Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Fanfic in RL

What reactions do you get when you mention the concept of fanfic in everyday conversation?

So far, I haven't met one single person in real life who knew what fanfic meant before I explained it to them. I have a couple of friends who actually wrote fanfic (actually, Mary-Sued, but I guess many people start this way) before I told them about it - only they didn't know it was an official hobby. One of them has been my saviour during Advanced Physics classes, in fact - I don't know how I'd stay awake unless I was discussing Harry Potter fanfic with her

Apart from them, the reactions I have received vary. When I explain them the concept of fanfic (usually giving them a short version like 'it's writing stories based on existing heroes'), most of them give me funny looks that say 'well, that sounds strange, but if you like it...' Some ask questions like "are these stories going to be turned into a TV series too?" or "have you published any of them?" (meaning in books). Once I told someone via SMS, and he SMS-ed me back with something like 'Whoa, whoa, wait a minute there! What in the world is that??'. And I seem to recall someone finding it 'cool', but I can't remember who it was for the life of me.

I am now campaigning for the joys of fanfiction to everyone who will listen to me

Also... how did you find out about fanfic? I was informed by Raquel, with whom I'd been exchanging emails for a while. So it happened online, with the help someone who had already been into it for some time. Although I had started writing my first pieces of fanfic years earlier, when I used to watch Mexican soap-operas and couldn't wait until the next episode

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Anna, I identify completely! That's just the kind of reaction I get and I've also been campaigning for the joys of fanfiction since I began reading, maybe about six years ago.

I first heard about fanfics from my friends who were into it waaay before I was. My friends were the hugest Harry Potter fans in elementary school, and they began reading fanfics to sate their HP needs during the increasingly long wait between books. I was a little skeptical at first, especially since you have to weed through fics at FF.Net and I had to suffer from reading many unfinished-but-fantastic stories. As I ventured out into different fandoms, I got more and more into it and I haven't looked back since! :p

I honestly never thought that I'd be interested in writing fanfiction, but I was really inspired by a TV movie I saw lately, so I started writing my first fic after years of reading. It's fun, but I think I still prefer reading. I mean, I enjoy having everything go my way, but I'm an inherently lazy person. That said, I've been thinking of writing a Troy fic now, which contradicts my vow to write one story and no more. I'll have to see what happens though, because I realize that I once I start a story, I'm responsible for everyone who reads it, but I'm really bad at time management and school takes all my time.

In the meantime, I'm just going to keep reading, reading, reading!

I first found out about fanfic, as far as I can recall, at a Star Trek convention. Fanzines! What a fabulous idea! It wasn't, I hasten to add, 'zines about Star Trek, but with a high concentration of fans, other show's fanzines were there, too.

It's gotten a *lot* easier and more accessible since people started getting online.

PJ
(ex) zine addict
drugs would be cheaper

I started writing it instinctively ages ago.... I think even before I was too far outa grade school (13 yrs old) I was writing Doctor Who fanfic. But I was actually far more likely to sort of invent my own fandom, like write "fanfics" involving someone I had a crush on. When I was 15-18 or 19 I had an almightly crush on Greg Louganis, and he heavily featured in stuff. Oh, and now that I think about it, my sister really liked the tv show Knight Rider, and I wrote a little bit based on that.

but with people outside of my family, I think I'd first have to spell the word "fanfic", explain where the word came from, and then draw diagrams. Some people have an astonishing lack of imagination.

(ps---I see people are posting fast and furious on this, right before my eyes! Pam mentioned fanzines----yeah, I did a bit of star trek too, and that was my first major encounter with other fanfic types!)

You know, I can't ever recall having a conversation of any depth about fanfic with work colleagues. I retired just as the internet came in, so all of my experience is pre the net.

I don't remember that anyone I knew actually showed an interest in learning what it was I was doing. I started writing poetry and short stories when I was eight - animal themes to start with - and gradually over the years I graduated to SF and SFantasy as my area of interest. So my family didn't really see the difference when I switched to fanfic. It was all just that strange hobby that kept me tapping on the typewriter till the late hours and had done since I was kneehigh to a grasshopper.

