Why is this so true tho š©š
i hate when other people are funnier than me.
āI think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that itās 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 canāt 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 theyāre like āOMG Dante youāre so cool.ā 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 doesnāt have a single original plotāalthough much of it would be more rightly termed RPFāand 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 didnāt like, because the eighteenth century was basically high school. And Spenser! Donāt even get me started on Spenser. Hereās 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 Iāve never heard of? Thereās 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 authorshipābarriers that have weakened over the centuries but are nevertheless still very realāand 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 didnāt 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 workāto 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). Whatās amazing is how many people who didnāt 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 werenāt discovered until hundreds of years later. Humans have an urge to express themselves, to tell stories, and fanfic lets them. If youāve 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. Iāll admit I donāt read a lot of fic these days because most of it is notāand I know how snobbish this soundsāparticularly well-written. That doesnāt mean itās ānot goodāāthere are a lot of reasons people read fic and not all of them have to do with wanting to read finely crafted prose. Thatās why fic is awesomeāit 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 theyāre doing. Thereās 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 Iām reading it or not, I love that fanfiction exists. Because without people doing what fanfiction writers do, literature wouldnāt exist. (And then Iād be out of a job and, frankly, I donāt know how to do anything else.)ā
ā āAs a professor, may I ask you what you think about fanfiction?ā (via meiringens)
okay maybe Iām biased, but did it bother anyone else how literally none of the characters acknowledge that Harlan /is/ like family to Viktor? When theyāre deciding whether or not to give him to the Sparrows itās always āHarlan saved our livesā or āViktor owes Harlan for giving him powersā. Not āViktor partly raised himā or āHarlan is like a son to Viktorā. Family is soooo important but Harlan doesnāt get to count?
Two hearts, stupid clothes, you canāt miss him! Go on, scan the whole parsec, heās not here! God knows where he is right now, but I promise you heās doing whatever the hell he wants and not giving a damn about me, and I am just fine with that! DOCTOR WHO ā The Husbands of River Song (2015 Christmas Special) directed by Douglas Mackinnon | written by Steven Moffat āŗāŗāŗ Peter Capaldi as The Doctor āŗāŗāŗ Alex Kingston as River Song
i seriously hate when someone is like āwell xyx could be related to this mental illness or neurodivergenceā and someone feels the need to come in like āwell *I* have depression/adhd/am autistic/etc. and i shower consistently, am not messy, understand social cues, am great in school and work, and am overall a functional and ānormalā person so itās no excuse uwuā literally shut the fuck up lmao
like what do you get by shitting on other neurodivergent ppl who struggle more than you do? of course having something like autism isnāt an excuse to do whatever you want with no regards to others, but it can explain why you struggle with other things more so than neurotypicals do. give us a little patience and understanding. donāt act like just because YOU can āovercomeā your conditions it means the rest of us are not trying hard enough or are being lazy or whatever.
Sacheen Littlefeather has passed away on October 2nd 2022. While people remember her for her acceptance speech on behalf of Marlon Brando, know that she also ended the media blackout of the Wounded Knee occupation, won an Emmy & co-founded the American Indian AIDS Institute of San Francisco.
Viktor: Synonyms are weird because if you invite someone to your cottage in the forest, that sounds nice and cozy, but if you invite someone to your cabin in the woods, they're going to die.
Five: Yes, it's called "connotation".
Allison: My personal favorite is butt dial vs booty call.
Klaus: Mine is "forgive me, Father, for I have sinned" vs "sorry, Daddy, I've been naughty".
Luther: Great news! Language is now cancelled!
I rewatched S1 and S2 of The Umbrella Academy for the tenth time, and I decided to keep track of how many times the characters said certain words
DNI: Homophobic, transphobic, Ace/Aro-Exclusionist, racist, xenophobic, classist, ableist, sexist, antisemitic, pedo, anti-shippers.
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