I read something on social media, which in all too typical fashion has proven impossible to find again, where someone claimed that fanfiction is the modern version of telling fairy tales. (Or folk tales, idk. Makes it hard to search for the article when I can't even remember the exact wording).
This... this makes a surprising amount of sense to me. Like, back when most people centered their lives around agriculture, and the seasons, winter was a time when... well, there wasn't much else to do. The crops had been harvested, it was too cold to plant, and a family spent quite a bit of time hunkered around whatever heat source they had...
And told each other stories.
To pass the time. To entertain.
We get this notion nowadays, with books and movies and tv shows that have an official plot, that stories are... solid. Immutable. The author wrote it however they wanted, and that was that.
But folk tales were living, breathing things. They changed as society changed, as someone decided to tell it a little differently.
I have been around the fanfiction community for a long time, though I hadn't realized that for a long time. That is, one of my close friends in college is a writer.
Not professionally, but she's always had some sort of story on her mind. Original characters, world-building...
And she writes fanfic.
The somewhat recent attempt by Tumblr to restrict pornography brought out posts on fanfic history that made me realize that I'd been influenced by it for a while.
See, my friend tended to move to whatever social media fanfic was on. She was on LiveJournal back when that was a primary site for it, and during one of our regular visits she basically sat me down and had me create an account. (I remember wondering when the heck I'd ever use it, since I hated journaling assignments in school and didn't think I'd ever use it. Wow, did that change!)
And when LiveJournal became a more hostile place for fandom communities, many of them migrated to Tumblr. So I followed my friend there, to stay in touch. Found another friend there, as well (she also writes fanfiction.)
It's interesting to me, as a *mostly* outsider, because I've never really thought of myself as a fiction writer. I enjoy reading. I devour books. And sometimes, I'll admit, I've come across a rather poorly written book and thought I could do better.
But creating worlds? Wanting to explore a particular character? Wanting to write?
Mostly I write to help clarify my own thinking, as various ideas swirl around in my head.
I suppose there's another element to this, as well. That I, for the most part, have never felt as though I needed something more than the official story.
This all changed when Naruto got it's claws in me, and hasn't really let go.
I don't tend to write about that much here. Maybe it's because it still seems... silly? Not nearly as important or interesting as Roman history, or fighting terrorism, or computer security.
But that's all background info, a bit of a prelude... Because I can't really talk about the topic I want to if that's not understood.
Reading fanfiction is interesting, because fans create their own explanations for things. 'Fanon', as in 'fan canon', instead of the official canon. They'll fill in the blanks of a story. Create in-depth character analysis of characters that only showed up once or twice.
Some of it's good, some of it's bad, but the way the story changes in fandom is... fascinating. Like, in Naruto they talk about how he was isolated and treated badly, but they don't really go into a lot of detail. I mostly go with "isolation is harmful in it's own way, consider that exile is considered a horrible punishment, and that's enough"... but fanon has interpreted that as "merchants raise prices and give him shoddy goods on a regular basis" and some even go so far to have him chased by lynch mobs. Like, I don't think he'd be as loyal to the village as he was in canon if that happened on a regular basis, and as I said isolation is pretty damaging in it's own right, but whatever. Write what you want to write, and I'll read what I want to read. (Quite a few seem to like using Naruto to write stories of abuse, and I can see that it can be cathartic and helpful to the people writing it.)
Everyone's free to disagree with any sort of character analysis, and write their own stories differently. (I am also glossing over some of the heated arguments, particularly when it comes to pairing various characters with each other. Fandom is not all sweetness and light. Oh, and fandom is also apparently a smutty, smutty place. Far smuttier than what we tend to see in normal story telling. Which is also why so many anti-pornography moves tend to hurt fandom communities, thus leading to their exodus when poorly designed attempts to reduce pornography start destroying fandom communities.)
Anyways. That post about fanfiction as modern folklore changed my thinking on a few things. Because, you see, that's what a lot of writing was like back in Roman times.
It was fairly common to write something and attribute it to a better, more well-known public figure... or take a story you like and modify it.
It's not like they had the notion of copyrights and plagiarism, not in the modern sense.
And when stories are fluid like that, the way they grow and change says something about the society telling them.
Hence why the discussion of Romulus and Remus was so interesting. Given how bloody Roman politics became, was the fratricidal murder saying something about Roman society?
And - on a topic that, well, Bible literalists will truly hate - this is also how a lot of early Christianity worked.
Like, they so loved the story that they expanded on it, built on it. Created lore about minor characters that only showed up once or twice. Wrote things that they attributed to famous names (like St. Peter) and circulated it.
And the stories that gained widespread acceptance said something - about society, about human nature, about (if you're religious) our relationship with God.
Not because it was word-for-word written by whoever it was alleged to be written by, but because these stories resonated with people. To use fandom terms - when someone comes up with an idea that fans really, really like, they often say that they 'accept it as headcanon'.
