Please welcome today’s guest writer, Catherine Kramer. Catherine is a 2014 English grad. She works in publishing and lives above a bakery; her days are filled with books, baked goods, and–most naturally–Boy Meets World.
“Previously on Boy Meets World…”
Thus began my recently rediscovered third grade foray into fan fiction.
My “book” was cleverly titled Boy Meets World Continued, and while it picked up right where the best television show of all time left off, it is essentially my re-writing of the series finale. All of the characters whose storylines took them far and wide in the last episode suddenly decide to come back home, and everyone who didn’t get married suddenly decides to get married. There’s not so much a story arc as a straight shot to the altar. If nothing else, this example of my very early work reminds me how far I’ve come both as a writer and as a human being who understands that marriage is not the goal of life.
If you were to ask present-day, twenty-two-year-old me what I think of fan fiction, I would tell you I find it “fascinating,” which is my polite, succinct way of saying that people who write fan fiction strike me as the kind of people who are slightly terrifying in their obsessions, and that if they actually had talent in writing fiction they would probably come up with their own characters, and that if they really love the thing they claim to love so much wouldn’t they trust the actual creators of said thing to do a passable job of, you know, creating it?
So the initial discovery that nine-year-old me was committed to this craft was not amusing.
But the undeniable truth is out there: I, Catherine Kramer, am the author of Boy Meets World Continued, published by the Mrs. Vanden Brink Press (a print-on-demand operation) in 2001.
I am an author of fan fiction.
But now that I find myself here in the company of Trekkies, Pottermaniacs and the like, I suppose it’s time to identify what it is we’re trying to get at with our borrowed storylines and all-too-familiar characters: control. Just because we didn’t write the backstory doesn’t mean we don’t want some say in the ongoing narrative.
We have an idea—it just happens to be very closely linked with someone else’s idea that came first.
We want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.
We want to make our mark.
We want control.
In the series finale of Boy Meets World, Cory and Topanga moved to New York, Shawn and Angela didn’t get married, and all of the things were changing; I decided to change them back. I wanted a different ending, so I took control.
But in doing so, I missed the point of the show I purported to love. Boy Meets World is chock-full of life lessons, chief among them the inevitability of change and learning to deal with our lack of control.
Puberty takes a toll on our hormones.
Parents (and legal guardians) go from being heroes to humans.
Breakups alter our perspectives.
Someone can transform from “The Good Looking Guy” into Plays With Squirrels.
College—well, college changes everything.
Despite my viewing dedication from an early age, I missed something. I arrived at the conclusion of the series unwilling to accept change—in the characters’ lives or my own. I hadn’t soaked in the lessons of the immortal Mr. Feeny, who understood change better than anyone, moving from elementary school teacher to high school principal to retired fisherman to one-time college student to college professor (AND his past lives include K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider and Benjamin Braddock’s father in The Graduate. Long live William Daniels). But now—thanks to years of syndication and eventual DVD release—the lessons meant for Cory and the gang have made their way to me, just in time for an avalanche of change. As a member of the graduating class of 2014, I am already familiar with the various shades of friends moving away, not moving away, getting married, not getting married, getting jobs, not getting jobs, and everything in between.
And thanks to the newly launched Girl Meets World, I know that Cory and Topanga weathered the post-college storm of uncertainty, so maybe I will too.
But first, I think I should perfect my Feeny call.
Catherine Kramer (’14) has a degree in English and works in publishing. Her continued existence is made possible by grace, warm hugs, and iced chai lattes.
