Seriously Though, What Is The Deal With This Fandom?

At the base of the sprawling magnolia tree out in front of Pirates of the Caribbean is a massive ship's anchor. I am very sorry not to have a photo I can show you, because it's quite striking. It appears to have lain there for quite some time—the tree is slowly enveloping it and the metal is rough with corrosion. Oddly enough, the anchor's rope is still attached, in perfectly fine condition, and if you follow it up through the branches of the tree and then over, you'll find that it originates from...

...Tarzan's Treehouse. Which was, of course, built from the wreckage of a ship.

This is one of those Disneyland details that I find absolutely enthralling—a literal connection between two entirely different attractions in two different lands, whose only real point of similarity is the presence of sailing ships. There is an excellent symbol-logic to it: the one thing these two attractions have in common, the thematic bridge between them, also serves as a physical bridge between them. It's almost mystical, isn't it? One can easily imagine a dream-scenario in which the themed lands are more profoundly separated than they are in fact, with no linking walkways, but the anchor rope remains and serves as the functional bridge between New Orleans Square and Adventureland—a reward for those daring enough to walk a tightrope or swing hand-by-hand underneath. What other surprising connections might or should exist in such a fanciful version of the Happiest Place on Earth?

Are you with me so far? Now for the real question. Why is no one else talking about this stuff?

The Disney theme parks fandom is unlike any other I have ever participated in. As a group, we don't really behave like fans. We behave like art/literature critics, dissecting the tropes used in attraction narratives and judging their effectiveness against some elusive, probably imaginary “objective” standard. We also behave like art/literature historians, obsessively cataloguing the accomplishments of individual Imagineers and sussing out where and how they were inspired (when it's not abundantly obvious). We behave like technology reviewers, gauging whether the features of new releases are sufficiently cutting-edge and comparing them, favorably or unfavorably, to past versions. And all of that is fine, because we are, in part, all of those things. Theme parks are complex interweavings of a multitude of arts and sciences, completely understood only in relation to each other. Moreover, the live-and-in-person interactivity of a theme park enables us to engage with its fiction on more levels than a typical film or novel.

So...why don't we engage with the fiction of Disneyland more often? The well-designed attractions invite, nay, beg us to create our own stories within their worlds, and we give them the highest of praise for it...so where are those stories? Where is the Jungle Cruise fanfiction? Where are the self-insert Country Bear OCs?* Where is the rampant speculation about how Frontierland, Main Street, USA, and Tomorrowland represent the same town in three different time periods? Oh sure, we indulge our creativity left and right, but nearly always in the literal context of theme park design: we make up attractions that we wish existed. It is as if Harry Potter fans never wrote fanfiction, only chapter-by-chapter outlines of hypothetical further novels in the series, complete with cover blurb, recommended typeface, and brief descriptions of the cover design and chapter header images...but none of the actual prose.

I'd like to see some prose. I'd like to see this fandom really blow the lid off the potential for Disney theme parks to inspire. This is not a demand for existing members of the community to produce—if that's not where your imagination takes you, then it's not where your imagination takes you (the Muse can be coaxed, never forced)—but it puzzles me as to why we don't seem to attract more people for whom that is one of their creative strengths.

It's not that the fields are entirely fallow. You can find a fair amount of, for instance, Haunted Mansion fanfiction if you know where to look...but most of it doesn't feel at all like the ride. A typical story is just the backstory for an OC ghost, brimming with angst** and tragedy (since it's the story of an untimely death), with the Mansion itself involved only at the end when the unfortunate spirit arrives there to stay. Leave out that ending, and you'd never know where the author got their inspiration. That's not...bad, per se, but I can't help but think it's a little disingenuous to call something Haunted Mansion fanfiction when the Mansion's presence is so tangential.

Then there are the stories that openly take place in the theme parks, but treat their existence as theme parks completely literally, without further commentary—the fiction equivalent of our Armchair Imagineering, as it were. Often these stories focus on Disney film characters. Some of them are actual published novels endorsed by the Walt Disney Corporation. I tend not to find these very satisfying either—they seem to take for granted the “Space Mountain and Mickey Mouse” view of the parks that I dissected last week.

Only once in a while do I find something just transformative enough to really scratch the itch. That's when I tend to make an It Came From the Fandom post...of which there have been a total of six so far, so clearly it's a rare situation. And maybe the reason for that is that...it's hard. I've tried myself to create the sort of thing I crave, and found it to be a difficult balancing act—taking the parks seriously without taking them too literally, exploring the possibilities suggested by the gaps in worldbuilding without wandering off into something unrecognizable.

But I hope that by calling attention to this strange blind spot in our fandom, I have inspired some of you to try walking the tightrope with me. Maybe we'll get from the base of the one tree to the top of the other as a team.

* OC = Original Character. That I feel I need to point that out, instead of safely assuming my readers are all familiar with the term, just goes to show how odd this fandom is.

** To be fair, most fanfiction is like this regardless of the source material.