Lore:Can you please introduce yourself and give me an overview of your previous experience with writing fanfiction, including which fandoms you write for?
Bee:Okay, so I'm Bee, and I'm in my mid-30s. I started writing fanfiction when I was 16. I have written for a lot of fandoms, so I'm going to keep it briefer than the list [they laugh], the full list, because some are just like one or two things people made requests, but--
Lore:--Mm-hmm [affirmative], yeah--
Bee:--Some of the big ones are X-Men the movies, X-Men: Evolution, Marvel Comics...
I wrote a lot of NCIS and Star Trek, the 2019 reboot-y version. I've written some, more recently, for Bridgerton. I've written a lot for The Hunger Games. None of it's ever seen the light of day [laughs]. I've written quite a bit for Pride and Prejudice and The Vampire Diaries. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but those definitely are some of the ones I've written the most for.
Yeah. And--and when I started, when I was 16, I--I started by reading fanfiction. I didn't even know it existed.
Lore:Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Bee:I think, before then, the internet was younger back then [they laugh]. I remember discovering fanfic.net [Fanfiction.net], and I was obsessed with Rogue and Gambit from the X-Men cartoon of my childhood, but also the comics, and I just wanted to consume everything about them.
And they were--I thought it was so interesting this, like, couple who couldn't touch, you know. She couldn't, that was her mutant power, she can't touch--
Bee:--And so, how do you have this romantic, you know, connection where you can't touch each other? And it just felt like the ultimate, you know--unexpressed, you know, intimacy. And I just, I loved it all.
But part of what drew me there is at the time, you know, I was--I had undiagnosed depression, and so a lot of it was I really wanted to not be in my body, not be in my life, not be where I was living. And so it was a real way for me to escape all of that, to get out of the situation that, I had an alcoholic parent and their alcoholism was progressing and just to be away without leaving.
And eventually after I read--I don't even know--hundreds of stories, thousands, who knows?
Bee:It was all I did in my free time when I wasn't, you know, cutting--I would cut class sometimes to read, like, fanfic. I mean, I was really obsessed. I was like, I think I could do this. I think I could do this, too. And I had ideas of things I wanted to see, you know, ways I wanted to see the characters progress and--and Gambit wasn't in the X-Men movies.
So that's kind of, like, how would he come? And I had seen some introductions and and what would their relationship be like? And I think I absorbed a lot of, I don't think what I put out into the world was bringing anything new, but I [laughs], because I had absorbed a lot of stuff, but I really, yeah, I really enjoyed it.
I just remembered another fandom I wrote a lot for was Harry Potter.
Bee:So that's one I forgot. I didn't have my list in front of my face. But yeah, Harry Potter is another one. But yeah, it was really--it was really about, like, I think I can do this. And it brought me even, I felt, closer to the characters and further away from my real life, which was so deeply unhappy, unfortunately.
Lore:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for sharing that. My next question is then: what inspires you to start writing a fanfiction?
Bee:Well, today I'm inspired a lot of the time by the actual characters. So today my life's a lot happier, thankfully [laughs], and I don't have as much time to write. Not, I mean, not even close, but a lot of times it's like, I think these characters are really cool. So I'll use Bridgerton as an example because I've been writing a lot of Bridgerton lately.
I thought, Kate and Anthony are two of the characters--they were in the more recent season--and it's an enemies-to-lovers, which I think is a great trope. I think it would be terrible in my real life. It sounds awful to, like, constantly be fighting and just dislike someone and then, all of a sudden, you're like, wait, I want to fuck you.
And it's just not, I don't think that sounds fun, but it's really fun to write [laughs]. And so--so when I had ideas, you know, it would be like, what if? So a lot of times their their book and the show is written in Regency era. So what if they were in modern times and X, Y, Z? And so one of the ones I wrote more recently was like, what if they had--
So in the book, they get married and then he has some kind of crisis because he doesn't want to love her and then they work it out. And so I was like, what if you took that into modern area, era? So maybe they're not married--because you don't have to marry someone in the modern era to sleep with them--but they have some kind of relationship, and he has that same crisis.