In the days that I was working, I'd spend my evenings writing the next bit of my fanfic, then I'd print out the newest version, put it into a ring binder and spend my lunch-hour editing the previous night's work. The most I can recall ever discussing what I was doing went something along the lines of:

"What you doing?"
"Writing a story."
"What about?"
"Blake's Seven. It's a TV show."
"Oh."

End of conversation.

I never felt embarrassed to talk about it, or tried to hide it, but I never met anyone at work who shared my interests, so it never became a topic to chat about. In fact, I think my work colleagues probably felt much the same way as my family did - that strange hobby she has, but, hey, if it keeps her happy... <g>

I first discovered the concept of fanfic while browsing through a local bookstore for Star Trek books. ST:TOS (re-runs!!) was the very first SF show which caught my attention. The one which set me on the path of loving so many SF shows over the years. And I'd been buying up every Trek book I could find. This book was New Voyages - a collection of stories by fans. I suddenly realised that I'd been writing fanfic for the past few years and never known that's what it was called. Blinding light of a revelation that one was!

From there, like Pam said, the first place I made a beeline for at a Trek convention was the sales room and every fanzine I could snap up. I had piles of the things in my attic until just recently.

LabRat

It's really not a conversation-starter around the people I know. I've only ever told one person that I'm into fanfic, but he's one of my bigger computer nerd friends. I think his reaction was something like, "You mean you can stand reading on your computer screen for *that* *long*?!" Maybe one day I'll start printing. But for now, I'm in a group that reads things like Masques in one sittting. (Took me all night, in case you're interested.)

Anyway, I told one of my friends I was into Superman and Lois & Clark, and apparently that's not exactly cool, so I keep my mouth shut. No biggie.

I never even heard the word fanfic til I started surfing the web. I wrote tons of stories in middle school to calm my tv show withdrawls, but it wasn't til I started looking up Lois & Cark right after the show ended that I found people actually wrote stories and posted them on the web.

JD

I've told several people that I'm into fanfic and have explained the concept to them, but none seemed interested. The assistant principal came into my room to discuss a Read-A-Thon with my students and asked why I didn't raise my hand to say that I was reading a book right now. I told her and the class that I read Lois and Clark fanfiction on the internet in amounts that would rival the size of any of their books. I received curious looks, but nothing more.

When my brother came over to my house, he saw me constantly running back and forth to my computer and wanted to know what I was doing. I told him that I had just posted my own story and was reading the feedback. He hung his head low, shook it, and said (in mock shame), "Oh Susan, is this what you've become?"

On the other hand, a parent of one of my students asked how she could help her son practice his English (which is a second language, though you'd hardly guess!). I asked the student what his favorite tv show was and told him about fanfiction. He read some on fanfiction.net and is into it, and now he's writing his own. Cool!

I think there are a lot of us who have never actually said the word "fanfic" to anyone else who we don't already know likes fanfic.

When I was TAing a senior-level 1 credit computer programming class, I caught one of my students looking at fanfiction.net on one of the computers instead of working on her program, and I kicke her out of class instead of admitting that I knew exactly what she was looking at :p .

There are probably quite a few of us who would never utter the words "fanfic" or "Lois and Clark" in public.

Most everyone who knows me knows that I write stories, they just don't know what for.

I'm not ashamed or anything. I have mentioned the word 'fanfic' quite a few times, but I've gotten so tired of explaining what that is (to the same people!) that I've stopped being specific. When somebody asks, I'm reading, and they know not to disturb me. I did find one friend in RL who also read fanfic, but our fandoms are... different. <g>

I found fanfic back in '99 after a particularily nasty cliffhanger in the X Files season finale. I'd hoped online to look for spoilers for the next season when I'd stumbled across a collection of stories based around the season finale. From there it escalated. Several fandoms later... here I am.

