Collinsport Shipping: TWO SECRET LIVES

Let us assume it is safe to say that we all have dirty little secrets. Or we used to, before we started broadcasting them all over Facebook. Still, there are those who will park outside 7 Eleven, clandestinely indulging in a pint of Ben & Jerry’s before going home to dinner. Some people hide behind the bushes in the backyard to smoke a cigarette (or something else), away from the prying eyes of their parents (or children). Some people write fanfiction.

What’s wrong with fanfiction? Why are many people mortified at the prospect of their family or coworkers finding out that they post flights of fancy on the Internet? Surely there are worse things one could be caught doing online. Perhaps some of us are writing scenarios with a mature theme or enacting a fantasy role play that’s just too intimate to share with anyone but complete strangers.

This was my family’s reaction:

Extra! Extra! Read all about your favorite pairings!

Husband: Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. By the way, is this why you still don’t have a job?

Teenage Daughter: I told all my friends that my mom is so cool, she literally writes fanfiction. They thought it was awesome. And weird.

Grown Daughter: I prefer Harry Potter/Avengers crossovers, but I’ll be your Beta, if you want. 

Mother: That’s nice, dear. Does it pay anything?

After my first blog, I sent inquiries out to several writers to ask if they would like to be profiled in upcoming columns. The response was almost invariably, “I would love to but, for God’s sake, don’t use my real name.”
One of these closet contributors is Peekaboo Fang. She writes a wildly popular serial on Fanfiction.net called Role Reversals. The only negative thing I can say about it is that chapters have been posted infrequently for almost a year now. She must have a real life or something. Peekaboo agreed to tell me about her fanfic writing career if I maintain her anonymity. She revealed only that she is “closing in on 30” and comes from a creative family obsessed with old-school horror and comics.

She was first introduced to Dark Shadows as a child, thanks to the aforementioned family members and their VHS collection.

“I was hooked right away. Those early episodes with Victoria and Barnabas were like Alice in Wonderland meets Dracula to me. [They] captured my imagination right away.

“I started reading DS pieces occasionally when I first discovered Fanfiction.net and Livejournal years ago, but went through a long period where I was consumed by other fic obsessions. I didn't get seriously into reading DSFF until more recently, when I heard that Burton was making a movie, and that re-sparked my interest.

“My favorite character is definitely Willie. I find his arc so fascinating, how he runs the gamut from scumbag to tortured slave to underdog hero. I'm also quite fond of Barnabas, Vicki, Josette, and I harbor a special soft spot for Nicholas Blair, so I naturally gravitate towards stories which showcase any of those guys. The Globetrotters and the Willie Loomis series is amazing; I'm a big fan of those.” (The interviewee may be sucking up to me there.)

“Zombie Josette is another one of my favorite DSFF authors. Her Roger/Victoria one-shots, in particular, tickle my fancy. For some reason, I like exploring unexpected pairings in DS fics (such as Willie/Carolyn in my current story). This only works if the author is competent, though, and Zombie makes the romantic tension between Roger and Vicki believable.

“I'm usually not a fan of modern retellings, but Joriki's Resurgam is a page-turner, figuratively speaking. It is unbelievably well written with unique twists and turns. My new favorite is A Gift From Above by Val76. It's about Willie/Maggie, my original favorite pairing, and it's still capable of tugging at my heartstrings, especially when it's done so sweetly and honestly. I'm a romantic at heart.”

This is not what they meant by closet writers

I asked Ms. Fang what inspired her to start writing her own fanfiction.

“Crossovers,” she replied. “One of the great things about fanfic is the idea of combining my favorite fandoms. You'll see a few on my page at Fanfiction.net. My first story came about when I became obsessed with combining two TV shows I love, Star Trek and Mystery Science Theater 3000. Even though they're both sci-fi, they're still such different products. For example, one is a drama, the other is a comedy. I liked exploring the possibilities to see how these very different sci-fi characters would relate to each other if forced to interact.

"Unfortunately, the Star Trek category at that time on FF.net was being bombarded by trolls and flamers, and so my crossover was infiltrated by really nasty reviews. I was young enough then to take it too much to heart. By the time I'd gained enough courage to try again, the well had run dry, idea-wise, for that particular story, so I moved on to other genres/categories.”

