Guns and Grapple:
Fanfiction

There’s an awful lot of twaddle talked about the “Lara canon” or the background facts as gleaned from Eidos, the games, the comics, the films and the inventions of fans or from Susie Hamilton, the much missed PR person who used to work for Core in Derby. Let me give you a couple of examples of what I don’t regard as “canon”. I don’t think Lara should have a steady boyfriend. There is no evidence from the games or the films that she does. I also don’t think Lara should have an annoying man telling her what to do via a dinky headset. This was a narrative invention for the first Tomb Raider film, hastily shoehorned into the last levels of Chronicles to give the concept authenticity. However, if someone wants to write a story in which Lara has a boyfriend and a dinky headset – maybe the headset could give her and her boyfriend sex tips whilst in coitus – then that’s fine with me. Personally my version of the Lara character would only submit to a miniature speaker telling her “you don’t want to do that” if blackmailed into it or if it was surgically implanted in her tooth fillings. So in conclusion – it you want to mess with the canon slightly, go for it. I could probably even cope with Lara being half-American and really called Laura, provided the writer gave enough justification for it.

 

1. “Lara is not an anti-hero”

 

This is an old chestnut. People seem to want Lara to be like Nancy Drew or even Indiana Jones. That’s all good, but some of us don’t have that vision of her and “fan fic experts” who claim that a slightly villainous Lara is not acceptable just haven’t been watching the games. Even at her most goody-goody one has to admit that Lara has an anarchistic streak. If one combines that with being brought up as a rich “only child” by mostly absent parents, and add in the traditional distain that many Englishmen have for foreigners, it is not unreasonable to write stories in which Lara is less than an angel. Combine this with her propensity for firearms and her tendency, at least in the early games, to shoot everything that moves, and one can make a perfectly fair case for her being a thrill-seeking sociopath. You may disagree, and that’s OK. But don’t try lecturing those of us that have a less than rosy view of Lara’s motives and character that we are somehow “wrong”. On a personal note, I started writing TR fan fic at the time TR2 was released, and I made her a psychotic bitch right from the off. I could only laugh when she shot that innocent helicopter pilot at the end of TR3. OK, that bit of uncalled for violence may have been an aberration and a mistake on the part of Core, but you have to admit that it makes darker visions of Lara possible.

 

2. ”Lara doesn’t smoke, drink, swear or shag”

 

Yeah, right. I have a collection of Core-released pictures showing Lara with a cigar or Lara sipping a glass of something that probably isn’t root beer. As for her not having sex, as far as we know she’s not a signed up member of the Ring Thing, and she’s a busty, sexy girl with a tremendous enthusiasm for life, so unless Jesus has entered her life or she’s had her bits removed in an African circumcision ceremony, I think it unlikely that she is chaste. However if you want to write her as a teetotal virgin that is perfectly acceptable, but leave the rest of us who don’t agree with you alone. As for swearing – if you don’t want Lara to swear, then don’t write her that way. I’ve met quite a lot of upper class rich English girls with links to the aristocracy and most of them swear like navvies. So a Lara that swears is an option, in my humble opinion, however regrettable.

 

3. “Lara is green, loves animals and respects other peoples’ cultures”

 

There seems to be a politically correct crowd out there who wants Lara to be some sort of eco-hero like the heroine in some sort of saccharine 90’s childrens’ cartoon. When I see Angelina Jolie dressed up like a Tibetan monk and being “spiritual” or getting all tribal with the Masai, I’m reminded of the character Edina Monsoon from Absolutely Fabulous or Ali G. There’s more to respecting a culture than dressing up in ethnic costumes and listening to foreign music. The real life Angelina Jolie may be an international ambassador for all things bright and beautiful, but that doesn’t mean Lara is. I suppose it is possible that Lara buys Fair Trade chocolate whilst simultaneously looting a country of its archaeological heritage, but she’s have to suffer from the sort of schizophrenia that allows governments to destroy countries in order to “liberate” them. I suspect she’s a good deal more down to earth and in touch with reality than that. You may disagree and that is your right, but it don’t mean other versions are automatically incorrect.

 

4. “Respect Lara or Eidos will have the lawyers on you”

 

Ten years on, and not a single author of even the most violence femmeslash fiction “starring” Lara has been in receipt of even a slightly snappish email to the best of my knowledge. So relax. I’d be more worried about Eidos nicking your plot ideas than you nicking theirs.

 

5. “Lara doesn’t do space travel”

 

I have a certain amount of respect that say that there are some things Lara wouldn’t do because it is out of character. However, the games have introduced so many diverse elements, that I reckon there’s a fairly wide remit. There have been aliens, ghosts, mutants, living statues, dinosaurs … many things that one doesn’t get in an Indiana Jones story as a rule. Also if you want to write a crossover story in which, for example, Lara meets the Moomin family, I don’t see why you shouldn’t try it, even though there is no evidence that Lara has or ever would meet the Moomins (without shooting them.) Fan fic can be satirical and playful, even parodic, as well as being of the more “train-spotting” variety in which every fact is of Trekkie-calibre “authenticity”.

 

So there’s my ha’penniesworth, which I hope will provide some balance to the advice already given in this Author’s Notes section.

 

Thanks Ostercy!