Hey, I’ve done this before!

While I sometimes drive myself a little crazy with my new projects and jags and heavy to-do lists, there is neat stuff that goes on too, and I learn things, which is probably why I keep doing it. Actually, I have learned a lot about fan fiction.

My view shifted when I revisited “The Breakfast of the Gods” page at http://breakfastofthegods.com/ and noticed this line:

“Okay, it’s ‘fanfic’ but it’s worth your time – trust me.”

It caused me to redefine fan fiction in my head. I had never heard the term until I started frequenting the Television Without Pity message boards, and even then, I never really read any, and I would just see other people referring to it. It tended to sound pretty twisted.

From Jones’ standpoint, it is fanfic because he is using characters he did not create. Really, that’s all it is. That many people seem to explore the genre only for sexual purposes probably has some deeper meaning, but ultimately that characters or situations set in place by someone else might inspire you and lead you down other story paths is not in itself twisted. Thinking about it that way, I realized I had done this many times.

I was always taking off from television shows and movies and thinking of expanded scenarios when I was younger. Most of them look pretty stupid now, but there is one spin-off from season 5 of The A-Team that I still revisit. (That was a horrible season, so that may be why I think of my innovation more than the original. Stupid Stockwell.)

There were two things, though, that I specifically had in mind to draw as comics, and both involved other people’s work, though with some changes. Why I did not get to them I will explore soon, but for now I just want to go over those, hitting two major sci-fi franchises,

UI Trek

It’s been interesting reading about fake geek girls lately, because I am sure for people who keep score I am not geek enough. There are a lot of things I find interesting, but do not go crazy about. Star Trek has been one of those. I have watched many episodes, and I usually enjoy them, but it has never been must-see for me. In college, I had friends who were much more into it. Our College Bowl’s team name was Pon farr, from episode 30 of the original series. This is the same episode that introduced T’Pau, who gave her name to a British pop group. Everything I know about that, I learned from when we were forming our team, with an assist from Wikipedia during writing. This was not my thing.

(My favorite memory of College Bowl is not Star Trek related though. It was when a question was asked about a new stamp series, and three of us looked at each other blankly, but Melissa shyly answered “Love”, and then even more shyly explained, “I like stamps.”)

Anyway, I had already learned Sid was a Star Trek fan my first year, but in my second year he was an RA over at the University Inn, and I guess he found more kindred spirits there. His Spock had a Kirk (Aaron, but not any of the other ones I have written about), and there was a Scotty, whom I seem to remember as David, but then I think maybe David was Chekhov. The thing that I know for certain is that there was someone who identified with Scotty, but also there was someone who was actually from Scotland, who could have been an obvious choice, and that was where the story idea started. (Though I guess to be accurate to the series, the real Scotty would have to be the one who was faking his accent.)

The idea I had in mind was that a transporter would split Scotty into two. This happened once with Kirk, initially believed to have been split into good and evil Kirk, but it was more complicated than that, and eventually they were put back together. Since Scotty would have to either be transporting himself, or have someone else running the transporter, a malfunction makes more sense. However, instead of physically identical but with different personality aspects dominating, these two would be completely different in appearance and personality, and they would eventually decide that two Scotties were better than one. However, the little Scottish terrier that materialized after them both? Pure evil.

Fun parts were going to be the argument between the two Scotties—“I dinnae know who ye are, but you’re nae Scotty!”—and also Christine.

Christine was one of the other RAs, and Sid had recently accidentally hit her in the face with a softball, which she was good-humored about. Anyway, the obvious thing was to make her Nurse Christine Chapel, as played by Majel Barrett Roddenberry, but what if you combined all of those roles? Giver her Nursel Chapel’s attraction to Spock but Number One’s sleek appearance and coolness, and Lwaxana Troi’s aggressive confidence. Okay, I did not do anything with the Computer voice part, but with the rest, Spock was going to be raising an eyebrow.

I really wanted to do this, and I told Sid I was going to do this, but I never did get around to doing it. One thing with a lot of ideas is that they have an expiration date. I had been working over fall term, so I started meeting all the new people and got this idea in Winter or Spring of 1992, and then in May I realized I needed to go on a mission, so after finishing up spring term, I started working, served the mission, worked more, and did not return to Eugene until Spring ’95. The only person who was still around was Sid, who had graduated but was now attending law school there.

Now, even though that idea was not fully developed in its time, I can still put it out there on the internet, where some people may find it mildly amusing. There were a lot of inside jokes, so it had a definite target audience, but there are enough pop culture references that it is not completely inaccessible.

The other idea, which I think I started shortly after college, was all pop culture, so should be accessible to anyone who is a fan of two distinct but big pop culture phenomena. It’s too long to do here though, so tomorrow!