Fan Fiction

I think escapism is important. Running away from problems is usually a bad way to solve them, but sometimes being able to focus on something else allows people to find new perspective and hopefully new ways to solve those problems. I could write about my feelings about everything that happened this week in Boston, but I am going to give myself some time on that. Especially since I prepared this whole thing during the week. “Best laid plans of mice and men,” I suppose.

Anyway, fan fiction. That’s right, in the eye of tragedy, I am going to write about fan fiction.

I actually think that fan fiction can be a valuable tool for writers sometimes. Writing using the same characters and settings of another work of fiction (or non-fiction) can be a good starting point for practicing what type of writer the person wants to be. One should be wary of using fan fiction as a crutch, but in the end, there are far worse things a person can spend their time on.

The only fan fiction I ever wrote was in middle school about a wrestling tournament involving video game characters (inspired by that MTV “Celebrity Deathmatch” show), other than that, I barely have enough time to write my own stories. A lot of fiction can be so derivative that I sometimes wonder if a person should just change the names of their fan-fiction and make it their own. I suppose that may lessen the people interested in the work initially, and may also defeat the purpose of the “crutch” in the first place.

Despite my complete lack of want to write fan fiction, that doesn’t mean that sometimes ideas don’t pop into my head. So here for your approval, are my underdeveloped fan fiction ideas.

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

Instead of a clone army, the “clone attack” is actually the ability to make clones of anybody. This erupts in a Cold War-esque conflict of paranoia of not ever knowing who is real. Jedi have an upper hand in determining who is who, but since the cloning process can also manipulate midichlorians and therefore can fool the other person into thinking the clones are the original people. Anakin is a cheerful, good jedi until he gets tricked into killing Count Dooku and  his friends by a clone of Obi-Wan Kenobi. This leads him to the dark side and in the end, the emperor turns out to be a clone of Palpatine with an artificially high midichlorian count (originally Palpatine started the clone project to make doubles of himself to protect himself from the Sith traitor, but it backfired on him when the Sith sabotaged the clone). Also, the reason the emperor looks so weird in the original trilogy is because clones age prematurely.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:

When Voldemort gets resurrected into his body, the process actually mends back his soul and it is so traumatic that it erases all his memories. He ends up being a very nice, though eccentric, wizard. Dumbledore realizes that Voldemort is no longer evil and takes him into his care (because he is going to be murdered anywhere else). Dumbledore even makes Voldemort the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Harry completely disagrees with this until Voldemort sacrifices himself to save Harry from the newly formed Death Eaters lead by Lucius.

Jurassic Park:

Nothing goes wrong in the park and the entire movie is Jeff Goldblum being awesomely awkward.

Lord of the Rings:

This thing about Tom Bombadil is true.

Doug:

Roger is a recovering alcoholic and, as part of the 12 steps process, Roger meets Doug in a café to apologize for bullying him during school. Roger thinks that maybe he had feelings for Doug and only bullied him due to his internalized homophobia. Roger had gotten in such a bad depression after high school that he had to drink to keep feelings deep inside down. Roger is unsure whether this means he is bisexual, homosexual, or if he was attracted to just Doug. Doug doesn’t quite know how to respond to this but he forgives Roger. Doug then begins to daydream and seems to be completely out of it. Roger tries to get him out of his daydream, but leaves lamenting that he was hoping to get more of a reaction from Doug (love or hate, didn’t matter). Roger wonders if Doug is so introverted and self-involved if Roger’s bullying even really reached him. Maybe he only teased Doug not because of his feelings, but because he hated that he didn’t seem to be aware.

Power Rangers:

Rita imprisons the Power Rangers. Rita rules the world for 10 years and then releases the Power Rangers. It turns out that due to her magic powers, Rita has been able to solve most of the world’s problems (world hunger, population, and other problems are solved by the fact that Rita can make things grow in size), but once Rita solved all the problems, the people turned against her. The Power Rangers agree to do an act to seem like they killed Rita and saved the world. Rita escapes and the Power Rangers have to figure out what to do after Rita is gone.

