A Very Interesting Blog Entry

Check out this blog entry on The Pit of Ultimate Dark Shadows:

Why are there so many Julia/Barnabas stories?

Oh good! (I think...) It is an interesting phenomenon with a lot of facets. I wouldn't mind a little chat either on the web-log or by email. I have a hard time getting over to this site and finding everything lately. (Not that I don't appreciate the site! Calms me down a great deal.)

Making friends with a fan of the idea first has been an endless blessing to me. Wish I could have her stay with us for a week. ^_^

I've written my share of fan fiction over the years but I've seldom used Julia and Barnabas as the main characters. Not that I have anything against either character but there have been so many other writers using them and doing a better job than I could. A story that focused on, say, Paul Stoddard or Roxanne Drew was more satisfying to write.

I "love" how hundreds of people pretend they don't know who I am or what I do.

It makes me feel very welcome, I must say.

What an odd little entry. I've never heard the expression "that burns my biscuits." And several other peculiar turns of phrase.

I think the stories are so numerous because fans enjoy writing them, and other fans enjoy reading them. Period. Simple as that. No need to throw the I Ching or study Freud to come up with some elaborate rationale.

Julia fans, and Julia/Barnabas fans (or "shippers," I think the term is now?) became a rising force around the time I learned about fandom and started going to the occasional Festival, back circa 1995. Of course, I don't see my very intermittent participation in fandom as having anything to do with the rise of Julia cultists in the ranks.

A notable thing I have observed with fans who were involved in the 1970s and 1980s is that if they were Julia fans, they were very badly scarred by the contempt in which the character seems to have been held by the big name fans of the period. The fandom then was dominated by Josette fans and Angelique fans. I think Julia fans were considered eccentric at best.

Interestingly when the series started running nationally on Sci Fi, a lot of people referenced Grayson's performances as a major reason for becoming addicted to the series. This actually seems to reflect what was the same case during the broader popularity of DS back during the original broadcast--it comes out if you read the letters printed in the soap opera mags (which did not start until AfterNoon TV in late 1968). It's the real reason why Grayson was in so many episodes--she was genuinely popular with the fans of the period. It had nothing to do with the fact that Sam was a writer, although Dan Curtis was known to be one of Grayson's biggest fans.

I never know how to evaluate Danny Horn's writing about Grayson... I think he does genuinely admire her, but sometimes I think what he mainly admires is how no holds barred she was in her work on the show. That had a lot to do, as we have frequently discussed, with specifics of the production and what the major directors such as Lela Swift and Henry Kaplan (about whose directorial style KLS had some fond, revealing memories to share in her very first book).

G.

Post cancellation, I wasn't involved in fandom in the '70s and throughout most of the '80s (I didn't come into fandom until '88 after I'd been watching DS for a few years in syndication - in fact, until I started watching DS again in '86 (after attempting to resist for the longest time), the show was but a fond memory of childhood that I rarely thought about). I had no idea there was such a backlash against Julia back then. But it's completely true that during the show's original run fans were always writing in to the daytime magazines about their love for Julia. Most letters insisted that Barnabas should forget his SYT obsessions and focus on Julia. I particularly remember one letter (which I'm pretty sure I shared around here somewhere) in which a fan insisted that unless Barnabas and Julia got together the fan was going to stop watching DS.

What's really interesting in light of the '70s-'80s put-down of Julia is that by the time I got involved in online fandom in the mid-'90s Julia fandom had not only been in full swing, it was widely expanding. While there had been all sorts of fanzines devoted to Julia, online fandom soon created Julia e-mail lists and dozens of Websites devoted to her...

To be fair, I know a lot of fans of Julia and Grayson were extremely irritated by the reported neglect of the actress and her characters in the latest MPI video documentary release. I think the documentary was mostly focused on Dan and his career and his supposed role in making DS the cult classic it became.

Maybe it didn't help that soon after the release came further news of a documentary about Jonathan Frid's career. Once again, some Grayson fans felt slighted.

I personally think this is a wonderful time to be a fan of Grayson and her DS characters. With social media and blogs, there are more photos, articles and resources available focused on her than I ever dreamed would be the case back in the late 1990s.

G.

To be fair, I know a lot of fans of Julia and Grayson were extremely irritated by the reported neglect of the actress and her characters in the latest MPI video documentary release. I think the documentary was mostly focused on Dan and his career and his supposed role in making DS the cult classic it became.

Despite having owned it for over a year, I haven't even watched the documentary part of that release yet. As I'd posted soon after I got my copy of the Blu-ray, I was thrilled that MPI finally deemed to include that 1966 ABC promo that I love and that was all I really cared about. Going by what I've heard, seeing something that I suspect exclusively glorifies DC's contribution to DS over the contributions of others who might have actually been equally if not more responsible for the show's success doesn't really interest me all that much. Though I'm sure I'll watch it someday...

I find this discussion very interesting. As someone who didn't really discover DS until around 1999/2000, I was immediately taken with Julia. First I found her annoying as a foil to Barnabas in the early episodes, but as their relationship developed she became very endearing and I cared for her. I think one of the hallmarks of the series is not the lost love between Barnabas and Josette, but the lost love between Barnabas and Julia. It's like the Mulder/Scully effect--will they ever get together or not? Many shows were based around this.

I don't know how intentional it was on the part of the writers, but Grayson certainly played it with a heavy undertone of Julia being in love with Barnabas and being willing to sacrifice her life for him, all of her own free will. This relationship differs from someone like Willie, whose relationship was bound by blood and Barnabas' control.