...AND THEY FIGHT CRIME!

So, I was babbling the other day about commissions -- and yesterday I received this in my notes at deviantart courtesy of the ever-wonderful and extremely talented neme-chan. We have on the left one Tessera Penrose, and on the right we have Lavinia. You know, I still have no idea what Lavinia's surname is? I do know her first name is actually Lucia, but her father took to calling her Lavinia and it stuck. She never minded. <3 But yeah, the expressions on these girls' faces...they are totally BFFs. And what drives me crazy is that I totally want to make use of that, but really...they ought never to meet in-story.

Dammit.

But you know, this whole thing reminded me of fanfiction and whatnot, and that happened for a few reasons. Firstly, I used to write a lot of fanfiction. I fell out of the habit of it long ago, but when I was seventeen or thereabouts I started collaborating on an epic fanfic that became more of an original work than anything else, and after a while we filed off the serial numbers and reworked the setting and made it an original story. We then had a falling-out and neither version was ever finished, but despite my lingering nostalgia that's not quite the point. The fun of walking into a fanfic world, you see, was that artists liked to draw for us, and I still have a decent collection of pictures from those stories. I am such a whore for pictures, I can tell you, but the real irony of all this is that last week I got a message via livejournal asking about this epic fanfiction thing. The writer of the message wanted copies of some of the stories, as they've all been eaten by the interwebs; I figured it was just nostalgia on their part, too, but as it turns out? They want to do some fanart. <3 So, that was a bit of a welcome surprise right there.

Still, I got to thinking -- I have something of an odd attitude towards fanfiction these days. When I first started writing it I had no idea what it was, and to be honest it wasn't until the advent of the internet in my life that I took it seriously; before that I spent ninety-five percent of my writing time with my original characters. These days I don't write it much at all, mostly because I haven't the time and I'd rather write original fiction anyway, but sometimes I wonder what sort of attitude I'd take to fanfiction of my own work. I have no problem whatsoever with art, because I can't draw to save myself, but writing...I find to be an odder prospect. It's likely because I can write it myself, but with that said one of the best things about collaborating with another writer is the fact you get to read stuff about these characters without having to write it yourself...

Still. G.B. mentioned a couple of my older characters in a comment the other day and although I now tend to imagine Woody and Andy sitting around in the back of my head living out a sort of perpetual L&P commercial, it brought to mind a thought I had a long time ago about that story. Woody and Andy are best mates, and they tease the living daylights out of one another. That ad I linked just before is an absolutely pitch-perfect example of the kind of friendship they have. But as a slash fangirl of old, I can just imagine people taking a platonic relationship like theirs and sexualising it. And I would hate that. No, honest, I would. Hilariously I would totally be down with someone slashing Andy and Pisces, because there are various reasons why that could happen, but Andy and Woody? No. It would annoy the shit out of me, because it's just not how I see the characters. At all. So from that point of view, I suppose I can sympathise with authors who loathe fanfic, because it does seem almost like a loss of control over the characters and their development. I mean, I wouldn't personally forbid it, but there are definitely things that would bug me. And if someone ever wrote a story where Viola Morgan voluntarily ended Valentine's Day without the slightest bit of bloodshed, I would have to hunt that person down and lob a Companion Cube at their head. There would also be a distinct lack of cake.

Still. If there was someone who could write fanfiction for me, it would solve one little problem -- the girls above. They totally want to kick ass, take names and FIGHT CRIME. I frankly haven't the time to let them indulge in such crack. So who am I to argue, then, if they wander off elsewhere and find their satisfaction there...?

I've been out-imagined by my own imagination, and need to give the voices in my head curfews. Yeah, this writing marlarkey, it's a tad dodgy. Still, you don't see me giving it up, do you...? ^_~