The World Without Fan Fiction

William Shakespeare did enjoy the novellas of Italian author Matteo Bandello.  He loved them so much that he nicked no less than four plots from him.

Of course, no-one noticed because the originals were all in Italian.  (Shakespeare himself had to read them through the English translations of William Paynter and Arthur Brooke.)  Nevertheless, the bard took characters and story-lines intact, then rewrote them in his own words.

Cymbeline, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night all have to be scrubbed from the libraries of the world.  They are fan fiction. 

Of course, if we've lost Romeo and Juliet, then it's also time to kiss goodbye modern derivatives, like West Side Story.

It's not only Bandello's work being given the fan fiction treatment under Shakespeare's quill. Saxo Grammaticus, the 13th century author of Vita Amlethi, might have recognized the plot of Hamlet. There was quite a vogue for fan fiction based on it during Shakespeare's time. His troupe actually performed Ur-Hamlet, a play based on it, before the playwright decided that he could do better.

We can also spy bits of Ovid's Metamorphoses and Chaucer's The Knight's Tale in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Let's just declare William Shakespeare to be a serial fan fiction writer and wipe his works from our world.

Never once, during the entire adventures of Sherlock Holmes, did he turn to his companion and say, "Elementary, my dear Watson."

At least he didn't in anything written by Arthur Conan Doyle. 

In 1899, when the British actor William Gillette ad libbed a dramatization of the character, he said it. Or something close to that.  It became a fan favorite; and it was picked up in the Sherlock fan fiction of PG Wodehouse in 1915. 

In short, the famous catch-phrase is fanon and therefore it has to go.  While we're on the subject, the deerstalker hat was added in Sidney Paget's fan art.  They were published in The Strand magazine, so became indelibly imprinted in the fan consciousness.

However, we have to return Sherlock to canon.  The phrase and hat must go.

Mind you, Twilight's author Stephanie Meyer can hardly sniff.  She comes from a long line of vampire fan fiction writers, who have experimented with John Polidori's ideas.

Until he wrote The Vampyre in 1819, you'd have none of this vampire-passing-as-a-human-being nonsense.  Previously these monsters had been snarling, bestial and stinking of the grave; or else they had been misty, insubstantial things.

Polidori's Lord Ruthven was very different.  He could get close enough to humans, to prey upon them, because he looked human himself! 

Any vampire novel taking that same characterization since has to be considered fan fiction.  Out goes Dracula, all of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, The Lost Boys, Blade and ultimately Twilight.

Just call them fifty shades of nothing.

Finally, no more Avalon. That was another of Geoffrey's fan insertions. Quite a popular one though.

The character of Lancelot was Chrétien de Troyes's Gary Stu from the 1170s, so he'll have to go. All of that courtly love, including the affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, and the chivalry aspects were written to impress Marie de France and her noble ladies.

This was also the moment when Arthur and his men started prancing around in full suits of armour, and calling each other 'knight'. They all become firmly Christian and start hunting for the Holy Grail.

All fan insertions and therefore all disappeared.

Let's move onto the 13th century, because fan fiction there went into over-drive. From the Vulgate Cycle, we have no need to wipe out the first eight volumes, as they all relate to Merlin or the Holy Grail. They've already gone. 

*Skims through and erases Galahad.* Lancelot was already a fan insertion. Giving him a son doesn't make him less so. We should also lose the Round Table that's just appeared.

Oops! Morgan Le Fey nearly crept in there. Slightly shaky ground here, because she was based on either Anna, Morgause or Gwyar from the old Welsh legends. We don't know which of those are fan names, so at least two will have gone. She was just Arthur's sister then.

Chrétien extended her role to make her Guinevere's lady in waiting, but that was only to have someone loyal to Arthur around. He needed the plot device to move his love affair narrative along. Morgan could tell her brother all about the couple and make it all dramatic. Chrétien did enrich her personality a bit by saying she was good at healing potions though.

Which was all that the fan fiction writers of the 13th century needed to create something really juicy. If Morgan can heal people with herbs, then doesn't that make her a bit witchy? Link her with Merlin and suddenly we have rampant supernatural business going on.

Very exciting, but also fanon. Let's see them safely removed before 15th century Thomas Malory makes Morgan Le Fey the evil one.

I don't think we need to go any further. We've already erased the elements that have been constantly rewritten and reinterpreted ever since.

So let's settle down and enjoy the Arthurian Legend, now that all of the fan fiction has gone from it!

Golychaf wledic pendeuic gwlat ri.
py ledas y pennaeth dros traeth mundi.
bu kyweir karchar gweir yg kaer sidi...

Much better, don't you think?