Jews in Fanfic

[mofic]

I imagine we have a number of fanfic authors in this community. I'd love to hear how folks deal with Jewish issues in writing fanfic, if at all and any related thoughts on the topic

Comments

[astaria51]

I feel like as Jews, we often have different perspectives on normal cultural events. So I don't feel like I need to write about people being Jewish, or whatnot, to bring a Jewish perspective of the world to my stories. Or even to stories that I read. That's just my perspective, no matter what.

And obviously, a different perspective is good. The mere experience of hearing about Jewish practice or cultural concern deepens fanfic as a genre. But I also think we bring something to fanfic as writers/readers.

That said, when there are Jewish characters for me to play with, I often play with them -- my Buffy fic was more likely to have Willow being Jewish as I experience it (I joke that I am Willow: I'm a cultural/secular Jew, bisexual, and for a long time was Wiccan - now am more pantheistic).

And definitely, the idea of writing Supernatural fic with a Jewish bent would be interesting - they're often so Christian-oriented even though half of what they're doing would come off pagan to a strongly-Christian viewer (sooo: my brother sees visions, and we trap demons in pentacles and kill them with salt. also, i don't believe in God, really. but there is a Hell, and demons you can make deals with. and polytheistic dieties are all evil, sadistic and pissed) that I feel like they need a good talking to. :D

For that matter a Jewish backstory for Lilith on SPN would be interesting, since we saw so little of her.

I'd be interested in some pro-pagan Supernatural fics as well, for the same reason.

[astaria51]

As a side note, this of course doesn't cover original fic, just fandom. My original fics almost always include some kind of Judaism, whether secular, religious or not - because, of course, that's my life experience.

But, somehow, it's okay in fic to make noncanonically gay characters gay but not noncanonically Jewish characters Jewish. So...there's that. LOL.

[mofic]

But, somehow, it's okay in fic to make noncanonically gay characters gay but not noncanonically Jewish characters Jewish. So...there's that. LOL.

I write m/m slash and I think that we should follow the same rules for both. It's okay to write something about a character that is not shown in canon, but it's up to the author to make it believable. If the character appears to be heterosexual (or at least sexually/romantically involved with a woman), then the slash writer who chooses to write him as gay (and not all slash depicts self-identified gay characters just as many real life MSM do not identify as gay) needs to deal with that. And there are lots of ways to do that - he might be intentionally deceiving because he doesn't want it known he's gay, he might be self-deceiving because he thinks he can get over being gay, he might not yet realize he's gay. All of those things happen with real life gay men and all of them can be credibly written into fiction.

Similarly, if a fanfic writer wants to write a character as Jewish when canon shows him/her as not Jewish (or never specifies one way or another) I'm all for it, as long as it's done credibly. And again, I think there are lots of credible ways to do it and which one is chosen will depend on the fandom, on the author, and on the story s/he wants to tell.

[marag]

I've written two stories in which I portray Robin (of Batman and...) as Jewish. One was a throwaway joke piece and the other was a bit more serious. Since his religion is never identified in the comics, as far as I can tell (and I've read a good chunk of the comics he's appeared in!), I figured it was safe.

I...I wanted to play with the character a bit, I guess. Making him Jewish in the silly piece was purely a way to give him a nice Jewish Bubbe to pester him about settling down, but in the second, I wanted to use his not-very-Jewish background to look at what he does. I didn't completely succeed, but that was my goal.