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tywinning asked you: 2012-08-09 03:37

As a professor, may I ask you what you think about fanfiction?

I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn.

Most of the history of Western literature (and probably much of non-Western literature, but I can’t speak to that) is adapted or appropriated from something else.  Homer wrote historyfic and Virgil wrote Homerfic and Dante wrote Virgilfic (where he makes himself a character and writes himself hanging out with Homer and Virgil and they’re like “OMG Dante you’re so cool."  He was the original Gary Stu).  Milton wrote Bible fanfic, and everyone and their mom spent the Middle Ages writing King Arthur fanfic.  In the sixteenth century you and another dude could translate the same Petrarchan sonnet and somehow have it count as two separate poems, and no one gave a fuck.  Shakespeare doesn’t have a single original plot–although much of it would be more rightly termed RPF–and then John Fletcher and Mary Cowden Clarke and Gloria Naylor and Jane Smiley and Stephen Sondheim wrote Shakespeare fanfic.  Guys like Pope and Dryden took old narratives and rewrote them to make fun of people they didn’t like, because the eighteenth century was basically high school.  And Spenser!  Don’t even get me started on Spenser.

Here’s what fanfic authors/fans need to remember when anyone gives them shit: the idea that originality is somehow a good thing, an innately preferable thing, is a completely modern notion.  Until about three hundred years ago, a good writer, by and large, was someone who could take a tried-and-true story and make it even more awesome.  (If you want to sound fancy, the technical term is imitatio.)  People were like, why would I wanna read something about some dude I’ve never heard of?  There’s a new Sir Gawain story out, man!  (As to when and how that changed, I tend to blame Daniel Defoe, or the Modernists, or reality television, depending on my mood.)

I also find fanfic fascinating because it takes all the barriers that keep people from professional authorship–barriers that have weakened over the centuries but are nevertheless still very real–and blows right past them. Producing literature, much less circulating it, was something that was well nigh impossible for the vast majority of people for most of human history.  First you had to live in a culture where people thought it was acceptable for you to even want to be literate in the first place.  And then you had to find someone who could teach you how to read and write (the two didn’t necessarily go together).  And you needed sufficient leisure time to learn.  And be able to afford books, or at least be friends with someone rich enough to own books who would lend them to you.  Good writers are usually well-read and professional writing is a full-time job, so you needed a lot of books, and a lot of leisure time both for reading and writing.  And then you had to be in a high enough social position that someone would take you seriously and want to read your work–to have access to circulation/publication in addition to education and leisure time.  A very tiny percentage of the population fit those parameters (in England, which is the only place I can speak of with some authority, that meant from 500-1000 A.D.: monks; 1000-1500: aristocratic men and the very occasional aristocratic woman; 1500-1800: aristocratic men, some middle-class men, a few aristocratic women; 1800-on, some middle-class women as well). 

What’s amazing is how many people who didn’t fit those parameters kept writing in spite of the constant message they got from society that no one cared about what they had to say, writing letters and diaries and stories and poems that often weren’t discovered until hundreds of years later.  Humans have an urge to express themselves, to tell stories, and fanfic lets them.  If you’ve got access to a computer and an hour or two to while away of an evening, you can create something that people will see and respond to instantly, with a built-in community of people who care about what you have to say.

I do write the occasional fic; I wish I had the time and mental energy to write more.  I’ll admit I don’t read a lot of fic these days because most of it is not–and I know how snobbish this sounds–particularly well-written.  That doesn’t mean it’s "not good”–there are a lot of reasons people read fic and not all of them have to do with wanting to read finely crafted prose.  That’s why fic is awesome–it creates a place for all kinds of storytelling.  But for me personally, now that my job entails reading about 1500 pages of undergraduate writing per year, when I have time to read for enjoyment I want it to be by someone who really knows what they’re doing.  There’s tons of high-quality fic, of course, but I no longer have the time and patience to go searching for it that I had ten years ago. 

But whether I’m reading it or not, I love that fanfiction exists.  Because without people doing what fanfiction writers do, literature wouldn’t exist.  (And then I’d be out of a job and, frankly, I don’t know how to do anything else.)