But, like, what if he didn't come back and they didn't work it out? And so I wrote it as a second chance romance, and I really enjoyed the idea because it was, like, in the book, they mature together--
Lore:--Mm-hmm [affirmative]--
Bee:--but in the, in the evolution of thinking about these interesting characters and how they would evolve away from each other and could they come back together more evolved and be, you know, ready to have more honest conversations, and I--I thought it was really fun.
Another one, I love pets--and they have a dog--and I was really missing having a dog. And so I was just like, what if they were in the modern era and they needed to find a dog-sitter? Like, just, what [digital distortion] if these people who--in--in that one, they had, like, they were in a relationship, but it's, like, just because they don't change [digital distortion] their worldviews, so a lot of times those are the things.
Sometimes, I used to do a lot of, like, prompts and stuff. So, like, when I was writing for the Star Trek--like, 2019 movie series one--they would do, you know, holiday exchanges that--for my favorite couples, and--and there was this where_no_woman's community on LiveJournal, where_no_woman, something like that. Anyway, it was, like, they would do prompts, you know, and--and I would write drabbles and all these things.
And so I love prompts. In fact, that's some of what I write now, even for Bridgerton, is they'll do, like, Bridgerton Week or Kate and Anthony Week or Kate Week, and I'll write to the prompts or drop some clips of--of unfinished longer fics for the prompts because I--I enjoy that. I think it's really--a fun exercise to say, "oh, you have to include this thing" or "you have to think about it from this perspective."
It's how I ended up writing a Star Trek characters in a Harry Potter AU [alternate universe]. Like, somebody gave a prompt that was, like, I want you to write [laughs]--I remember being, like, oh my god, how though? And, so, it was really fun, and I actually really liked the story I ended up with. And yeah, it's, you know, another time I wrote the Star Trek characters in, like, a World War II AU because that was, like, another prompt.
So that's a lot of what inspired me as well. And sometimes it's also other things I read. So I have an unfinished story for Bridgerton that's kind of like taking those characters and putting them into a different romance novel I read. So it's like in that romance novel, the personalities of the two leads are very different. So like, what if I took these two and put them in that same situation and like how would they get to the end?
So that's some of what really inspires me. And--and sometimes because--it's also, I realized, a little bit of a crutch for me because writing original fiction, it can be intimidating to try and think of my own characters and so--so sometimes I write a fanfiction, and then I'm like, okay, this is actually different enough from the source material that I think I can make this into something that is original.
And I have done that several times and shared it. Not--not anything too deep, but just, like, showed my mom or showed friends because I don't show people my fanfiction that I know in real life [laughs], usually.
Lore:Yeah. Yeah. Um, thank you so much for sharing that with me. I definitely share several of your, like, sources of inspiration, so I feel that a lot. So my next question is: where do you position most of your fanfiction in relation to canon?
Bee:Ooh, that's a great question. [Digital distortion] Okay. So it has, it varies so much based on the source material [they laugh]. So, I mean, I am the kind of person who will--I'll write a, like, between the scenes, like I wrote a Law & Order fic once--
Lore:--Mm-hmm [affirmative], yeah--
Bee:--that was like after the end of this episode. Like, I feel like there's more to say.
And, so, I was just, like, these Law & Order characters, you know, having conversations about what happened in the episode, and--and it's probably the only Law & Order fic I ever wrote because it's so not my style to like--although, I--I guess I wrote a lot of [digital distortion] NCIS fiction, and a lot of--and almost, all the NCIS fiction was, like, between-the-scenes stuff--
Lore:--Mm-hmm [affirmative], yeah--
Bee:It was because procedurals are very, like, plot-oriented and not usually character-growth-oriented. There are some exceptions, like Elementary, or the one with Nathan Fillion, Castle.
