lmao people mock fanfiction but when u think about it some people manage to create novel-length stories that are extremely well written without getting paid and they do it on top of school and work and everything else in their lives just because they love to write and they love the original story or the people they write about like im pretty sure that’s more productive than being the person who is just sat there laughing at it all
What is significant about fan fiction is that it often spins the kind of stories that showrunners wouldn’t think to tell, because fanficcers often come from a different demographic. The discomfort seems to be not that the shows are being reinterpreted by fans, but that they are being reinterpreted by the wrong sorts of fans – women, people of colour, queer kids, horny teenagers, people who are not professional writers, people who actually care about continuity (sorry). The proper way for cultural mythmaking to progress, it is implied, is for privileged men to recreate the works of privileged men from previous generations whilst everyone else listens quietly. That’s how it’s always been done. That’s how it should be done in the future, whatever Tumblr says.
But time can be rewritten. Myths can bend and change. Something new and exciting is happening in the world of storytelling, and fans are an important part of it.
Laurie Penny, Sherlock and the Adventure of the Overzealous Fanbase [x] (via wearethemakersofmanners)
The 5 Best Pieces of Writing Advice I Didn’t Get in School | Cracked.com
Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?
We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.
They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to Middle-Earth.
George R.R. Martin (via indisposablehero)
The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.
T.S. Eliot (via dougancapaldi)
When someone tells a fanfiction writer that they’re “not a real writer,” I say to that person, “You don’t have the slightest idea of what it means to write a scene and a a character in the English language, with images and words chock full of received meaning.” I do think there’s an innocent bravery to saying, “I’m going to write another Sherlock Holmes story,” but of course it’s already a new Sherlock Holmes the moment you start writing it. It’s not Doyle’s. It’s yours.
Jonathan Lethem, An Interview with Jonathan Lethem
Fic:Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World by Anne Jamison
(via merindab)
When someone tells a fanfiction writer that they’re “not a real writer,” I say to that person, “You don’t have the slightest idea of what it means to write a scene and a a character in the English language, with images and words chock full of received meaning.” I do think there’s an innocent bravery to saying, “I’m going to write another Sherlock Holmes story,” but of course it’s already a new Sherlock Holmes the moment you start writing it. It’s not Doyle’s. It’s yours.
Jonathan Lethem, An Interview with Jonathan Lethem
Fic:Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World by Anne Jamison
So maybe this is what the rest of us look like:
The people who ship writing/difficulty and writing/revolution don’t talk to the people who ship writing/entertainment or writing/romance. The writing/money shippers have an uneasy detente with the writing/literature folks in the prose fandom, but almost none of them talk to the poetry people because how could you even? The writing/YA folks have a strong community or are cliquish, depending on who you ask, and everyone knows not to invite the writing/genre people to the same party as writing/literary folks because it just ends up in a shouting match.
Fandom would explain that this is why we can’t have nice things.
Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over The World by Anne Jamison