Thursday, June 11, 2009

What's awesome about the new fanfic

One of the phenomena attached to the Star Trek reboot that I've been most curious about is how non-Trekkies approach it and see it. This ranges from delight at watching a brand new fan watch TOS season by season and hearing them express all those lovely nuances of character we've known forever. New eyes are seeing the exact same things we saw! We did not talk ourselves gradually into a mass hallucination. A new fan can describe the characters and their relationships in the same way we have.
The fanfiction created by writers coming from other fandoms has been a joy to discover as well. I am not really into other fandoms. I just don't have time to get involved in watching tv and actually following story arcs and whatnot. Someday when I'm in the nursing home I'll get some old Battlestar Galactica and Lost DVDs or whatever. So I had no idea what a vast pool of talent is out there, and I'm humbly grateful that they have found Star Trek interesting enough to write in it. This new generation of writers may or may not know that their whole genre began with Kirk and Spock and that there is a whole tradition built up by their foremothers. But I do know that this time around writers are not spending elebenty years circling around the concept of m/m and gayness and are K and S only gay for each other and what special circumstances would have to come together before they would own up to their feelings for each other. That process is forgotten and unnecessary,and how awesome is that.

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