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Getting Stuck In: FIFA, Fan Fiction, And Coping

By: Bridget Gordon (@thaumatropia)

This is the first of a three-part series. Look for the next installment next Friday.

I’m going to tell you a story.

*****

Once upon a time there was a young boy named Nathan. He was ten years old and lived with his Mom and Dad in Seattle. His Dad was English and grew up in a modest but loving home in South London, while his Mom grew up in North Carolina and met her future husband while studying abroad in England. Nathan had no brothers or sisters. They lived in a bright green house in Ballard. His Dad worked long hours but always made sure he had Sundays off. Sundays were their day together.

One Sunday in late November, Dad had surprised everyone with Sonics tickets. Nate was so excited to go to the game he could barely sit still. Everyone had a great time, even though the Sonics got beat pretty handily by Utah.

A cold, hard rain was beating down as they entered KeyArena and by the time they left the stadium the rain had mixed with sleet and  fog. They got in the car and started driving home, slowly, cautiously. Nathan couldn’t stop talking about the game.They came to a red light and Nathan started talking about how much he loved Rashard Lewis, and how he’s going to be one of the best players in NBA history, bigger than LeBron James, and how he wants to be just like Lewis except maybe play as a point guard instead.

There was a sudden bright light and then nothing.

Nathan woke up groggy, barely able to see, and in excruciating pain. His English grandparents were standing over him. He had only seen them a couple times before. He looked around and saw he was in a hospital room. His grandparents said he had been unconscious for the past six days. They said they’ve been worried sick and were so glad he’s starting to come around. It took him a while to shake out the cobwebs enough to put a sentence together.

“Where’s Mom and Dad?”

His grandparents told him. Nathan doesn’t remember much of the rest of the day.

He left the hospital a little over a week later. He was too upset to go to the funeral. The house was put on the market, and it would sell about six months later. As for Nathan, his grandparents were his closest surviving relations. He would be going back with them. To England. All he had to do was pack some of his belongings and say goodbye to his friends from school.

It was all too quick. It was all too easy. One minute he’s going to a basketball game with his parents. The next, he’s on a plane to another country with people he barely knows. His entire life was over. Just like that.

*****

The story I’m telling you isn’t real. But it did happen.

The story I’m telling you is, like nearly all fanfiction, a derivative work. Some of the story was developed in the course of a few save game files of Manager Career Mode in the FIFA video game franchise. I filled in the blanks on the rest. The games I’m describing here did happen— including a crucial moment in one game toward the end. Nathan is, in effect, a Mary Sue character. (Or a Marty Sue, depending on where you’re at with the gender binary.)

I didn’t plan for this story to develop, in the same way that I never planned to start playing FIFA. I never considered anything I was doing with this silly sports video game to be creating fanfiction. Nor did I think that creating fanfiction based ostensibly on sports- despite English football being probably one of the most popular media franchises in the world- was really possible, in the sense that it created either compelling stories for an audience or emotional catharsis for the auteur. Yet I found myself not only spending hours playing FIFA, but I realized I was also creating an elaborate narrative around my gameplay that largely existed in my own head. This narrative was based around a character I created primarily to fill a need in my squad that didn’t exist in the transfer market and found myself developing an emotional attachment to.

Though I didn’t acknowledge what I was doing as creating fanfic at the time, I realized in hindsight it was fulfilling much of the same functions that fanfic often does for their creators. It let me engage critically with a story I already followed and loved (in this case, English football). It allowed me to explore what I want out of this story, and in a broader sense, stories in general. And, while not every fanfiction creator does so for this reason, it provided an emotional release and source of comfort at a time in my life when I sorely needed it.

*****

The first few months in England were hard. Very hard. He would sit in his new room at his grandparent’s house in Wandsworth and stare at the walls. He had trouble adjusting to a different school environment. The kids bullied him relentlessly. And there was nowhere for him to play basketball.

He was also worried that his grandparents hated him and that this would be just like Harry Potter. They didn’t hate him, of course. They loved him to bits. He was, in fact, the only piece of their son they had left. They did, however, try to keep their distance while he grieved. They didn’t want to smother him. After a few months, though, it was clear Nathan needed something to help him start the healing process.

His grandfather was a lifelong football fan. He grew up as a fan of Wimbledon FC, a club with a long, proud, and (to outsiders at least) somewhat notorious history. Just a few years prior, the owners of Wimbledon FC moved the club to Milton Keynes, a town 60 miles north. Moving sports teams to new cities was common in America, where even Nate’s beloved SuperSonics fell victim to greedy and opportunistic owners. But in England, it was a national scandal. Football clubs are reflections of their community— it made no more sense to move a club to a new city than it would to move a church, or a library. But it happened. In response, fans of Wimbledon formed a new club, AFC Wimbledon, and began playing in the depths of English semi-professional football. Like most Dons fans, Nathan’s grandfather transferred his loyalties to AFC, and was a proud early member of the Dons Trust. His club was owned and run by their fans. By people like him.

On weekends, the club held a community football scheme in the park. Nate’s grandfather really thought this would be good for him. Get some fresh air. Make new friends. See what makes this club so special.

It took him a while to feel comfortable with a ball at his feet. He kept tripping over himself. But slowly, surely, he got the hang of it. He was starting to have fun, for the first time since the Sonics game. He even made a couple friends.

He liked it enough that he asked if he could go back.