Which Fictional Characters Would You Most Like To Include In A Story?

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Fri, 2006-02-10 00:20

I was just thinking about this. I reckon there's a certain childish pleasure to playing with characters created by other people, mixing them all up and having characters from different stories meet each other and interact.

It's like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which features (in the film at least) The Invisible Man (HG Wells), Mina Harker (From Dracula, Bram Stoker), Captain Nemo (20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Jules Verne), Alan Quartermain (King Solomon's Mines, H Rider Haggard), Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde), Dr Henry Jekyll & Mr Eward Hyde (R.L Stevenson) and Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain) amongst other characters all having a ripping adventure together.

I'd love to have a story where various British postwar Science Fiction characters interact in a space where all of their back stories interact. So I'd have:

Professor Quatermass and the British Rocket Group (BBC 60s)
Dan Dare and his supporting cast (50s Comic)
The Doomwatch organisation (70s telly)
Jerry Cornelius (Michael Moorcock hero and groovy psychedelic spy/nihilist)
Steed and Mrs Peel (Avengers 60s telly)
Number Six and The Village (The Prisoner 60s telly)
Steel Claw, Robot Archie, Spring Heeled Jack and others (50s to 70s Comics)
Captain Britain (Marvel's First Superhero specifically for the UK market)
MarvelMan/Miracleman (40s clone of Shazam, later eighties revival)
Various Characters from V for Vendetta (Eighties dystopian comic)
UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (Alien fighting military from Doctor Who)
Sapphire and Steel (70s telly)

Overall feel of a UK where boffins build rockets in the Kent countryside, Aliens invade small scottish islands, the government runs various departments constantly fighting for money to explore other dimensions, and suburbs are regularly plagued by time slips, dimension warps and superheros fighting and knocking down privet hedges. Various groovy characters fight odd and colourful villains but in scratchy 1970s tones with underlying feeling of the three day week and growing unrest.

Just imagine how much fun this would be...

Who would you like to play with?

Cheers,

Mark Brown, Editor (on leave), www.ABCtales.com

Fri, 2006-02-10 09:46

maddan

I always wanted to put Starbuck (from Moby Dick) in a story, but I've never worked out how. I love stories that put Superheroes in the real world (The Incredibles, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen), it's kind of an old idea now but I can't get enough of it. it's full of comic potential but it also plays our violent fantasies off against us. But when does this become fan-fiction. I want to write a series of stories where MR James and HP Lovecraft team up to fight the supernatural. James would be all stoic private school educated english gentleman and Lovecraft would be a lili-livered pale new england mama's boy forever hovering on the edge of insanity. James was scared of hairy things and Lovecraft was scared of slimy things, so obviously they'd make a perfect team. I want to read Mark's story.

Fri, 2006-02-10 12:09

markbrown

James and Lovecraft would be excellent! I'd read that! 2000AD did something similar with Lovecraft, Conan Doyle, Charles Fort and someone else. As to the question of when does it become fan fiction, I'd say it becomes fan fiction when it becomes an imitation of what is there already. Characters, tropes, situation, stylistic modes etc can be used to make points, or shed light on both themselves and the world. Imagine a world where a young Margaret Thatcher replaces Emma Peel at Steeds side in The Avengers. This could be Avengers fan fiction, but probably wouldn't be because it adds something to the original that wasn't there, and also allows for an opening up of themes, ideas etc that trying to write a lost episode of the show wouldn't. It's about how you do it, I reckon. Or imagine a world where the A-Team was real: A highly armed vigilante group dispensing summary justice. Huge body counts. Slapdash approach to establishing the rights and wrongs of a situation. Imagine what it would be like to live in a town if they came to right some wrongs, imagine just how weird, in the real world, they'd be. To write something from the point of view of a normal person would be able to make points and re-imagine the characters and the effect of their actions. Cheers, Mark Brown, Editor (on leave), www.ABCtales.com

Fri, 2006-02-10 12:26

maddan

The a-team one would make an excellent satire on the american foreign policy.

Fri, 2006-02-10 12:56

Jack Cade

I used to love writing Final Fantasy fanfiction, using Gogo from FF6. I'd also like to write stuff involving Transformers, but it's nigh on impossible to mix them in with any other story because they're too damn hard. Yes! To Mrs. Peel and the Prisoner, certainly. And Gambit from the X-Men. Also: Biggles. Just so I could do better than the film version where he blunders around talking about 'flying windmills' (helicopters). "Or imagine a world where the A-Team was real..." I think there'd be significant problems with an ultra-realistic approach to the A-Team. What problems would they be here to sort out? Street-crime? Inefficiency at the town hall? Road rage? Media bias? Racial tension?

