Wilmarie’s Weblog

Chapter 1

Dani shut her portable computer’s top down with a sigh of frustration.

She’d been scouring the Internet for news about her favorite author, Lillian Goddard. Dani was a big fan of Goddard’s books, and was anxiously waiting for the next installment of the ongoing series (“The Chronicles of Illyria”), supposed to be seven books long. The last one had been the third, and the ending had been a dreaded cliff-hanger: One of the heroes was supposedly dead, the others were lost, and the fictional kingdom of Illyria was to declare war on the vastly powerful Empire of Dalmasca. Each book was bigger, lengthier than the last as the author expanded the characters, developed plotlines, and fleshed out the locations of the story.

Goddard was fleshing everything so much that the next book was scheduled to come out in about 15 months.

Dani’s boyfriend paused his game, looking at her with an arched eyebrow, “Something wrong?”

Dani replied, “Gah! I am so bored! What is taking Lillian so long to get the new book out?! I mean, she doesn’t work, she just writes . . . stories . . . that are several hundred pages long . . . Damn! The new book is never gonna come out!” Ryan snickered, but wisely stopped at her violent glare. He continued his game, ‘an ultra-violent gorefest’, as Dani’s mother had put it a few minutes earlier, featuring a tattooed, bald man  in a loincloth laying waste to all the fabulous creatures of Ancient Greek myth. Dani made a face as Ryan’s character began fighting the Colossus of Rhodes, who had been just imbued with life by the Olympian juggernaut Zeus. After putting out the statue’s eyes, the scantily clad character climbed into the Colossus body and broke the machinery inside that allowed it to move. The Colossus keeled over in its death-throes.

Ryan made a happy hoot, “Take that! And this, Danielle Waldron, is why we don’t have a Colossus of Rhodes today.” She sniffed and commented, “That’s not how it happened. The Colossus was supposed to fall into the ocean after an earthquake or something. Ryan Casey.”

He paused the game again and threw an arm around her, “Seriously, girl, do you not possess a single imaginative bone in your body? That thing in the game was a much better version of what happened. Much more interesting than a stupid earthquake, don’t you think?”

Dani shrugged.

Ryan pressed on, “Oh, what? You still pissed at your good buddy Lillian taking so long?”

Dani nodded, and Ryan suggested, “Read something similar to it or something, to wait till it comes out.”

Dani sat up, opening the computer’s top again, “I could look at the forums, see if there’s a blurb or an interview. I have to know what happened to my favorite characters!” Ryan  gave a despairing sigh and unpaused his game, “Jeez, you’re obsessed. Look, Zeus is evil in this game. Didn’t I tell you there was something wrong with that perverted, shape-shifting guy?”

Dani looked up in time to see Zeus, a supposedly benevolent god, betray the warrior on the ground. As the phantoms of Hades came up to drag him down, another character stepped in to save him: Gaia, the mother of the Greek gods. As she talked about how Zeus had betrayed her as well, she was going to help the warrior defeat the Lord of the Greek gods. It was an interesting story, t o be sure, but Dani thought it was a bit outlandish to change a story that everyone knew ended with Zeus being a good guy. Still, she had an idea. “Hey, maybe I can find some fanfics about the Chronicles books?” she asked Ryan.

Ryan mashed buttons to keep his newly-revived warrior from falling off Pegasus’s back and snorted, “Nerd.” Dani made a face, slapping him on the arm, “Hey, watch it!” He laughed, “C’mon, fanfics are for little kids. Obsessed, geeky fans.” Dani pointed at the television screen, “You know what, Ryan? That game is a fanfic.”

Ryan gasped, “Lies! This is a game, a damn good one!”

Dani narrowed her eyes and persisted, “It is a fanfic, and one of the oldest kind of fanfic there is! The earliest recorded fanfiction is an 8^th century manuscript doing exactly this: Adding to the Greek myths and the writings of Homer.” Ryan  made a small laugh, “Not likely, Dan.” She shrugged, “Denial is not just a river in Egypt, dear. Your precious little God of War game is an interactive fanfic.”

Ryan ignored her, trying to get a few minutes of gameplay before Dani’s mother kicked him out.

Dani looked at her watch: nearly time to find her brother online. Kyle was in the Armed Forces, and was currently out in the Middle East. Still, he and Dani were very close, and she always made it a point to check her instant messaging program at 10 at night, when he’d get a break from his duties and try to come online to talk to her.

She signed on, and immediately grinned: her brother had signed on a few minutes earlier. Dani called out to her mother, “Ma. Mom! Kyle’s online.” Anne yelled back, “I’ll be online in a minute! Take it easy!”

After asking after his health and the status of his mission out there, Dani sighed. She missed her brother; he was always the one guy who backed her up, offered support. She typed,

Dani’s back stiffened with surprise. She’d always thought of fanfiction as a consumable good, not as an actual product. After all, the people who wrote it did it for free. They always had to put up a disclaimer that stated whose work they were basing their stories on. The stories were out in public domain, for crying out loud! There for the taking, like those little mints they always gave you at restaurants.

And yet, to think that she could write something that other people could read, and might even like . . . it was an interesting idea. She remembered how she’d avidly read fanfictions about her favorite animated movies, often tapping out small replies peppered with not so much criticism as much as just gushing about how she liked some of the stories better than the original work itself.

She looked back at her screen,

 After a few more minutes of talking (or typing), Kyle had to sign off. He issued the usual instructions for her to take care of herself, and of their parents, and to kick Ryan in the balls if he kept bothering her and calling her a geek, and signed off. Dani shut her computer again, feeling melancholy at the immense distance separating her from Kyle.

Dani’s mother petted her daughter’s head; she’d joined the conversation from the computer in her home-office a few minutes earlier. “You miss him a lot, baby?” Anne asked, and Dani nodded. After giving her daughter a brief hug, Anne looked at Ryan (who was making himself as small as possible to avoid notice).

“What are you still doing here, Ryan? It’s after 10 at night on a weeknight. Go home!”