I don't know as I'm ashamed of it, but I certainly don't tell other people either so take from that what you will.

I think I've always had some sort of leanings toward fanfic. As a child, I was a voracious reader so disappointment in an ending was bound to set in from time to time. To make myself feel better, I'd re-write/add an epilogue to "improve" it.

It wasn't until the advent of the internet that I found FoLCs. This was my first experience with fanfic, and remains foremost in my heart for many reasons. Nowadays it is, once again, my only fandom of interest. Don't watch television much, and don't have time to wade through the dreck even if I were interested in another show.

As for other people knowing, I find it's easier to just not correct people's impressions that I'm hard at work researching my next paper or deep in some Kafka-esque reading.

Apparently those of you who discuss this with others are in a much more open-minded group of people. Kudos to them. Mine consider television watching a frivolous waste of time, and I shudder to think what they'd say if I told them I not only watched but actually wrote stories for free about it.

Besides, it's nice having a guilty pleasure that hurts no one

It's hard to really get into conversation with people about things that fascinate you, but not them. For example, I'm really an astronomy nerd, and I guess the rest of you are not, huh? So if I started to explain to you why the star designated Mu in the rather southerly constellation of Columba is one of my favorite stars, would you be interested? Would you like to know why I get a kick out of a galaxy called NGC 3310? Will you listen if I talk to you about the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, about supernovae 1a, about the cosmic microwave background or about string and brane theories? Guess not!

It's really hard for me to find people who I can really discuss astronomy with, because my problem is that I'm extremely interested in these things, but I can't talk about them in mathematical terms. And most people who are really astronomers like to rattle off numbers or formulae or equations, or else they explain, down to the minutest detail, about their latest extremely accurate measurements of something which seems unimportant to me, like the number of ions they managed to detect in the upper parts of the atmosphere of Titan. So the astronomers lose themselves in the math or in myopic details of their science, and the non-astronomers couldn't care less. And how do I talk to anybody about astronomy in a way that interest me?

Don't worry, people, I'm not trying to make you see astronomy the way I see it. Similarly, I'm not trying to make anyone I actually know here in Sweden interested in Superman, or in Lois and Clark. It's no use. You like these things, or you don't. I talk to you FoLCs about Lois and Clark, not because I believe you think of Lois and Clark the way I do, but because you can understand the things I want to say better than anyone I meet in my daily life. And that, I guess, is what this kind of boards and forums are all about: that you get to talk to people who share your interest in something that you can't really talk about with any of the people that you actually meet in the flesh.

Ann

TOC---i can soooooo relate to how you feel about having to carry corks around with you. The corks are to stop the mouth up because you'd love to talk to people about your interests, but no one else on the planet shares 'em. there have been times in my life when I swore I would never speak again, literally, never talk, a vow of silence beyond giving someone the time of day and saying thank you to the person who bagged my groceries.

funny thing is, I coulda used you about 15 yrs ago when I needed to do research on supernovas because of a star trek story I was writing.

and how many of us mention to our real life contacts "hey, I've got a story on the internet that actually has (fill in the issue being discussed) as part of the plot!" ? zip. we are all wierdos living in our own little universes. i oughta know, looking at my sig and avatar.


---ps--I mean, we may mention the stories, but do those people go read 'em? nope.

In high school, I used to gather a couple of my friends and during lunchtime I'd rattle off on what happened on LnC the night before and what I thought should've happened. Part of my everyday journal was written with my synposises. Not sure if they were actually interested in what I had to say or they were just humoring me. lol

I didn't discover fanfic until I started doing web searches on LnC right after it was canceled in 1997. By that time, my family had finally gotten onto the internet and I wanted to soak up anything and EVERYTHING having to do with this show because I was so upset with it's demise.

After hearing about it and reading several fanfics, I was finally inspired to start writing my own in 1998.

All of my closest friends know I write fanfic because most of them write it as well. We all write for different genres, so I find that pretty kewl.

