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If Not For The Wank
Query Shark is a blog where aspiring writers can send their query letters to be looked over by professional agent Janet Reid, and then promptly chewed up, spit out, and glared at it by an angry lamniformes*. Oh, and there's something about insightful critique or some nonsense about helping authors or something silly like that. Anyway...

Query 189 (scroll down for the original version) is a Gilligan's Island/Hawaii 5-0 crossover fanfic in which the Gilligan's Island cast is all suspected of murder and also there is something about magical bat guano and I don't know what this guy was smoking, but I want some. Cue about...ohh, 60 comments of "well, it's an okay idea, I guess, but you should really just post it on FF.Net". A few enterprising web sleuths dig up the author's website, but don't post it for the sake of anonymity.

Cut to a few days later. The comment count has gone up to 73, and the author submits his revised query (which you already noticed in my above link). Now...well, let's let the author explain it, shall we?

"IF NOT FOR THE COURAGE adheres strictly to the legal definition of parody, and thus uses derivative characters under the fair use doctrine. Nevertheless, parodying our beloved seven stranded castaways might very possibly cause a stir. Are you afraid of a bit of controversy? If not, then read on…"

Apparently, a handful of people telling you that you can't publish fanfic and you fail at parody is "controversy" now.

"But where is the wank?" you ask. "This is just a dogpile on a clueless author. It's not like he came back to argue!"

Meet Jason Bloomberg. Jason has C/P'ed selected lines from all his detractors and turned them into praise for his fanfic. It's okay because he admits that they've been edited at the top of his sidebar. Also, bad press is still good press, I know what I'm talking about because I didn't just read Wikipedia, no one has ever written a fanfic where none of the characters were unrecognizable, this book isn't for fans of the show except when it is, and it's an irrefutable parody because Gilligan is gay.

Back at the query, everyone just boggles at the author's giant balls, but it seems to be winding down. I don't expect any future revisions to get much attention, so let me conclude with this delightful quote:

"But questions still remain: will agents and/or publishers steer clear? Would the copyright owner still sue? Will this book create a stir because it uses characters without permission?

My response: bring it on."

*probably used this incorrectly, but thinks it made the sentence sound nice anyway
**It occurs to me in retrospect that this could totally have gone in FW. Somehow, my brain just saw "Query Shark wank!" and ignored the whole "fanfic about Gilligan's Island" part.

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	ladyvyola 2010-12-10 02:38 pm UTC (link)
	"and of course, Cardinal Richelieu is played by a sock puppet." My life simply will not be complete until I can work this phrase into regular conversation. (Also, kudos for your own delightful phrasing -- "granted, that third sentence was..." is just beautiful!) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

queencallipygos
2010-12-10 06:18 pm UTC (link)

Thanks!

I should probably also explain why I said "no" to the sock-puppet thing.

First, the serious reason:

* I've noticed that some young playwrights go through a phase where they imitate Christopher Durang. But -- they don't quite get why Christopher Durang works. The reason why Christopher Durang's own Edward-Gorey-On-Mescaline sensibility works is because that is his own voice. He's not trying to be that weird, he actually naturally is that weird.

But a lot of playwrights, when they first read his work, it flips a switch in their head where they think, "ooh, wait, I can actually just be wacky and have it work. Yay!" And they end up writing stuff that just flogs that "Whee! I'm being wacky!" to death, and it all smacks of them just trying way, way too hard. It all ends up sounding....alike, and when you find you actually do not see a difference between the Cardinal-Richelieu-sock-puppet play and the Emily-Dickinson-and-Walt-Whitman-applying-for-government-cheese play, that's a big problem. These plays aren't terrible, they're just...visibly forced wackiness for wackiness' own sake, and that just isn't quite good enough.

That's why I rejected that -- because I could tell it was going to be another forced-wackiness play, and wouldn't be worth the read.

* And now the weird reason:

That was actually the seventh play we'd had submitted to us that year that featured a sock puppet. I have no idea what was going on, but we got seven plays that featured sock puppets that year. It gets better -- five of those seven plays were also about 9/11. Yes, you read that right -- 9/11 plays that featured sock puppets.

To this day I wonder if some very weird memo had gone out that I didn't know about.

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	ghostmaster 2010-12-10 07:35 pm UTC (link)
	9/11 plays that featured sock puppets Wat (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	queencallipygos 2010-12-10 09:19 pm UTC (link)
	One was honestly and truly staged. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	snarkhunter 2010-12-15 02:34 pm UTC (link)
	Synchronicity...gets weirder. (Reply to this)(Parent)

kattahj
2010-12-18 08:56 pm UTC (link)

Yes, you read that right -- 9/11 plays that featured sock puppets.

LOL! There's a Swedish book called "Brev till samhället" (Letters to Society) which contains deliberately weird letters and the polite responses they get. One of the letters was a request for funding of "The Nuremberg Trials as a Punch and Judy show." I'm tickled to find out that the letter wasn't as unlikely as it seemed in the book!

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