insight into the World of Fan Fiction: Part Three

Here's part two of Otalia fan fiction author DiNovia's interview with me. Enjoy!


Just like the story on Guiding Light, Otalia fan fiction has had its positives and negatives. What are your thoughts on Otalia fan fiction at the moment, in light of the current story arc that has been formulated on the show?

Ok, that’s an excellent question. I’m not fond of the storyline as it stands after June the 22nd; doesn’t make me a very popular person right now. [Laughter] Or at least, it’s not a popular opinion. But I don’t like it. I think that it was a mishandled idea. I think that it would have been more aptly played, more deftly played, if they had done it after the wedding, rather than four months later. To be honest, as a writer, I think it is sloppy writing, or lazy writing. I think it makes use of clichés that weren’t necessarily needed here. I understand there were logistics issues with Jessica Leccia’s absence due to her maternity leave. However, I think that there were a number of options for them to play with, and that having chosen the one that they did and placed it in the way that they did, I think it did a disservice to the characters. That’s what’s most important to me as an author, the characters, especially these two.



I think that fan fiction can help heal a fandom that is beset by these conflicts, as it were, because there are differing opinions about this particular storyline. There are certainly others with opinions that say that this is excellent for this couple, and so dramatic and so aptly played, and yes, of course, the actresses are doing wonderful work with what they’ve been given, I certainly agree with that and would never say otherwise. Fan fiction can show an alternate way of having to deal with it. And that is actually why my friend Fewthistle and I created Burning City, which is an Otalia fan fiction, art, and video community that, as its premise, restricts artists and video artists and authors from using any canon having to do with the Otalia storyline, post June 22nd. Meaning, no reference to the pregnancy scare and no pregnancy issues at all. Other things from canon, such as Phillip’s illness or Natalia working for Blake, or those sorts of things, are certainly up for grabs, but the one main issue or premise for this community was to stop it at 6/22, as far as the Otalia storyline went. I think that the storyline on screen presents a very interesting challenge for authors. We, at Burning City, have chosen one way to deal with it.

Certainly there are other valid ways to deal with it, such as writing the storyline into fan fiction and attempting to repair the damage that has so obviously been done to this couple by speculating what’s going to happen when Natalia returns. I find it very difficult to read those pieces right now, but I do read them. There are four authors whose works I would read if they chose to deal with that particular subject. One of them is my dear friend Bronzey, who is doing a fabulous job with this particular aspect of the storyline and I enjoy reading her story very much. Another one is one of my betas, Megan, who has asked me to beta for her a story that deals with this particular storyline and how she has chosen to resolve it. So, there are absolutely many different ways that fan fiction can be used during this time to help fans deal with their issues regarding the storyline because we are a family, and we pride ourselves on that.

I was reading Coming Undone last night, and I was just amazed at how you could just get inside Olivia’s head and write as if you were her. How do you get inside their heads like that? How do they even stay there? There must be four corners to your mind to keep all those women in there and yourself!

This is where I get to talk a little bit about what makes DiNovia, DiNovia. I am a theater major. I have a degree in theater. Although my particular major emphasised stage management and directing, I had to be on stage a number of times as part of the program. One of my favorite parts about acting is to be able to create a character, based on a script, and extrapolate from that script how the character would react in certain situations and incorporate that into your whole being. I tended more towards method acting. Although, I drew the line at like, if I had an injury, actually injuring myself to find out what it felt like. But my choice in acting was to take my character and write a journal in their voice. Not just a journal about what was happening in the script, but also a journal page or three from their childhood, from their future, taking the script and making it a baseline, but extrapolating both the past and the future for this character.

From that, I learned that I could use that in my writing. I find myself writing in first person perspective more for the genre of Otalia than any other fandom I’ve ever written for. Which I believe is interesting. In Hide Beside Me, I write Olivia, Emma and Natalia in first person. I find Natalia the hardest, even though I’m possibly more like her or, well, Fewthistle would say I am the Natalia, so being like a character doesn’t necessarily make her easy to write when it’s first person perspective.

