Telecultists and obsessed fans are, by definition, a group outside the norm. Their reactions to specific television programs, and the way in which they incorporate these texts into their everyday lives, is notable in its loyalty and, as the word fan suggests, fanaticism. Unlike the majority of viewers of a program, the people who fall into this category (henceforth referred to as simply devotees) see the text as not something separate from their 'real' life, but as an important facet of that life. Many academics have addressed the relationship that exists between these possessive, obsessive viewers and the industry point of the audience-industry-text triangle.

The most well-known and cited of these is Jenkins' Textual Poachers, a term now commonly used with a negative connotation to describe a state of affairs where the devotees hijack a program and bring about an anarchy of unofficial webpages, fanzines, fanfiction and, eventually, lawsuits from the copyright holders. However, it is possible to argue that because devotees exist outside the normal boundries of television viewers, their relationships to the other points of the triangle are also altered. Telecultists, devotees and other viewers existing outside the mainstream are in a unique position where all the normal rules pertaining to television audiences break down. The reason that these viewers choose to blur the borders present in the 'normal' television-audience relationship is that one such border, between the television program and their personal lives and experiences, ceases to exist. Their experience of the text is entirely contextual, and therefore any distinction between categories is simply a perspective that, in the majority of cases, the devotees choose to disregard.

One such breakdown is between levels of textual validity. Within the bounds of 'normal' television viewers, text can exist as one of three types. In the context of a television show, the three types can be classified as follows: the primary text is the television show itself, sometimes referred to as the 'canon' within fan circles. Secondary texts are the official novelisations, studio fanclub newsletters, or any other merchandise or tie-in released as a companion to the primary text. Tertiary texts are fan creations, unofficial webpages and fanzines, fan fiction, discussion groups, and similar interactions between the devotees of the primary text.

This neat segmentation has no bearing on the obsessive section of the fan community, however, since the devout fan will embrace secondary texts as an offshoot of the primary - in fact, there is no difference between the two. If something is said in an official reference guide, then it is as good as gospel to a devotee (although it must be acknowledged that arguments occasionally break out in fanfiction communities as to whether or not it is acceptable to take the 'if it's not onscreen it didn't happen' approach, or if incorporating official extrapolations is the only fair way to play). Although the distance between primary and tertiary is bridged with ease by the devotee, it is even easier to see the breakdown that occurs between secondary and tertiary.

To explain this, it must first be acknowledged that a truly obsessed fan does not simply enjoy being a viewer of the television show they love. It becomes one of the definitive characteristics of their personality. For the people who went to Melrose Place sleepovers every week to watch the show in a group, the text was only one facet of their enjoyment of the evening. Interaction with other devotees and discussion about events in the text, both clear examples of tertiary text creation, became an inextricable part of the experience of being a fan of the show itself. Devotees are, by and large, part of a social group based around the common bond of fanaticism as much as they are audience members of a text.

This breakdown of primary/secondary/tertiary is shown as an example of the way in which the devoted fan crosses or disregards the boundries created by the normal television viewer and the academics studying that viewer. More controversial than the blurring of textual source levels, however, is the way in which the devotee transgresses the division between audience, industry, and text.

The interaction between these three is so complicated in the context of cult tv that it is difficult to divide them even for analysis. Audience and text have a complex relationship that is made no less convoluted by the conflicting attitudes to devotees presented by the industry corner of the triad. Before this triad can be deconstructed, a clarification of this industry sector has to be undertaken.

There are two main and often warring factions under the label 'industry'. These can be divided into Creative and Corporate sections, the Creative comprising of the writers and producers of the text, such as Gene Roddenberry for Star Trek, Chris Carter for The X-files and Joss Whedon for Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, and the Corporate being made up of the networks and copyright holders for the programs: Twentieth Century Fox in the case of the X-files and Buffy.

Twentieth Century Fox is not well-liked by the fan communities that surround some of the shows the studio produces. The Buffy community has created several campaigns to force Fox to back off from the unofficial websites, with the Simpsons fanbase joining the Buffy devotees in their outrage at the treatment fans recieve. The ill-fated Fox program Millenium can attribute its failure to the fact that no unofficial webpages were allowed to take root or stay open on the internet. The show failed to generate an devout fan community because any potential devotees were discouraged from taking an interest. A cult tv show where no cult is allowed to grow around it is a sad and short-lived thing indeed.

The case-study for this examination of devotees and their role in the media triangle is Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, because while it is a relatively new addition to the annals of cult tv the machinations of the different interests within its obsessed fan community are fairly typical of the broader situation within fandoms and also well-defined in terms of whose interests conflict and whose do not.

Buffy's main audience is amongst adolescent and young adult viewers, the text is created from a primarily female viewpoint in terms of character identification. However, if one thing has become clear so far it is that devotees are a breed apart from the typical viewer. The Buffy fan culture, at a devotee level, is comprised of the same cross-section witnessed in other programs such as The X-files and Star Trek. There is a thriving subculture of slash fiction, and as well as the usual fan convention type outings, an annual P.B.P, or Posting Board Party (named for the main online meeting place of fans, the show's official messageboard) is held, where the fans mingle freely with actors and writers from the show itself.

This interaction between the Creative side of the industry point of the triangle and the audience is another feature of the Buffy fan community. Joss Whedon has gone on record supporting the slash authors, declaring that there is romance in almost every relationship and people were more then welcome to 'bring [their] own subtext'.

