Thamiris

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Fan
Name: Thamiris
Alias(es): Tham
Type: fanwriter, moderator, archivist
Fandoms: Smallville, Harry Potter, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys Xena: Warrior Princess
Communities:
Other: Odysseys and Ecstasy
URL: Thamiris at LiveJournal
memorial AO3
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Thamiris was a writer, essayist, and mailing list moderator, especially well-known in Hercules-Xena and Smallville fandoms.

She was best known for her enthusiastic, unabashed appreciation for erotica and beautiful men, as well as being an elegant and stylistic writer with a strong leaning toward classic allusions, coupled with an earthy realism.

In a 2000 interview hosted on the Ksmithares archive, Thamiris stated:

.... history, murder, sex, perversity, psychology. Those five things summarize my interests as both a writer and a reader. [1]

In 2001, Thamiris wrote:

Not everyone likes my stories. I learned this a few years ago, when I started writing. Most authors eventually realize this, no matter how many LoCs they receive. Yeah, I want readers, and yeah, I hope they look at my fic and see something worthwhile.

But I don't owe readers sweet fuck all. I don't have a contract with them; the feedback isn't payment for services rendered. I'm not employed by my audience to write. I'm not indebted to them in any way. This isn't the Middle Ages, and the fannish community is not my patron.

No, it's my story, written for me, and if you see something in it that touches you, then I'm thrilled. But it's not up to me to thrill you; that's a perk you might get when you read my fiction. And hell, maybe you don't even want a thrill. How the hell should I know? Which is why I don't write for you, but for me.

I can't predict an audience's response. Even within fandom, the potential readership has a wide base. Some of those people, the gentle, Bambi-sh souls, need disclaimers to spare them from the trauma of reading nasties. Others like disclaimers as lures (pairings, ratings, etc). Still others don't give a shit, and will read a story based on relatively fluid criteria, who care more about how I tell a story than how I fit into their story template.

Those are the readers I want: smart, sophisticated adults who know that my stories might disturb them, or anger them, as much for any possible kink as for romantic schmoop. (And with my stories, you might get either, none, or both). I'm excited to have them, and I'll eagerly thank them for freely sharing their response to my work. [2]

Thamiris passed away on April 4, 2007. She was forty-one.

In Xena/Hercules Fandom

[Herc/Xena fandom influence & works here [citation needed]]

Thamiris also hosted the Ksmithares archive. This archive collected stories posted to the Ksmithares mailing list. Thamiris was the creator and moderator of Ksmithares, a mailing list for discussion and stories about characters from the Xena and Hercules universes, as well as characters portrayed by Kevin Smith, best known for his role as Ares on Xena: Warrior Princess. She was also involved with this archive in its later incarnation, the Ksares archive.

A meta essay characteristic of her style was Thamiris' Sexed-Up Grammar Guide, which was simultaneously funny, informative and hot:

Don't use a colon to separate a phrase or dependent clause from an independent clause:

NO: Day after day: the war god kissed you.

YES: Day after day, the war god kissed you.

NO: At the day's end: he pushed you onto the bed and licked your nipples.

YES: At the day's end, he pushed you onto the bed and licked your nipples.

In Smallville Fandom

Thamiris often posted meta analyzing and expanding on Smallville's references to mythology and Greek and Roman classics[3] or from a "mostly tongue-in-cheek" Freudian perspective.[4]

She also posted a lot of extremely popular porn.

[more about her Smallville stories here would be good [citation needed]]

Along with Siobhan, Thamiris became a moderator of ClarkLex after Liviapenn stepped down.

Interviews

Meta and Essays

Preserving Thamiris' Livejournal

After Thamiris' death, the livejournal community tham_preserved was created as a center for fundraising efforts by her friends, in order to upgrade her livejournal to a permanent account. This would have the effect of always preserving Thamiris' layout and userpics as they were when she was alive. The tham_preserved community also took steps to preserve Thamiris' personal site, Odysseys and Ecstasy, as well as the Ksmithares archive.

Fan Comments

Some comments (out of many, many more) at Tributes:

[arebella]: Thamiris: founder of the KSmithAres list, gifted writer and story-teller. She left us way too soon with so many stories left unwritten.

