Colin McEnroe Show: Fan Fiction Keeps 'Harry Potter' Alive; Sheds Light On Spock's Evening Wear
A discussion on the world of fandom with Lev Grossman and the OTW.
"Lay down some cover fire for me," I told Commander Troi, Buffy and Bill Curry. "I have to get back to Earth and do a show about fan fiction."
The vampire slayer and the busty Betazoid Starfleet counselor crouched behind the body of the slain Chewbacca while Curry scrambled to fetch the phasers and I activated the escape pod, setting the controls for the Dankosky Building on planet Earth in the Delta Quadrant. I hit warp speed and was gone in a flash.
Back on Tatooine, as the charging Banthas overwhelmed the rebel position, Curry turned to Buffy and Deanna and said, "If we're going to die anyway, there's something I'd like to do."
Hey, wait a sec. This is MY fan fiction. And isn't the whole point of fan fic to allow the uncredentialed author to expand his favorite imaginary world and make exciting new things happen?
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As an aside, and perhaps a
As an aside, and perhaps a comment to Rachel who felt constrained to fit into that "19 years later" epilogue - one could make anything at all happen within 19 years. For the last four years and more I've been writing a very long fanfic where Harry and Lucius Malfoy have developed a relationship, antagonistic at first but leading in to romantic. It still fits completely in canon. Harry did marry Ginny, Lucius is still married to Narcissa, Harry's an auror and Ginny plays professional quidditch. There's noting in canon that says that Harry and Lucius -didn't- have an affair, unlikely as one thinks that may be. That's the beauty of fanfic. There are so many things that -could happen- even within canon that one shouldn't feel constrained by it. Oh, and there's nothing at all wrong with AU either! :)
"the uncredentialed author to
"the uncredentialed author to expand his favorite imaginary world and make exciting new things happen?"
As your actual show points out, the "uncredentialed" author is often highly credentialed - many fan fiction writers are - shockingly - writers of one kind or another: authors of their own books or professors or lawyers or librarians or, in the case of many younger fanfiction writers, active and engaged students. Oh, and also: he tends to be a "she". :D That, I think, rather complicates your picture of Spock in drag (which I love, btw, having written an article that claims that Spock is a favorite of female fans precisely because he is the "alien" who stands in for women at a time when women were aliens in military and scientific culture. So while I think you maybe meant for that image to be laughable, I don't think it's laughable at all.)
E-mail from Hank
How about taking characters as Tom Stoppard to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Shakespeare? Two minor characters who got their own book and Stoppard made money.
E-mail from Anonymous
Colin - If you used my name (please don't) I'd get laughed out of the newsroom, but I will tell you I delved into the world of fan fiction back in the 1990s through The X-Files. I stumbled into a group of X-Files fan fic writers through a story I was doing for an Arizona paper. I loved the show, especially the complicated mythology, but after several seasons, I felt the show's changing cast of writers had somehow lost the mythology thread. It was fun to talk to other people who liked the show, but I assumed it was just a lark. After reading some of their stuff (I eventually turned into a beta reader for some of them - my AP style training paying off!) I found that some of the best fan-fic writers had a better grasp of the mythology, and its possibilities, than the show's recent batch of writers. And even average writers were very devoted to the storyline and had incredible attention to detail that rewards smart, dedicated viewers. And in a really basic way, it also kept the show alive long after a main actor like David Duchovny took off. The X-Files executives seemed to love the fan fic world, realizing it was kind of a pre-viral video way of promoting the show before the YouTube revolution. They even named a few small, bit characters after prolific fan fic writers. On a more artistic note, I'll say that I saw fan fiction help a couple of fledgling writers get their start, giving them a place to get started, with already developed characters, to learn things like dialogue, pacing, etc. Just FYI.
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