Scooby-Doo:

Remember when they had all those guest stars? Like Mama Cass, Don Knotts, and Batman? Wouldn’t it be awesome if Mama Cass, Don Knotts, and Batman teamed up and solved mysteries? Seems like a missed opportunity to me (though I am a huge fan of Don Knotts so I am biased).

Spiderman 2:

Instead of Doctor Octopus being “crazy,” Doc Ock finds himself with a perfectly sane mind, but with the crimes he has committed by accident (the experiment failing, killing people, accidentally killing people when he was unconscious in hospital) and his wife dead, Doc Ock only lives to turn the failed experiment into a success. Spiderman than has to deal with the fact that there is no way society will forgive him (especially with J. Jonah Jameson making him seem like a monster) and he is a brilliant man that could help the world. Spiderman has to decide if he is more loyal to the society he is sworn to protect, or to Doc Ock, whom Spiderman is much more sympathetic towards.

Spiderman 3:

Just make it a musical. Maybe by somebody other than U2 for safety.

Compartmentalization:

That Gwen would have used that robot suit. Why did she not get the chance to use it? The author was a fool! A FOOL!

The Scarlet Letter:

In this version, the book is terribly outdated and it is only studied to look back on how people judged women harshly for what they did in their private lives, and not because it is as relevant today as it was back when it was written.

Batman:

It turns out there are more than one Gotham City (like there are multiple Springfield) and the Christian Bale Batman chases a villain to the Gotham City that the Adam West Batman protects. Christian Bale Batman then has to figure out how to deal with not just another Batman, but a city that is much brighter (literally and figuratively) than the one he came from.

Real Life:

That I would realize that “fan fiction” doesn’t mean “rewriting popular things in ways that I would have liked them more.” I sort of completely missed the “fan” part. Maybe that is the real reason why I don’t write fan fiction.

Review of Spec Ops: The Line

I am not the biggest fan of violence in video games. Not necessarily just for moral and societal reasons (though those help), but because violence in many video games is boring. I am not saying that all games should strip violence from themselves (I support people being able to put whatever they want to in their game), but so many games seem to only use violence as filler; something to keep the player occupied as they go from point A to point B. Video games use violence as a crutch because it seems like that is the only thing that people can identify and understand quickly. This may actually be more indicative of psychology of people than video games necessarily, but whenever I play a game that uses an alternative to violence, it is something I celebrate. Sometimes I wonder if video games would be better if they really dealt with the violence they depict, instead of just using violence as a time-waster.

Spec Ops: The Line is an attempt to answer that question. In Spec Ops, the player is Walker, the leader of Delta force, leading his three person team into a devastated Dubai. Dubai has been destroyed by sandstorms, and the game begins with Walker trying to save the people of Dubai and confront Konrad, the military commander that seems to be running things. Walker was saved by Konrad years before, and his mission turns into obsession of how a man can go from a rational military commander to a dictator of sorts. Spec Ops is a pastiche of Heart of Darkness, and it slowly goes into madness as the narrative progresses.

The thing that makes this “madness” interesting is the contrast it has to the linear third person shoot game play the game adheres to. Spec Ops plays a lot like a Call of Duty (shoot all the guys and then you win) game, but as the goal of the game goes from saving everybody, to just surviving, the tone shift of the narrative paints the game play in a completely different light. The game starts as the player walks through abandoned cars, littered with casualties from the sandstorm, and confronts what the player assumes to be the same faceless “insurgents” that seem to be the enemy in every third person shooter set in the modern era. The game quickly shifts into fighting Konrad’s forces (the Damned 33rd) and as they communicate in the same sort of military speak that the protagonists do, the absolute morality of the mission begins to be muddled. It is this continuing muddling contrasting with the same game play a player might experience in any other third person shooter that begins to question both violence in the game, but also violence that prevails in the video games that Spec Ops is emulating.

This contrast between game design and game narrative shines the brightest when the player is confronted with a choice. Spec Ops doesn’t try and make all these choices explicit, it is up to the player to realize that they have the power to make a choice in the first place. Being in an extremely hostile environment makes making the “right” choice, or making the choice that will lead to survival, tough to do. That becomes compounded when the choices the player makes don’t pan out exactly they would expect. Should you save the guy who could lead you to the rest of the refugee hostages, or should you save the two hostages that could be killed right in front of you? Is there a right answer? In the end, it is something the player has to figure out for themselves.

