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I finally saw Challengers this week. It immediately entered my personal echelon of the great modern sports movies (as well as a gripping, thorny romantic drama). The movie does a terrific job of using the existing powerful narrative structures and character archetypes in sports to create a compelling story — the washed-up prospect, the fading star, the phenom who never got her seemingly fated shot at glory.

And as is my way, I purchased the relatively new tennis game TopSpin 2K25 immediately after, returning to my roots as a (very bad) tennis player in my youth. In a surprising turn of events, the way I played TopSpin right after seeing Challengers sort of felt like writing fanfiction — and I realized that, without recognizing it, I’d been engaging with fanfiction in my own way for years.

In the character creator, I decided to make my tennis player one of the three central characters in the movie. Forget the boys — Challengers’most compelling star is Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan, a former teenage phenom whose knee blew up during a college match, ending her promising professional career before it started. But what if I could rewrite that narrative? What if her knee injury wasn’t quite so catastrophic, and she had another chance?

In my version of Tashi Duncan’s career, her knee injury still happens, but a full recovery is possible. My save file starts, in my head, at the beginning of that process, as she enters the tour lowly ranked, regaining her confidence and control over her body as I learn how to play this game. I gave her some kinesiology tape on her right kneeand otherwise tried my best to style Tashi like she appears in the movie (I have limited apparel options this early in my career).

I’m in the early days of my career and having a great time. After a disappointing blowout loss in my first match (as Tashi got used to using her knee again and I got used to TopSpin’s controls and play patterns), I bounced back with an upset victory in the first round of my next