-- Dan Bern, "Jerusalem"

Geckos are small tropical lizards that eat bugs and can cling upside down to ceilings. They also make a noise that sounds like a cross between a dog's bark and a bird's chirp. Jae, however, does none of these things.

"Jae Gecko" is the pseudonym for a passionate, politically-minded, idealistic, stubborn, compulsively detail-oriented mediafan. In her "spare time" (ha!) she travels constantly, makes music, cooks, and writes, and sometimes that writing includes fanfiction. Much of the fanfiction that she writes has tended to be classified as "slash," but Jae thinks people are better off not trying too hard to classify her stories according to existing categories. Somebody's always going to end up disappointed, and somebody else is always going to end up missing out on something they might have liked.

She first heard of fanfiction when she was 16 and brand new to science fiction fandom, and she was intrigued, but it never held any real appeal for her before she saw "West Wing." She came to the show later than many--her first episode was the two-hour season two opener--and there was something about the combination of watching those flashback scenes and having to try and figure out who the characters were at the same time that caused her to wonder whether there might be more there than meets the eye. She felt vindicated when one of the other people she was watching it with turned to one of the die-hard fans in the room and said: "So, these two used to be lovers?"

At that point, Jae set off to search for the fanfiction about that relationship that she knew must be out there. She hadn't written any sort of fiction at all for ten years, so it didn't occur to her at first to write anything herself; she simply wanted to read the stories that were suddenly appearing, whole-cloth, in her head. After an entire day of searching the Internet, she finally realized that although there was already a lot of stuff out there, indeed, no one had yet written these particular incredibly obvious stories! So she set out to write them herself, and by the time they were told, she was having too much fun to stop. Although she mostly concentrates on original work these days, she's very grateful to fandom for introducing her to the wonderful world of fiction writing.