This week, we’re looking back on one of our longest episodes to date, Episode 8: “FANthrax!” This was also our first time diving into medical drama in this story, but it won’t be our last! (Bwahaha!) Here’s Dee to blog about it!
Oh, FANthrax. This is another quintessentially 00Carter episode. There’s drama. Humor. Nick’s a little cringey. Brian almost dies! As you all well know, someone always dies of fun in 00Carter.
I think this one started from “we need a disease episode.” The purple pee was one of the first symptoms we came up with for the virus, long before the story had a plot or the virus had a name. And of course, our resident medical expert, Julie, made sure that the symptom actually aligned with a medically possible cause (I also think Julie was the one that really wanted the purple pee to be a symptom to begin with). As for my contribution, I’m pretty sure I lazily said the virus should be “FANthrax,” because it was like anthrax, but not quite, so it was punny. And given that this was an early aughts parody, anthrax was top of mind.
I enjoy this episode for switching up the characters again. It was great to see Red get her moment in the spotlight. Although, she’s super lucky she’s a main character in the story; finding an antidote for the virus would have gone less-swimmingly in real life for sure!
I think Rose’s main contribution to this one was that Brian needed to suffer to mend his and Nick’s relationship. She loves the drama, lol.
This is the last episode I helped write (or at least plan, I’m not positive I wrote anything) before the revival as I went on a long hiatus from fanfic. But maybe I did write something, I couldn’t even remember writing parts I very clearly wrote in earlier episodes, so who knows! This episode took a while to write, much more than the others (it’s also nearly twice as long) and I wasn’t the only one to depart the story around this time (so I’m told). I think that back then we were young and excited, but didn’t collaborate on expectations as much. Did we have deadlines or slack? I really can’t remember… At least now we’re older and excited, but with some more realistic expectations around our writing, ha.
So, this is the point in 00Carter when Frick and Frack slowly makes the transition from enemies to tolerating each other. Why the slow burn and what’s next for our hilarious duo?
Julie: Brian and Nick definitely fit the “enemies to lovers” trope in this story (in a strictly bromantic way, of course). I think once we decided to make Brian a CIA officer instead of a HimTak agent, we had to make Nick hate him at first because of the back story we gave him. Nick hates the government, so of course he was going to resent having to work with any government official. Brian only became an antagonist because Nick was so aggressive toward him right out of the gate.
Dee: I think that’s 80% of 00Carter: ______ happens because Nick _______. Seriously though, if Nick hadn’t been a dick, Brian would have been very nice to him.
Julie: We always knew they would eventually be friends, though. We all love Frick and Frack and looked forward to developing that friendship between them. Nothing like a near-death experience to bring them together! We all love the drama.
Rose: I do think making Brian suffer was my main “let’s make this happen!” idea. Sounds like me. But really I do think it was 100% necessary. Because otherwise Nick never would’ve given Brian a fair shake. He’s stubborn, lol. It was always endgame for them to be friends. I grew up a hard core Frick and Frack girl!
Julie: Who doesn’t love to see Brian suffer (in fanfics)? Brian medical drama is what drew me into fanfic in the first place! So of course I was down for a disease episode in which Brian suffers. You’d think this would be my favorite episode of 00Carter because of that, but it’s not. (Although the name “FANthrax” still cracks me up!)
Dee: That’s totally right, this is like a “made for Julie” episode. I’d say Brian doesn’t suffer enough in fanfics anymore, but I think we’ve done a pretty good job on making all of the Boys suffer equally.
For being a world-wide organization, HimTak has done a lot of work in the US thus far. What’s everyone’s thoughts on Canada being the first international venture?
Rose: That’s our US bias coming out. I actually want more overseas missions in the future. Maybe throw in Spice Girls at some point lol.
Julie: I know we had planned to have a mission take place in England so we could really parody James Bond, but we ended up scrapping that for a different idea. “Catch Her if You Can” is the first episode where we really see HimTak go global. Setting this episode in Canada was like dipping our toe in that water. It was different without being that different. I don’t remember why we decided on Canada in the first place, though. Was it so we could make “Blame Canada” jokes, or did that come about because it was set in Canada? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Dee: I think we planned that episode in England (“On His Majesty K’s Secret Service”) before this one and ultimately decided against it, which is too bad because I always enjoyed the close Bond parody idea of it. That and the musical episode are both fairly planned episodes from a bygone era! I don’t know why we picked Canada first, but I love all the ridiculous “because it’s Canada” jokes. Like Nick driving 100 mph because he thinks kilometers and miles are the same thing. Hilarious! I’m glad that there’s a more world-wide episode now, but I feel like we picked Canada way back when because google maps and such were limited and we had some good first-hand Canada sources, more than we did for other foreign countries. Luckily, the internet has improved since then and we can be accurate without genuine first-hand experience.
