Del Floria's Interview with Sutherwinds
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Del Floria's Interview with Sutherwinds |
| Interviewer: | Del Floria (Live Journal) |
| Interviewee: | Sutherwinds |
| Date(s): | June 12, 2011 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | Man from U.N.C.L.E. |
| External Links: | full interview is here, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Del Floria's Interview with Sutherwinds is an interview with a Man from U.N.C.L.E. fan.
It is part of a series at Del Floria's. See Del Floria's Interview Series.
Excerpts
Why MFU? What is it about the show that fuelled your creativity?MFU was a very popular show in my country while I was growing up. I liked the gadgets, the plot and of course, the characters. I never wrote stories but I used to daydream about adventures and situations I would like to see them going through.
I entered the fanfic universe not too long ago and started to write for other fandoms. After my fourth story, I was already contemplating retirement from fanfiction writing, when a friend asked my help to develop a story based on her own idea. As I began to write the story, I found that the plot looked like something I could have seen on MFU. I had not thought about that show in years but suddenly, it inspired me to come up with this story for another fandom. It was easy for me to build up an adventure with elements of espionage and science fiction. I could stretch reality without falling into the supernatural.
Once we published that story, I realized that I could write something for MFU too. My first story for this fandom took me less than I expected precisely because MFU offers so much freedom to write. You can invent your own gadgets and drugs, send the characters anywhere in the world and make them fight against all kind of adversaries. MFU universe accepts almost everything.
How would you respond to a critic who says, “Oh, you write fan fiction. You’re not a real writer.”Honestly? I do not feel like a writer. I am too new in this to consider myself anything more than an aficionado. However, fan fiction should not be so underestimated. Many famous writers have borrowed characters and places from each other throughout the years. Tom Stoppard wrote in 1966 a tragicomedy called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He takes two minor characters and reviews the Denmark Prince’s tragedy through their eyes. Should not it be considered a fan fiction story? More examples, Sir Walter Scott gave Robin Hood a cameo on his epic novel Ivanhoe. Alexandre Dumas’ D’Artagnan appears in one scene of Edmund Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac.
Nowadays, we have proliferation of writers taking license to develop characters from other novels: Peter Pan in Scarlet, by Geraldine McCaughrean; The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor, Stephen King, an H.P. Lovecraft’s fan, has written stories based on this author’s works. He is also among others that have taken Sherlock Holmes as a character for their stories. Dracula is another choice to be rewritten over and over again. Sena Jeter Naslund wrote in 1999, a parallel novel to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, called Ahab’s Wife…
There are many other examples that I could mention, but that would extend this answer endlessly. I do not want to put original writing and fan fiction writing on a balance. I think they have coexisted for many years and they are still together. It is not about which is better or more authentic, published books or posted stories. It is more about the writers. There are huge, hard cover books out there that do not deserve so much attention. On the other hand, we can find really good stories in fan fiction that could be published and compete with other works like those I just mentioned above.
“Real” writers take time in front of their desk and pour their thoughts into paper for hours. Whether you write original stories or fan fiction, if you are talented, it will show no matter what.