I Mourn for Adonis and the other perils of fan fiction (which is still destroying America, by the way)

Not so long ago, I warned that fan fiction was destroying America.

I’ve been silent on the subject since then because of the vitriol-filled emails I got from five different fanfic authors.

Five of them. That’s what, seventy or eighty percent of the people who write fanfic, right?

Clearly, I touched a nerve.

Their impassioned death threats and photos of the front of my house left me with both a lot to think about and an extreme reluctance to go outside, let alone touch on the subject again.

Until now.

Their chief complaint, after the one about my continued existence in a living, non-tortured state, was that as someone who didn’t write fanfic, I wasn’t a special star and could therefore never know what I was talking about.

Au contraire! I have written fanfic. In fact, I can count on three fingers the number of fanfic works I’ve written:

Two Doctor Whos (one thirty years ago, one about ten years ago) and one Star Trek (about twenty-five years ago).

So I have not only fanfic writing experience, but the wisdom, when speaking of it, that comes with age.

I know, I know, you’re thinking, “Ian, you’ve written fanfic? Bullsh*t.”

I can sympathize with this assessment. If I didn’t know myself intimately (and believe me, I do), I would share that assessment.

Therefore, I offer proof.

The first Doctor Who fanfic is lost to history, so I cannot present it as evidence of my bona fides. And the second Doctor Who story was written for an audience of exactly two (myself and the Missus, who is the star of the tale), and is not meant to be shared.

Both stories are also so terrible that to read them threatens the very fabric of space-time, and as my hero, the Doctor, would never stand for that, they shall remain forever beyond your reach.

That leaves the Star Trek story. When I first hit upon the idea of using it as my rebuttal to the vile electronic hate-scrawls that filled my inbox after the first blog post, I despaired. For I believed it, too, to be lost forever.

I was dimly aware of a copy reproduced in my high school Science Fiction club newsletter, but remembering the name of and then tracking down the phone number and calling the president of the club seemed like far too much effort.

In addition, ever since the burning paper bags with copies of Star Trek: Voyager inside them started appearing on my porch, I’ve been less than enthused about the idea of interacting with the outside world.

You have no idea how difficult it is to remove melted plastic from concrete. Especially when you know what had been on that plastic.

This is the hardware responsible for proving a horrific truth. There should be a Star Trek episode where Kirk and Spock go back in time to prevent the device from ever being built. Hmm, I may have a story idea there…

Then I bought a used USB Zip drive (via mail order, of course), and started going through all the Zip disks I had stored in my garage.

It proved to be a treasure trove of old pictures, letters, school papers, and, yes, works of fiction by yours truly.

It is this recent development that now allows me to present to you, my discriminating readers, proof of two things:

1) That I have indeed partaken of the fan fiction fount, and can therefore trash talk it without consequence from the tiny but fanatic community that still perpetuates this literary crime against Humanity

2) Fanfic is, as I have always maintained, and as my story demonstrates beyond any doubt, a literary crime against Humanity

So I now present to you, mostly unedited (except for the Kirk/Spock/time-traveling Wesley Crusher threesome scene – propriety demanded I cut it), Star Trek: I Mourn For Adonis. I recommend donning Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses before reading any further.

 

Fanfic is DESTROYING America! (Sam/Dean/JWatson/SHolmes/HPotter/HDresden)

Sam wiped the lamb’s blood mixed with demon’s blood from the silver knife and looked at Dean, whose breath heaved with the recent exertion of killing the monster. But when Dean looked in Sam’s eyes, he realized he was ready, nay, needed a little more…exertion.

Harry Dresden ran his withered, burnt hand across his bare, sweat-glistening chest, and glared at them from the other side of the prone demon body. “Please, you two, get a room.” A thoughtful expression came over his smoldering, lonely eyes. “Unless you’re willing to share…with me.”

The boy wizard leapt up in the air, his wand already at half-staff. “Me too!  Me too!” shouted Harry Potter. He waved his wand and shouted, “Snuggigus Fantasticus Sexicus!” and a plush king-sized bed appeared in the room of the abandoned old cabin. The four heroes fell into it at once, their clothes seemingly falling away as they tumbled into one another.

“Oh, I love you my sweet!”

“No, I love you more my shmoopy boopy toopy!”

“Wait, who are you talking to?”

“Not possible, Harry dearest! I love you the mostest. Just look at me when I look at you! No, look lower!”