Tham and I go way, way back, to the beginnings of the Herc/Xena fandom. Tham always had my back in the old days and even when we weren't on the best of terms, I admired her for being willing to speak up for what she believed in.

She could tell a story with the finest of the fanfic writers. She was simply one of the best writers of any genre to ever take the characters so loved by the Herc/Xenaverse Nation and weave them into stories. Period.

[...]

I am a better person and a better writer for having known you and your work. You will always be with me when I read your stories and remember you as a superb storyteller and as a friend who always had my back.

[kristyspyder]:Thamiris was a bit of a hero to me. I never knew her true name. She was heavily involved in the Smallville fandom, a bit involved with Harry Potter, and I read her blog entries ravenously.

She was a self proclaimed pornographic goddess. She was tawdry, and literary, and smart, and completely vulgar in the most delightful way. She was vivacious and and her wit was quick and sharp. She did not suffer fools or people who took themselves to seriously. And I think it was her most ardent dream to see Clark and Lex make out on her living room floor (and then join them, of course).

I feel like there is much less light in the world. And I loved her even though I never really knew her. I think just knowing she was out there somewhere meant that the passion I put into fandom was not silly. That fanfiction was just another form of fiction. Because if Tham agreed, it couldn't possibly be any other way.

I will miss you Tham, you affected my life and I will be forever grateful.

[lobelia321]:

I am very, very sad. I loved reading Thamiris's posts. She was such an essential and life-affirming and kind presence on my Flist. I will miss her terribly. I already missed her terribly during her long absence and am so very sad that her icon and her baroque prose and her luscious, sexually bold stories will simply be gone from my every day. She was a generous and thoughtful person, embraced life and fandom and with a rich understanding of sexuality that spilled over into a lustful gusty love of words. She always had such interesting ideas and I never heard her utter one unkind word or wanky thing. She was very respectful of others' views.

She was an academic on the west coast of Canada, and she loved medieval English literature and managed in truly uplifting ways to connect this to her lust for Smallville. It was she who introduced me to the world of vibrators by means of her hilarious Ode to the Vibrator. She wrote a gorgeous Harry Potter fic called ...Lies in the Rookery which gives you a taste of her attention to words and her sensual love of language. Her kindness comes through in her fannish guide for newbies. She loved fandom in all its manifestations, and her every post got seventy plus comments because she was just so lovely and beloved.

I will miss her terribly. An online death is a very strange thing, and we are the first generation to have to learn to deal with it, and with the memorial of a dead person remaining in form of their very vibrant and alive LiveJournal. It is so strange, but as others have said, an online death is no less sad and an online friendship no less real than an offline friendship. It works on different levels, and sometimes on deeper levels.

I miss you, dearest, sweetest Thamiris. I loved having you in my life and I'm grateful that I knew you, for a while.

[tingler]: Thamiris wasn't a terribly prolific poster. Weeks and weeks could go by without a new entry--but when she did, you knew it was going to be good. And then she didn't post for a long, long, long time and just about when I was starting to wonder if she'd wandered away from LJ for good, she showed up with some story about having cancer or something and not wanting to bother any of us with all that. I was so happy she was back and, y'know, I just assumed everything was going to be all right, she was getting better, she was posting again with all her former fabulousness and then... gone. I never even met her yet I loved her very much.

[jenna thorn]: We never met, I never saw her face, and yet I miss her. Her enthusiasm for literature, indeed for the world, was infectious and she made it a more exciting place by giving us her view of it.

[literaryll]: Her language is ripe with everything she gave to fandom - passion, hilarity, insight, warmth. Smallville fandom is so lucky to have had her. More than that - we are all lucky to have had her no matter what she was fangirly or talking about. She was a fucking gift.

[destina]: Thamiris raged and was gleeful with equal intensity, and she loved the things she loved, and wasn't shy about her writerly neurosis, and gave some of the most beautiful feedback ever out of sheer kindness, and I can't stand it that that kind of light was just winked out.

