Fan Fiction

I’ve had an…interesting relationship with fan-fiction over the years.

I will admit, I was quite dismissive of the genre at first. Not the effort or the results, but the desire to tell a story in another person’s playground. Every fan-fiction story out there could be re-written with minimal changes in a new universe; why copy someone else’s?¹ It was a kind of plagiarism in my eyes; a kind of laziness.

A lot of this, I think, came from my social issues. The idea of inserting yourself was — well, still is — frightening. You aren’t the original “official” writer of Star Trek; if you wrote a story about the crew of the Enterprise, you might get it wrong.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s a silly mindset when you think about how many times the official IP has “gotten it wrong,” and that’s even before you question the whole idea of a story “being wrong” in the first place. I was young and stupid.

I’ve certainly mellowed on the idea since. Fandoms breed communities, and Fan Fiction is a way of giving back, of maintaining and supporting that community. It’s also so much easier to get readers for your work when it’s based on something they’re all ready reading. I understand that in a visceral way, nowadays.

If you’ve read anything I’ve written about RPGs, you’ll recognize that RPGs could be considered a kind of Fan Fiction. Much how I’ve said that any fiction book is a valid RPG Manual, any world bigger than its chosen protagonist is an invitation to create your own stories. Look at all the maps detailing the size and scale of Middle Earth, all the towns and villages we’ve never been to. Consider how many Time Lords there are apart from the Doctor, how many starships there are apart from the Enterprise, how many magical schools for aspiring magicians there are apart from Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches.

Sure, I spent my hours created my own fantasy worlds, but not everyone has that kind of time or inclination. Some people don’t want to make their paint from scratch. Some people want to make art off a reference; they paint still-lifes and portraits. Nothing wrong with that, it’s all still art. It’s still worthy of respect.

But, even with this respect for Fan Fiction, I’ve never actually written any myself.

It’s not like I haven’t considered it. I’ve pondered scripts for Star Trek and Doctor Who in my head, I’ve played “what if” scenarios with familiar characters, I’ve even done the Mary-Sue thing and added in a single special character to an established group to “see what might happen.” But I’ve never written any of it down.

I’ve decided to change that, thanks in no small part to Grimdark Future.

Now, there is nothing in particular about Grimdark Future that is unique in its worldbuilding. Indeed, it’s a kind of Fan-Fiction itself, taking Warhammer and filing off the serial numbers², but what has gripped me about it is the way in which it developed the setting. As I said when talking about Grimdark as a genre, Grimdark Future has managed to create something of a Grimdark universe without making anyone “bad guys,” in the pulpy sense. There is still room for fiends, monsters, and all manner of villainy, but none of it is motiveless or overly simplistic.

So I wrote two stories in the GF universe. The first touches on the origins of the Ratfolk Clans, and the second the moment when the DAO Union first made contact with the Alien Hives.

Let me be perfectly clear: none of this is official cannon, and I didn’t do a deep dive/exploration into the current lore. It’s entirely possible, if not likely, that this isn’t what anyone at OPR had in mind.³

But that’s the beauty of Fan-Fiction. It’s a place where cannon isn’t an issue. Someone else can write a completely different story about the Alien Hives making peace with the sector, and even if the two stories are incompatible, they can still be worthwhile. Consider the fact that The Killing Joke’s Joker and Batman Beyond’s Joker can’t both be cannon, but they are.⁴ How many different takes are there on the stories of Heracles, Sherlock Holmes, and Jesus? What if cannon is a myth?

That sounds like fodder for another post, so I won’t go much further into that.

Instead, I’ll simply share with you these short stories, and suggest that if you are looking for a miniature wargame to get invested in, you could do worse than Onepagerules.