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?

Hmm…let’s see, as a fan, the first fan fiction that I ever read had to have been back in my Star Trek: The Next Generation days, pre-computer. And that was written by other people. Back then, they published it in fanzines. You found the address for the fanzine in the back of a science fiction magazine. You sent off your story and if they were going to publish it or if they weren’t, they would let you know, and it was very interesting.

It was right at the end of that era, though, I did send in one story that was going to be published, but the fanzine disbanded. That story was a hetslash story between Captain Picard and Beverly Crusher. [Laughter] That was long prior to me coming out as a lesbian and discovering that there was a whole world of fan fiction to be had, from that perspective of things.


But what it meant for me was inclusion. Inclusion in a fandom and finding other people of like mind who understood that, yes, the sexual tension or the anger and the constant fighting and bickering on-screen, in canon television shows, could lead other places, and it would be death to have those things lead to other places on the television show. It would kill the television show, but it wouldn’t necessarily be death to think about it and certainly not to read it.

So, in that way, fan fiction really gives a fan the best of both worlds. You have your show and the canon relationships that are built on that show, and you hope that the writers of that show take your characters on a responsible path with regards to those characterizations. You look forward to every angst-filled episode, or every near-missed kiss, or all of those things, and you hope that the show goes on forever because you love watching these people, and you come to think of them, as I did with Star Trek: The Next Generation particularly, as an alternative family.

My high school years, which is when I was involved with Star Trek: The Next Generation, were not exactly pleasant, and it was a nice escape to be able to move on to something that was more inclusive, more intelligent than the conversations I was having at school, and educational even; Star Trek, I always found it to be somewhat educational.

As an author of fan fiction, what do I think of fan fiction? Well, actually, I’ve been writing fan fiction long before I had a name for it. I can clearly remember, when I was 10 years old, and yes, that was a long, long time ago. I’m 39, so when I was 10 years old, my school gave out these little, grey handwriting pads, so you could practice your handwriting, and I thought, ‘What a good way to practice my handwriting would be to write stories, instead of just the normal copying words,’ or they told us to get magazines and copy out passages from magazines or books, and I thought, “No, I can write my own stories.”

I have clear memories of sitting at my aunt’s house while visiting or my grandparents’ house in the sunroom writing out stories to Buck Rogers and the Twenty-fifth Century. And 10 was right around the time that I was starting to understand romantic relationships as well, and that was exciting because, in Buck Rogers, there was all sorts of sexual tension between Wilma Deering and Buck and near-missed kisses and longing looks and all of that stuff that spoke to me, even back then, and I really wanted to get in on that. And I always knew that, you know, if they just had 15 more minutes of that episode, they would’ve kissed. [Laughter]

And so, that’s why I started back then, even before I had a name for it. And I would show them to my parents, who thought they were stupid. They couldn’t understand why anybody would look at a television show and think, ‘Oh, I would do that ending differently, and I would make them kiss,’ or whatever, and from my cousins and other people, I learned pretty early on that you had to be careful with who you showed stuff like that to because the societal norm was not for people to do that. Then what happened after that was, I realized that if I wanted to be involved in fan fic, and I wanted to do it in a socially acceptable way, the only way I could really do that was through soap operas.

As an author of fan fiction, you also get the inclusion part. You also get something that a lot of authors in a lot of other venues don’t get, and this is one of the hardest things to explain to people who don’t understand fan fiction. Specifically my mother, who has often said, “When will you be done with this hobby of yours so that you can publish original work?” And it doesn’t work like that for me. First of all, I do want to publish original work, and I probably will somewhat shortly here; however, I also love fan fiction for the very reason I’m about to tell you: Instant gratification.

I know immediately if my work pleases people because they have the ability to tell me that within seconds of finishing a piece that I have written. As any other writer will tell you, the creation part of it is a good chunk of why we write. Creating worlds or experiences or scenarios or interactions between our characters is a great chunk of why we write.
The other part of it, though? Is we are attention whores, and we want to be recognised for it. We do not want to write in a vacuum and fan fiction gives you the ability, better than any other venue of writing, to throw your ideas out on the internet and have a group of people respond quickly. I’ve had people respond to pieces that I’ve written within ten minutes of me posting them. You can’t get much more instant than that, and I think that that is one of the best parts of fan fiction.

