Part 1: Fanfiction
A Belgian journalist was
admiring the blissfulness view from his hilltop country house with his white
terrier dog, Snowy. While soaking in the glorious views, Tintin writes his next
piece regarding two men whose goal it was to thieve such a valuable piece of
jewelry from a nearby home. Once he had enough of writing for the day, Tintin
decided to have a well-deserved rest on his couch, all snuggled up to Snowy.
Tintin was fast asleep
dreaming about such a tale. His written piece had become his very own dream.
However, if only he could wake up to notice what was going on around him.
Instead of these men stealing such delicate jewelry, they were thieving his
beloved white terrier dog, Snowy. How could this happen you say, as Tintin
continued his magnificent dream he was unaware that this was occurring around
him. A few hours later, Tintin awakes from his restful sleep, to be absolutely
oblivious as to what happened whilst he was sleeping. He jumps up from the
couch, puts the kettle on, whilst waiting for it to boil he wonders where Snowy
is. In Tintin’s house, there are limited places for snowy to hide. His house
consists of a cramped living room, which flows onto the kitchen and then his
bedroom follows with a cozy balcony overlooking the town. Tintin begins to look
for his beloved pet, thinking that he is hiding under his bed, or under the
sheets since it was a sunny but crisp winters day. He soon discovers that Snowy
is nowhere to be found. He seeks high and low, but gives up and sits down to
ponder of where his beloved pet may be. He reminisces about the times Snowy has
run away, but he does not recall any time that he has done so. Tintin starts to
panic, he rushes down to the local village and asks around to see whether
anyone has sited Snowy but he returns home a few hours later without his
beloved dog. Tintin has a distressed sleep due to not knowing where his dog is,
if he is warm, has shelter and food. He is clueless and has no idea where or
why Snowy would just leave. All without knowing that it actually has a link to
his written story. As Tintin awakes to the sound of banging and crashing next door,
he opens his front door and realises that there is someone moving in. He offers
the nice young lady help as he yawns, she declines and says “You better get
some more rest before you think about helping me.” Tintin chuckles, and says,
“I’ve been up all night because my white terrier dog, Snowy has gone missing.”
She sighs and says, “Oh I am dearly sorry to hear that, I hope you find him
soon.” “Thanks.” Tintin says as he closes the door and stumbles back into his
cozy home.
Three days pass, within
those days Tintin made flyers and stuck them up in his town, however he has not
heard or seen anything. He his becoming miserable by the second and worries for
Snowy’s wellbeing. However, he befriended his next-door neighbor whose name is
Aja. He helps her unpack her belongings,
as doing so his eyes are caught by a shiny piece of jewelry which is sitting on
Aja’s mantelpiece, he subtly seeks the what seemed to be jewelry but now
realises it’s a dog collar. SNOWY’S DOG COLLAR. He sneakily grabs the collar,
slides it into his trouser pocket and says, “Sorry Aja, I have to leave, I have
a Snowy emergency.” With that said, Tintin belts out of her house like a speed
of light, enters his home and quickly locks his door behind him. He carefully
gets the collar out of his pocket and examines it, there are a million thoughts
running through his mind, “Why does Aja have his dogs collar?”, “Is she the one
behind his disappearance?”, no she cant be, what if she is? Tintin is confused,
next minute Aja knocks on his door and says “Tintin are you okay, you hurriedly
left mine, do you mind if I come in?” Tintin does not reply, he sighs and gives
her a chance to explain. He opens the door, Aja sits down and he shows her the
dog collar. He asks, “This is Snowy’s dog collar, how come it is in your
possession?” She startles and says, “Argh, well… I brought it off these men who
own a jewelry store in the next town.” Tintin has a sigh of relief and says
would you be willing to take me to this shop so I can confront them about my
dog?”. Aja agrees and takes Tintin to the shop.