[jen]: The KSmithAres mailing list was my first online fandom and my very first foray into slash. I couldn't possibly have experienced a better inauguration into either world. I have never found anywhere like the KSA list in the happy acceptance of het and slash alongside one another, the lack of taboos, the quality of feedback and discussion and the round robins. It takes more than one person to make a community, and I made some wonderful friends there, yet the driving force behind the list, the reason it had so much of the singular character it did, was surely due to Thamiris. Tham was always enthusiastic and incredibly generous with her time, knowledge, and feedback. She kept the list active, engaging and fun with a multitude of different challenges. I learned so much from her feedback (both on my work and that of others) and her fun and supportive tutorials. I'm very glad that I had the opportunity to know her.

[earis]: The incomparable Thamiris has passed. My words are insufficient to explain how amazing she was, how her LJ entries were some of the most thought provoking and exciting reading material I have ever experienced. I attribute many of my beliefs about fandom and fanfiction and the role of the active viewer/reader to her influence. I reread her stories often, letting the weight of her words vibrate in my bones. I respected her immeasureably, both for her brainy awesomeness and for her amazing spirit. She did not bring the hate to fandom, only the love. She did not try to be hurtful, only tried to spread joy. Others have said more and better than I can, but I will miss this woman and I will honor her.

[musesfool]: Thamiris was a ballsy, talented lady, a real dame, and I mean that in the absolute best sense, and I was always impressed with the way she used words, not just in her stories, but in her posts, in her comments, in her feedback. Her presence on my flist - in my fannish life - will be missed. I feel like there should be porn in her honor, dirtyhot and lush, full of linguistic arabesques and joy, the way her posts and stories always were.

seperis: One of the most elegant writers I've ever encountered, and a brilliant meta writer as well.

[norwich36]: I always thought she was the kind of fan I wanted to be: an amazing writer and essayist, a warm and welcoming person and someone with an amazing lust for life and for beautiful boys. I was so in awe of her writing talents that I almost never sent her feedback (which was dumb, because I could see from her journal how kind she was to newbies), and while I did finally get around to recommending some of her amazing stories, not just in SV but her Ares slash and her unbelievably beautiful bible slash, and her terrific SV meta, I really regret I let my shyness get in the way of interacting with her more, or letting her know exactly how much her writing had meant to me.

[sextagteam]: Her meta, especially 'Domestic Penetration: Queering the Home in Highlander, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, The Sentinel, and Smallville,' is what really lead me to see the potential beauty and playfulness in analytical writing and inspired my own interest in media studies and fannish meta. This interest is ultimately what lead me to my choice of major, which will of course have a great impact of my life (or is that just what they tell you to lend the entire collegiate experience meaning?) I wish I could have communicated something of the impact she had on me to her. I will always remember her skill and joy with words, as well as her open and delighted attitude towards sexuality and art. They were a bright spot in fandom.

[lyrebird]: Back in 2002, LJ was a very different place to what it is now. Thamiris'd pose intriguing topics and people would reply in their hundreds. Most amazing of all, she responded to every single comment. Unfailingly. They were friends... but many were also big fans of her work, her posts - her entire online persona. Her chatty warmth and enthusiasm charmed many. She virtually became a fandom of her own. Time went on, and I came to realise the kind of person she was: very gregarious, passionate, opinionated... and extraordinarily generous to friends and newbies alike. I'll always be grateful to her and I admire her for the way she stood up for PWPs and writing sex for its own sake. It's strange browsing her journal and site knowing she won't update anymore. A tragic shame she's gone.

[suzume-tori]: You can look at a star shine even after it's gone out, and you won't ever know that all you're seeing is the residual light. If ghosts or angels or spirits can read the internet, Thamiris will see all the comments left to her - both by those who know of her death, and by those who haven't realized it - and Thamiris? If you're reading this? Thank you very much. You made very beautiful things; I wish I'd known you. Whatever it was that made you write so well, I hope it was something that carries over. I hope your shine is yours to keep.

References

  1. ^ foxmonkey interview with Thamiris. January 9, 2000
  2. ^ from Bambi in the Headlights: Thoughts on Disclaimers (December 6, 2001)
  3. ^ "SV's Visitor: A Mostly Tongue-in-Cheek Freudian Analysis: thamiris — …". Archived from the original on 2022-05-17.
  4. ^ "SV's Fanatic 5.10: The Mythological Context: thamiris — LiveJournal". Archived from the original on 2022-05-17.
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