Trolling and flaming, for the uninitiated, are common occurrences in some of the more popular fandoms, like Harry Potter and Star Trek. A troll posts intentionally dreadful stories with horrendous grammar and absurd plots often involving sudden, unexplained sex scenes. A flamer is a bully who writes degrading reviews for the fun of it. Often, these twisted individuals harass their victim to the point of distraction, and the author will delete the story just to end the abuse. These rants are usually full of obscenities, misspelled and in all caps. I am pleased to say that I have never seen evidence of either activity in the (TV) Dark Shadows forum.
I asked Peekaboo about the stories she went on to create.

"I'm pretty eclectic in my tastes, so it's hard to pinpoint just what kind of stuff I write. I don't write for Dark Shadows only. On my FF.net page I've posted everything from multi-chapter adventures, most of which explore the tragic origins of various villains (Jackie, Role Reversals), angsty, romantic one-shots (Remember, Life Upon Her Yellow Hair But Not Within Her Eyes), goofy comedy crossovers (In The Very Distant Future, Jeeves and the Opera Ghost), to even a little femme-slash (She Knows), though that's not something I'll probably write again—mostly because I felt like it turned out kind of offensive and weird.

“Aside from Dark Shadows, I'm a sucker for Batman, Star Trek, Phantom of the Opera, and DC comics in general. And those are only the fandoms I've written fics for! There are tons of others I obsess over. I don't know if I'll actually write too many more fics after finishing Role Reversals (it's an awesome process but exhausting). But if I do, I've had a few plot bunnies for the show Once Upon A Time and Phantom. So who knows what the future holds!”

Let’s talk about Role Reversals, which has more “likes” and “follows” than any other story in my field of vision.

“Role Reversals. Hmm. Where to begin? One day, I started thinking about how things would have played out had Josette been the one cursed, not Barnabas. The switch in gender dynamics opened up all sorts of juicy possibilities, allowing me to explore in flashback how Josette would reconcile the gentle, well-bred young lady we know from the show to the powerful vampire she becomes in my story. And by swapping the roles completely, for instance, Nicholas hooks up with her—instead of Angelique with Barnabas—I could also delve into the ways men left their marks on women they would  ‘ruin’ back then. In effect, Nicholas punishing Josette with vampirism came to stand for men punishing women for expressing their sexuality.

“There comes a moment in a chapter I'm working on where Josette actively rebels against this punishment and decides, once she awakens in 1967, that she'll fight back. Unfortunately, the two centuries that pass really sour her outlook, and she commits vengeful, violent acts, obsessing over getting back what was cheated her (a happy life with Barnabas) in what she hopes is a more forgiving and independent time to women (1967 certainly wasn't perfect, but compared to 1795, it is better).”

Peekaboo didn’t mention it here but there are other clever switch offs in the story. It begins with an orphan Barnabas Collins who arrives at his cousins’ estate to become tutor to young David. The vampire Josette, of course, sees him as the reincarnation of her 18th century beloved. Her brother is a little boy named Stefan and Elliot Stokes is the doctor who discovers her secret. You would think Willie would have more fun living with Josette in the Old House than he did with Barnabas, but the guy still can’t cut a break. There are other twists and turns, but I don’t want to reveal them here. Read the story.

What happened with the crossover, Victoria Phibes?

“I'm a big fan of horror movies, and my earlier DS story, My Name is Victoria Phibes, is a crossover with the Vincent Price Abominable Dr. Phibes movies. Unfortunately, unlike with Role Reversals, I sort of charged headlong into that one without any sort of outline, and I quickly ran out of plot ideas. So, yeah, it's just dangling there, and darned if I know what to do with it, which is too bad, because I actually like what I came up with. Basically, Dr. Phibes's chief motivation throughout the movies is both to avenge his wife Victoria's death and revive her, and at the end of the second movie, (*SPOILER!*) he's heading toward the River of Life in Egypt to do just that. Unfortunately, thanks to Angelique’s and Nicholas's meddling, everything goes kerflooey and Victoria ends up a baby. To protect her, Phibes and his goddess aunt (this is very convoluted) decide to send her 40 years into the future where she'll be safe. Thus, she's Victoria Winters. And Phibes returns for his grown-up bride.