The people I run into that don't know about fanfic are usually those idiot random ims chatters. They usually ask me what it is and then when I tell them, their first impression is that I actually write for a TV show and get paid for it! I tell them I could only wish. lol The other reaction is one of publishing books. They think I have a book out there to read. Again, I say I wish, but you can find some of my written work online.

I was never much of a reader in my school days, but I do remember reading TV tie-ins even way back then - I remember the first Sci Fi book I ever read was a Star Trek story. At some point, I found zines, but I don't remember which fandom introduced me to them - I believe it was Beauty and the Beast. I think I found fanfiction.net through the X Files and I've read through several fandoms worth. I was always very cautious to keep my professional life (teaching) and my fan life separate, because unless one is also a fan, one tends to look down on fans. I am very lucky that my husband is also a fan (Batman is his obsession) so he totally understands when I join my internet friends for a "vaccation" somewhere in the country to see some celbrity or other. The funny thing is, I've recently started to admit fan stuff to my colleagues. Several of them know that I go "visit" Bruce Boxleitner and Melissa Gilbert at various events, and pictures from those events are my screensaver, which has launched during presentations. No one recognized them and wonder if they are realtives, which is fine for me but sad for them. What brought me here is the fact that around Halloween, our direct TV stopped working, and hubby never got around to calling to get it fixed, and so we've been watching DVDs ever since, since we can't watch TV. Needless to say, I'm wearing out season 1 and when there was no more, I went to fanfic. I can't believe I wasn't part of this fandom earlier, butI guess at the time I couldn't handle more than one fandom at a time and I was totally into the X Files. I recently told a colleague about fanfic - just before Christmas vacation, and she went abroad for two weeks, so I haven't seen her since. I also showed her and another colleague one of the trailers. I'll let you know if I've hooked them or not.

Cheryl

I just realized, I replied in this topic without actually answering the question

Yes, I'll mention fanfic. Back when I first started writing for L&C (1995), I was working in an office and I told a few people there... one of them clearly thought I was weird, but hey, he was obsessed about basketball, so I didn't feel he had any room to criticize

I've told my mom about the Kerth awards, and she's read one or two of my short stories. The one time I showed her an episode she said she could understand why I liked it, but it's not her thing.

I've told a few other moms in my "Mothers of Preschoolers" group -- actually, once at a Tupperware party, the ice-breaker was to tell one unique thing about yourself. I told them I'd gotten fan mail from around the world and had one of my stories translated into French My kids are convinced that I'm famous

More recently, I've told some of our friends from church -- in part explaining *why* I wanted to drive nine hours to Pennsylvania for a day, then another nine hours home the next, which involved explaining friends from online, which led to fanfic in general. One of them's also a general contractor who did some work on our house, so he noticed one day I was working on a video (he tried to talk to me and I waved him off ). Later, I showed him the two videos I'd done, and a fanfic trailer, I think. I doubt he'd ever follow it up outside of a conversation with me, but he thought it was kinda cool (he said I was obviously a romantic), and has been willing to listen to me babble on about it once or twice

So, yeah, I'll talk about fandom and fanfic to all sorts of people. In fact, at times, it's hard to get me to *stop* talking about it Mostly, the reaction is a polite "how nice for you" accompanied by a mildly interested yet vaguely puzzled look. If I think they'd really like to know (or if I need to make a point <g> ) I'll keep on explaining until the puzzled look is cleared up and the interested part has gone, too

PJ

It's not a topic I bring up at work (the people there are too stunned by my expressed intention of putting a model of Thunderbird 1 into a supersonic wind tunnel and taking flow pattern photos for me to start talking about Superman), but neither do I deny that I write. A couple of years ago, some of my students somehow found my L&C fics and came to ask me if the writer was me; I said yes and the conversation more or less fizzled out (I don't think they knew what to say after that ).

I've also encouraged workmates not to be ashamed of being fans of all sorts of stuff, including L&C, but mostly the topic doesn't arise. Shame.

Phil, starting to seriously plan those TB1 tests now that the tunnel is back on deck