Thursday, June 3, 2010

Why I'm reviewing Avatar fanfiction

Avatar 2006 scifi

Before reviewing tons of Avatar fanfiction, I must preface this with an explanation.
In 2006, I finished writing a novel about people with tails who lived in trees. I had been working on it for three years beforehand. Imagine my annoyance at seeing a movie about the same premise appear on screens in 2009. So there are differences between James Cameron's work and mine, such as how my non-blue characters lack fiber optic hair and are not anything like Indians. You can read my novel at http://mogwai_toejam.tripod.com/Earthstars.html. So maybe it's not as exciting as the Marines shooting at blue people throwing spears, and I plan to do an extensive rewrite once I've gotten all my alternate plots identified. It's just a shame that James Cameron effectively stole the soul out of my ideas before I got a chance to share them with the world.
In the process of reviewing all these works of fanfiction, I hope to gain some reflective insight into my work, and be able to modify my story so that it no longer resembles Avatar. By reading the worst of them, I hope to unlock that secret part of my brain that James Cameron cannot penetrate with his mind reading rays, and find whatever remains of the soul he sucked out.
If you think this sounds crazy, the other theory is even crazier. Did someone read my screenplay at Zoetrope.com and rip it off? Was James Cameron lying when he said he was writing the screenplay right after he got done with Terminator? My lawsuit wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell, like that Chinese guy that tried to sue him. I still want a copy of that book, the Tale of Blue Crows, and that book that Canadian wrote. I can find neither one online, which is truly a shame. All you can find are tons of news articles about it.