“So you weren’t talking to me, you cold, heartless bastard. That makes me want you more! MOAR!”

“I see the game is afoot,” the young, modern-day Sherlock intoned as he burst into the cabin, followed a moment later by the erstwhile John Watson.

“My god, Holmes,” ejaculated Watson, “there are four naked men in that bed!”

“Your powers of observation fail you yet again, my dear John,” said Holmes, languishing atop the other men. “There are five naked men in this bed, and I predict that before this sentence is over there will be si- Ah, I see I deduced correctly.”

“Oh shut up and kiss me,” said John, his hungry mouth finding Sherlock’s and kissing it hungrily. “I’m ravenous for your love, old man.”

“I don’t think Mycroft would approve,” mumbled Sherlock between gasps of sheer pleasure. “He hates when I start without him.”

“Rick! Rick! Where are you!”

“Minmei!” shouted all six men at once. “What are you doing standing there when you can be here in bed, naked, with the rest of us?”

“Oh my,” said Mr. Sulu, beaming into the cabin, sword swinging, just in time to join the festivities.

Fanfic is destroying America. And I’m not talking about the paper-thin plots, the laughable sex scenes masquerading as character development, or the wanton intellectual property theft that fanfic represents.

I’m talking about England reclaiming us.

“Wha?” ask the naive Americans out there reading this. (“Who cares?” ask the nonchalant Canadians out there reading this.)

Fanfic is undergoing a British invasion. Doctor Who, Torchwood (which is practically fanfic in its raw form anyway), Sherlock (modern AND gaslight), Harry Potter(/Snape – eew!). The fanfic sites are being overwhelmed by the British newcomers. These ‘illegal immigrants’, as it were, are robbing American fanfic stories of valuable slots on the fanfic sites.

Even our old enemy, Japanese anime, is contemplating an alliance of convenience (no-strings-attached-allies-with-benefits?) to thrust off the new threat.

How do I know this? How did I detect this saucy, saucy threat?

I looked at the numbers (all from a prominent fanfic website on the net (ahem) I refuse to name because it employs so many non-American fanfics).

Greatest American Hero: 119 (Yes, the pinnacle of American greatness, the Greatest America Hero, has only 119 stories.)

Harry Effin’ Potter: 542,277 (And I’m not kidding about the effin’ part. Holy crap, remind me to never send my kids to a British boarding brothel school!)

Knight Rider: 52 (52!!!! Come on! It’s KNIGHT RIDER AND MADE OF AWESOME! KITT/Michael fanfic practically WRITES ITSELF!!!!)

Sherlock: 4509

Buck Rogers: 3 (3!!!!!!!! You can’t get MORE AMERICAN than Buck Rogers (and we all want MOAR MOAR MOAR Buck!))

Clearly the Americans are under threat from our supposed allies across the pond. The slimy limeys are taking over, and we, in our highly aroused and distracted state, are allowing them.

It’s a damn shame.

If you’re American (or if you’re Canadian but think Americans are awesome, as we are), it is your patriotic duty to stop whatever it is you’re doing right now and write a fanfic based on an American book/movie/TV series. Unless you were already in the process of doing just that, in which case, in the name of all that is holy, DON’T STOP!

Need some ideas?

Puff the Magic Dragon is woefully under-represented in the genre. Where else can you find a more American folklore opportunity?

Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn/Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Freaky deaky!

Any characters created by Tom Wolfe or Tom Clancy. (And how about created by Wolfe AND Clancy? Tasty tasty.)

CNN is still American. Why limit ourselves to fiction? In this war on Britain, let’s draft ourselves some (American) fannonfic. Mmm, Anderson Cooper/Bernard Shaw. Yummy.

So yes, help us stop the British fanfic menace. And once we put the Brits down, we can start worrying about those cheap Chinese import fanfics. We can’t compete with their lower cost knock-offs, but we can erect a proud, tall barrier by using more and bigger penises in our fanfic.

And if you’re worried that plot will take up too much space, crowding out the giant genitalia, don’t. Plot in fanfic is like use of a condom in fanfic – totally unnecessary and rarely seen.

And once we have a perfect world of American fanfic devoid of plot or meaningful character development, free for our impressionable youth and adults to read, people will come to expect less of loftier works, such as books you buy online and at the bookstore or peruse at the library. Those can be devoid of depth and meaning too.

That’s when we’ll know we’ve won.

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