I find I write Olivia the easiest. I can get inside her head like nobody’s business. I can hear her snark. I can hear her pain. I can hear her fear. I don’t quite understand, actually, unless it’s just a case of opposites. That she is opposite of me, but yet, we share a common history of damage that maybe I’m able to get into her head a little easier.

The one that surprises me the most is how well received my interpretation of Emma is. Emma, as you know, is eight, and to write first person perspective of an eight year old is…well I’m never quite sure I’m going to get it. I’m never quite sure when I come up to an Emma chapter that I’m going to be able to recreate the first one and be able to hear her in my head again, and yet, she never fails me. So I am very surprised that I am able to get Emma on the page consistently because as a character, it’s hard to follow her. She’s not a consistently used character, and she’s not consistently portrayed, so the fact that I am able to create a consistent eight year old who sounds like Emma to other people is very gratifying.

It is difficult to write in first person perspective. It can be very difficult if you can’t hear the voice of the person you’re trying to write, and that’s the next chapter, and you can’t move on with the story until you get that chapter. I had that problem with Natalia a lot early on in Hide Beside Me. Or in general, even when I wrote third person omniscient, past tense, with Natalia in Captured for the Queen to Use, I found myself listening, over and over, to clips of her. Not watching, but listening, to get her cadence down, to get her word choice down, to get her pauses. My God, that character has more pauses and changes in thought and pace in sentences than I’ve ever had the unfortunate necessity to write. In fact, I was joking about this with Fewthistle the other day when she was expressing she was having problems writing Natalia as well, and I said, “Really, honestly. Just throw in a couple of double-dashes and some ellipses and you’ll be fine.” But that’s really too simplistic. It’s very difficult to get Natalia’s voice down and her word choice down and all of that.

It’s gratifying when I get told, “How do you keep these characters in your head that well? How do you get their voices down so well?” I wish I knew. It’s some sort of strange alchemy of my training and my level of empathy. I do have a heightened sense of perception where people’s emotions are concerned. I always have, ever since I was a small child. So I think it’s a strange alchemy of just natural empathy, the ability to empathise, the training that I received in acting and a writer’s ear. I think it just comes together and makes something happen that’s wonderful.

Why did you get started on writing Otalia fanfic? Why do you continue to write for us fans?

Wow, well, I would have to say that, although I hesitate to use the word “blame”, the blame does fall to Destini, our fearless leader at Big Purple Dreams. Destini and I have been in similar groups for many, many years. She used to run Alternative Quadrant, back when I was writing in Voyager days. We knew each other online, and still it’s only online. I have not had the pleasure of meeting her. We have been kind of circling each other all this time, and I have had a livejournal account for years now, and she friended me and we’ve been on each others’ livejournal accounts as friends for, I would say, a good three years, at least. And so, what happens with livejournal is you check every day to see what your friends are doing.

And around January – December and January – I kept seeing these Youtube clips of something that she was defining as “Otalia,” and I was like, “Ok, I don’t know what this is,” and so a couple of blurbs underneath said, you know, Guiding Light and I was like, “Ah, a soap opera! I wasn’t aware that Guiding Light was doing a lesbian storyline like All My Children was doing.” So 20 years previous, I had stopped watching soap operas cold turkey and never went back. And, so I was like, “Oh, a soap opera. I’m not interested in that!”

So, I continued to ignore the clips. And then, there was one. It turns out it was from January 13th, 2009. The episode was known as “Family Day.” I believe that’s what it’s known as online. The scene was Natalia, Olivia and Emma trying to get Emma out the door for family day. It’s the scene that ends with “You deserve it, Mom!” – the cookie, and I knew nothing about these characters. I didn’t know who belonged to whom, what was going on, why they were there, who the child was, anything. And I watched the scene, and I extrapolated from the scene that Emma was Natalia’s child and that Olivia was Natalia’s live-in lover and that Guiding Light had gone much further in a lesbian storyline than I had ever seen on television before. That’s what I extrapolated from that one scene. I was wrong, on every level, except the names of the characters. At least I got those right. But underneath it Destini had said, “I’m falling in love right along with them.” And you know what? It didn’t take me long to figure that out.