I mentioned in the blog that this was the part where the collaborators began to decrease. Any thoughts on why this is or other woes of collaborating that came up around here that we didn’t discuss in Idolize Me’s retrospective?
Julie: We planned and wrote this episode in 2009, about two years after our first episode. By this point, we were out of that honeymoon phase that follows the start of any new project, and the excitement had worn off. I think some of our collaborators just lost interest and wanted to move on to other things. Most of them drifted away from fanfic and the fandom altogether. I also know that those of us who were still heavily invested in this story, particularly Rose and I, drove people away with our demands about staying in contact and meeting deadlines. As the enthusiasm that had driven the earlier episodes faded, it started taking longer and longer to finish episodes, and we got frustrated with waiting for people to finish their parts. Obviously, a collaboration can only succeed when everyone involved is committed to doing the work, but at the end of the day, fanfic is a hobby, not a career. Real life obligations – family, school, work – have to take priority. We were not always the most patient or understanding when it came to that, which led to some conflict and ultimately caused some of our collaborators to leave.
Rose: Despite being the collab whore of the group, I wasn’t the most understanding. Having had life get in the way often now in the past few years, I’m far more understanding now than I was then. Julie was my one collaboration partner where we actually not only finished something (Undead) but stuck around after to do other things. And I think it’s cause back then we were hyper committed and now we’re not but more understanding. In the way we should’ve been back then. One of my favorite things about reviving 00Carter back is having you back Dee. I’ve missed you.
Dee: Aww, my heart! <3 I missed both of you too, probably most out of my fandom friends; I thought of you both often. But I told y’all this already in a very long letter when I did come back. In a retrospective lens, I wish I had tried to do more to compromise than being all “my way or the highway.” I think it’s hard to really see other people’s views when you’re struggling. But then, you also don’t want to admit that you’re struggling. I was such a headstrong youngster, lol. In my ripe old age of mid-thirties, I definitely self-reflect more than I did then. Life plus a complete lack of inspiration definitely compounded into me being both busy and writing nothing. Which isn’t great for a collaboration. But I appreciate that we’ve come at this with a greater appreciation and understanding for everyone’s feelings, life shenanigans, etcetera.
Julie: Aww, I’ve missed you, Dee! It feels good to be writing with both of you again! We were all still in that young, self-centered phase when we started this story. Between finishing college and starting careers, we were also busy! Looking back, I don’t know how I even made time for fanfic throughout my last few years of school and first few years of teaching. Talk about stress! But writing has always been a mood-lifter for me, so I tried to make time for it. In hindsight, I realize the reason I was so gung-ho about 00Carter during this period was because I wasn’t really writing anything else at the time. When we started the story, I was still working on my Broken series, which I had been writing since 2003. After I finished that in 2008, it took me over two years to really get into another solo novel. So in 2009, collaborations were all I had, writing-wise. It was frustrating to find myself with the time and inspiration to write but feel like I couldn’t because I was waiting on other people to write the parts leading into mine. I think if I’d had another story in the works that I was equally passionate about, I would have been more chill about it. We’re all older and wiser now, and we agreed when we decided to continue 00Carter that we would give each other more grace when real life gets in the way of writing.
Dee: My heart again! <3 I’m glad we’re writing together again, too. And spelunking in alien caves, lol. I was always impressed that you had so much inspiration and time in college and as a beginning teacher. That’s the type of fanfic author I wanted to be. I’d just finished PBox around that time too and it went the exact opposite, where I had the collabs but couldn’t drag inspiration out of myself if I tried, lol. If I could go back, I’d try to do better to support your inspiration. I appreciate the grace in finishing my last scene in our current episode. Sorry I’ve been slow.
Julie: I just had no life outside of that, apparently LOL. Thanks, though! And no worries! Editing our old episodes plus working on my other story has kept me plenty busy lately. I’m also more patient these days!
