Attack of the Public Domain Characters!
A not-so-original short story
Mitch glared at the blank laptop screen and slammed down his fist on the desk.
Ten minutes later and not a single word had migrated from his head to the screen. What the hell? It shouldn’t be this hard to write a novel. Two weeks into November and zero progress. He’d never come close to winning that bet with his NaNoWriMo group at this rate.
“Maybe if I browse Google for a minute, I can find some inspiration,” Mitch told himself while unloading a frustrated sigh.
He pulled up the search engine’s home page and clicked on the “I’m feeling lucky” button. A series of photos and articles on the Orion Nebula popped up in the results.
Wonderful. Even Google refused to help break his writer’s block.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Mitch threw his hands up above his head. “How can you write a story about a stinking nebula? Thanks for nothing, Google!”
Maybe it was time to set this project aside and browse through the latest funny cat videos. Mitch needed a quick laugh after enduring all this stress and torment. How did all those literary greats survive without access to the antics of furry felines from around the world?
He clicked on a bookmarked page featuring all the latest popular cat videos. Mitch scrolled through the feed. Watched that one already. And that one. And that one. A disappointed sigh escaped his lips. Is it too much to ask for these influencers to get on the stick and upload a new video each day? He needed his fix.
Soon, one of those annoying sponsored ads popped up on his feed. This one featured a new trailer for an upcoming movie: The Three Musketeers vs. Dracula.
“All for one and one for all in the battle against evil,” Mitch said, repeating the movie’s tag line.
That’s it. Pure genius.
Mitch had been making this way too hard on himself. Tons of public domain characters available to pluck and drop into a story. Why didn’t he think of this sooner?
This bet was as good as won.
Mitch grabbed a pen and a yellow legal notepad next to his laptop and scribbled furiously. The ideas rushed out of his head like a river engorged with spring runoff.
Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel band together to form an elite group of assassins-for-hire. They infiltrate kingdoms and overthrow wicked rulers for a princely sum. Of course, the story needed to include a cool training montage where the three women master various forms of martial arts under the tutelage of a wise dragon. Then, later, they meet their greatest test when Zeus and his fellow Olympian gods descend in their chariots to challenge the growing power of the trio.
Perfect!
Wait.
What if Zeus and the other gods were ancient aliens and their “chariots” were actually UFOs? Oh yeah, then Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel go enlist the services of Leonardo Da Vinci to rig up some cool inventions to combat the alien invaders. Mitch remembered he invented the Da Vinci Code or something like that, so he’d be a good inclusion in the narrative.
This train left the station and ran at full speed now.
Mitch’s writer block vanished faster than dew from grass after sunrise. He cranked out thousands of words from one day to the next ahead of his NaNoWriMo group’s next meeting. The finished draft would blow their minds.
Until it didn’t.
“This is unoriginal trash. You lost the bet. Pay up.”
Lizzy’s whiny voice grated on his nerves more than usual. Who appointed her head of their writing group anyway? Selling 10 copies of a self-published memoir about being raised by mountain goats didn’t make her an expert in storytelling.
“I won,” Mitch insisted. “You bet a $50 Starbucks gift card I couldn’t write an original 50k novel. I did it. Now give me the gift card, so I can use it on my morning coffee.”
The other three writers seated around the table gave him incredulous looks and shook their heads.
“Dude, this story has already been done,” Garth said. “It’s just a lame rip-off of Excalibur in Sherwood.”
“They’re nothing alike,” Mitch replied.
Winter rolled her eyes and pushed her orange-rimmed glasses up along the bridge of her nose.
“Let’s compare, shall we?” she said. “You have Snow White, Rapunzel, and Cinderella fighting invading space aliens disguised as gods. In Excalibur in Sherwood, King Arthur and Robin Hood form an alliance to fight time-traveling cyborgs disguised as wizards attempting to install the Sherriff of Nottingham as the ruler of England.”
“It’s practically the same story!” Lizzy said.
“Maybe next time, throw something original in there like vampires or zombies,” Garth added. “Or a shifter romance subplot with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
Mitch sunk down into his chair and sulked. How could he enjoy his mocha latte now? Vampires? Zombies? Shifters? Bleh.
Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
How about time-traveling zombies? Perfect. Red Riding-Hood, the Big Bad Wolf, and Grandma must band together and make a final stand at Grandma’s house to stop the zombie horde from destroying the future.
Mitch’s frown snapped to a widening grin. That free coffee would belong to him alone soon enough.
Did you enjoy this satirical tale? Check out my other short stories and my serialized stories in the Strange New Worlds archives.
"Selling 10 copies of a self-published memoir about being raised by mountain goats didn’t make her an expert in storytelling."
Ahh, but selling 15 copies surely will! Thanks for this fun piece, John. Tbh, better than what's Disney's chucking at us these days. Wah-wah-wah.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Marvel and Lucasfilm writing rooms!
All seriousness, this was hysterical. (Heh.) I'd be laughing riotously if I wasn't out in public at the moment. Very witty and humorous bit of commentary.