Like I said about what types of fan fiction I like, there are three ways to get me involved in a storyline very fast. Hurt/comfort. I also like redemption stories. Recreating yourself and finding your way. Those stories, I love that. Then the third thing that will get me every time is a child. And lord mercy, Otalia has a child. Emma sucked me in, while Destini got me hooked. You know, started me off, pushed that stuff on me like a drug, and boy, oh boy, Otalia is a virus or a drug or an addiction or an obsession or whatever else you want to call it. Emma kept that going for me. She really got me hooked on the pairing and how those two women reacted and interacted with that child in that one little clip just sealed the deal for me.

Why do I continue to write for the fans? Well, first of all, who wouldn’t want to write in this fandom? I have to say that the Otalia fandom is different from any other fandom I’ve ever been involved in, ever. And I mean that. I was stunned at how quickly I became addicted to Otalia. I was flabbergasted when that addiction led me to stop eating; to stop doing almost anything. Unfortunately, at the time, I was working full time and going to school full time. It was unheard of that I would be so enamored of any fandom that I would forget to eat. I would stay up 24 hours, just to watch clips, to write, to talk to the fans, oh my god, the fans! How could you not write for this fandom? That’s what I want to know. If you have any sort of writing skill whatsoever, if you love Otalia, this fan base is the most vibrant, the most organised, the most loving and connected fan group I have ever been involved in. I can’t tell you how many friends I have made and how my life has been changed by the fan base. Not just the actresses, but the fan base has been so generous and so kind and so supportive, not just of my work, but of me, as a human being! So yeah, that’s why I write for you fans. Because you? You guys rock.

Do you have a muse or are you just inspired by the characters on the show?

I do have a muse, and if any of you are familiar with the movie Tank Girl, starring Laurie Petty, I call my muse “Tanked Muse.” And basically, when I interact with Tanked Muse, because I do interact with her, she is generally Laurie Petty, dressed as Tank Girl, with a bottle of Bombay Sapphire or some other very expensive alcohol, in her hand, swigging from it and telling me what to write. She and I have had arguments. She and I have had disagreements. A notorious one is that, very early on in my writing for Otalia fandom, I wrote ten ficlets to music. The challenge was to take your iPod, put it on shuffle and write a story for the first ten songs. The tenth song that came up for me when I did that was Melissa Etheridge’s “Sleep,” and Tanked Muse took off and started writing and I was typing until I realised that it was a death scene, a major character death scene. It was an Olivia death scene and my throat closed up and I started to weep. I couldn’t get past the first paragraph, knowing what was coming, because she told me the whole story, how it was going to end and I could not deal with it. She has been told we don’t do death scenes and she still comes around to suggest them every once in a while, and I just ignore her. But yes, I do interact with my muse.

I know that sounds odd. She can be recalcitrant, she can be silent. She spent years silent. She can be fun. She can be overbearing. But she is always creative, and she is the kind of me that I’m not. I am much more professional, much more organised, much more even-keeled, much more quiet and cautious and compassionate than my muse is. She’s the brash part of me, the brash side of me, that I don’t get to express very often, and I think I need that in order to break through to get the writing. It’s important to have a muse, so yeah. I am very much inspired by the characters of the shows that I have written for. But I’ve been inspired by characters before and have not actually ended writing for those fandoms, so it really depends on what’s going on and what I feel I can give to the fandom and what I feel not qualified to do. For instance, I have been inspired by the characters on Saving Grace, and yet, I choose not to write for Saving Grace because I just don’t feel I could do it justice. I don’t think it’s my genre, but I’ll read it.


There you go DiNovia lovers, that's part two of her interview with me. Again, I'd like to thank Katie Kelly for transcribing the interview as well as Xan and Badger for the editing advice. Also for those who can't wait for the next instalment, I predict two more editions after this one (including tid bits about "Hide Beside Me"!)
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An Insight into the World of Fan Fiction: Part Two

Following on from that great interview with Otalia fan fic author and fan, DJ Shiva (which you can find here: http://julesypops.blogspot.com/2009/07/insight-into-world-of-fan-fiction-part.html) I now am so pleased to be able to finally start posting my interview with "Hide Beside Me" author, DiNovia.