Fri, 2006-02-10 13:02

markbrown

The A-Team, if you remember, were called up by people who had a problem that the authorities wouldn't deal with, so I reckon the prize story for an ultra-realistic A-Team would be to be called in to sort out some suspected child abusers. This would involve a conspiracy that included health workers, teachers, local liberals, artists, gay people. The point being that sometimes the problems that people want to solve by force aren't necessariliy the ones that they should. Just because the authorities don't believe you doesn't mean that they're covering something up... For a good use of Biggles check 'The Bloody Red Baron' by Kim Newman. Cheers, Mark Brown, Editor (on leave), www.ABCtales.com

Fri, 2006-02-10 13:38

ja_simpson

A story with the A-Team would be great, although the body count wouldn't really be that high. There'd be tons of greasy, tattooed bikers with mullets catapulted through the air by explosions from somewhere behind them though. Off a balcony probably.

Fri, 2006-02-10 13:48

poetjude

Black Beauty (Anna Sewell) meets Hazel from Watership Down (Richard Adams) in a comic romance... the geometrics of the erotic content would be a challenge for any author.

Fri, 2006-02-10 13:58

tom_saunders

Humbert Humbert and Minnie the Minx Visit my blog: http://whatisthisstrangeplace.blogspot.com/

Fri, 2006-02-10 14:14

#10

faithless

I'd like to write a story set in a social workers office. with jesus. charles bukowski. charles hawtrey and germaine greer. their workloads are huge and the tensions unbearable as they try to sort out the various messed up lives of the people living in the rubbish tip slums of rio de janeiro. harold pinter would make a cameo appearance as a comedy policeman trying to organise a round-up and massacre of the unwanted. it would be a comedy classic.

Fri, 2006-02-10 14:32

#11

pepsoid

Mark... V for Vendetta... looking fwd to it or what?! Especially now they've got Hugo Weaving in the lead role... Also... The Bloody Red Baron - fantastic! Also Dracula Cha-Cha-Cha by same author... v.difficult getting hold of his other works tho' (at least from that wonderful free medium know as 'the library') Onto topic... Buffy + Van Helsing. Bugs Bunny + Neo Vs Agent Smith + Elmer Fudd. Dracula as the 'good' guy Vs Lovecraft's 'Old Ones.' On the A-Team topic, it's ripe for a 21st C remake, methinks... but who would play who, I wonder...??? :-) * P * :-)

The All New Pepsoid the Second!

Fri, 2006-02-10 14:57

#12

polidori

The book Iâ€™ve just completed (still deliberating and pondering over cover letters and synopsis and stuff) does exactly this! I found that more often than not, I had to find the character to fit in with what I needed. A lot of reading involved! Amongst others I have used: The cards from â€˜Alice in Wonderlandâ€™, Moll Flanders, Polly Peacham from â€˜Beggarâ€™s Operaâ€™ and loads of background characters taken from Dickens, Hardy, Austen to name a few. Great fun, especially turning good characters into nasty ones - or is that just me.

http://www.beyondsampled.co.uk

Fri, 2006-02-10 15:50

#13

justyn_thyme

I put Vincent Calvino in a story, along with his author Christopher Moore. Calvino is a private detective in Bangkok and the hero of a series of novels by Moore. They're quite good but largely unavailable outside of Thailand.

Fri, 2006-02-10 18:33

#14

Moimo

Harry Kerdean Garet Jax - The Wishsong Od Shannara and I dunno meeting the psychiatrist the boy from Catcher In The Rye is talking to.

Sat, 2006-02-11 10:17

#15

Jack Cade

"This would involve a conspiracy that included health workers, teachers, local liberals, artists, gay people. The point being that sometimes the problems that people want to solve by force aren't necessariliy the ones that they should." This is true. However, wouldn't that kinda spoil the A-Team? It'd be like a story where Sherlock Holmes was brought into the 21st century, only to find his legendary sleuthing skills are useless because all the unsolved crimes are petty, random or committed by powerful criminal organisations who the law can't touch.

Sat, 2006-02-11 11:45

#16

mykle

I'd like to read a story where the A-team got rid of Saddam instead of leaving the job to the B-team (Bush and Blair). Then perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent lives could have been saved and Iraq would not be the bomb-blasted theatre of agony it has become... or, at least it might make the gungo-ho blow-some-sense-into-them Neo-com supporters pause for thought. No, that is far too unlikely - even for sci-fantasy.

Sat, 2006-02-11 15:03

#17

rokkitnite

Uh... I would just like to intervene at this juncture to point out that I wrote a satire on US foreign policy using the A Team some five years ago. They were sent to hunt down Bin Laden. It rocked.

Sat, 2006-02-11 19:07

#18

maddan

talking about the a-team last night, Murdoch would be genuinely insane, Face a slimy womanizer leaving a trail of bastards across the country, Hannibal a General Patton style disciplinarian, and Mr T's famous love of children to maybe be just a little innapropiate. Colonel Decker would be a kind of good guy, but forever bogged down in red tape and cleaning up the mess the A-Team leave. It'll be great.

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