It’s no secret that I want to write a book about the internet and fan cultures of my youth. From my fanfiction essay to my first byline in a major Jewish pop culture site forthcoming next week, it’s something I’ve been passionate about for some time now, and one day I hope it becomes real.
But as writers, we prune and edit and take away and cut and revise our works. In an effort to keep my Substack updates somewhat consistent and fresh, I wanted to share sections of current and future essays that didn’t make it into the final draft, publication or otherwise. I’ve edited some for clarity and to update any recent goings-on but here’s just a sample of what I write and unwrite.
from “The Last Fanfiction I Ever Wrote” (The Offing, November 2020)
Some published authors don’t like fanfiction. One of the most well-known of these authors is George R.R. Martin. The writer of the fantasy phenomenon A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin was once quoted as saying “Nobody gets to abuse the people of Westeros but me.” Bold words from a man who basically looked at Tolkien’s entire universe and went, “yep, gonna write it better.” David Weiss and David Benioff, the main showrunners of its television adaptation Game of Thrones, totally abused the characters. The entire Dorne storyline was botched long before Oberyn Martell had his skull bashed in by The Mountain. Tyrion Lannister became a shell of his complex character, reciting a flat table read of how stories are human and blah blah Bran the Broken (also, YIKES). Our favorite girlboss (and problematic white savior) Daenerys’s heel turn into a mad queen in less than an episode. You may argue that adaptation should not be equated with fanfiction, but by the final season it became apparent that Game of Thrones read like an OOC (out of character) fanfiction. What’s a fan to do when the book series remains unfinished and the show didn’t live up to expectations?
Write fanfiction, of course.
from “Men in Real Life” (unpublished, in essay development hell)
Gregory House isn’t real.
I’m not sure if I’m physically attracted to Gregory House, but I see myself in him. Doing little irritating things just to stir a reaction from others. Lying to a friend. Fucking off at work because I can get away with it. The apathy. The bubbling frustration at incompetent but well-meaning morons. Yet, he is likeable. There’s an unpolished gruffness about him that keeps me watching, waiting for the geode of his personality to crack open. Something to explain why I like him as much as I do.
Because he’s not real.
I have a type, after all. My recent list of television shows I’ve binged on and off this pandemic year reveals one archetype: emotionally unavailable yet oddly charismatic. Perhaps slightly problematic, but not truly evil as if punishable by our messed up justice system.
Gregory House, Tony Soprano, and Don Draper. So many fictional men. I forgive them for their trespasses and reward them with my admiration. I like these men because I’m an unlikeable woman, and therefore, real. I wouldn’t make it as a primetime dramatic protagonist. I can’t even make it as the main character of my own life. The talented Edie Falco as the titular pill-addicted nurse in Nurse Jackie doesn’t get nearly the same amount of attention or praise that Hugh Laurie received as Vicodin-chugging Gregory House. Hell, Carmela isn’t afforded the same introspection as her dynamic Soprano husband. Jon Hamm portrays Don Draper in all his beautiful destruction as a husband-father-boss, yet it’s Betty who is the bad mother-wife. These men cheat, lie, and some even kill—yet we like them. I like them. When I turn off my television, they’re suspended in their own making. But I breathe and stumble into my own development, face reflected into the black of my television screen.
from “Stephen King’s IT Failed Stanley Uris” (Hey Alma, forthcoming Dec. 2021), although this draft dates back to 2018 (oof)
To be an American Jew is to know death. Branches of the family tree snapped off from murders, pogroms, and concentration camps. To be living here, in America, is knowing America never stopped being antisemitic. It’s just another nation perpetuating the same atrocities.
It’s taken me two years to write and rewrite this essay. Every month brought another tragedy, another painful reminder. On the morning of October 27th, 2018, eleven Jewish people were murdered at the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I write an angry Facebook post where I called out evangelical Christians for their failure in acknowledging the pain and harassment of Jewish and non-Christian people. Most of my Facebook friends agree with me. I get messages from a friend saying that Christians too are persecuted, that anyone is capable of perpetuating this violence. I live an hour from Charlottesville, Virginia. After the riot that took the life of Heather Heyer, a white supremacist group posted stickers on two local college campuses in my city. It never fucking ends.
We buried my grandfather in the Jewish cemetery outside of town. I fear the day the headstones topple. I make an effort to visit my grandmother more often. Her ghost of a New York accent says “bats mitzvahs” and I cannot bring myself to ask her what sort of violence she endured, what violences her parents experienced. How my great-grandfather escaped the Austrian-Hungarian Empire as a young boy before World War II wiped his distant relatives off the unfurled European map. Or my great-grandmother’s immigrant parents, their last names misheard and recorded as Prince.
What violence do I know? What violence does a fictional character know when he’s just on the page?