Now those of you who are unfamiliar with DiNovia won't be out of the loop any longer because this amazing woman was so open and honest with me that you will feel like you've been given an all access pass into her mind. She's a fantastic writer and a dear friend of mine so I hope after this you will see exactly why everyone who meets her or reads her work cannot help but adore her.

For those of you who are familiar with DiNovia will know exactly what I am talking about when I say, "GODDESS OF OTALIA FAN FIC!!!" So I don't feel I need to go on any further about that!

Before I get into the interview part of this blog, let me tell you a little bit about her most prominent of works for the Otalia fandom, "Hide Beside Me". Now I was sitting here trying to condense the story of "HBM" in two sentences...and found I couldn't. So I asked my lovely editor for this series of blogs, Xan, and she said to me, "Olivia and Natalia are on the run. Phillip is crazy. Dinah rocks." So there you have it!

Now I'm going to stop blabbering on and get straight into the interview. It will be in about 3 or 4 parts because it's so meaty and I've been told by many a DiNovia fan to not edit out too much of her words. So you may only get two or three questions per blog because the questions I asked required very detailed answers. Kill me later!

Here we go!


How are you doing today Di?

I am doing well. Thank you. [Laughter] I’ve had a moderately productive day. Had to restart my computer and restore some things, so that was a little frustrating, but other than that, doing ok. It’s a Sunday, so beautiful day out. Thank you.

Alright, so, first off, what does fan fic mean to you, as just a fan, as well as an author of fan fiction?

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An Insight into the World of Fan Fiction: Part One

Fan fiction (as defined by Urban Dictionary) is written by fans within a fandom for other fans. Generally, the author uses the characters and/or the settings from the original work to write a new or continuing story. Fan fic, as it is often shortened to, took off in the 1960s with Star Trek fan fiction springing up in fanzines.

The way I see it is that fan fiction is attached to every story, whether that story belongs to film, television, comic or novel. The reason for this is that every viewer or reader has their own perspective of what they enjoy or dislike about a particular story or character. Some may share perspectives and thus springs the demand for new interpretations of how the characters or storylines from the original work should be written.

Quite often, fan fiction served as an alternate universe to the original work. Characters who would not normally be involved in stories could associate. Characters with preexisting history in the original work could have their story shaped into new tangents. This allowed fans the opportunity to write and read the ideal plotlines that would never have made the cut in the original work, such as adding more graphic sexuality in between characters.

This brings me to the fandom in which I read fan fic about most often- Otalia.

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A View from a Soap Whore

Ok so I have been watching soaps from the womb basically. My earliest memories were watching Days of Our Lives with my mother, followed by The Young and the Restless with my metzmums (grandmas for those Armenian challenged). To top all that off, all four of us would sit down and watch The Bold and the Beautiful in the late afternoon. I grew up watching soaps. Soaps were, and still are, my only constant in life. I have lived and breathed soap opera and I am not ashamed to admit it.

It was watching soaps with my metzmums that I fully realised the power of soaps to engage with their viewers. These two elderly women knew next to nothing English and yet they would still be able to explain to their little enthusiastic granddaughter exactly what was going on just based on purely watching facial expressions. Dialogue aside, they could explain who was sleeping with who, who was carrying another persons baby, which character was blackmailing another...every plot point was explained in perfect detail. How is that possible? How is it possible for two women who knew no English to be able to understand a whole show and its characters. 


I see this as the universal language of soaps. The ability of soaps to reach all viewers, all people. Perhaps one could argue that when one is schooled on the history of soaps and has watched it for many many years, soap conventions become like a second language. My grandmothers knew no English, I barely knew Armenian, but they knew soap and they taught me soap (as did my mother but she knows English so it was a much easier with her, but I digress).

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