The stories, letters, and writings that grew into 'official canon' became canon because so many people accepted it as headcanon.
Which I think makes for a far more interesting discussion than taking it literally.
This... this makes a surprising amount of sense to me. Like, back when most people centered their lives around agriculture, and the seasons, winter was a time when... well, there wasn't much else to do. The crops had been harvested, it was too cold to plant, and a family spent quite a bit of time hunkered around whatever heat source they had...
And told each other stories.
To pass the time. To entertain.
We get this notion nowadays, with books and movies and tv shows that have an official plot, that stories are... solid. Immutable. The author wrote it however they wanted, and that was that.
But folk tales were living, breathing things. They changed as society changed, as someone decided to tell it a little differently.
I have been around the fanfiction community for a long time, though I hadn't realized that for a long time. That is, one of my close friends in college is a writer.
Not professionally, but she's always had some sort of story on her mind. Original characters, world-building...
And she writes fanfic.
The somewhat recent attempt by Tumblr to restrict pornography brought out posts on fanfic history that made me realize that I'd been influenced by it for a while.
See, my friend tended to move to whatever social media fanfic was on. She was on LiveJournal back when that was a primary site for it, and during one of our regular visits she basically sat me down and had me create an account. (I remember wondering when the heck I'd ever use it, since I hated journaling assignments in school and didn't think I'd ever use it. Wow, did that change!)
And when LiveJournal became a more hostile place for fandom communities, many of them migrated to Tumblr. So I followed my friend there, to stay in touch. Found another friend there, as well (she also writes fanfiction.)
It's interesting to me, as a *mostly* outsider, because I've never really thought of myself as a fiction writer. I enjoy reading. I devour books. And sometimes, I'll admit, I've come across a rather poorly written book and thought I could do better.
But creating worlds? Wanting to explore a particular character? Wanting to write?
Mostly I write to help clarify my own thinking, as various ideas swirl around in my head.
I suppose there's another element to this, as well. That I, for the most part, have never felt as though I needed something more than the official story.
This all changed when Naruto got it's claws in me, and hasn't really let go.
I don't tend to write about that much here. Maybe it's because it still seems... silly? Not nearly as important or interesting as Roman history, or fighting terrorism, or computer security.
But that's all background info, a bit of a prelude... Because I can't really talk about the topic I want to if that's not understood.
Reading fanfiction is interesting, because fans create their own explanations for things. 'Fanon', as in 'fan canon', instead of the official canon. They'll fill in the blanks of a story. Create in-depth character analysis of characters that only showed up once or twice.
Some of it's good, some of it's bad, but the way the story changes in fandom is... fascinating. Like, in Naruto they talk about how he was isolated and treated badly, but they don't really go into a lot of detail. I mostly go with "isolation is harmful in it's own way, consider that exile is considered a horrible punishment, and that's enough"... but fanon has interpreted that as "merchants raise prices and give him shoddy goods on a regular basis" and some even go so far to have him chased by lynch mobs. Like, I don't think he'd be as loyal to the village as he was in canon if that happened on a regular basis, and as I said isolation is pretty damaging in it's own right, but whatever. Write what you want to write, and I'll read what I want to read. (Quite a few seem to like using Naruto to write stories of abuse, and I can see that it can be cathartic and helpful to the people writing it.)
Everyone's free to disagree with any sort of character analysis, and write their own stories differently. (I am also glossing over some of the heated arguments, particularly when it comes to pairing various characters with each other. Fandom is not all sweetness and light. Oh, and fandom is also apparently a smutty, smutty place. Far smuttier than what we tend to see in normal story telling. Which is also why so many anti-pornography moves tend to hurt fandom communities, thus leading to their exodus when poorly designed attempts to reduce pornography start destroying fandom communities.)
Anyways. That post about fanfiction as modern folklore changed my thinking on a few things. Because, you see, that's what a lot of writing was like back in Roman times.
It was fairly common to write something and attribute it to a better, more well-known public figure... or take a story you like and modify it.
It's not like they had the notion of copyrights and plagiarism, not in the modern sense.
And when stories are fluid like that, the way they grow and change says something about the society telling them.
Hence why the discussion of Romulus and Remus was so interesting. Given how bloody Roman politics became, was the fratricidal murder saying something about Roman society?
And - on a topic that, well, Bible literalists will truly hate - this is also how a lot of early Christianity worked.
Like, they so loved the story that they expanded on it, built on it. Created lore about minor characters that only showed up once or twice. Wrote things that they attributed to famous names (like St. Peter) and circulated it.
And the stories that gained widespread acceptance said something - about society, about human nature, about (if you're religious) our relationship with God.
Not because it was word-for-word written by whoever it was alleged to be written by, but because these stories resonated with people. To use fandom terms - when someone comes up with an idea that fans really, really like, they often say that they 'accept it as headcanon'.
The stories, letters, and writings that grew into 'official canon' became canon because so many people accepted it as headcanon.
Which I think makes for a far more interesting discussion than taking it literally.
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