“And then I ran out of ideas. It worked wonderfully in my head, but on paper it just got too out of hand. However, it's an interesting read if you don't get too invested in what happens next. I promise that won't happen with Role Reversals. I definitely have to work out some kinks in the ending, but other than that, I've been following my outline and I'm only a few chapters away from being done. It may take a little while, but I'll get there.”

What are her readers like?

“I've gotten FANTASTIC feedback. I first posted Reversals only a few days after the Burton movie came out, before the movie had a category of its own on Fanfiction.net. So I think a few reviewers were new fans who hadn't seen as much original DS. They were receptive and curious, and I got to introduce one reader to Jason McGuire, and sent him a few clips from YouTube. It made me feel very knowledgeable and full of myself, emotions every author likes. Mostly, though, I believe I've drawn in original fans, especially once the movie got its own category and I got less traffic from that direction.

“I'm not too sure about what age group everyone falls into, so I'm guessing from all over the spectrum. But what I can say is the reviews have been some of the most thoughtful and helpful I've ever had. People are paying close attention and are incredibly well-educated about the settings and time periods. Someone pointed out the proper channels Barnabas would have taken to get from England to Maine in the 1960s, and someone noted when I said Collinwood when I meant to say Old House. I've had predictions, encouragement, and overall great excitement. As an author, there's nothing better than people who want more.”

Mine was not one of the helpful reviews. I believe I pointed out the impracticality of bringing cows into the Old House and leading them into the basement. I’m pretty sure cows are physically incapable of going down stairs. And what’s happening to the carcasses? I lie awake at night pondering these issues. Peekaboo graciously responded to my comment and explained the scenario in greater detail.

So, if she wants more readers, why doesn’t she tell her friends?

“Nah, I don’t want too many people to know. I like to think of FF.net as my way to share interests outside of my social circle. I'm sure they'd be supportive—in fact, I have a few family members/friends who write fanfic of their own—so maybe someday I'll let them know. But for now, I'm enjoying my anonymity. I feel like it's more freeing.

“Wow, how dumb am I? I just remembered my real name shows up in emails to you, duh.”

No worries, Ms. Fang. You will receive my blackmail instructions in due time. See Mom, I can make money from fanfiction.
 
_______________________________________________________________________________

Marie Maginity has a BA in Theatre and works as a professional actor, director and drama teacher. She has had many “straight” jobs, including bartender, gas station jockey, graphic artist, website designer, facepainter and film projectionist. Once, she bullshitted her way into a newspaper job as a reporter and, over the next eight years, became a copy editor, feature writer and assistant editor. She lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia with one husband, two daughters and two cats.

COLLINSPORT SHIPPING: A word of introduction

Hi, my name is Marie and I am a ficaholic.

Fanfiction is fast-acting and highly addictive, and I’m a daily user. I prefer high quality stuff, but I’ll read almost anything: the good, the bad and the grammatically incorrect. Of course, there are limits. It has to be about Dark Shadows (original series), I prefer for the story to include Willie at least somewhere, and the characters’ names must be spelled properly. There is no one in DS named Barnabus, Quenten or Willy.

Me and my boyfriend, Dennis, circa 1978.

When I’m not reading, I am writing, proofing, editing or doing research. In the past year I’ve devoured dozens of interviews and books about teenage hustlers, merchant steam ships, scam artists, prison inmates and the 12-step program. I even attended a couple of AA meetings, where I sat in the back of the room, ate cookies and took notes.

Why, you may ask. My stories can never be published for profit, because I don’t own these characters. Is it because they’re read by a lot of people? Yes, partly. Dark Shadows doesn’t get anywhere near the traffic of a Harry Potter or Twilight fanfic, but the numbers are respectable. Fanfiction.net, at the time of this writing, has 361 stories based on the original series, placing it somewhere between Beverly Hills 90210 and Spartacus: Blood and Sand. That’s not taking into account fics based on the 2012 Tim Burton film (movies are a separate category), which, if combined, would undoubtedly boost the score.

At one point I tried compiling reader statistics of my fanfics from the various sites where they’re posted, and counted more than 3,500 visitors from 32 countries. I’m okay with that. 

