Sabine (fan)

Sabine was a multifandom fan fiction author, as well as co-founder and co-archivist of the sorkinfic archive Our Boys with Punk Maneuverability. She launched several fan communities and fic exchanges, and was the driving force behind Yes, Virginia and The Mango, two private mailing lists that brought together a small group of fans and created enduring communities. 
Sabine was fannishly engaged with Slings & Arrows, The X-Files, Farscape, Babylon 5, Band of Brothers, and M*A*S*H. Other fandoms included NCIS, Doctor Who, The West Wing, Sports Night, Stargate Atlantis, a variety of Star Treks, and anything involving David Tennant. She also wrote under the names Makiko and, with Punk, V. Salmone.
A small selection of her fanfiction can be found at her fic journal, fromthesabrary, but her AO3 account is a complete archive of her work and contains over 150 fics in 45 fandoms, as well as eighteen podfics--her own fic and others'--and one vid.
She died in January 2013.January 24, 2013, Sab, my Sab by runpunkrun Her AO3 account is now maintained by Punk,emily's archive (Last accessed 16 February 2013) who in February 2021 was pleased to announce the addition of Sab's podfic (and vid) to the archive, finally making it a complete collection of her work.Sab's podfic now on AO3! (Last accessed 8 February 2021)
==History==
Sabine got started in fandom as early as 1991, though back then it was in the form of bulletin board services like Prodigy and CompuServe, where she was a member of fan groups for Star Trek and its various characters.
Later, in or around 1996, she discovered fan fiction, and began writing and posting to mailing lists and newsgroups, including alt.startrek.creative and later alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated, where—according to Wikipedia—on April 1, 1998, she became the first person to use the word fanon on record.Wikipedia page for "Canon (fiction)" (Last accessed 25 October 2015) Her experience on newsgroups led her to X-Files fanfiction in 1998, where she met Punk on alt.tv.x-files.creative, and they began to co-write under the pseudonym V. Salmone, which later became the two-headed beast known as punkensab.
Sabine started writing fic in the Farscape fandom shortly thereafter. She used the name Makiko because there were members of the Farscape writing and production staff who knew her as a fanfiction writer under the Sabine name.
In 2000, in response to a job offer that meant she'd have to go off the grid, she assembled Yes, Virginia, a private mailing list that was mostly made up of The X-Files fans and meant to keep her in touch with fandom while she was working. It quickly turned into a thriving community with its own vocabulary, beta practices known as machete beta, and, of course, scandal, when it was revealed there was an angry mole in the group. The group survived, though, and in 2001 Sabine started The Mango, a similar mailing list for fans writing Sorkinfic.
She also started her LiveJournal in 2001, and began to write and read in many fandoms, frequently several at a time. It was around this time that she became interested in slash. Prior to this she'd mostly been writing het pairings, but with Sports Night and West Wing her focus grew to include m/m pairings.
In Sorkinfic, she created and maintained the Our Boys fic recs site and archive, which went down when its domain lapsed several years ago. With the help of the AOOO, she was trying to resurrect it.
In 2004, she created and moderated, with the help of Punk, the multi_pass multifandom icon challenge community on LiveJournal, which enjoyed more than a year's worth of weekly challenges. This was also the year she became active on theatrical_muse as mun to Citizen G'Kar, among others.
Meanwhile, in space, Stargate Atlantis began to air, and Sab joined up in 2005, eventually adding Slings & Arrows, Doctor Who, and M*A*S*H to her fannish rotation. She was branching out into more of a multifannish lifestyle and becoming increasingly interested in small, Yuletide-type fandoms, as well as f/f slash.
She wrote My Big Breakup on a whim, never having read Scrubs fanfiction in her life, and, after gauging interest in Scrubs fanfiction, started the LJ community Scrubsfic. Later, noticing a continued interest in sitcom fic, she ran the Sitcomathon in 2006 with Kyra Cullinan. The year before, she helped develop the Multiverse many-worlds crossover challenge with Andraste, and Andraste took over the challenge completely after its first year.
Sabine took part in Yuletide the very first year it ran, in 2003, and along with Victoria P's multifandom remix challenge, it was one of the things Sab tried to do every year; she had many rounds of each under her belt.
She was never shy about discussing her fannishness with the outside world, and she'd tell anyone who listened that she wrote fanfic and hung out with other fans. She was so proud of fandom.cutting my teeth on the gristly parts of TV (Last accessed 22 February 2013)
==Writing Style==
Sab liked to play with language, to twist it into unusual shapes, to use the word "credenza." She liked a lot of plot, a lot of plot. She liked people working together to build something. She liked it when things weren't easy, when people were a little mean to each other, or a lot mean to each other. She liked an apocalypse, a dystopia, a spaceship.
Ten Signs You're Reading a Story By Sab, in Sab's own words:iamsab: on breezy, sarcastic, socks-wearing days (Last accessed 17 February 2013)
She liked her characters deeply flawed, almost to the point of unlikeability, but it was important that those flaws were balanced with bravery and compassion, usually hidden away and saved for worthy instances. She liked a reluctant hero, an anti-hero. And competence was a must; they needed to be brilliant, to possess an unrivaled skill at something and have the talent and the will to pull through when it counted, whether it was to serve their own agenda or someone else's.emilyss: (no subject) (Last accessed 18 February 2013) 
Gul Dukat, Tony DiNozzo, Londo Mollari, Gregory House, Temperance Brennan, Scorpius, Rodney McKay, Perry Cox, Quark, and Starbuck all fit her requirements, and she liked to pit them against their tempering influences, like House/Wilson in HUGE EGO SORRY.
