I wrote this piece of flash fan fiction for my Collective Storytelling class. I’ve never felt compelled to write fanfic, although I respect writers who do. For this experiment, I was originally going to do a fairly cynical piece titled “Ginny Weasley and the Quarter-Life Crisis,” about an eighth year at Hogwarts where Ginny is dating the new Defense of the Dark Arts teacher Harry Potter. She freaks out because without Voldemort there’s no reason to do anything, and she realizes that she goes to the only high school in the world where NO ONE HAS SEX.
In the end, I decided against this piece. I wanted to write something from my heart, the way that true blue fan fiction writers do. I chose to retell the end of the controversial Spider-man arc from 2007 — One More Day — in which Peter Parker makes a deal with the devil to save his Aunt May’s life in exchange for his marriage to Mary Jane Watson and 20 years of series continuity. Although my version nullifies every issue of Spider-man since One More Day, it stays true to the characters and the integrity of the series.
And besides, those new issues suck anyway.