Is it for the applause? Hell, yes. Some writers don’t give a shit, but most do, and I’m a sucker for any kind of feedback: emails, comments, kudos or reviews—even the negative ones. In fact, I love it when readers get involved, ranting that Julia must (or must not) be paired with Barnabas, or that Jason is a dick, or they want to punch out Harry Johnson.  They find secret meaning where none was intended and significance in seemingly random events. On more than one occasion, I have altered a story or added a chapter based on their conjecture.

But, and I think other authors will agree, the #1 reason we write is simply that we love Dark Shadows and will not let it end. So, it lives on in prequels, sequels, parallel time and alternate universe.
DS fanfiction has been around for about 40 years. Dealers’ tables were lined with it at the convention I attended around 1978, not that I noticed. I don’t remember much from that festival, but I probably spent most of my time stalking John Karlen and Dennis Patrick. 

 I feel like both an old-timer and new kid on the block, because I watched the show when it originally aired, but wrote my first fanfiction last September. However, I had a predisposition to this addiction from an early age. It happened like this ... (music cue in and your screen goes all wavy).

*

It’s 1967, and I am 10 years old. Wandering the neighborhood, I discover my teenage cousin and her friends huddled on the front porch, all staring wide-eyed through the window at the television set in the living room.

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Watchin’ a soap opera.” Oh. I hate boring soap operas and start to leave. “It’s about a vampire and he’s gonna kill this girl.” Oh! I love horror movies and join them, squeezing in amongst the bigger kids to take a look.

On the screen is a distraught young man sitting by a fountain, agonizing over whether or not to warn the young woman of her impending doom. At that moment I forgot all about my undying devotion to Davy Jones of the Monkees, and Willie Loomis became my drug of choice. Five shots are fired off camera and we all jump, grabbing each other with a communal scream that was heard several blocks away.

Around the time of Victoria Winters’ witchcraft trial, I was kicked out of girl scouts for missing too many meetings. That came as a relief because after-school activities were interfering with my soap opera.

*

It is 1977; I am 20 years old and a theatre major at a university that looked down its academic nose at my love of musical comedy. I submitted a proposal to write and direct an original piece (well, not completely original) for the black box theatre, a venue reserved for undergraduates.

Dark Shadows was in late-night reruns in tandem with Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and the combo was very popular on campus, so that was to be my source material. The result was a musical parody titled The Late Shows, and Act I was Dank Shadows (or the Flight of the Fledermaus). It had cheap jokes, Mad Magazine-style song lyrics and featured characters like Barnacle Coffins and Victorian Spinsters. It was a hit with not only DS fans but with the frustrated actors who wanted to sing and dance.

That was my first taste of blood and made me the shameless attention whore I am today.

*

No, it’s not real. It would be cool if it were.

It is 2011, and I am — older. While browsing through Netflix, I came across old episodes of Dark Shadows. Hey, cool, I used to love that show, and there was bad boy Willie, my favorite.

When I had watched every available episode, I started over and watched them again. Soon I was supplementing my addiction on the Internet and discovered that I was not alone. There was a DS community, alive and kicking, with enough websites, forums, photos, stories and videos to keep me from ever cleaning my house again.

Well, forget about the stories. Fanfiction was artistic drivel and a ridiculous waste of time. My older daughter’s obsession with fanfic, anime and manga caused her to flunk all her classes, lose her scholarship and get kicked out of college after the first year.  So my genius kid was now working in a grocery store because she couldn’t stop reading comic books (excuse me, graphic novels) and watching Japanese cartoons. As a result, I was not kindly disposed towards fanfiction.

Yet, her devotion to those genres did not wane, and she tried to suck me into the black hole of fandom by telling me about other kinds of fan-authored publications, like Dark Shadows, for instance. Then Demon Spawn (an affectionate nickname) introduced me to a site called Willie Loomis Saves Collinsport, authored by SaraMonster. It is a temple to John Karlen and, among its resources, is a listing of Williefic by some of the old masters. I clicked on one — just out of curiosity.

It was a story about Willie at a hardware store picking out paint chips for the Old House. What the fuck? I couldn’t get past the first paragraph. Sometime later, though, I went back to read the entire piece, just to vindicate my aspersions.

