So, this is weird ...

[katallison]

So, I'm sitting at work today, messing around, and I check my private e-mail, and there's something with "Roots Rain" as the subject line. I think "Woo-hoo! Feedback!", and I open it up, and it's from someone saying, in effect, "I found this story, and was wondering about it. How did you come up with the concept? How did you pick the name Vecchio? Are you from Chicago?" And I look at the "from" line, and see that it's from some guy whose last name appears to actually be Vecchio, with an AOL account.

So I ponder a bit, and then I send a nice friendly though impersonal response briefly explaining the nature of fanfiction (inwardly thanking the gods that this was not one of my more NC-17ish things and hence I don't have to explain slash as well), and giving a quick precis of the main characters and basic premise of due South. A few hours later I get a reply; the guy explains that he was doing a vanity-google on his name, and the story popped up, and he read it, and since his name is Vecchio and he comes from Cicero, and -- well, specifically, he said "I was wondering if you were writing about things you heard."

I laughed, as they say, like a drain; I quashed the temptation to write back "Yeah, in fact, you tell your Uncle Ray I heard about the ten kilos of heroin and he's in a world of trouble!" And now I'm just sitting here shaking my head and giggling. It's very odd to think back through one of one's pieces of fanfiction and try to imagine how it would come across to a completely naive reader, one wholly unfamiliar with the source material ("Wait a minute, this guy's a Mountie? What the hell's the deal with--a wolf? And who's this Victoria chick??"). And I'm really flummoxed as to why that story would google up ahead of the masses of RV-centric fiction out there.

Ah, the weird glories of the internet.

Comments

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Okay, *too* funny. That's one to tell at Escapade over a martini.

-J

[flyingtapes.livejournal.com]

That is *fantastic.* I don't think I've ever heard a better fandom/rest of the world story.

[codyne]

I once got an email from someone whose exact name I'd used as an OC in an X-Files story. The character in the story was an abductee whom Mulder fantasized about having weird alien sex with. Fortunately, she was familiar with the X-Files and thought the whole thing was pretty funny, so I didn't have to try to explain the entire concept to her, as you did. But it was pretty freaky.

[laurakaye.livejournal.com]

::falls over laughing::

that's fantastic. Heeeee.

[ex-verdandi713.livejournal.com]

A year or two back I got a similar e-mail on "Fire and Ice," from a fellow with the surname Wefler who wanted to know how I'd come to pick that name for a minor character. Considering that this minor-character-named-Wefler was distinguished in the story primarily by having been blackmailed into giving the protagonist a blow job, said e-mailer was far less indignant about the whole thing than he might have been. :-D

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

Not exactly the same, but...

My father's name appears in a Kinky Friedman novel. Kinky's thinly-veiled avatar for himself (the character known as Kinky Friedman :-) calls a psychiatrist's office and needs a pseudonym, so he uses my dad's name.

What makes it even funnier is that Kinky went to college with my uncle; they were fraternity brothers, back in the day. He actually wrote this as a little joke on his old frat bud -- took my uncle's last name and made up a first name to go with it. He had no idea that the first name he'd chosen was actually a real person.

Needless to say, we got dozens of copies as gifts from people the year it came out. *g*

[twistedchick]

Last time I googled my name I found it being used for a detective in a bad novel AND for a stripper. I didn't contact either of them...the combination was a bit more than I wanted to deal with.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

I actually got email from some guy who made thinly-veiled threats of legal action unless I changed the name "Lex" to one that he felt that he didn't own.

I wrote back explaining that I felt someone else had a prior claim to the name "Lex Luthor," and he dropped it.

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

btw, Kat, that's a particularly lovely icon. Where did it come from, and/or who is it?

[katallison.livejournal.com]

As LaT acutely discerns below *g*, this is Bill T. Jones, a marvelous dancer and choreographer. He's an amazing guy, too--grew up as one of 12 children of a migrant farmworker family, got a track scholarship to SUNY, got into dance, came out. Founded a dance company with his partner Arnie Zane (shown in this icon), travelled the world; then Zane died of AIDS in 1988, and Jones has been living with HIV for the last 15-20 years. Somewhere I have on tape a special that PBS did on him and his company in the early 90s; he's a tremendously articulate, passionate human being, thoughtful and engaged. (He's also, shallow me pipes up, one of the most astonishingly beautiful men I've ever seen in my life, as witness photos here and here.)

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

Guh.

What a spectacularly beautiful man. (And what a phenomenal story. Which I think I'd heard before; I just hadn't connected the story with the image.)

I don't know much about dance, but even I've heard of Bill T. Jones. I just didn't realize he was so stunning. :-)

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

I once got an email from the Baru family in Singapore thinking they had found their long lost cousin. The language barrier made it more difficult to explain that Bonibaru is actually my *cat*.

[istima.livejournal.com]

(howling) hahahahahah. That's too funny. (gasp)

[latxcvi.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty funny story, but I'm really posting to ask: Is that Bill Jones in your icon? Because if it is, that's deeply cool.

[katallison.livejournal.com]

Gold star for LaT--it is indeed the deeply cool Bill T. Jones (as I blather on at greater length to Kass_Rachel above). I love this photo of him and Arnie Zane, too.

[brynwulf]

But, really...what are the odds that there is a Vecchio in Chicago..and that he felt RR was similar enough to his life he had to write and ask? {{twilight zone music}}} But, I should have known it would happen to you, if anyone. :)