No one will be surprised that the vast majority of our site members are female, so for those of you who haven’t been around for many years, let me point out that Kace is a man. A really good, kind, sweet, wonderful man. He has been a supporter, confidante, fanfic writer, fanfic reader, radio host, and mostly a friend not just to me, but to many people on this site. We truly are a community, and it’s people like Kace who made L-word.com and now LesFan.com an online home to many.
We welcome all site members to submit their stories. Join us as we celebrate 10 years of The L Word – and how it has impacted our lives!
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Recently at LesFan, I shared my own memories from the past 10 years, giving a basic background as to how I wound up in L-fandom back in 2004 and how it affected me. So instead of rehashing the origin story, I decided to think back on when the deepening effect of the fandom truly hit me. Yes, those moments in Season 1 were fantastic and hooked me onto the show between Dana and Lara’s first kiss and the 4 AM kiss between Dana and Alice. Season 2 was certainly entertaining to watch, as different as it was from Season 1. However, the moment where I realized that for better or worse, the show taken an effect on me was in the moments after the Season 3 finale, Left Hand Of The Goddess.
March 26th, 2006 wasn’t a particularly pleasing day for me to begin with. It was the fifth anniversary of WCW’s final event before winding up in Vince McMahon’s personal borg collective, which as a pro wrestling fan from the South was a bit traumatic in itself. On top of that, was the fact it was now time for the Season Finale of The L Word, where my fandom started to give way to snark. Keep in mind, this was only a couple of weeks after the Losing The Light episode where Dana died and one week removed from Alice and Lara’s “Holy Crap Did That Just Happen???” kiss. Keeping myself spoiler free, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Upon watching the episode and realizing that the futures of Lara and Carmen were up in the air (as it turns out, there was no future for either on the show) and with all the other insanity going on in the storylines, I found myself a little miffed to say the least.
Jacky, bless her heart decided it was a good idea to let me take a crack at writing an episode summary. Left Hand Of The Goddess was my first attempt at it, meaning I was going to relive what I had just watched that evening, so I could type things out. I remember getting the blessing to go in guns a’blazing with it and from that point on, L-Word.com wound up with some notably different summaries than fans were used to reading.
One of the things I remember about that online chat with Jacky after the initial airing of Left Hand Of The Goddess was pointing out how screwed up the relationships were and also how at that point, the only stable relationship involved a straight couple. This would lead to a fan editorial I would get to present called “Whatever Happened To That Lesbian Show?” Typed during a time in which I was still in the closet of, “dirty bisexuals,” I took the opportunity to do something I had kinda held back on up to that point. I lashed out.
I lashed out at this crazy little show I loved to watch. As it turns out, I wasn’t alone in the feeling. I’m not big on suffering entertainment related trauma and given my Grant Morrison Complex (the overwhelming feeling of empathy for fictional characters) I had for the people in the L-Universe, from Bette and Tina to Alice to Lara and so on, even down to the minor characters on the show, those immediate days afterwards I admit were depressing. It was somewhere between writing that fan editorial and then going for a nice walk to clear to my head that I realized the impact of this show from an entertainment perspective. The whole thing had become cerebral and as silly as it may sound, it was hard to reconcile that. It was hard to reconcile why I cared so much about Shane ditching Carmen at the altar or Dana still being dead.
I also realized that in order to get through this, there was only one viable solution. That solution was delving into FanFiction.
Somewhere deep in the archives of LesFan is something called The Mythical Season 3.5. It’s not exactly the greatest thing ever put out by a fan or FanFiction writer, but honestly it wasn’t even about that. I needed something that was therapeutic in order to get through those early stages of the off-season. All I could do was imagine the layout of where those characters could go from Whistler and then type away while listening to whatever song I was basing each particular chapter on in a constant loop. Though it may be a little embarrassing to say this, I think I left a good piece of my soul in there somewhere.
That’s one of the things I appreciate about FanFiction. There’s that feeling of being able to alter someone else’s universe or at least have that notion that we might be able, even if it’s in an unofficial sense. There are so many variations of the narrative, too and it’s all put out there by fans who themselves felt a devotion to the lives of these fictional people and in many cases, wanting to create something better for them. Maybe in the form of a better relationship, or another relationship, or perhaps another setting altogether. For me, especially in the Spring of 2006, it was pure therapy.
All the different storylines in Mythical 3.5 and subplots and the touching on all these different characters, especially the not-so-major players involved served as a mission statement on the state of the show itself and something of a criticism on how those characters had been treated in the actual show. To this day, it’s hard to figure out why I cared so much to do it other than feeling of that need to do so.
In retrospect, it takes a show that significant to be able to bring that out of me. The support that I received from people at the site also kept me going. That support always meant a lot. That’s another thing about this fandom that really drew me in. We wound up becoming a support group for one another here. Sure, there would be disagreements of a philosophical nature from time to time, but that’s something that’s bound to happen. It was still a feeling of community. An understanding of what the show meant and my own understanding that for me, it was going to be different for most of the audience. I’ve always appreciated that for the most part, that audience still welcomed me as one of its own. I could have easily been cast out, but I wasn’t. I got to stick around.