One of the best parts of fandom, in general, is that it is not just an author, sitting at their desk, and type, type, type, typing, and then organising and packing it up, and throwing it in the mail and getting it edited and all that sort of stuff, and then waiting, waiting, publishing. That’s a long, lonely period of time for a writer. But in fandom and in fan fiction, you have a clear, teamwork relationship with your readers. You write; you throw it out there. Within ten minutes, in some cases, you get responses, and that, makes you a better writer faster because you’ll get people who say, “You know, I like this, and I like this, and I like this. Didn’t like that too much.”

But also, you sense as an author that you’re responsible, or at least contributing to other peoples’ happiness, hopefully. Most of the time. I do write angst, so it’s not always happiness, but enjoyment, and you’re contributing to that, and you know it instantly, and it’s so much more like being on stage as a comedian or something like that, but from a written perspective. It’s the best of both worlds for me because I did study theater, and I do understand what it’s like to be on stage and how immediate that response is. You say a line. If it’s funny, you get the response, and the rush that you get from that. The same thing applies here, but it allows for some sort of buffer, almost. It’s not as personal, and it’s editable because it’s written. It’s the written word, so you can edit it and fix it and change it and send it back out, all within a matter of hours. So that’s what fan fiction means to me, as an author.

So, care to share with the class a brief idiot’s guide to getting started in fan fiction?

First thing, pick a fandom. As far as my Internet presence went, my first fandom was Xena. But choose to learn your characters. The one pet peeve I have about fan fiction, other than specific pet peeves, like the misusage of the word shutter, S-H-U-T-T-E-R, versus the word shudder, S-H-U-D-D-E-R. My pet peeve overarching the genre of fan fiction would have to be out-of-character portrayals. I work very hard to keep my characters in character, even if I take them on paths that the show hasn’t taken them on.

And I hope that most authors would spend a little time getting to know their characters, before they venture into the writing aspect of fan fiction. I had to, with Otalia, in a very strange way. I don’t currently own a television set, so I had to start watching Youtube clips of Otalia that were very generously provided to me by Destini, who got me hooked on this fandom. Thank you very much, Destini! So that would be step 2. Getting to know your characters and getting to understand how they would react in certain situations.

Then, for a third step, I would say, find an online group that is either is devoted to that fandom or, if you have a specific pairing in mind, that pairing, and read other people’s works. A lot of people are worried that if they read works by other people, that those ideas, they might accidentally plagiarise or accidentally borrow ideas from other authors, and sometimes that does happen, but it also can be a great source of inspiration.

And then, once you’ve done all of those things, then I started out with a long story. My first story that I wrote for the Xena fandom, I started with a fairly long story, and I worked on it and I worked on it until it was complete. And then, I posted it. I still get people who will read it and comment to me about that particular story. You can start out with a very long story and wait until you complete it and then send it out. I didn’t have a beta reader. I didn’t even know what a beta reader was. So, that’s an option.

I would suggest if you’re new to a fandom, to start out smaller than I did. [Laughter] Start out smaller and get yourself a beta reader, at least one. Somebody who you’re going to send this piece to and say, “Ok, please look at it. I’ve read it six thousand times today. I can’t tell if I’m spelling words right anymore. Is this even in English?” Find that person who will give you honest, but constructive, feedback. The last thing you need is a beta reader who belittles your word choice, who corrects your spelling and calls you moron. I had one of those. Don’t do that to yourself. Make sure it’s a positive, supportive person.

Write a smaller fic, three pages, five pages, ten pages even. Run it through your beta reader, and then post! That’s the key; get it out there, in the fandom, to the fans, so that you can find out what works and what doesn’t. But yeah, so those, I would say are the four main things that I would do if I were to start all over, having known the word fan fiction and what I was getting myself into. Since I sort of went around a different way, I had to learn kind of backhandedly.

DiNovia, as a long time reader and writer of fan fic, what is your favourite type of fan fic story and why?

Ahhh… this one tends to be a little bit more complicated. First of all, I love hurt/comfort. Love. Hurt. Comfort. Hurt/comfort is defined as: One of your main characters is somehow injured or otherwise incapacitated. It might be a physical injury, a kidnapping, being shot, being imprisoned, on occasion, being raped (and I’m not too fond of those), etc. etc. etc. And that leaves the other half of the pairing, if it’s a shipping relationship, or the rest of the team, if it’s that kind of a general storyline or whatever, to go and find help or otherwise assist that main character.

I love hurt/comfort. I wasn’t aware what the definition of that was until much later, but my first Xena story was actually a hurt/comfort story. [Laughter] A lot of my stories tend to be hurt/comfort in orientation. I think it has a lot to do with my personal history. That it gives me a chance to work out some personal issues that I would be unable or otherwise unable to work out.

