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Thursday, December 11, 2003 Goldberg: Fan fiction
By Tod Goldberg
Around the Thanksgiving table a few weeks ago, my brother informed me he was in the midst of a nasty battle on the Internet. It seems the fan club of a C-list TV star whom Lee once worked with was up in arms over some perceived slight Lee'd muttered in print. It seemed a credible enough thing to occur and, considering the angry e-mails I've received regarding a particular singer/actor I've written about, not all that noteworthy. People older than 15 who are still ardent members of fan clubs for marginal celebrities generally fit into a subcategory of sociopath that veers dangerously toward utter whack job. I don't mean to say that members of the late Jon-Erik Hexum fan club are going to order a hit on his former co-star Meeno Peluce, but one has to wonder why, beyond sycophantal leanings, normal adults would spend scads of free time and energy devoting themselves to celebrities to the point that they make them into mythic creatures. In many cases, I believe people fall in love with a character and are unwilling to admit that the character is not the real person. Of course, a character can also be a real person: It is highly unlikely that, say, Neil Diamond is as badass in real life as I believe he is on the stage or in his songs. He's a personality in my eyes, not a person, which is why I've stopped actively stalking him. Later that night, Lee directed me to the message board where the members of the C-list actor's fan club were calling him names and accusing him of Geneva Convention war crimes. What I found were hundreds of women who seemed to believe that said C-list actor was their God, Heaven, Krispy Kreme, Dildo-With-A-Vibrating-Kickstand-And-French-Tickler and Warrior Prince of Acting. They were angry with my brother, for sure, but it was hard to figure out exactly why, other than that he'd stated his opinion of a casting decision that had occurred on the show both he and Mr. C-list were part of...a show that hasn't been on TV for nearly three years. In search of further answers, I kept clicking around until I found a link that promised me something far more insidious: fan fiction. For those of you not in the know, fan fiction is when people not involved in the actual creation of a show, book, movie or a celebrity's actual life create stories about them. It is one of the greatest and most wildly entertaining forms of copyright infringement this side of Kazaa. So, to say I was excited to read the fanfic about this particular star would be a vast understatement. I gravitated to the one where the star gets involved in a prison riot. It came with a helpful dictionary of terms used in the story, including "turn out," "shank" and "keep it real." Our hero was almost gang-raped by some convicts, but, alas, escaped with his anal hymen intact. I clicked through the rest of the stories and killed a plate of leftover ham in the process. The stories were uniformly...uh...well...bad. All of them were written by women, which I found somewhat surprising, but then I thought about the correlation between Teen Beat and Tiger Beat and fan clubs in general and it seemed to make some sense. Now I was all fired up to read more fan fiction about bad actors, minor celebrities and long-forgotten TV shows and movies. Forgoing the usual and known--anything involving Spock, Buffy and Elvis, basically--I fired up the Google and got searching. I started with a rather tender story revolving around Face and Murdock from "The A-Team." On the day of his wedding, Face takes a little time from the usual pro-forma screwing of hookers to reflect on the life he and Murdock have shared. In my quest to read fan fiction about Corey Haim, or inspired by his wonderful life, I discovered a Lost Boys fan fiction site that contained a disclaimer warning others not to "steal my original characters or my ideas...go and get your own characters and ideas; have a little faith in yourself! But don't steal from me!" I searched the entire story the woman had written and not one mention of the word "paradox" was found. The night moved forward with stirring readings from fans of "Manimal" and "Full House" and proceeded on with a page full of stories starring the boys from Duran Duran. I opted not to read some prime selections from the aforementioned Jon-Erik Hexum fan club page (the guy is dead, after all, give him some dignity!) and closed out my evening back at my original starting point--the home of the C-list actor and the zealots who love him. They really do hate my brother with the same zeal they love their star, and it occurred to me that if they ever got to know either in real life, their opinions might turn. Would I then find my own life fan fictionalized? "Tod, with shank in hand, was ready to turn out some punk who wasn't keeping it real..." |
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