Bee:Castle is also like that. That's, like, very character-oriented, but a [digital distortion] lot of them are like, oh, we have a case of the week and we're going to go solve it, and then maybe we have a personal conversation and you find out I'm getting a divorce randomly.
You're like, oh, wait, how did we get here? Because that's actually what workplaces are like. You're not talking about your personal life all the time. And so--and so a lot of those were, like, between-the-scenes how do these characters interact? So I--I thought Abby Sciuto and Tim McGee were [a] great couple, and they were [digital distortion] a couple very briefly at the beginning, but then that died away.
And I was like, what if it came back [laughs] and, like, had them... [digital distortion] I had written something that was, like, for one of the seasons much later on--I don't know, season seven, let's say--where it was like every episode, it was an interaction between them that you didn't see on the show--
Bee:--and how, and what that would look like. Yeah, I think I made it, like, through, like, 14 episodes before I lost steam. And so things like that definitely are canon-oriented. There are--also have been a few times where I wrote something where it was like, I wonder what the character's inner thoughts were when this was happening. So for Bridgerton, there was one--there was a scene that was very reminiscent of...
It reminded me of a line from Pride and Prejudice, and so I just did some, like, internal monologue of the character of Kate during that scene. No added--nothing's changed, nothing--
Bee:--you know. So really canon-compliant, canon whatever.
Bee:Other times, as I mentioned, like doing a Harry Potter alternate universe with Star Trek characters is, like--
Lore:--Uh-huh [affirmative]--
Bee:--you know, we're in a different universe, for sure.
Bee:And there are times when I take things into an alternate place, but I try to still hit some beats.
Lore:Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Bee:So, like, with the example I gave about the second chance romance--
Bee:--I still tried to hit some of the beats that happened in the book where it was like--
Lore:--Uh-huh [affirmative], yeah--
Bee:--you know, certain realizations that the characters needed to have or--or the--or yeah. Just and--and--and it varies widely, too. Like, I wrote a Hunger Games book where it was like I made one of the characters, a recovering alcoholic--
Lore:--Mm-hmm [affirmative]--
Bee:--not the one you would expect and [laughs]--Gale, just, not Haymitch--
Lore:--Yeah, interesting [laughs]--
Bee:--who would make a lot more sense because I was, like, the trauma that they experience--if they experienced it in our world today--
Bee:--you'd have a lot more ways to be destructive, I think--
Bee:--than they did in The Hunger Games universe.
Lore:Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Bee:And so--and I had written a lot [digital distortion] about it--it didn't hit any of the story beats--
Bee:--because basically the entire story already had--would have--some version of it already happened--
Lore:--Mm-hmm [affirmative]--
Bee:--and this is afterward.
Bee:So whatever happened that was traumatic for them, I sort of hand-wave-y "they went to war," maybe? [Laughs] Like, you know, but it's, like, done, and so there's no--there's no story beats to hit, so it's all new stuff.
Bee:And sometimes I like to write a lot about Madge from The Hunger Games, and she's not--she's hardly in it, so there's no story beats to hit, you know.
Bee:Sometimes, I--I wrote a--a Star Trek: The Next Generation fic once that was--there was a character in one scene--
Lore:--Mm-hmm [affirmative]--
Bee:--in one episode. And I--a few episodes later, there is a episode in The Next Generation where the ship blows up over and over again [laughs]--
Bee:--because they are stuck in a time loop. It's a great episode, one of my favorites, and I was like, what if this random character--who, you know, like, who we don't know anything about--like, what is her experience when that is happening?
Bee:Like she has to die over and over again. And like, what if she had some echoes of these memories? Like, how traumatic would that be? Like, they go through a lot of traumatic stuff [laughs]--
Bee:--so it just varies widely. I try to, when I do write fiction, you know, I try to make it clear, like, okay, this is an alternate universe, this is canon-compliant, this is canon-related, like--
Bee:--kind of make it clear so that people who are reading if--if they are reading, I mean, who even knows--will kind of have a sense of like, okay, this is what I'm getting into because some people really love, like, a stick-to-the-story and just to go deeper, like, you know. But that--usually at least one thing has to change, otherwise you're just writing the same book again.
