this means war

[extemporanea]

One of the more entertaining side effects of my liminal academic existence and strange research interests is that I'm becoming the go-to person for The Media when they approach my Cherished Institution for commentary on the more outré corners of culture: Lewis Carroll, or fairy tale, or Terry Pratchett, or vampires, or, apparently, fan fiction.

Comments

[jeanniewal]

This whole post makes me happy - it's good not to be on the very outer lunatic fringes anymore, with Reavers and men with blue hands. Yay for fanfiction! Also adore the xkcd headcannon - do the Avengers not all live in Stark Tower? I thought that was canon canon!

[wolverine_nun]

Weird. Everywhere I tun this week, I'm running into Firefly references. It's making my head spin. We have PZ Myers with "in fact, it makes me feel like an inhabitant of the planet Miranda, only I can’t make up my mind whether to just lie down and die or go full Reaver" and Confused Cats Against Feminism.

Two by two, hands of blue...

[extemporanea]

In various bits of comics canon the Avengers live either in Stark Tower or in Tony Stark's mansion, with sitcom shenanigans resulting, but the MCU hasn't depicted this yet. The best we've seen is a glimpse in the end credit sequence of one Iron Man movie of Tony's blueprints for different floors of Stark Tower tailored for the individual Avengers. MCU reserves the right to diverge from comics canon early and often, so I for one will be delighted if they choose to follow this bit.

[bronchitikat]

Lecturer in Fan Fiction - cool!

I completely misunderstood your ref to the Avengers living anywhere. Surely John Steed and Emma Peel are kinda London based?

Then I read jeaniewal's comment, and realised I'd got the wrong Avengers. Such is lif, such is being part of an older generation!

As for 'the JohnLock Conspiracy' - why are the producers (and fanfic writers) so fixated on sexual orientation? I thought these days we'd got past all that and people could just get on as colleagues. Or am I imagining things?

BTW - do Steed and Peel have fanfic?

[extemporanea]

I think the sexual orientation aspect of Sherlock is inevitable given Doyle's original text, which does construct a very close relationship between Sherlock and John, and which also explicitly presents Sherlock as not being into women. Certainly there are a lot of Sherlock versions pre Mofftis's one which play up the homoerotic subtext - and I think there is definitely a homoerotic subtext. The fan fiction focus is partly the tendency of fan fiction generally to focus on romantic relationships, but it also responds to the show's shameless and frequently frustrating games with homoerotic tension.

If you want Avengers fanfic in the John Steed/Emma Peel sense, see http://archiveofourown.org/tags/The%20Avengers%20(TV)/works, but you'll have to weed a bit as some fic writers apparently don't have much truck with tag coherence, and there's some bleed into Marvel Avengers owing to mislabelling.

[bronchitikat]

Fairy nuff!

Thanks.

[vesta_aurelia]

It's like the Harry Potter 'Ship Wars all over again.
Complete with can(n)ons.

If there's a show/book/film, theres fanfic about it. You might try An Archive of Our Own (A03).

[virtualkathy]

Nice to hear you burbling enthusiastically :-)

[pumeza]

Loved, loved, loved the interview, it was such fun. I think you actually got the gleefully pompous John Maytham to consider reading fanfic...

[extemporanea]

Glad you enjoyed it, I had enormous fun giving it :>. I keep meaning to send Mr Maytham some recommendations, he did put out a call for high-quality fics, but I get sidetracked...