Adaptations Part Seven: Fan Fiction
Fan fiction is unofficial takes on expanded universes, often creating significant portions of it. Fan films, prose, blogs, art. It can range from silly hobby to professional-level ambition.
In prose and poetry, classics like Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy were so influential, they influenced the canon of the Christian religion.
In contemporary film, The Backrooms is Kane Parson’s take on the collaborative internet canon and now has its own canon.
Master of the Universe started as fan ficiton to Twilight, then grew into its own thing, Fifty Shades of Gray.
Fan fiction theories have offered some fascinating explanations for established franchises. For example, in the James Bond universe, the idea that the whole name “James Bond” is a codename paired with the code number “007” was created to explain why Bond’s face keeps changing due to new actors, but the name & number stay the same.
Fan fiction can serve as wish fulfilment. In Marvel’s Avengers canon, Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanova have collaborrated, were part of the 2012 lineup that covered 9 films. By the end of that arc, Natasha perished in a self-sacrifce… so sad fans took to fan fiction.
In the world of games, fan fiction helped expand the hit game, Doom, as ID Software released the level editor program they used and soon fan levels showed up. And even entire game conversions like The Plutonia Experiment and Evilution that were soon endorsed by ID Software and officially released. Some of those involved went on to work in the industry.
Do you know any others? Drop your thoughts.
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Two that come to mind: the word “canon” itself is fan fiction’s coinage… early Sherlock Holmes devotees borrowed it from theology and wrote mock-scholarship treating Watson as the real author. And right next to your Backrooms example sits the SCP Foundation: thousands of authors, no owner, no original text to be faithful to, the canon is the collaboration.
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Ah... cool, I didn't know that about "canon" in pop culture.
SCP is pretty fascinating. I actually first read about SCP well before the Backrooms. I can't believe I didn't recall it in this post.