From Fan History Wiki

[edit] Introduction

The fandom celebrates a television series, starring Ron Perlman, Linda Hamilton, Roy Dotrice, Jay Acovone, David Greenlee, James Avery and Edward Albert, that ran on CBS from September 25, 1987 until August 24, 1990. It has been characterized by some people as having more openly sensual fan fiction than most fandoms and a sometimes bitter division between classic and all season fans which is only now beginning to heal.

Henry Jenkins has characterized the television-based Beauty and the Beast fan fiction community as having a shifting relationship with canon circa 1990. [1]

[edit] Terminology

Below is a list of terms and their definitions that are used in this fan community.

ABOVE: Anyplace that is not in "The Tunnels" below.
BELOW: Anyplace that is in "The Tunnels", the community's home.
CLASSIC: Pertains to the first two seasons of Beauty and the Beast.
CLASSIC FAN: A fan who prefers the first two seasons, often preferring to ignore the third.
ALL SEASON FAN: A fan who likes all three seasons.
BATB: Stands for "Beauty and the Beast."
V/C Vincent/Catherine
V/D Vincent/Diana
SND: "She's Not Dead" Usually means a fanfiction story in which Catherine is not killed during the third season.
AU: "Alternate Universe" A fanfiction story which features the main characters but takes place in a different universe that the traditional BATB universe. For example: the main characters may have met in another way, or lived in another time.
ALTERNATE THIRD SEASON: A fanfiction story in which the events of the third season occur but only up to a point. Similar to an SND although in an SND Catherine usually appears to die, whereas in an Alternate Third Season things do not usually go that far.

[edit] Timeline

Screen cap of Chandler's Beauty and the Beast Page.

Screen cap of Classic Alliance of Beauty and the Beast

Screencap of Marina's Beauty and the Beast Page.

Below is a partial timeline of events that took place in this fan community.

[edit] 1987

On September 25, 1987, Beauty and the Beast premiered on CBS.

[edit] 1988 to 1989

In the period between 1988 and 1989, the fan fiction community had published a number of fanzines and a number of letterzines. Fan art was becoming an important component of the fan fiction community. Abode of the Beast, Above and Below, Heartsounds, and Faded Roses are examples of early BATB fanzines.
This fandom was perhaps the first major fandom to find each other online. Two of the most important online Beauty and the Beast communities during this time were on Prodigy and GEnie[2]. George R. R. Martin [3], one of the writers of the series, was a member of the GEnie online community and gave the members valuable insights into the writing and production of the series.
June 18, 1988, the first Beauty and the Beast Convention held in Los Angeles at the Hyatt Hotel. Guests included Ron Perlman, and David Schwartz.
During August 1988, there was the Roy Dotrice Reunion 2, held in Lincoln (England), United Kingdom.
Creation hosted their first Beauty and the Beast convention August 18 - Agusut 19, 1989, in San Jose, California.

[edit] 1990

On January 24, 1990, Beauty and the Beast ended its last season.
On July 21-23, 1990 TUNNELCON 1 was held at the Sahara Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada. The Chairperson was Betty Nieswender.
On August 4, 1990, Beauty and the Beast last aired on CBS with the last of three previously unaired episodes.

[edit] 1991

June 14-16, 1991 South of Oz was held at the Hyatt Hotel, Orlando, Florida.

April 12-13, 1991 Festival of Dancing Light Convention held in Berlin Germany.

May 10-13, 1991 Celebration of Life Cruise was a cruise/mini-con to the Bahamas from Miami, Florida.

August 1991 MASQUERADE 1 was held in Birmingham, England.

[edit] 1992

In 1992, the publishing of Textual Poachers by Henry Jenkins caused a lot of dialogue in the community.

June 12 - 14, 1992 TUNNELCON 2 was held at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas, NV.

Halloween Con was held in Solingen, Germany.

[edit] 1993

September 1993 Of Love and Hope (OLAH) the first mailing list devoted to Beauty and the Beast is launched.

Great Expectations was held in Austin, Texas.

May 28 - 31, 1993 Masquerade 2 was held in Birmingham, England.

[edit] 1994

July 8-10, 1994 Tunnelcon 3: A Family Reunion was held in Las Vegas, Nevada.
August 1994 Masquerade 3 was held in Sheffield, England.

[edit] 1995

Songs of the Bluebird[4] the first website devoted solely to Beauty and the Beast was launched.
July 7-10, 1995 A Distant Shore: The Fairytale Continues Beauty and the Beast Convention was held at the LAX Doubletree Hotel, Los Angeles, California.

[edit] 1996

May 24-27, A Moment In Time was held at the Sacha's Hotel, Manchester, England.
July 12-14, A Kingdom by the Sea: A Romantic Celebration was held at the Omni Waterside Hotel, Norfolk, Virginia.

[edit] 1997

July 11-13, 1997 Of Things That Are Not And That Should Be: Reflections On The First Ten Years was held at the Sheraton Park Place Hotel, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

August 23-24, 1997 A Moment In Time 1997 was held at Sacha's Hotel, Manchester, England.

[edit] 1998

In February 1998, Sci-Fi Entertainment ran an article on fan fiction. It referenced the Beauty and the Beast fan fiction community. An extract of a relevant section of the article says:

There's also high-volume activity associated with Star Trek (referred to here as a aggregate for all four series, although currently Voyager seems to be leading to the greatest fanfic response ) and Lois and Clark: The New Adventure of Superman. But there are other, too: Star Wars, Babylon 5, Sliders, Xena, Dr. Who, Quantum Leap, Highlander, SeaQuest DSV, Beauty and the Beast - all of these popular science fiction and fantasy series have sites dedicated to the stories and characters of those universes.

