Don’t bow down and worship idols. — Exodus 20:5
When I wrote Hey Arnold! fanfiction as a teen, there was an author whose work I admired.
At that time, I had only just published my first completed story. But it was in script format, short, and suffered from the inclusion of an original character that took over the majority of the plot.
Conversely, the author I admired wrote sweeping, engaging narratives and weaved a compelling story that combined humour, romance and science-fiction (yes — science-fiction in a Hey Arnold! story). I wrote a gushing review on their works, all the while pining for the day I would write as effortlessly as them.
Fast-forward 15 years. I am now a full-grown adult, and the long-awaited Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie had been released. When I finally got the closure I had so desperately craved for over a decade, I was perturbed that my first thought was to be disappointed that the movie wasn’t closer to the ideas entertained in my fanfic — an alternate version I had written when the movie had a snowball’s chance of being made.
Selfish, right? I had grown so attached to a reality where the movie didn’t exist, that I found it hard to let go when TJM finally premiered. Nevertheless, despite my biases, the movie was canon now and I had no choice but to accept it.
Shortly after the movie’s release, there was another surprising turn of events: the writer that I had followed and worshipped — who had gone radio silent with her last update in 2007 — had suddenly returned and was writing again! I was beyond elated, singing praises similar to what one would of a prodigal son at last returning home.
I eagerly began reading her new story, exciting to live in this fresh new world of Hey Arnold! she created, and the end result was…meh.
Where was the feeling of encompassing elation I felt when I had binged chapters of her previous works? I even went back and re-read parts of her old stories to see if maybe my tastes had changed, but no — I liked her old stories just fine. The new story she wrote was similar to the firsts — science-fiction intertwined with nudges of humour and slice of life — but for whatever reason the story did not resonate with me.
As of now, the writer is still writing this new fanfic; it’s 30+ chapters long and ongoing, but honestly? I had to tap out after Chapter 5 because of the minimal investment I could muster.
After that bit of disappointment, I started to analyze the difference between teenage me and thirty-something me, hoping to shed light on why my consumption of fanfiction had changed.
I began to realize it had to do with my writing experience at both stages in my life. When I was younger, I only had a handful of fanfics to my name, and most were either unfinished, lost, amateurish, or a combination of all three. Our family didn’t have a computer until about 2003 so I spent the time writing stories by hand and doing research by recording episodes of Hey Arnold! on VHS and re-watching them repeatedly to get a sense of accuracy when writing scenes.
Fast-forward to today: I have a laptop I’ve purchased with my own income that I can use to easily do research, upload and publish fanfiction to the Internet. I’ve written 20 different Hey Arnold! fanfics — the majority of which are completed works — and have amassed a decent number of reviews and fans over the years.
I was no longer the bright-eyed dreamer that simply wished to write stories, I BECAME that writer, and in that process I developed a style and rhythm for writing that gleaned much of its inspiration from the original mind itself, Craig Bartlett, and from writers that had awakened a sense of creativity that, until I had read them, I did not think was possible.
In the end, I wound up outgrowing my idols. I was no longer satisfied with my favourite writer because I could no longer align my vision of a good Hey Arnold! fanfiction with how she wrote.
Even more startling, I felt let down by Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie not just because of the story, but because I was convinced the story COULD BE BETTER.
In my mind there is a perfect sequel and conclusion to the series, and quite frankly, I felt my version encapsulated it more than the actual final product did.
And this is why I wish to stop writing fanfiction and start creating original content. There are constraints one must follow when it comes to fanfiction. Canon, even if one does not agree with it, should at least be acknowledged and obeyed (unless the fanfic is in an AU — alternate universe).
A writer can choose to follow these limitations in order to retain accuracy, or they can go off the rails and incorporate as many world-building elements, tropes and other IPs as humanly possible. When this happens, fanfiction becomes less about the source material and more about wish fulfilment, more about creating a story than only has the slim veneer of the original source material. And at that point you wonder why the writer even bothered to write a fanfic in the first place.
I don’t want to reach this stage. There are so many ideas floating around in my head. A lot of them were originally for Hey Arnold fanfiction, but now I am confident enough in my writing create these stories without relying on a childhood cartoon. My ideas have legs, and I no longer need to use Hey Arnold! as the crutch to support them.