Silly idea: fake fanfic

[TheWritingGroup]

Here's a silly one, not originally mine: create a hot fanfic story about a franchise that isn't real. Say it's for the streaming show Ozarks, about someone managing a dying but still kind-of-solvent resort in the Ozark Mountains, desperately trying to make the place relevant in the 2020s. She has her family there. Hubby is a work-from-home network systems architect, who travels frequently, leaving her alone with their three children and a cousin who lives with them for not-yet-explained reasons. It's a dramedy.

The fanfic could be transgressive incest between family members, or the main character's habit of seducing resort guests whenever Hubby is traveling. (Neither of those are in the actual series, you understand.) Or many kinds of "whatever else."

We would be open about it here in the Author Hangout, but totally straight-faced in the actual stories, pretending it's a real series.

Thoughts.

--Annie

 

[TheLobster]

If the franchise is fictitious, then so is its setting. I’m not sure I understand what’s the difference between such “fake fanfic” and a regular story set in an original universe.

 

[Bramblethorn]

 

[CalBishForNow]

If the franchise is fictitious, then so is its setting. I’m not sure I understand what’s the difference between such “fake fanfic” and a regular story set in an original universe.

Putting it in the Fan Fiction & Celebrities category and trying to trick readers into thinking it's fanfic when it's not, sort of trying to create a Mandela effect? Maybe be coy about what it's a fanfic of and what details might be changed other than the sex to make it more plausible?

Other than that, I agree, it's just an original universe.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

Is it fake fanfic because it's not from a real show/franchise? Or is it fake beacuse you're not actually a fan? I'm confused.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Putting it in the Fan Fiction & Celebrities category and trying to trick readers into thinking it's fanfic when it's not, sort of trying to create a Mandela effect? Maybe be coy about what it's a fanfic of and what details might be changed other than the sex to make it more plausible?

Exactly. Maybe do it in March, release one chapter a week, with the reveal on April 1. Remember, I said up front it was silly.

--Annie

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Fan fiction for the fake movies in Tropic Thunder?

 

[PennyThompson]

I'm not super into fanfic, but are there expected genre tropes and story beats that get repeated regardless of the character/celeb?

Author inserts being starstruck? Oblique references that fans of the IP would instantly understand but an outsider wouldn't? Wish fulfillment of something that was left unsaid or unfinished in the original work?

---

I never expected to see her in real life, but there she was, sitting in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs at my Laundromat. Working up the courage, I approached her, trying desperately not to look like the fangirl I was.

"Ms. Franzibal? Is it really you?"

She looked up from her famous notebook, setting her pencil down and pinning me with her incisive gaze like a lepidopterist studying a moth. The crows feet around her icy grey eyes scrunched up adorably behind her black rimmed glasses, and her elegant hand brushed a silver-streaked lock of black hair behind her ears.

"Yes... Do I know you?" She leaned forward in her chair, and I caught a little glimpse of her leather shoulder holster under her sage green cardigan, cradling her snub nosed Smith & Wesson Model 36, no doubt loaded with silver bullets.

"No!" I blurted out, suddenly intimidated. "I'm just... I'm just a fan of your work. And... I'm wondering what you're doing in my laundromat."

Mabel Franzibal smiled at me, then stood up to her full 5-foot-nothing height and looked around the room conspiratorially.

"I'm doing my laundry, of course. But I take it your real question is, 'What am I doing in a quiet little college town like Plainview?'"

I nodded dumbly, my mouth suddenly dry, intimidated by the petite, mature, librarian/detective/witch of my dreams.

"It's quite simple, young lady. I have reason to believe that Jade Medusa is here, and she's up to no good."

"Jade Medusa?!" I exclaimed a little too loudly, then looked around fearfully, as if saying her name might summon her. No one else in the laundromat seemed to care. "But I thought she died at the end of The Tentacle Only Rings Twice!"

"So it seemed... and yet, she is here. Now, will you help me find her, defeat her for good, and save the universe?"

"Yes Ms. Franzibal, I'll do whatever you want!"

"Wonderful," she said with a mischievous grin. "Why don't we start with a quickie in the closet?"