Of course, I was right; the story was trivial nonsense, and so was the next one and the one after that. Then came the others, a series of transparent setups for Willie to be smacked, tortured, beaten and spanked. They should have their own category titled Fifty Shades of Bruise.

According to this, you find me irresistible.

But there were also love stories, in which Willie mated with Vicky, Carolyn, Maggie, an OC (original character) or the author herself. I can’t count how many times Maggie has begged him to take her virginity and, of course, he always obliges, because he’s a such a nice guy. 

Just when I thought it couldn’t get more ludicrous, I discovered slash, a style of fanfiction which features a homoerotic pairing. According to Wikipedia, this concept, in modern times, traces its roots to Kirk/Spock stories from the original Star Trek series.

Now Willie engaged in rambunctious sheet tumbles with Jason McGuire or agonized over his unrequited love for Barnabas, tempting the vampire by sunbathing naked on a beach rock (can you sunbathe at night?). Locked in a passionate embrace, Willie has an uncontrollable physical response when the master feasts upon his yielding neck. I made myself read every one of these stories, because one must be sufficiently educated on a subject in order to criticize it.

So you see, I initially scoffed at fanfiction, but later came to understand its appeal. However, my favorite character, in my humble opinion, was still a drag. I didn’t much care for the angsty, emo, depressing, woobie Willie: sweet guy, downtrodden underdog and poster child for domestic abuse. I wanted to see bad boy Loomis, the guy from my favorite fan video, Little Willie, by SaraMonster aka TheVampireSara. 

And so it happened one night, during a bout of insomnia, a vignette started to formulate in my head. I have always enjoyed prequels like Peter and the Starcatchers, Wicked and Susan Kay’s The Phantom. It’s cool to be able to manipulate details of a plot to cleverly coordinate with canon (and preferably with ample amounts of alliteration). With the seed planted by Sara’s video, I gave birth to Little Willie, my first fanfiction.

You and me did WHAT?

The time period was altered to begin in 1956, coincidentally the year I was born, because this is fanfic, dammit, and you can do whatever you want. It was the story of a kid who, like me, grew up with a single parent in a lower middle-class neighborhood of nuclear families. His friends had names remarkably similar to my childhood acquaintances, and he was taught in school by the same nuns. We even had the same principal, who would patrol the hallways with his German shepherd like a Nazi commandant.

But Willie and I did not come to the same end so, at some point, our tales had to take different paths. His circumstances must be such as to create the greedy, mean, little shit who would one day break into a coffin. Thus began Willie’s series of misfortunes, exacerbated by poor judgment and a rotten temper. And, occasionally, he does get abused (hey, it’s what the readers want).

My antihero is both a soft-hearted kid and a selfish, impulsive delinquent. I approached the development of his personality like an actor researching a role, using the same process that creates a believable performance to mold a three-dimensional character. This was true for (sometime) antagonists Jason McGuire and Barnabas, as well. It would have been easy to paint them as bad guys, but not as interesting. I happen to know they feel perfectly justified as to what motivates them to act as they do—however misguided that may be.

 In reference to a later story, one reader remarked:

“I think your Willie is stupid, brash, childish, rude, and a likeable dude—in other words, he’s perfect.”

The thing I like best about my Willie is that he’s so imperfect. There are no Mary Sues in my saga. In fact, I don’t think anyone’s even nice, although Vicky is usually at least polite.

*

My daughter has since gone on to a successful career in banking and, in her spare time, studies Japanese and acts as my fanfic consultant and beta reader. Like a good kid, she walked her technology-challenged parent through the confusing process of posting Little Willie at its first home on Fanfiction.net.

Since that time, I discovered other sites to share stories, such as LiveJournal, Yahoo forums, Fanlore.org and Archive of Our Own, to name a few, but I regret posting my series under so many different pseudonyms. The first was DramaLady, which is what my students call me. When registering at the next site, that name was already taken, so I became Mad Margaret, my favorite character in Ruddigore by Gilbert & Sullivan. She’s a Jenny Collins/bat shit crazy woman who lives in a haunted graveyard, so it seemed appropriate.

