Saricks, Brendan J.

The Line Between Fan and Fiction

I don’t know if you have seen this or not, but Blizzard is running a creative writing contest. The long and short of it is that you submit a story based on one of their universes, they read it, and if they like it YOU WIN. What you win is largely unimportant (to me anyway) but the opportunity to flex the creative muscle muscle is always appealing to me.

There are, of course, problems with this.

I am not a Blizzard Loremaster. Diablo means little to me, World of Warcraft was more about the loot than the story (even though the story, from what I gleaned of it, can be described only as thorough), and Starcraft is a Real Time Strategy game; I hate Real Time Strategy…but I loved Starcraft.

You’re confused. Hold tight, I got this.

I don’t like RTS games, but man Starcraft, fucking StarCraft. That game possessed my being for 2 or 3 years. Make no mistake, I was not the next Korean Starcraft Super-star, but I was the master of the Marine rush. The straight up, no bullshit, mother-trucking MASTER of the Marine rush.

And lets be honest with ourselves for a moment here, that game had a pretty bad ass story (40k-ites need to settle down - I get it ok?). Maybe it’s because I love a good Sci-Fi yarn, or that I could blur my eyes and see the zergs as Giger’s Alien (I love me some Alien - Aliens is number 3 on my Top 5 movies of all time), but whatever the case was, I really dug that story. I was so enamored by the story that I read the goddamned manual. Yes, Starcraft’s manual served as a prequel piece to the game’s storyline, and I read the whole thing.

But I don’t really remember anything.

I mean, I remember Xel-Naga, the zerg, the overmind (spoilers: dead), Jim Raynor, and being called a Judicator…but nothing else really stuck. So here I am, wanting to enter this contest for shits and grins, but finding that I may not be equipped to give the universe the respect it deserves.

And this, friends, is the trouble with Fan-Fiction; a trouble I am no longer concerning myself with.

I find that, in most cases, when someone releases a fan-fiction story for a franchise, it is overly wordy. Fans, for the most part, are proud creatures, and want to demonstrate their intimate understanding of the ‘verse to you. Marines don’t shoot bullets from their guns. They fire Tungsten-Carbide encased rounds made of Depleted Uranium from their T-734i Standard Issue Pulse Rifle. I’m all for being wordy, but at some point your average reader doesn’t give a shit. Sure, you will impress other fans with your technical vernacular, but a great story is a great story, blue-print analysis or not.

My understanding of the StarCraft universe is pedestrian bordering on handi-capable, so I don’t concern myself with that bullshit. My weaker understanding runs me into another problem however.

The story I’m writing for it is good (I think anyway - thanks, jerks) but is it a StarCraft story, or am I just taking a claustrophobic Sci-Fi tale and coloring it in with StarCraft crayons? Am I just pasting StarCraft construction paper onto this story and declaring it part of the ‘verse? I guess we will find out.

One thing that has always stuck with me was my buddy Hodapp’s words about the Halo Novels. He said they felt like a fan-fiction circle jerk. I think he may be kind of right. I loved the Halo novels (you noticed the past-tense too? Weird) but they skated that line between story and fan-fiction, sometimes falling into the ladder. I’m hoping I don’t fall prey to that, but I am also hoping that I manage to make a good StarCraft story.

That being said however, I suppose I would be ok with just making a good story. Maybe I’ll focus on that and see if the Xel-Naga want to play along…