March 27-29, 1998: BEAUTY AT THE BEACH: TO SEE THE WORLD IN A GRAIN OF SAND was held at the Sheraton Oceanfront Hotel, Virginia Beach, Virginia.
By June of 1998, the concept of badfic must have been present in the community as there appears to have been community member crossover with such authors as daemon, Diane and Sandy2. The X-Files Badfic Hall of Shame appeared in a post to alt.tv.beauty+beast answering the request for places to find X-Files fan fiction.

[edit] 1999

March 1999 Of Love and Hope(OLAH) has its final mailing.

May 1-2, 1999 A MOMENT IN TIME 1999 was held at the Hotel International, Manchester, England.

May 26, 1999 The TunnelDreams [5] mailing list was founded.

July 16-18, 1999 A KINGDOM BY THE SEA REVISITED: THE ROMANCE CONTINUES was held at the Holiday Inn International Drive Resort, Orlando, Florida.

[edit] 2000

July 7-9, 2000 A DISTANT SHORE II: REMEMBER LOVE was held at the Hilton Burbank Airport, Burbank, CA.
On August 1, 2000, the mailing list VincentsChamber was created. [6]
September 30 - October 1, 2000 MASQUERADES 2000 was held at the Forte Posthouse 'Albany', Nottingham, England.

[edit] 2001

May 4-6, 2001 A MOMENT IN TIME 2001 was held at the Davenport Park Hotel, Stockport, Manchester, England.
July 13-15, 2001 ONCE UPON A TIME IN NEW YORK CITY: A HOMECOMING was held at the Holiday Inn - 57th Street Midtown, New York City, New York.

[edit] 2002

On January 18, 2002, the EpisodeDiscussion mailing list was created. [7]
May 24-27, 2002 A Moment in Time 2002 was held at the Davenport Park Hotel, Stockport, Manchester, England.
On June 20, 2002, the Beauty and the Beast mailing list BBTV was created as a Yahoo Group. [8]
July 12-14, 2002 A Kingdom by the Sea III, A Celebration of Love was held at the Holiday Inn International Drive Resort, Orlando, Florida.
On July 17, 2002, the mailing list irecommend was created. [9]
batb_fanfiction, a mailing list for the posting of Beauty and the Beast fan fiction, was founded on October 28, 2002.

[edit] 2003

July 11-13, 2003 FOLLOW YOUR HEART: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST BY THE BAY [10] was held at the Crowne Plaza San Francisco-Union Square, San Francisco, California.
On July 16, 2003, the Classic Alliance of Beauty and the Beast site was created. [11]
On December 3, 2003, Chandler's Beauty and the Beast Page was created. [12]

[edit] 2004

On September 21, 2004, the Beauty and the Beast mailing list guttercoffeeshop was created. [13]

[edit] 2005

On January 5, 2005, the website Marina's Beauty and the Beast Page was created. [14]

[edit] 2006

On January 1, 2006, the LiveJournal community batb was created. [15]

[edit] 2007

On January 25, 2007, The Beauty and the Beast of It [16] Webring was started.
On February 13, 2007, the first season of Beauty and the Beast came out on DVD causing great excitement in the fandom.
From July 6 to July 8, 2007, Perchance to Dream [17] was held to help the fandom to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Beauty and the Beast.

[edit] 2008

In March 2008, Beauty and the Beast fan fiction writers reacted negatively to FanFiction.Net's policy change regarding the exclusion of certain characters from stories.

[edit] Kerfluffles

There have been some kerfluffles in the Beauty and the Beast because zine producers have charged excessive prices for their zines, to the point where some fen thought they were price gouging. [18]

There have many kerfluffles in the fandom concerning the third season. Many fans outright reject the third season and consider it never to have happened. Some even go so far as to insist that any discussion of "third season topics" in a mailing list be clearly labeled so that so that so-called "classic" fans will know not to read those posts.

Other fans either liked the third season or simply do not like having to label their posts.

The end result of this has been separate mailing lists for classic and all-season fans.

[edit] Notable Stories

[edit] Fandom Members

Kay Simon
Lynn, helps maintain CABB [23]
Margaret Davis
Nan Dibble [24]
Queen, The Linda Hamilton File maintainer [25]
Sharon Wells
Becky Bain
Eric Tullis
Stephanie Wiltse
Peter J. Formaini
Anna Kelley, formerly known as Anna Deavers
Wayne Kelley
Monica Cross

[edit] Fandom Size

Most BATB fanfiction is on BATB sites such as TunnelTales [26], The Steam Tunnels [27], and The Beauty and the Beast Reading Chamber (191 stories) [28].
The mail list bbtv [29] had 552 members as of April 3, 2007. As of December 8, 2007, the list had 640 members.
As of January 24, 2007, there were 50 television based Beauty and the Beast stories on FanFiction.Net and 221 movie based Beauty and the Beast stories on FanFiction.Net. As of December 8, 2007, there were 67 television based Beauty and the Beast stories on FanFiction.Net and 292 movie based Beauty and the Beast stories on FanFiction.Net.

[edit] See also

Beauty and the Beast fanzines

[edit] Sources

See Beauty and the Beast bibliography.

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Beauty and the Beast