At the next stop, that moniker was also unavailable so I thought of Elizabeth Bathory, the charismatic lesbian vampire in Daughters of Darkness. Nope. Liz Bathory? Uh-uh. I had to settle for Lizzie_Bathory. When I joined Tumblr, ALL those names were gone, and I became That Bathory Woman. Just to complicate matters, I go by Loui56 on the Yahoo forums and just plain Lou here at CHS; Louise is my middle name.

How did Little Willie grow up to be a six-part series? Like an alcoholic, I don’t know how to have just one. In addition, I was encouraged to continue by Mary Overstreet, famous fanfiction author and co-editor of the KarlenZines, who wrote me long e-mails full of constructive criticism and advice. But the sequel to my prequel, Globetrotters, presented a boatload of problems; I went from writing about things I knew to foreign situations about which I was completely ignorant, so the research began.

Moving on to the third story, The Maine Event, was much easier, because after the first two, I was feeling pretty buzzed. I had finally entered the series’ storyline, from Willie’s arrival in Collinsport to the cliffhanger ending in the secret room of the mausoleum. That necessitated a fourth story, Changes, where we finally meet our favorite bloodsucker. The six chapters cover the six days from the vampire’s entrance to B&W’s arrival at the Old House. I liked the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern approach, playing out scenes that happened offstage in the series and mixing them with my versions of the real ones. I was mindful not to regurgitate verbatim storyline or the original dialogue. It’s been done elsewhere but, frankly, I don’t see the point.

The fifth story was This Old House, and the length leaped from six to 19 chapters, but it covered a lot of material: the whole Maggie kidnapping thing, Jason’s exit, and the evolution of Barnabas and Willie, as individuals and in terms of their relationship. Reception in the early days was slight and polite, but readership with #5 really took off. I don’t know if it was because the vampire came into play (it’s always about you, isn’t it, Barnabas?) or if I was getting better as a writer. As with the previous installments, it nodded, winked and paid homage to the original series while steering its own course.

I had every intention of ending the saga there, I really did, but only a few days later I found myself again at the keyboard, powerless over my addiction. One more chapter, I told myself, just an epilogue — a cute little bit about Christmas. Oops, I ended in a cliffhanger and started plotting my next story.

Interlude introduced Dr. Hoffman to the Old House residents. All my female characters are strong, but she was the queen bee. In the synopsis I described the trio as fanfiction’s premiere dysfunctional family, with Julia as the Jewish mother whose weapons are sedatives and hypnosis instead of chicken soup and brisket. The plot departed from canon big time, creating a comedic, completely AU (alternate universe) story.  For me, it’s the most fun piece in the series, and it has an ending. A definite ending.

Some actors don’t know when to get off the stage, and it was time ring down the curtain. So, to feed my habit, I returned to the first story and started to revise because, along with the characters, my writing had also evolved, and the early stuff looked like crap.

Little Willie (Redux) went from four to nine chapters, like a director’s cut with deleted scenes. The nice part was I now had a following, and folks were interested in my earlier works, even if it meant that they were reading the series out of order. I am currently writing Globetrotters (Redux). It doesn’t score the kind of numbers claimed by This Old House and Interlude but, what the hell, I’m having fun with my adjusted timeline, interjecting bits of history into the plot. There are things I know zoom over the heads of my younger readers, but not all. The chapter about Rocky Horror, which I described as “Willie meets rock ‘n roll transvestite aliens from outer space,” was very popular.

*

During the past year I have been privileged to meet (via internet) and friend a lot of wonderful readers and talented fanfic writers. In future articles I hope to share some of their stories—if they’re still speaking to me after I trashed their work just now.

If you like to read and/or write Dark Shadows fanfic, and would care to talk about it on this blog, email me at dsfanfic (at) gmail.com. Or you can find me lying in the gutter, guzzling fanfiction out of my Kindle in a paper bag.

_______________________________________________________

The Willie Loomis Saga

I: Little Willie (redux)
II: Globetrotters (redux)
III: The Maine Event
IV: Changes
V: This Old House
VI: Interlude

Marie Maginity has a BA in Theatre and works as a professional actor, director and drama teacher. She has had many “straight” jobs, including bartender, gas station jockey, graphic artist, website designer, facepainter and film projectionist. Once, she bullshitted her way into a newspaper job as a reporter and, over the next eight years, became a copy editor, feature writer and assistant editor. She lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia with one husband, two daughters and two cats