Off The Handbook: An Introduction & Manifesto of Sorts

[strangeandunusual]

Most of this is copypasta'd from my Plurk. If you've already seen it there, feel free to skip it and go check the OTH tag for the fic postings.

Beetlejuice was my First Fandom. If you ask my parents, they'll say the Smurfs were, but I was like ... two. She-Ra was after that, but still. I barely remember it. The Ghost With The Most was the first thing I really got hardcore obsessed over as a kid. But it wasn't the movie: it was the cartoon. When it first came out, seven-year-old me ate, slept, lived and breathed in black-and-white stripes and red spiderwebs. I wanted to be Lydia. I used to pretend the big tree with the hollow in it at my playground led to the Neitherworld, and those three magic B-words would take me there. Et cetera. So when we were at the grocery store and I saw the Tim Burton version for rent in the video section, I beeeeeggggged my mother to rent it. She figured, like I did, that it was just like the cartoon.

We were all in for a wild ride. I learned the F word - "nice fuckin' model" - and most of the jokes went way over my head. My parents were horrified. I was just plain confused. Who were these Adam and Barbara people? Why was Beetlejuice only in a tiny part of the movie? And more importantly: WHY DID LYDIA HATE HER BEST FRIEND?

I wanted to see it again so I could try and figure it out, but it went back in the box and back to the store with a "nope, never again". I didn't get to see it again until I was in college and free to make my own cinematographic choices. I bought it on crappy two-sided DVD the first chance I got, and ... older me got a lot more of those jokes, for sure. I knew exactly why Lydia hated her best friend: he was a creep. But it was abundantly clear that the cartoon happened after the movie, so ... what a 180! How did that happen?

It stayed at the back of my head for ages. I didn't have access to the cartoon, though, and it took the DVDs of that coming out for me to really start thinking about it. With the advent of Certain Fanfics Going Mainstream, and stories like life-long fanboy Simon Pegg writing Star Trek: Beyond and Neil Gaiman writing for Doctor Who, I thought ... fanfic isn't a badge of shame anymore. It's a badge of honor, and a labor of love. And I had become pretty pleased with my own writing chops. It was time to start answering some questions.

So, I started developing Off The Handbook. It's in prose form, but structured in three acts like a movie script. Act One is done, the rest is in progress. I'm bridging the original with the animated, and doing it in what I hope is Classic Burton Style. To add to the sense of it, the few original characters I came up with are "played by" a couple of Tim Burton's standbys, and a comic actor of the original era. I've picked child stars of the 80s who resemble cartoon regulars Bertha, Prudence, and Claire. And of course, there are plenty of nods to Harry Belafonte.

I held off for a while when I heard the musical was coming out, but after listening to the OBCR, I realized it raises even MORE questions than the original movie, so this is firmly 100% fanfic/headcanon. I might toss in a reference or two to the musical, since Alex Brightman has said that he pulled inspiration from the cartoon for his portrayal of The B-Guy, but beyond that I'm keeping with the original plans.

So, enough babble. Enjoy my take on a bridge between Beetles, and please let me know what you think!