Nemesis fic was also a favorite of hers. She wrote several pairings that involved hatesex or enemyslash, including Kira/Dukat in Dislocation, Condemnation, Revelation, In Temptation (DS9), Crichton/Scorpius in A new device is being tested (Farscape), Aeryn/Crais in Hard/Work (Farscape), Geoffrey/Darren in And So Are You (Slings & Arrows), and Tenth Doctor/The Master in Give Up the Ghost (Doctor Who). Sexual tension between enemies or reluctant allies showed up repeatedly in her writing. 
Her stories were also rich with sensory details, smells and sounds and sights meant to set the scene and give readers a glimpse into the character's state of mind, the external action and the scene dressing often mirroring the internal goings-on of the characters.
For titles, she liked something with a little irony, a phrase that was in conflict with the meaning of the story and asked the reader to look for the gallows humor underneath. In her apocalyptic X-Files fic, Everybody Having a Good Time, no one was. Casey's life in Sport Night's Pretty Life might have looked good to him, but the reader knew better, and the thanks in her West Wing/X-Files crossover Thanks of a Grateful Nation is hollow and meaningless. Sab wrote, "When I set out to look for a title, I look for perverse irony first, and then, if I can't find anything good there, I look for something with rhythm."iamsab: overstuffed Narn (Last accessed 4 March 2013)
Sabine had a distinctive style that she cultivated in her fanfic, a quality known as "Sabby," but she could turn it on and off when it suited her, and so her voice could vary across fandoms.
"In general," she wrote in an interview in 2001, "I write a lot about people not being very nice, and things falling apart. I use the phrase 'arrogant fuck' a lot. I figure out what's wrong with the characters, and then exploit it, or try to."sab in the hot seat (Last accessed 22 February 2013)
==Transformative Works Policy==
Sab wrote in her LJ profile:
:"I'm all about communal fanworks, so if you want to remix/sequel/podfic/illustrate any of my stories, no need to even ask. Same goes for translating into foreign languages. Just don't make money off me and we're cool like three Fonzies."iamsab's LJ profile (Last accessed 25 January 2013)
==Notable Fanworks==
===Babylon 5===
*Babylon 5, the last, best hope for...just about everything -- Overview of the show written for crack_van.
*Londo Mollari of the House Mollari -- Essay.
===Scrubs===
*My Big Breakup -- As Sab herself put it, this has "the dubious distinction of being one of the first JD/Cox stories on the internet." cutting my teeth on the gristly parts of TV (Last accessed 26 January 2013)
*My New Pants -- Podfic of a story written by Punk, in which Sab pronounces "JDnitor" flawlessly.
===Sports Night===
*April in Paris (The Hemingway Remix) -- The Sports Night crew fights WWII, Hemingway style.
*Euskadi Six-Hour -- That time in France where Casey didn't sleep with anyone.
*Where Have You Gone, Tom Glavine? -- Post-series, a fic about Dan and Casey and the baseball strike of 1994.
===Star Trek: Deep Space 9===
*Dislocation, Condemnation, Revelation, In Temptation -- (Kira/Dukat)
*The Emissary, Gul Dukat -- Essay on Dukat and Sisko and Bajor and religion and perspective.
*Music Makers
===Stargate Atlantis===
*The Pegasus Society -- Rodney's wrapped up in IQ tests; Atlantis is wrapped up in John and Rodney.
* Brevity
===The West Wing===
*Glass Lemons -- CJ/Toby.
*Statesmen Cycle -- A five fic series that focuses on Josh Lyman. It starts pre-series West Wing and moves on into Bartlet's time in office.
===The X-Files===
*Everybody Having a Good Time -- Sab thoroughly destroys Mulder and Scully's world.
*Neither Moon Nor Earth -- Alien abduction and pregnancy; Sab's response to a Yes, Virginia challenge.
*Thanks of a Grateful Nation -- A crossover with The West Wing.
===Other===
* Licked to Death
*Us -- Sab's first vid, made in August 2006, set to Regina Spektor's Us.iamsab: they made a statue of us (Last accessed 17 February 2013) (Casanova)
*Open Letter To Scottish Actor David Tennant From American Chick Emily Aged 30-And-A-Half (Wayback Link) (David Tennant)-- "Dear Mr. Tennant, I'm writing from Hollywood, California, because your star's rising so brightly I can see it from here, and it's gorgeous, and it's blinding, and I thought you should know what it looks like from 6000 miles. This is also a love letter." 
*A new device is being tested (Farscape)-- The fallout from the episodes Into the Lion's Den and Dog With Two Bones.
==Remembrances==
	
==External Links==
*Podfic recorded by Sabine on audiofic archive
*Podfic of Sabine's works on audiofic archive
*Emissaries, Innocents and Old Married Couples: Livejournal for Sabine's various theatrical_muse pups.
*sab in the hot seat: Sab is interviewed by Sarah Ellen Parsons for In Their Own Words, May 8, 2001, via the Wayback Machine.
*overlook my supposed crimes: Sab blogs on Farscape as Makiko, March-December 2002.
*apocalypse weather: Sab's blog on the departed Vox, courtesy of the Wayback Machine, 2004-2006.
*apocalypse weather: Sab moves to Wordpress, 2008-2012.
*cutting my teeth on the gristly parts of TV, blog post by Sab: "And I've never been cagey or shy about my career as a fanfic writer and TV nerd, but for posterity and the nice people who visit this blog, I'll slap up my fannish CV. It's been a long, strange trip, cats and kittens, and I wouldn't change it for the world."
==References==
Category:Deceased
Category:2013 Deaths
Category:2021 Featured Articles
Category:Fanwriters
Category:Podficcers
Category:Community Moderators