Tintin stumbles into this
‘jeweler’ and demands to see his dog Snowy. These two men are just like the
characters he imagined and wrote about in his story. They were on the hunt for
the jewelry around Snowy’s neck!!! He says, “Give my dog back or else I will
call the police.” They snigger and say “We don’t have your dog, we sold him to
that lady your with.” Tintin is surprised, he turns around to Aja and says,
“Where is my dog”, she replies, “I really don’t know Tintin, I don’t have him,
truly.” “Yap yap yap” “That’s Snowy” Tintin says. He jumps over the counter of
the shop, the two men chase after him at speed but Tintin reaches the room that
Snowy is in but it has a lock on it. Tintin begs to get his dog out. Aja says,
“I’ll give the collar back for free if you just let the dog out.” The two
culprits decide and speak quietly amongst themselves and decide that they agree
on it. Tintin, shake their hands while Aja rushes back to Tintin’s home to
retrieve the collar. Once she arrives back the men release Snowy back into
Tintin’s arms, they are overly excited to see each other and they hurry home
back to Snowy’s natural habitat. After Tintin gives Snowy endless amounts of
cuddles and loving, he goes to his notepad and screws up the story about the
diamond thieves because he wouldn’t want that to become a reality next time.
The next day Tintin buys Snowy and blue collar without the jewels on it. The
moral of this story whatever is shiny; will attract those that admire shiny
things.
Part 2: Commentary
In reference to Vogler’s
(1998) text we can say the fan fiction creates a number of character archetypes
within its course. For example the hero of this piece is Tintin. He was faced
with the loss of his beloved dog Snowy whom he adores. In the beginning he just
thinks that he has wandered off but later on he discovers that two men have
actually taken him for his fancy bejeweled collar. Certain heroes, like Tintin
encounter multiple obstacles on the road to adventure (Vogler, 1988). For
Tintin to get Snowy back he was faced with giving the thieves the power to
attain the expensive collar so he could get his dog back. For instance Tintin
portrays the quality of sacrifice because at the end Tintin has to give up
Snowy’s collar to the thieves. He did this so he could have his best friend
snowy back. Another example in this piece of work is that Tintin faces his
greatest fear. The fear being him experiencing the loss of his beloved dog
Snowy. In addition to this Tintin had to face another fear of confronting the
rivals who stole Snowy, so he had to come face to face with what he feared the
most. Of the many fears faced by heroes, the greatest dramatic power seems to
come form the fear of standing up to a villain or authority figure (Vogler, 1998).
The hero of Tintin was able to take possession of whatever he came seeking. He
is deemed as a treasure hunter because they are able to take the gold that he
went in looking for (Vogler, 1998). Tintin risked himself and Aja because they
were seeking for snowy from the thieves who stole him. These thieves and Tintin
made an agreement to exchange the valuable possession, which was Snowy’s
bejeweled collar. We experienced the factory of resurrection (Vogler, 1998) when
Tintin lost Snowy because he faced the feeling of loss. At the beginning of the
story Tintin enjoyed his lifestyle with Snowy, he would write stories on a
day-to-day basis. However one day the story that he was writing somehow
overlapped into his own life. The thieves were stealing jewels in his story
however they actually came for his own dog Snowy that indicates the Supreme
Ordeal, which is also known as the climax. Heroes have to undergo a final
purging and purification before reentering the Ordinary World. Once more they
must change. The trick for writers is to show the change in their characters,
by behaviour or appearance rather than by just talking about. This is where we
can say that Tintin did experience the notion of resurrection due to the loss
and triumphed he lost and gained through losing Snowy and getting him back. We
can link this to the notion of taking possession (Vogler, 1998) because when
Tintin was searching for Snowy him and Aja ended up going to the place where
she said she brought the diamond collar from. Tintin was on a mission to
collect his beloved dog Snowy. Vogler (1998) states that this step of taking
possession of whatever they came seeking whether it is gold, a weapon or a
person. But this notion focuses on two or more people making a transaction
whereby the hero has risked their life and now gets something in exchange so in
this case it was his dog Snowy.
It
is clear that my Fanfiction was able to follow both Vogler’s (1998) mythic
narrative structure, and character archetypes.
References:
Vogler,
C. 1998. The writer’s journey: Mythic structure for writers. Studio City, CA:
Michael Wiese Productions.
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