Dad: That’s an Alaskan brown bear, it’s not indigenous to Europe.
Me and Mom: This doesn’t take place in Europe, it’s a fantasy world.
Dad: Then why aren’t there fire-breathing dragons and things
that feeling of intermingled excitement and terror you get when you’re writing something that might turn out to be really great
I have made an Agent Cooper icon. I am not a religious person, but I genuinely believe this object has apotropaic powers.
Repost from my non-fanfic tumblr.
It’s funny to me that people continue to look down on fanfiction as an inferior literary enterprise. Human beings have always told stories based on other stories. If the history of the Western canon is any indication, it’s the most natural course for storytelling to take.
Homer wrote fanfiction. Sophocles wrote fanfiction. Virgil wrote fanfiction. Everyone who wrote Arthurian literature (Chrétian de Troyes, Marie de France, Wolfram von Eschenbach, the anonymous author of the brilliant Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) wrote fanfiction. Dante wrote fanfiction. Chaucer wrote fanfiction. Shakespeare wrote fanfiction. Milton wrote fanfiction.
It’s only after publishers take control of distribution that the work of individual authors becomes protected by copyright, which guarantees an income, yes, but also kills their stories. Because when you have a story that only has one authoritative version, one interpretation, one telling, it dies, and turns into a fossil.
At least, until the Internet comes along, and people don’t have to rely on publishers for distribution any longer. And then new life is breathed into old stories by their retellings.
I believe in stories that aren’t sterile, stories that don’t die, but continue to grow, mutate, crossbreed. I believe in stories that we can participate in as more than audience members, that we can create rather than merely consume.
This is why I believe in fanfiction as a legitimate literary enterprise.