I still get to stick around. I still see The L Word as my Star Trek. I still see myself wanting to touch on all these different subjects involving the show and its characters, including alternate timelines, which I’m working on these days and will be for some time. It’s a decade later and now I find myself entertained by shows like The Blacklist and Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Lots of action, lots of drama, and I’m sure lots of FanFic possibilities. It’s yet to hold a candle to the L, though.
Which takes me back to that fateful week in 2006. That time where it kinda hurt to be a fan of the show, because of the way that season ended. That time where many of us were starting to feel disenchanted. That time where FanFiction and the community involved in it at L-Word came to the rescue. Perhaps it’s a bit geek, but I’ll always remember that above most other things when I think back on the previous decade.
Thanks for reading and also for letting me stick around.
Seahurst says
Kace this was so wonderful to read! I found myself turning into a bobble head as I nodded in agreement with what you were saying. :-)
I still haven’t watched all of season 3. I have never watched the moment when Dana died, furious with IC for not only killing off Dana, but the way in which she did it. There are so many women and men out there battling breast cancer, she could have contributed so much to their fight, but she chose to be a drama queen and kill off one of the most beloved characters. I don’t think I ever quite forgave her for that.
And when the anger became to much I lashed out with my own twisted version of her story lines. Talk about therapy! Oh yeah, now that was some therapy! It truly was one of the only ways I could let go of my anger and disappointment.
Writing and reading fan fiction helped me get through the WTF moments and less than stellar writing, but it also helped me through some rough patches in my personal life. The support you talked about was a gift from the Goddess. The emails, comments, private messages and new friendships opened my world and wrapped me up in a warm, supportive, loving L Word blanket.
Thank you for writing this Kace. Your contributions to this site have always been through an honest, clear filter…and through the ups and downs you have consistently been supportive of Jacky, and all the writers and the readers. Thank you for that, it has been noticed and appreciated, even if that appreciation has been silent. :-)
Kace says
Thanks, Seahurst for the kind words! If you ever do get to that first time viewing that scene in Losing The Light, keep in mind the image of a drunk Kace watching that for the first time, cussing out the TV and being tempted to launch an empty glass bottle at either the TV or the wall. I remember the chat room that night was full of vitriol. It was unreal.
Blackbird says
You’ve given everyone a reminder of the compelling nature of the Hero Complex when you refer back to Grant Morrison’s notes on the rebirth and rekindling of characters we have all identified with strongly. It is a very good explanation for this phenonmenon that enthralls us here in L Word fanfiction land. I wonder, too, if as the readers and writers we didn’t feel that we HAD to go to the battlefield that became the show we loved and bring our doctors and nurses and best medicine and set up our fabulous L Word triage tent. I did. I feel compelled to write a behind the scenes series that follows the plot points of the show to give our characters their Off Screen POV’s to add to and yes, sometimes fix the more aggravating and WTF moments. The lesfan.com stories here address our whiplash neck trauma and hopefully as we read and enjoy we experience a cure for the storylines that made no sense or like with Dana’s death, hurt us. More thoughts I’ll keep to myself because this is your front page story. But I liked all you said, and appreciate what you have done for the years you have been paying attention and writing and thinking about the topics in your post. Blackbird
Kace says
Hey Blackbird! I LOVE your concept for Behind The Scenes. I admit I’ve been tempted to do something similar though the Alternate Timelines project, Without The L (currently on the Without Tim one) keeps me busy enough. I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of a secret history going on with some of the seemingly minor characters on the surface. I also dig anyone who gets the Grant Morrison reference. I think Jonathan Woodward of The Annotated Crisis site put it best.
“Morrison has a great deal of empathy for fictional characters, and indeed seems willing to embrace the Red King’s paradox and give the dreamer and the dream equal value and ‘reality’. Thus, the death of trillions in the Crisis, including many well-beloved heroes, was at the very least a minor trauma to him.”
Blackbird says
Paradox —Yes, I write all the time toward a paradox and I have found that Bette will paint her self mentally in a corner when she’s pissed off or horny and instead of seeing x,y,z she stays stuck in a polarity of X only or Y only and not beyond the binary. She’s getting more broad minded though in my behind the scenes world because she is smart enough to recognize the meaningful nature of two by fours repeatedly against her psyche. Plus it fucking hurts after a while she realizes.
But to our paradox as lovers of fictional characters and “the dreamer and dreamed world” – I’m interested how our minds drift toward the dreamy places always, to me that is where time bends with space and again we are able to lose those binding polarities of this is Real and this is Unreal. I’ve got a real good one for you I’m waiting to drop into a story THE WHITE QUEEN SAYS TO ALICE “It’s a strange sort of Memory that works only backwards.” Someone has got to get real stoned in my story to say this but Shane has Alice B Toklas’ brownie recipe. THAT MY FRIEND KACE is a wonderous paradox is it not, a memory that works only backwards? And I may zing you a PM because I have this crazy cool thought about writing a story, (and you know much better than I do because I’ve been at this for 5 weeks or maybe 6 weeks) in a very interesting format kind of a way, The curious format I’m considering is a way, way behind the scenes POV. Would you do me the favor?BYE, BYE Blackbird
Kace says
PM me anytime. :-)