Lore:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I agree. 100%. Sounds good. Leading into our next question: when you are writing a fanfiction, what elements of your story or narrative do you consider the most? So, like, examples of the elements could be, like, the tense you choose, or the descriptions you're writing, the narrator--narrator's perspective that you pick to write from, the plot structure, the characterization, or so forth.
Bee:Wow, I don't know that I put that much thought into it. I think if--the honest answer is [inaudible] that usually it starts with the idea of dialogue.
Bee:I really like character voice and character voices. And so a lot of times, it'll be like, oh, these characters are having a conversation in my mind--that makes me sound crazy [laughs].
Bee:I just mean that they are--I just think about a situation or, you know, and--or I'll see something and it'll--oh, I have a great example. So, I don't know if you've seen that graph of Leonardo DiCaprio and his girlfriends and their ages. There's like a chart on the internet, highly recommend you look it up if you haven't seen it--
Bee:--and [laughs] just the world needs to know about it. And I was like, if Anthony Bridgerton existed today and, like, was a movie star, wouldn't that totally be him though? I mean, and--and so I was talking with a friend who's in the fandom--
Bee:--and I was like, "I'm kind of obsessed with the idea of, like, him as, like, George Clooney and Kate as Amal" and, like, but they--but--unlike George and Amal, who seem to have, like, a pretty steady, normal relationship--it would be hitting the beats of the story in the sense that, like, she doesn't like him, he likes--you know, he maybe is interested in her. He makes a terrible first impression--
Lore:--Mm-hmm [affirmative] , yeah--
Bee:--like the beats of the--I went with the TV story more--and kind of, like, making them, like, having them live these lives where they're [digital distortion] in these different careers.
Lore:Uh-huh [affirmative].
Bee:So in that case, it was a bit more about the plot. It wasn't so much about the dialogue, but a lot of, like--when I was writing a lot of Star Trek fanfiction, a lot of it was I loved, like, James Kirk's voice. I thought it was so fun the way Chris Pine played him--
Lore:--Mm-hmm [affirmative]--
Bee:--and Dr. McCoy. Shoot, I'm blanking on the actor's name. But--he was great, Bones--
Bee:--Leonard McCoy. Anyway, he also, like, was just so grumpy all the time [laughs], and I loved their back and forth. And I remember I was bored on a plane, and I just spent--I wrote in a notebook for like four or five--six, ten, I don't know how many--pages of just dialogue where I was like, they're just having a conversation about nothing where, you know, he wants to do something, you know, Dr. McCoy is like, this is terrible, and--and maybe Spock is there just, like, watching them. And it was just so fun. It's a fun dynamic, but I--a lot of times when I'm writing, sometimes description comes easily, especially if I already have, like, a pretty full plot in mind.
Sometimes I don't have any plot in mind. I just have, like, a prompt that's like, "World War II," and then I'm like, okay, let's see what happens. But a lot of times, as I'm writing, I might write some description, but I'll sometimes skip description and just go with dialogue and then go back and write the description afterwards about what they're doing, how they're moving--if it's pertinent. I mean, sometimes you don't need that. If the stuff's moving fast [Bee snaps twice], then you just keep it moving. But yeah, it was very--it's a lot of times, it's that--it's that conversation.
I've been mulling went over for a fandom that I don't even think exists from, like, a romance novel that just made me cry and cry and cry. And it's called Day of the Duchess. I think my response was over-the-top, but I--for some reason--love these characters. And I was like, what if they didn't get married and then, but the--the rest of the things all stayed the same. Like, how would he win her back over? And I've been, like, a lot of what I think about when I think about these characters is--is their dialogue and the way and--and internal monologues and how they just could not understand each other.
I can't get them even close to the finish line, so I haven't written anything down. But it's--it's been fun. I mean, that's what's fun for me is just imagining the conversations.