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Part one of whatever the hell this meme is

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uhhh alastor redesign please don’t cook me he’s such a hard character to redesign 😭😭

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Griffin mcelroy made interstellar blues and the ethersea intro yet music isn’t even in like the top ten things he’s most well known for. What the fucg

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relistening to amnesty, yeah! duck’s concept is so funky.

“Hey youre supposed to do this important thing” “no i really dont want to” “what” “bye *becomes a park ranger*”

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shoutout to the only taz campaign

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Griffin: ah yes I will introduce a fbi agent who’s looking for bigfoot who will slowly over the course of the campaign grow to care for the people of amnesty lodge and I will also of course give him a gay little romantic subplot WITH mr bigfoot himself. So excited to sprinkle that in through the plot.

The PCs, a former weed-smoking-field-hockey-playing-in-abandoned-mall teen, a bi stage magician with little-to-no respect for authority, and a literal ex-con: it’s a fuckin COP stay FAR AWAY from this NARK he must not be TRUSTED

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Part 1!

Listen, I know how it looks but uhhh..Would you believe me if I told you everything would be okay?

Prequel Masterpost Next

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Part 5!

Well. It's been exactly one year since I started this comic. Which is pretty impressive for my tiny attention span. This is the biggest of my stories and I'm so damn proud (and surprised) that I was able to finish it haha

Quick q&a because I know a lot of you would ask something like this:

Why didn't I add "x" to the comic? - Because I didn't want to.

Why did I add "x" to the comic? - Because I wanted to.

This story was improv from start to finish and that means I added and took away many things. I don't regret any of them haha

Thank you all for being with me. This fandom is wonderful and I'm happy to be a part of it :)

When is this happening? ‘,:l

Part 1 Masterpost

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Part 4!

The honey is here~

Part 1 Next

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I have decided to unleash The Day Muriel Had Enough comic unto my wonderful Tumblr Followers!

Thank you for the support and hilarious comments! It means so much to me and makes it easy to keep at it!

Happy holidays with all my love and nonsense!

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everybody’s always on writing prompts like “what if there was a world where everyone had a timer ticking down to their death… but you met someone whose timer said infinity!” or “what if everyone had their cause of death tattooed across their forehead… but you met someone whose forehead said THE CREATURE!” Enough -

enough. stop with the shock value. there is no need to insert THE CREATURE; the benign concept of such a world is horrifying enough. not even in urgency, but just in banal, everyday interaction. imagine you meet someone and their timer says two years. not tomorrow, not urgently soon, but two years. enough to do quite a lot. they could fall in love in that time - could they get engaged? have a baby? you might otherwise get to know them, befriend them, but perhaps you opt not to, make a conscious choice not to invest in your own grief. what balancing act would every individual person have to participate in - I have ten years, is that long enough to be a good mother to children? is that long enough to secure a caretaker for my own mother? my wife will die a few months before me. my newborn’s timer reads nineteen years.

and cause of death. you interview for a job and emblazoned across the healthy, smiling face of the HR lady is MALNUTRITION. your country is prospering, safe, but every person you meet on the street from the babies to the old women read BOMB. BOMB. what kind of havoc would fate wreak on the world? what about the loss of privacy? how would that shape our notions of hope? idk man I think a lot of those ancient poems were right, and the fates are monsters. I’m interested by the framing of these ideas as trite horror tales when the premises themselves are so much more disturbing if simply taken to their logical ends

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Part 12!

It came out pretty chaotic haha. I don’t regret anything though~

Part 1

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Part 1!

..of the C.A.S. animated project:D

So...this is basically a little animation test we did to see if we can replicate the style of the original show. Turns out we can haha. And now that we know that, we want to do more~

Solid Helium Lizart Lotte

Aaand I put this thing on Tiktok and YouTube :D

Also. If you want you can help me pay these people for their work by making a donation. Yes, I'm paying them. This animation wasn't made just on enthusiasm.

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Quick Q&A: Yes, you can use this animation for gifs/icons/edits/headers/profile pics/redraws and other stuff. Just include the credits. Please:)

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Part 7!

…….I’m sorry?

Part 1