This is what you can do with a powerful story with a (more or less) open ending: you plant a memetic seed, you create something that lives on in people's minds, with endless possibilities - not just for fanfic; if a lot of people relate to a story, it's because they all find enough to relate to their own situations, which are always going to be diverse and changing. See the "your friends aren't watching the same show as you and that's OK" essay that's out there somewhere. See also that list of greatest characters published recently, with Tony Soprano, Buffy Summers and Homer Simpson topping out even though two of them have been off the air for years.
To quote Homer, it takes two people to lie (or tell fiction): one to lie and one to listen. Without the reader/viewer/listener, a storyteller is nothing. The storyteller creates life, but the reader feeds and maintains it, gives it endless possibilities in applying it to their own understanding of the world. If the writer then, years later, decides to take the story up again and narrow those possibilities to one (and a pretty depressing one at that), people are going to demand that it holds up. Because what he's essentially doing is saying "You're all wrong. I set this story free for you to use, but now I want it back again." Which, obviously, is their legal right.
...I'm talking, of course, of Douglas Adams' clinical-depression-fueled Mostly Harmless, which ends with him literally wiping out all possible universes past and future and killing everyone we cared about. ;)
“The important thing is that you rescue the prince.”
Yeah, what happened to that, anyway? I haven't seen any fanwank yet to the effect that Season 8 ended in absolute defeat because Buffy forgot to find a prince to rescue, but I'm sure it's out there...
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Post-Chosen Buffy was ours.
This is what you can do with a powerful story with a (more or less) open ending: you plant a memetic seed, you create something that lives on in people's minds, with endless possibilities - not just for fanfic; if a lot of people relate to a story, it's because they all find enough to relate to their own situations, which are always going to be diverse and changing. See the "your friends aren't watching the same show as you and that's OK" essay that's out there somewhere. See also that list of greatest characters published recently, with Tony Soprano, Buffy Summers and Homer Simpson topping out even though two of them have been off the air for years.
To quote Homer, it takes two people to lie (or tell fiction): one to lie and one to listen. Without the reader/viewer/listener, a storyteller is nothing. The storyteller creates life, but the reader feeds and maintains it, gives it endless possibilities in applying it to their own understanding of the world. If the writer then, years later, decides to take the story up again and narrow those possibilities to one (and a pretty depressing one at that), people are going to demand that it holds up. Because what he's essentially doing is saying "You're all wrong. I set this story free for you to use, but now I want it back again." Which, obviously, is their legal right.
...I'm talking, of course, of Douglas Adams' clinical-depression-fueled Mostly Harmless, which ends with him literally wiping out all possible universes past and future and killing everyone we cared about. ;)
“The important thing is that you rescue the prince.”
Yeah, what happened to that, anyway? I haven't seen any fanwank yet to the effect that Season 8 ended in absolute defeat because Buffy forgot to find a prince to rescue, but I'm sure it's out there...