Fanfiction on a broader scale also enjoys a symbiotic relationship with the text, within Buffy circles the term 'jossed' refers to a story idea being used first in a fanfiction and then later cropping up as a storyline on the show itself. In one example, for instance, a story by the writer Rae, titled 'Remember Me', explored a narrative about the character Faith awaking from her coma, switching bodies with the show's heroine and then running away to LA, causing a showdown between Buffy, Faith, and the souled vampire Angel. Several months later the Buffy episodes 'Who are you?' and 'Sanctuary' (actually an episode of Buffy's sister-show Angel, but on the same story arc) included all of these plot points in much the same fashion as the original fan story. As another author in the fandom, Lar Diehl, put it in her page entitled 'An Open Letter To Joss Whedon', "We use your intellectual property quite shamelessly, you... do the same for the episodes in which you brazenly lift our ideas." This is textual poaching in reverse, the fans actually aiding in the creation of the text they love.

The sense of community and support for fan effort doesn't stop with fiction, either. Alexander Thompson is a well-known name within the online Buffy world, famous for tirelessly transcribing dozens upon dozens of episodes and making these transcripts available freely on his website. Joss Whedon has praised Thompson's work and autographed one of the scripts in appreciation. However, as often occurs, conflicting interestests between the Creative industry and the Corporate industry meant that Twentieth Century Fox did not share Whedon's liking for Thompson's work. He was contacted by the company and forced to remove his transcripts from the internet, with the threat of legal action if he did not comply.

Warner Brothers, which up until late April 2001 was the network on which Buffy was shown, is well known as enemy number one in the war between fans and industry. Twentieth Century Fox, too, has a less than glowing reputation amongst devotees. And while Star Trek's fanfiction community has come to grief in recent years from Paramount, this has not stopped the tide of slash (Star Trek was the first fan community in which this type of homoerotic fanfiction surfaced), and these fans, rather than feeling victimised by the treatment from Paramount, see it as a challenge to work around.

Della Van Hise was an active member of the Kirk/Spock slash community when she had an official Star Trek novelisation, 'Killing Time', published in 1985. The book was filled with subtle and not-so-subtle suggestions of a relationship between the two characters. It was hastily withdrawn and over 50 revisions made before it again saw the light of day. Copies of the original print run, rich in homoerotic subtext, are still in circulation amongst fans.

In examples such as Van Hise's book and the reactions of the Buffy community to Fox's oppression (which have included a fan blackout, boycotting, and letter writing), it becomes apparent that the anarchy that the Corporate sector fears the fans will bring about does exist, but rather than simply hijacking the text and running amok, they appropriate, subvert, and contribute in very significant way to the television programs they love. They keep shows on the air, such as the teen sci-fi show Roswell, which, when faced with cancellation, saw a huge rallying of the fan community in the form of inundating the producers with bottles of Tabasco sauce. The devotees know that en masse they make a huge difference.

The reason that the devoted fans can make such a difference is that they operate outside the normal triumvirate of audience-industry-text. They are part of the audience, but their experience of the text is neither strictly observatory nor limited to the primary source. The Corporate side of the industry may treat them with contempt and fear, but at the same time the Creative side is deeply conscious of fan contribution (Babylon 5's creators are the benchmark of this behaviour, at times re-writing whole story arcs so as to avoid intruding on fan's ideas) and the interaction between audience and industry is rarely so strong when separated from the textual aspect of the triangle as it is with devotees.

Devoted, fanatical viewers of a television show are fascinating because the boundries and borders between defined sections of the program and related industries are irrelevant to them. Primary, secondary and tertiary categorisations are rendered obsolete, and the triangle of audience, industry and text is pushed, prodded, broken apart, transgressed, and reassembled in so many ways that the Corporate industry is threatened by this. The growing popularity of the internet, which is the medium for most fan activity nowdays, has seen attempts to shut down fansites for a large number of cult tv programs. These attempts are ongoing but fundamentally will not achieve anything except feeding the animosity between fans and industry. Studios such as Twentieth Century Fox choose to disregard the important and significant role that unofficial webpages play in a television program's popularity, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Devotees are not creatures of the dot.com age any more than television itself is. They have, however, adapted to the medium and realised the potential of it much earlier than the Corporate giants that so often seek to oppose them. Fan communities have shown time and time again, from Star Trek to Roswell, that they can keep a show on air through sheer strength of fraternity and devotion. Fan groups flourish under the care of a kind industry, but when faced with opposition from that same industry, fans will not alter their behaviour but rather defy any group that stands in their way. The fans have inherited the earth, and when the industry eventually realises this there will finally be a chance for these close-knit and devoted communities to operate in a space free from the lines that they already ignore but that the studios and industry constantly seek to reinforce.

Bibliography

Jenkins, H Textual Poachers: Television fans and participatory culture Routledge, New York & London, 1992

Divola, B Fanclub Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, 1998

Goldsworthy, P (Dec 1996/Jan 1997) 'Stranger than fiction' in The Australian's Review of Books p. 12 - 13

Reeves, J L, Rodgers, M C, and Epstein, M 'Rewriting Popularity: the cult files' in Lavery, D, Hague, A and M Cartwright (eds) Deny All Knowledge: Reading the X-files Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, p. 22 - 35

All websites accessed 07 May 2001

Copy Catfight: How intellectual property laws stifle popular culture, by Jesse Walker
http://www.reason.com/0003/fe.jw.copy.html

Remember Me, a Buffy fanfiction by Rae
http://onthefringe.org/remember/fiction/rae/

An Open Letter To Joss Whedon by Lar Diehl
http://www.obsessedmuch.net/bibliodiabolique/joss.html

The Lost Books of Star Trek
http://www.well.com/user/sjroby/lostbooks.html

Henry Jenkins' site
http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/org/t/21fms/www/faculty/henry3/

A history of fanfiction
http://writersu.s5.com/history/history01.html