Page 105 of Total Creative Control
He turned his phone over, screen down.
Once the kettle had boiled, he poured the water over the powder, stirred the mug lackadaisically, and carried it into the living room. His laptop sat on the coffee table, and he switched it on automatically. There were three emails from Charlie at the top of his in-box, all calledDiversity Baby!
After being warned by the Telopix communications team that changing Faolán’s sexuality might not go down well on social media, Charlie had been bombarding Lewis with his ideas to make the change more palatable. As far as Lewis was concerned, each idea was more ridiculous than the last, which was no surprise becauseBrahminswas shaping up to be an irredeemable shitshow. A shitshow that he had to live with for the sake of the deal, but that he refused to think about today. Charlie could wait until Monday.
Closing his email, he took a swig of the hot chocolate, grimacing at the lump of powder that disintegrated on his tongue as he opened Facebook. He scrolled through some posts, then checked Twitter and Instagram. There was the usual social media fan chatter about the show, plenty of speculation about the US version. Most Brits thought it would be worse than the original, but some were excited about longer seasons and more content. And there was some hilarious dream casting, as if Telopix had the budget for Hollywood megastars.
He also spotted a couple of links to fanart and fanfiction. Out of curiosity, he followed one link that took him to a couple of genuinely impressive digital renderings of Skye and Faolán in a clinch. Over-romanticised, perhaps, but professionally done. And striking.
Lewis felt an odd lurch in the pit of his stomach as he studied the image of Faolán in Skye’s arms, gazing up adoringly into his dark eyes. It was...touching.
The other link was to a fanfic recommendation, and he hovered his cursor over it for a long time. He’d never read any fanfiction, for obvious reasons. Why would he want to read the amateur butchering of his own creation? But since he’d found out about Aaron’s fanfic habit, and after last night’s conversation about creativity and gatekeepers, Lewis was starting to see things in a new light.
Just like the fanart, fanfiction was simply an interpretation of his work, right? And anyway,didhe own Skye and Faolán? He may have invented them, but that didn’t mean others couldn’t bring them to life too. Couldn’t enjoy their own creative interpretation of the story and characters.
Maybe he’d been a precious arse about it all these years.
Taking a deep breath, he clicked the link and found himself on a site called Archive of Our Own.Its banner read:A fan-created, fan-run, nonprofit, noncommercial archive for transformative fanworks, like fanfiction, fanart, fan videos, and podfic.
He had no idea what podfic was, but okay. What astonished him, though, was that the site had almost four million members, and over eight million works.
Eightmillionworks.
Turned out there were millions of people creating art for free, sharing their talent with others for fun. No fame, no glory, no money. That was… That was fucking astonishing.
Curious, he started reading the fanfic he’d clicked on and… Okay, technically the writing wasn’t great. But it had heart; he could see it in every line. It had passion. The author really fuckinglovedthe characters they were writing about, which stood in stark contrast to Charlie and his Faolán-bro, who only existed to appeal to a notional audience demographic.
Clicking back to the home page, Lewis realised that he could search by fandom. To his astonishment,Leecheshad racked up over 41,000 fanworks.
And some of those would be Aaron’s.
His heart gave a flustered kick. He bit his lip, considering. Reading Aaron’s fanfiction felt intimate, like peeking into his mind. Should he do it? His fingers tingled, stomach tensing with anticipation.
Yes, the weird nervy feeling knotting in the pit of his stomach was anticipation. He was excited to read Aaron’s work; he wanted to feel that connection to him.
And it wasn’t like reading someone’s secret diary, was it? This was work Aaron had sent out into the world for anyone to read. So why not Lewis?
Before he could change his mind, he clicked into the search bar and typed ‘Jägermeister’.
And there he was: JägerMeister — 112 works.
Pulse racing, Lewis started to scroll. The stories were arranged in descending chronological order, each one tagged with episodes it related to, as well as other things like ‘angst’ or ‘pining’.
That made Lewis smile because Aaron had always been a fan of the angsty episodes.
His fic titles were cool too. Lewis recognised quotes from Stoker and other classic vampire texts. But then, Aaron had always had a knack for coming up with clever titles.
Charlie should ask him to improve onBrahmins, for fuck’s sake.
Not sure which story to start with, Lewis checked out the stats. Each one had a number next to ‘hits’, ‘kudos’, and ‘comments’, so he chose a story that had a lot of all those things: 32 chapters, 76,323 words, 39,000 hits and 2500 kudos.
Fanfic? It was a fucking novel.
Settling back in the corner of his sofa, he balanced his laptop on his thighs, sipped his hot chocolate, and began to read.
The first thing he noticed, clear as a clarion, was Aaron’s voice. Maybe because Lewis knew it so well from the countless notes Aaron had provided on his own work, but he heard Aaron’s concise language in every line. No purple prose here, thank God.
The dialogue, of course, was spot on. It would be, with Aaron writing. But it wasn’t the same as the show’s dialogue. Less pacy, giving the characters more time to explore their thoughts and feelings. One of the advantages of prose over screenwriting.