I read only femmeslash. That should’ve gone without saying. I don’t read hetslash. I very rarely read a gen story, a general story, meaning that there’s no relationship involved. It’s just a story using the characters from the show. I don’t read slash, either, or boyslash, as it’s also known because I don’t follow anybody or any pairing of that nature. Just haven’t done it, so I read exclusively femmeslash.

In addition to that, and in addition to hurt/comfort stories, I love good, alternate universe stories. Obviously, I’m writing one of those right now.
I also love, love, love when the couple has a baby. That’s really embarrassing to say because a lot of lesbians aren’t into that, but I am. I’m a total mom, so I do enjoy baby fic.

On the other side of the question though I feel like I should state too what I don’t like to read. I don’t read rape fic. I find it even reprehensible that I have to say that that’s a genre of femmeslash or of fan fiction in general, where the idea is that rape is treated as a sexual act to be glorified, not as, say for instance, you’re writing a Law and Order: SVU fic and someone in the story gets raped because that’s what SVU officers deal with on a daily basis. That’s more related to the plot, rather than having one of your pairing get raped and treat that as a sexual act that’s glorified and appreciated. I don’t understand that type of fiction. I also don’t understand incest fic. That just disturbs me too.

[Laughter] There are lots of squicks out there, and those are things that people won’t read for whatever reason, and I understand that baby fic is a squick for a lot of people. My squicks are rape fic and incest fic, so I won’t read those. That is not to say that I won’t write rape into a story if the plot requires it or if it makes sense for the character or whatever it is that I’m trying to accomplish in this story, it makes sense to use that particular horrific act as an event in that character’s history. It’s very difficult to write, I’ll give you that, but it’s not to say that I won’t write it.

Alright, it must be asked…The jeans trilogy! You’ve got parts 1 and 2 out already, with part 3 to follow soon. Will we see an epilogue? Or perhaps you’ll get to part 3 and realize that there’s a story there for part 4?

Oh, you wish, Jules. [Laughter]

Oh damn!

You know what? I actually doubt that I will have either an epilogue or a part four to this story. I think that it will have served its purpose by the time I get to the end of three. Really its purpose was a.) to please you Jules, and b.) as a kind of anti-angst piece of fluff that we all needed back then, with jeans fic 1, or “Coming Apart at the Seams,” as it is actually entitled, and now with jeans fic 2, “Coming Undone,” and jeans fic 3, which has not been named yet.

These are primarily designed to be anti-angst pieces of fluff that will help those of us who are overwhelmed with the angst on the show, to get past that or to escape that for a little while. I personally like the symmetry of the number 3, and I think that three’s are a complete item in my book, so for jeans fic, it will be just a trilogy. But, you never know! I’m not saying never, I’m just saying probably not.


So there you have it guys, the first part of this incredible interview with DiNovia. Stay tuned for the next instalment, probably tomorrow sometime. Keep checking in!

On a last note, I’d like to thank Katie Kelly for transcribing this hour and a half long interview for me, which ended up being almost 12, 000 words! Also, a thank you to editors Badgersprite and Xan for all the advice, it is always much appreciated.

Thank you for reading and thank you to DiNovia for the interview!

- Enjoy it or not. Comment if you wish. But thank you for reading regardless.

- Just for those who are interested, here are some links to DiNovia's various fan fics for Otalia:

Here is her livejournal which is where she posts all of her fics: http://seftiri.livejournal.com/tag/otalia

For specific fics you can find them here too:

"Hide Beside Me"http://incandescentfire.com/index.php?&showtopic=982&hl=hide

"Jeans Fic Trilogy: Parts 1 & 2": http://incandescentfire.com/index.php?showtopic=1399&hl=DiNovia

and http://seftiri.livejournal.com/141785.html#cutid1

"10 Otalia Drabbles, iPod Music Challenge from P&P": http://incandescentfire.com/index.php?showtopic=935&hl=DiNovia

"Doors Left Open": http://incandescentfire.com/index.php?showtopic=977&hl=DiNovia

"Ordinary": http://incandescentfire.com/index.php?showtopic=1372&hl=DiNovia

"Somebody's Wife": http://incandescentfire.com/index.php?showtopic=1203&hl=DiNovia

"Captured for the Queen to Use" Parts 1 & 2: #1 http://community.livejournal.com/bigpurpledreams/12501.html and #2 http://community.livejournal.com/bigpurpledreams/12706.html