pH Balance

Imagine if, instead of a repatriation renegade, Laila Croft was a lawyer. Imagine if, instead of stealing from museums, she negotiated with them to return artifacts stolen by scholars from the Western World. Imagine our young heroine working with the law, rather than against it, to do the right thing.

You may be thinking that this would make for a less interesting story. I disagree—a different story, for sure, but interesting in different ways. But don’t just take my word for it: check out this Planet Money episode that explores what Laila’s career could have been like if she chose a different path. I won’t spoil too much, but it involves a secret organization, some high-level lawyering, and surprising insight into the future of museums.

And no, NPR didn’t pay me to shout them out—but wouldn’t it be cool if they did?

It would be cool to explore this path for Laila in an alternative history, or even a sequel to her debut. Sometimes the most interesting stories have their root, either literally or spiritually, in the real world. Although Laila’s story has very little basis in reality, the story was inspired by and pays homage to many works greater than anything I will create in my lifetime.

Laila’s story is a work of fanfiction.

what is fanfiction, really?

In my last post, I wrote that concept art and fanfiction share some common denominators. One is the ancestor of a piece of work, the other a descendent. Although creation begets creation, there’s something incredibly important about fanfiction that sets it apart from other kinds of art: it is done by all kinds of people, in all kinds of media, with varying artistic backgrounds. It’s done because someone is so inspired by something that it drives them to create.

Sometimes fanfiction gets a bad rep for being a codeword for poorly written smut. Even if someone is writing smut—and even if that smut has little to no literary value whatsoever—what matters is that this is a stepping stone to the act of creation itself: something that empowers you to create something new out of what exists around you. Plus, there have been great success stories born out of fanfiction smut. Just ask E.L. James, the author of 50 Shades of Grey—which came from Twilight fanfiction (there are actually many published works that started off as Twilight fanfiction, surprisingly).

Vampires aside, fanfiction is cool—but it exists in other forms that hide in plain sight. The modern-day retelling of ancient mythologies, from the Percy Jackson series to the more literary works of Madeline Miller are a sort of fanfiction. It’s not just unique to books, either: Clueless and West Side Story both take inspiration from older works (Emma and Romeo and Juliet, respectively). Sometimes it’s not intentional, and we begin to create something that reflects what we’ve consumed, appreciated, and absorbed as part of our identities. And sometimes it is.

But before 90s rom-coms started recycling Shakespeare with all-star casts, creators were inspired by muses. They would invoke them to write plays or play instruments. In reality, muses were really just a personification of the inspiration we get from being human: having feelings, experiencing the world, etc.

In ancient times, that was probably seeing a woman’s ankle or giving birth without an epidural. But as society coalesced and developed, and the annals of culture grew, we’ve been exposed to the human experience secondhand: we now have a window into other peoples’ feelings and experiences through art. Or maybe dimensions of our own selves that we hadn’t accessed before.

fanfiction: humble beginnings

Many artists describe feeling like they “have” to create a certain work, filled with this potential energy they need to put back out into the world. Sometimes, this comes from being inspired from something someone else created. The best works of art involve feeling so inspired and moved (by anything at all) that it drives someone to use the best parts of themselves to build something wonderful: something that can be shared with people.

Fanfiction is often someone’s first foray into creation. Furthermore, fanfiction allows creators to share their art with people who love and are inspired by the same things that they are. Characters who are already beloved (or hated) take on new life, new forms, in these inspired guerilla thought experiments.

Sometimes it’s hard to start from scratch. Sometimes, you need a jumping off point. What initially got me into writing essays—and what convinced me that I was good at writing essays—was having to write essays on other people’s essays. I kept writing essays because I found that it was a great way for me to express myself, and now I write essays on many different things that bring me joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, or anything else rattling around in my brain (not BingBong though, RIP). It brings me a lot of happiness to turn my experiences into words, and I don’t really do it for any other reason.

When I decided to try writing fiction at the beginning of 2023, it started with an idea that someone had before me: what if someone was the reverse Indiana Jones? What if they broke into museums to repatriate the artifacts?

The story evolved and became a combination of things and ideas I wanted to write about. While these things and ideas already existed, this combination that I created was uniquely mine. Even though this work didn’t set out to be compeltely original, it is, in a way: because I created it, I stitched together this manuscript of history, pop culture, personal references, and ephemera (when necessary_ but for all intents and purposes it is mine. And I consider it to be a work of fanfiction.

I recognize that the more I create, the less I’ll rely on the shoulders of giants. I’ll build confidence in my own ability to create, and become a better writer. I’ll never stop being inspired by others, but instead find different ways to express that influence, and combine it with my own voice to make better work.

And I can’t promise much—but what I can guarantee is it will still be a better love story than Twilight.

This Week’s Top Three

• The Secret History 🗿 – reread for book club (GR)
• Mrs Sidhu Investigates 🔎 – WhoDunit featuring an auntie?? Yes please. Be sure to have a snack because she does own a catering company and will be making a lot of yummy food.
• Mystère by La Femme 🤟🏾 – great french rock album