Warning: Spoilers for Wall Street and Kill Bill within.

From the “too long to Twitter but too dumb to be an OTI feature” files comes this interesting question: is the classic 80’s film, Wall Street, a prequel to the Oughties classic, Kill Bill?  Or, in other words, does Bud Fox from Wall Street grow up to become Bud from Kill Bill?  Maybe only Daryl Hannah could tell us for sure, but I tend to think so.  Here’s my evidence:

In Wall Street, up and comer, Bud Fox, throws his lot in with evil capitalist Gordon Gekko.  Gekko, in turn, introduces Bud to Daryl Hannah, a beautiful blonde who seems too good to be true.  Bud soon falls for Daryl, unaware that she is in cahoots with an evil older man (Mr. Gekko).  In fact, Daryl once even dated Gekko, and her livelihood depends on him.

But…

National Public Radio. This American Life, specifically.

This radio show, made famous for its true-life storytelling on subjects ranging from building superintendents to summer camp, occasionally dabbles in the world of fiction. Very occasionally, they dabble in the world of superhero fan fiction. They’ve done so on at least 2 different occasions, both with stories by writer Jonathan Goldstein:

Episode 198: “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” A sad-sack man tells what it’s like to date Lois Lane after her break-up with Superman… while also serving as Superman’s ineffectual sidekick. It’s not easy being Superman’s sidekick, especially when he starts hitting on your girlfriend. Luckily, he finds a comforting soul in Clark Kent.

Episode 241: “20 Acts in 60 Minutes.” The Penguin and Mary Poppins compare notes on umbrella flight techniques only to find they have little in common. To make matters worse, Mary loses interest in the Penguin and strikes up a conversation with Bruce Wayne about controlled jumps off of buildings.

Note that we have at least two violations of Mlawski’s rules on good fanfic: both stray far from the mood and style of their original sources, and the second one crosses over two different fictional universes. Fortunately, these rules aren’t hard and fast; besides, more conventional fanfic wouldn’t really work in the context of, you know, NPR.

Readers: what are some other unlikely sources of fanfic, superhero or otherwise, that you’ve found?

Shakespeare won't read your fanfic, either.

Embarrassing admission of the day: I read fanfiction.  It’s hard to tell over the Internet, but that word “read” is in the present tense.  I read fanfiction.  Today.

But only sometimes!  Once or twice a year – at most, I swear! – I indulge in what I admit is a very guilty pleasure.  Some of you watch Gossip Girl; some of you unironically enjoy The Chronicles of Riddick.  Me, I read amateur versions of anime and children’s books.

99% of fanfiction is terrible, of course.  95% of anything is terrible, and I added 4% because this is the Internet we’re talking about.  But every so often I find a fanfic I can’t keep my eyes off.  It might capture the feeling of the original source, or attack the premise from an interesting and new point of view.  I get to see my favorite characters come back to life through the power of words.  The puppeteer might be different, but, in the best fics, anyway, my beloved puppets are back and better than ever.

Before you sneer, I should probably remind you that many great pieces of “real” literature are just glorified fanfics.  Every other year the Pulitzer or Man Booker Prize goes to a retelling of a some old text; the only difference is that they use stuff in the public domain so they can’t get sued.  Fanfic isn’t new, either.  See anything by Shakespeare, anything by the any of the Ancient Greeks, and the entire New Testament, for instance, and you’ll understand what I mean.  Although the New Testament did get the character of “God” all wrong and also was a little too G-rated in comparison to the original text.  Still, points for using the postmodern techniques of using “found documents” and not one but four unreliable narrators.  That’s a good fanfic.

The trouble is that it is very difficult to find good fanfic.  Sometimes I go dumpster diving at Fanfiction.net, but it just takes too long.  Why in the world doesn’t that site have a “sort by rating” feature or “sort by number of reviews” feature, anyway?  Seeing as I am too lazy to wade through the slush, as those in the publishing world like to say, I’m just going to have to make every fanfiction writer on the Internet better.  That means you.  In my spare time away from this blog I teach writing, so I do this more out of habit than anything else.  And, yes, I’m going to make the assumption that stories that meet my personal tastes are objectively better stories than those that don’t.

You guys better step it up.

A list of five thou shalt nots and five thou shalts below.  While some of these tips will be about writing in general, most are specifically about writing fanfiction, a form with its own quirks and issues.  And even if you don’t write fanfiction yourself, maybe you’ll enjoy reading a deconstruction of the medium.