That being said, it is hard to wholeheartedly recommend Spec Ops: The Line. It is a type of game that manipulates the player and the goal isn’t really to be “fun.” The game seeks more to make the player think and feel terrible than to try and fulfill any sort of power or mastery fantasy. It is this manipulation that can come off as pretentious. I agree that some of the narrative twists come off as something the player could have no real control over (an therefore can dampen agency), but by the end of the game, the narrative takes a back seat to how the game made me feel in the moment. There are moments of pure helplessness and it made me rationalize something that I would never do in any other context (I still feel a little embarrassed looking at my Playstation trophy list, which shows which choices I made at certain moments). It is that journey down how it feels to have to make decisions while everyone around you wants to kill you that made me think long and hard about violence and conflict around the world. Sure, I have read, heard, and seen many things about violence and conflict, but it was easy to sit and judge people when I never really been in any of those sorts of situations myself. Spec Ops: The Line gave me a little taste of how that may feel like. It made me more empathetic towards people who have to deal with those decisions on a regular basis.

Video games are typically played as entertainment, as escapism, and as something to let off steam, so when something comes along to try and try and make me think and feel bad about myself, I appreciate that experience. It is funny to me when people complain about “video games not being fun anymore,” because, as far as I can tell, most video games are so obsessed with being fun and accessible that they end up being mediocre as a result. It is already widely accepted that other entertainment mediums, music, books, movies, are compelling, and perhaps even at their best, when they are doing more than just keep the audience happy. Spec Ops: The Line is a great example of video games breaking the shackles of mindless fun and being something worth discussing.

The Sirens of Titan, A Review

There is something about a book that drives someone to read the first chapter again after finishing it. I derive a certain joy in being able to read the last page of a book, close it, and being able to reflect on the experience, but sometimes a book will end in such an amazing fashion that I am compelled to start over again just to see how it all fit together. It is like a magic trick that the magician repeats over and over to an enraptured audience trying to figure out how in the world they did it.

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut is one of those books. It helps though that the book starts with millionaire Malachi Constant going to a mansion he has been invited to see a man caught in a chrono-synclastic infundibula who has a prophesy to tell him. How Malachi takes that prophesy is reminiscent of a certain classic Greek tale, but that is only a fraction of the story. Sirens of Titan uses science fiction to explore some of the deepest and hard to deal with aspects of religion, society, humanity, and our place in the the universe.

The book isn’t just about Malachi Constant, it is about how the things that happen to him come about. Kurt Vonnegut does  an excellent job of giving his novels a sort of “democratic” feel. While there are characters do influence the narrative more, they all feel like they are a part a the puzzle that creates the universe around them. Even the narrator of the story reads more like a character. The way the story can jump from subject to subject, giving motivations and insight into the world, it all feels like someone is telling their story, allowing for certain perspectives and points of view to bleed through. It is what makes The Sirens of Titan feel so honest; no one has a 100% unbiased version of the truth.

The way the book jumps around and gives insight to the world and society feels a lot like another science fiction book, Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy uses humor and satire to explain the universe (megaverse?) that the protagonist Arthur Dent lives in. The thing that made Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy worth reading is how that humor and satire would comment on the sort of sad realities of modern life. Sirens of Titan, on the other hand, uses the sad realities of modern life to create humor and satire. I found nothing in Sirens of Titan laugh out loud funny, but the sort of dark humor that festers on the edges of the tragedy, sadness, and hopelessness of what happens to Malachi Constant is something I found even honestly more funny (even if the humor is found in a sort of “self-defense” between myself and what the book is trying to say).

 One of the reasons I love Kurt Vonnegut, and by extension, The Sirens of Titan, is how all his books manage to be much more interesting than a plot summary could convey. The Siren of Titan is an example of how the journey is more important than the destination.   I feel this is an important aspect of writing. If a story just uses words as a sort of makeshift bridge to try and struggle to the next plot point, then the story isn’t worth reading. This is also why The Sirens of Titan is worth reading.