The Day the Music Died
is a short story created by Sam Starbuck, about what could happen if everything possible went wrong in a fandom in such a short time frame.
Our narrator, Nick, runs his titular "Nick's Diner" blog, and reminiscences about the overnight downfall of the multi-media franchise Carverquest due to a chain reaction of drama.
The Day the Music Died contains examples of:
- Armoured Closet Gay: Donny Benson is caught "in a hotel room with a ball gag, a blindfold, an electrical-stimulation kit, and a teenage boy."
- Audience-Alienating Ending: In-universe, Carverquest ends with one involving The End of the World as We Know It. It takes the death of the author to get the fandom to stop treating the final book as non-existent.
- Captain Ersatz: Dux Carver and the Carverquest franchise serve as one to Harry Potter. It's even got a well-known author better known by their initials than their real name (DLE instead of JKR). The fact that the story ends with everyone dying just before the author follows suit also paints it as one for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
- Computer Virus: A Japanese hacker sent out a trojan horse designed to take the IDs of anyone who opened it... disguised as a leak of the most anticipated book in a popular series. And word didn't get out until nearly everyone in the fandom read it. Whoops.
- Content Leak: In-universe. The leaking of the entirety of the tenth Carverquest book kicks off the plot four days before it was supposed to hit shelves. Things get complicated when another leak of the same book with entirely different text shows up later, and the ensuing debate over which one was real goes so hard it breaks the LiveJournal servers.
- The Cracker: "Tamaki" fakes a leak of the final Carverquest book to steal approximately 5000 people's personal information. The narrator comments that "When the police caught up with him he was hip-deep in Wiis, iPhones, and candy bars."
- Dead Artists Are Better: The Carverquest fandom shows it's full of two-faced people when they rage so bad about the ending of the series that when the author finally passes away the narrator snarks that maybe all of their collective hatred manifested in a heart attack... and then about five minutes or so after it is official the condolence posts start to appear and so do the fanfiction honoring the man.
- Died During Production: In-Universe. The author of the Carverquest books starts the story on his dying bed and still writing, and only barely avoids this only to decide to write the series ending on a full-blown apocalypse so nobody can write continuations and then dies.
- Disaster Dominoes: First two contradictory versions of the final Carverquest book are leaked. Then it officially releases to reveal an "Everybody Dies" Ending. Then the author dies. It only gets worse from there.
- Extremely Short Timespan: As lampshaded by the narrator, the Carverquest fandom goes from thriving to bombarded with dramabombs that could last an entire fandom months individually in over a week.
- Expy Coexistence: Harry Potter (which Carverquest is meant to riff on) is established to exist early on, as even their fandom is embarrassed by the behavior of Carverquest fans.
- Foe Romance Subtext: According to the fans, Dux had plenty of it with his nemesis the Werewolf King in the books. The eighth film apparently laid it on thicker than usual.
- From Bad to Worse: The story is a barrage of bad situations all affecting the Carverquest franchise and fandom at once, which essentially nukes it to the ground overnight.
- The Fundamentalist: Reverend Donny Benson becomes the sworn enemy of several thousand people when he broadcasts a rant from his church the day old DLE dies, decrying the man, his work and all of its fans as evil.
- Here We Go Again!: The story ends with the narrator discovering another series of books, with the implication that they'll have the exact same toxic fandom that killed Carverquest.
- Insistent Terminology: The author continuously describes all of the Internet insanity, all of the standard fandom discussion and so on, as "wank".
- In-Universe Nickname: Nick's blog is known as "Nick's Diner" in-universe, referencing how it's filled with the sort of junk food you can't get enough of served by the most sarcastic host available.
- Pedophile Priest: Donny Benson, who gets caught engaging in sexual deviancy with a teenage boy.
- Popular with Furries: The in-universe Carverquest books are stated to have attracted several furry fans by the protagonist due to the immense amount of werewolves and romantic subtext involving them.The furries loved us 'cause of the werewolves, which was great and all 'cause who doesn't love a furry, deep down?
- Song Fic: A variation. The climax has the narrator streaming himself singing Don MacLean's American Pie (which has "the day the music died" as part of the lyrics) and videos of people singing the song becoming a short-lived meme before the appearance of a new fandom bandwagon to jump on. As typical of these type of fanfictions, the lyrics are placed among the narration.
- Title Drop: "The day the music died" is part of the lyrics of Don McLean's American Pie, so they obviously appear when the narrator sings the whole song.
- Torch the Franchise and Run: Happens in-universe to Carverquest: the tenth and final book, written on the author's deathbed, ends with The End of the World as We Know It.
- Two Aliases, One Character: One of the many disasters striking the Carverquest fandom is the revelation that two prominent users, Andrea2331 and Dcrv_writer, were in fact both alt accounts of a single UCLA sociology student.
- Yellow Peril: Deconstructed, as Tamaki's scheme of stealing five thousand people's personal information through a fake leaked copy of Carverquest's final book leads Nick to note that racism became prevalent in the already unstable fandom.And you know what happened next. He was Japanese. Rich, meaty racewank flowed like a river.
