Fan Fiction

I tend to bitch a lot about fan fiction.  It's not the fan fiction that bothers me, it's when they turn fan fiction into a rebooted franchise like the did with the new Star Trek movies.  The reason is that when people take the fan fic try to make it part of the original work to legitimize it, it waters down the original material, in my opinion.  Or it seems disrespectful. The expanded universes can damage a franchise like Star Wars as evidenced in the 7th movie.  I've blogged on both in the past, so I won't go on about it.

But I'm not angry at fan fiction itself.  A lot of it is very good.  And I was thinking of times when it is even necessary with the episode of TNG that I talked about this week.  I was thinking of the Traveler and how little was written about him though it's well documented.  And I was thinking about Wesley and how things could have been done better.  That is the basis for a lot of fan fiction - someone thinking they could do it better. (Which is why it belongs on its own plain of existence and not within the canons of the various fandoms, because not everyone has the same idea of "better.")  So I poked around a little to see if anything specific was written for Wesley, but didn't make a thorough investigation.  After all, I know Wesley could've been written better, but I can't personally think up better twists to his story.  Others have apparently and I'm glad of it.

I've mentioned in passing before that other movies have been made of older shows that are fan fiction based and that I was okay with them because they were existing separately from the original franchises.  Dark Shadows is an example.  I'd read some of the fan fiction that went along with Dark Shadows and I saw bits of it in that movie.  A lot of people always wanted to see Angelique and Barnabas together, even if it was only a one time thing.  I also saw the observations my husband and I would make coming to life as if someone else was thinking what we were thinking and it was so funny.  (Couldn't Barnabas just come and take over the house since it's rightfully his?  And he does just that.)  They were cruel to Roger and Julia, but it was obvious that whoever wrote it just wasn't a fan of the characters, so it was also just good fun.  What I loved most about it, and where I saw the respect that I've mentioned before, is in the costume design.  They went above and beyond to recreate the awful clothing from the series.  They didn't try to update or streamline any of it (except Michelle Pfeiffer's costumes.) It showed that there was love, real love, for what was.  That the people that made it probably sat and laughed at the old series in the same way I did.  Laughed because they loved seeing the awful fashions and campy effects.

I ended up liking Maleficent very much.  It was a twist on the old Sleeping Beauty story.  It was such a hard twist that it never could've been used as an update or passed off as a legitimate part of the original story. It was just creative writing by someone who noticed that the villain had no background and appeared to me mad for not being invited to a party.  The nods to the original Sleeping Beauty were wonderful, with the scene where Aurora receives blessings from the three fairies playing out almost word for word, until it was necessary to tweak it for the sake of the story in the movie.  They presented her the lopsided cake for her birthday that was a much beloved part of the animated film.  Such a brilliant touch!  It was nicely done.

I've even dabbled in "fan fiction" myself if that can be applied to cartoon shows.  I watched Heathcliff a little growing up.  I didn't like Heathcliff but I was intrigued by the other cats that got a side story from time to time.  I think they were called the Catillac Cats... Rif Raf, Mungo, Hector, Wordsworth, and Cleo.

I made a soap opera world where Rif Raf and Cleo are divorced with twin sixteen year old daughters.  R.R. is a mobster with Mungo as his right hand man and Cleo is a P.I. with Hector as a partner and boyfriend.  Wordswoth is a doctor and my storylines were mostly plagiarized from movies and science fiction that I'd seen.  I used to draw it as a kid.  I've taken it and transferred it to story form just as an exercise in creative writing, never to be seen by anyone since, as I said, the stories aren't terribly original.  I find it strange that this particular cartoon is what fueled my desire to invent an alternate universe when I'm a fan of things like Star Trek and Star Wars, but it just goes to show that fiction is a malleable outlet for a creative mind and fan fiction can be useful, healthy and fun in the appropriate venues.

Anyway, that's just my thoughts for today.