Welcome to my page. I hope I didn’t scare you with that headline, which reads a lot like something else at a quick glance! Today we’re talking about fanficking, or the act of bringing fanfic to life.
Fanfic, for a refresher, started as fan-based storytelling incorporating characters and settings from original works of fiction, although I’m sure the confines of source material have bled into the margins over time and there’s now fanfic about like, Benjamin Franklin and the Babadook. While I know this isn’t all fanfic, modern fanfic, from what I can tell, has come to mean romanticizing or sexualizing an otherwise platonic fictional or non-fictional pairing, as in “I’m going to write fanfic about Wonder Woman and most of Themyscira,” or expanding upon an already established fictional or non-fictional pairing, as in, “I’m going to write fanfic about the gay Vegas ad couple.”
It’s in this way that fanfic has become an invaluable resource/outlet for the queer community, who is so often denied the love stories it craves in every possible avenue. We can’t even get the Applebee’s to-go customer and the Applebee’s to-go employee being backed by Melissa Etheridge to get the recognition they deserve. Sad!
This is where Halloween comes in. It’s an opportunity to bring fanfic to life and level the scales. Obviously, this can be done every day with a little thing called role-play, but no one gets to see that, unless they do, given everyone is aware! Halloween is where you – no, we – can shine publicly.
Doing my part to get this fanficking ball rolling, on Halloween I will be the Debbie to my girlfriend’s Ruth from GLOW.
You may have seen a couple pieces from us about the gay undertones of GLOW that have only marginally been made explicit in season two. In particular, the painfully stunted portrayal of Debbie and Ruth’s dynamic is an extra special denial of obvious sexual chemistry and genuine romantic love, made proof by the fact that one of them usually leaves the room screaming crying after having a conversation.
This is not how adult friends act! Here’s a list of some more things that strictly platonic adult friends don’t do, that Debbie and Ruth have done:
- Choked each other for fun
- Pulled each other’s hair for fun
- Asked the other for the permission to date
- Told the other they miss being made fun of by them
- Fucked the same guy as a power move
- Had to alert those around them not to acknowledge their whole deal
- Stared at each other’s bodies during aerobics
- Sabotaged the other’s date
And yet we have been forced to watch Debbie trying to get back with her husband, Ruth entertaining being courted by the camera guy, and Ruth testing the waters with their terrible writer/directer. So, we will be righting these wrongs by showing up at every function as Ruth and Debbie, The Couple. It’s a backstory that will appeal to less than five percent of the people in any given area, but if I’ve gotta watch a shoehorned romance between a straight man and Michelle Rodriguez in an action movie, you’re gonna hear about this damn Netflix Original couple.
Also, I’m interested to see where I am mentally, and I guess physically, embodying a character that I am devastatingly attracted to. Should be a fun night!
I bet it’d be fun for you, too. I’m no date expert, but this could be a great first (or second or third) date, because then you sort of have to make out, for the cause. So, if there’s a duo (trio, etc.) in media or history that you know were together/belonged together but have been cast as platonic friends and/or business partners, I ask that you join us and tag Autostraddle on Instagram with a picture of your pairings so I can compile a beautiful list of gay dreams come true.
I love you.
Clumsy, bespectacled blonde with secret Superhero identity seeks gorgeous brunette multibillionaire CEO with homocidal family for All Hallow‘s Eve entertainment purposes.
English speakers with inexplicable Irish accent preferred.
people let’s go we have 29 days
Perfect. I need to be winona ryder and elizabeth olsen from that h&m commercial.
you’re fanficking a couple as one person i’ll drink to that!!
i think about this commercial daily
Omg, I had no idea this commercial existed. Thank you so much.
choked each other for fun
does anyone know how to post gifs on here i’m trying to post one of betty gilpin winking to this comment
i legitimately did a spit take
This is only works about half the time for me so this is either going to be helpful or a complete disaster.
Disaster!
omg this works for me THANK YOU
Suddenly it works for me too! I don’t know what happened when I first posted it.
So, are you two going to be pulling “wrestling moves” on each other?
gonna leave it all out there in the ring
As ever, I shall live vicariously through you all… (though not in a stalker way, I promise!)
meet us in party city
Brittana! Yeah I know it breaks the rules but this idea possibly came to me before they were cannon.
Or better yet, Drew Barrymore, Whoopi Goldberg and Mary-Louise Parker’s characters from Boys on the Side.
love that we’re getting the throuples going
YES. And also Whoopi Goldberg and that novice nun in Sister Act!
The ultimate Mommi couple aka Emily and Stephanie from A Simple Favor
If you want acting notes there should definitely be a moment where Staphnie apologises for no reason and Emily slaps her to make her stop. But like, it’s ok cause it’s consensual and Stephanie is into that.
chloe no one is stopping you from linking us to this fanfic
Erin I’m not saying I’m going everyday on Archive of Our Own hoping this fanfic will finally be written, but you know…
The latest episode of the podcast Queer as Fiction did this pairing! I don’t think there is any slapping, but I think you’ll like it.
OH I WILL DEFINITELY LISTEN TO IT THANKS
for Halloween I plan to be Chidi Anagonye, and I got my GF to be Eleanor. I really wanted her BF to be Tahani, to demonstrate the my preferred Eleanor-has-two-hands shipping situation, but I don’t think he’s comfortable with the flowy floral dress aesthetic. (Also if I had another partner I would 100% have insisted that they be Simone.)
hell throw danson in there
Just tagged Autostraddle in my Halloween 2017 pic. My gf and I went as Rizzoli & Isles!
angie harmon, the voice that shipped a thousand ships
I got laid off before I could buy my planned halloween costume, so partner and I are revisiting our Flamecon costumes and doing Captain America and Bucky Barnes again.
As a fellow Debbie/Ruth fanfic fan I hope y’all have been reading Yotoob’s amazing ‘From Russia (With Unsaid)’ and ‘The Best Part of Losing You’, the latter which is currently in progress. You will not regret it.
Thanks for the tip! I love this ship.
Hey, so Erin, ya know how you thought the title sounded like something it wasn’t? Well in German, to ‘ficken’ is to f**k, und so actually, it’s sort of an English/German mash up of doing exactly that. With fans. Idk, so maybe Rammstein likes to get dirty on Halloween weekend …
Really tall femme glamazon dressed as Snow-White in platform heels and her petite butch gf dressed like sandhog or construction worker maybe as a Sonne tribute…because my brain goes to strange very places with slightest of prompts.
I don’t know about Rammstein, but die Ärzte definitely like to get dirty all year around – one of their songs is named “Ich will dich ficken” (=I wanna fuck you) after all.
PS.: I have to admit that because of the “-ing” ending, I didn’t make the connection between fanficking and “ficken” until you mentioned it, even though I am German xD
Consider a similar yet slightly different approach: choose a queer cinematic icon, then dress as two of their different characters. My gf and I are entertaining the thought of going as Clarice Starling and Nell, so we can stop the awful screaming of the tae in the win’.
OMG Erin yes! You are, as always, a genius <3
All I need is a Tahani to my slightly more masc Eleanor.