the absolute mindfuck of learning that when americans said “pumpkin spice” they were talking about like. nutmeg and cinnamon. and not adding pumpkin flavouring to stuff

Rant about fanfiction writing

I was just informed by my brother (who thinks he’s a better writer than anyone else because he has some fancy degree in writing) that fanfiction “doesn’t count” as “real writing” because you aren’t using your own “ideas.”

He doesn’t know that I write fanfiction. He probably wouldn’t have admitted his opinion if her did. But it has pretty much solidified that I will never tell anyone I know in person what I write.

I’ve already been told by several family members that my obsession with a “stupid tv show” is ridiculous and that I’m “too old” to fangirl.

Sigh. /rant

In Defense of Fanfiction

I am a professional writer and editor in real life. I have a double degree in English and writing and am currently in school once more to obtain a master’s degree. If your brother’s fancy writing degree was worth anything at all, he should be able to admit that the vast majority of all literature is in fact fanfiction of someone else’s story and its elements. In other words, no one’s idea is, by definition, original.

Let’s take a look at just a few examples to support my theory that some of the most important or well-known pieces of literature ever created qualify as fanfiction:

Ancient/Old Literature

·        Around 2000 BCE: The Epic of Gilgamesh was inspired as a fanfiction of a historical King of Uruk, mixed with Mesopotamian mythology. The story includes the character Utnapishtim, who lives through a world-wide flood by building a ship per the instructions of the god Enki and ultimately landing on a mountain in the Middle East, similar to Noah’s story from the Bible (dates for the book of Genesis vary anywhere from 1400 BCE to 800 BCE). Many historians suggest that the story of Noah was directly inspired by Gilgamesh’s story of Utnapishtim. Other historians suggest the two were simply inspired by a similar source. Either way, there’s too many startling overlaps to classify Utnapishtim and Noah as only a coincidence.

·        20-ish BCE: The Roman author Virgil wrote The Aeneid, which is a direct sequel to the previously created epic The Iliad attributed to Greek bard Homer. Virgil was also known for writing pastoral poems based off and inspired by the work of the great poet Theocritus (280 BCE). As a fun addition, Theocritus himself was known for rewriting the cyclops villain (Polyphemus) of Homer’s Odyssey into a love-sick idiot in his work, Idyll XI.

Medieval Era (500-1500-ish CE)

·        700-1000: The Alphabet of ben Sirach was an anonymous Hebrew collection of satires that included a parody of the biblical Genesis story of Adam and Eve. The story gave Adam a totally different wife by the name of Lilith, the character of which was inspired by Babylonian mythology. The whole of the collection is additionally wrapped in a fictional account of telling the stories to the historical figure of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar—another real person fanfiction of a celebrity from that time.

·        Around 1000: The world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, inspired the massive outpouring of Japanese Noh theater plays involving characters from the novel, such as Aoi no Ue (Lady Aoi), which has been attributed to a few people (Zeami Motokiyo and Inuo). This play appropriates the Lady Aoi from Shikibu’s psychological novel to explore her death and is only one example of the available fanfictions of the novel.

·        1308-1320: Dante’s Divine Comedy (known most famously for the Inferno) is a literal OC self-insertion of the Italian Dante Alighieri himself into the hell, purgatory and heaven from Catholic / biblical texts. Its format is in an epic, in an attempt to outdo the Aeneid and Iliad before it. It also includes an insertion of a ghostly Virgil, who copied the Iliad to write the Aeneid. Furthermore, Dante’s work includes insertions of real historical people that Dante didn’t like. It’s possibly the most self-indulgent fanfiction ever created while also being named one of the greatest poems in literature.

·        1392: Geoffrey Chaucer (known as the father of English literature) wrote a  famous collection called The Canterbury Tales. The collection takes its basic format and inspiration from Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron (written in 1351). It’s suggested that some of the tales Chaucer uses actually originated from Boccaccio’s work.

Renaissance Era (1550-1660-ish CE)

·        1590: English poet Edmund Spenser borrowed the legend of Arthur of the Round Table in his epic poem, The Faerie Queene. In it, Arthur is pretty love-sick over the fairy queen.

·        1597: English playwright Shakespeare borrowed various mythologies and historical figures and mixed them together. Not even his most popular play, Romeo and Juliet, was original. He took the idea from a poem written by Arthur Brooke in 1562, called, “The Tragicall Hystorye of Romeus and Iuliet.” Even more interesting, Brooke had taken his idea from the 1554 Giulietta e Romeo by Italian author Matteo Bandello. (Shakespeare repeatedly sourced other people’s ideas or historical existence for his plays.)

Enlightenment Era (1660-1789)

·        1667: English poet John Milton wrote Paradise Lost, a fanfiction epic of the biblical story in the book of Genesis about the fall of creation and humankind into imperfection.

·        1712: English poet Alexander Pope wrote a mock-heroic epic called the Rape of the Lock to make fun of all the serious epic writers before him, borrowing such images as the way epic warriors put on armor and connecting it to the way rich people put on rich clothing and jewelry. He used other standard epic elements as repeated throughout The Iliad, Aeneid, and so forth.

·        1759: French writer and inventor, Voltaire, wrote a satire Candide. It borrowed various elements from Tales from a Thousand and One Arabian Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern folktales from the Islamic Golden Age.

Romantic Era (1789-1850)

·        1819: In Don Juan, English poet Lord Byron took the pre-dated legend of Don Juan, which was about a man who seduced a lot of women, and reversed the original plot so that Don Juan ended up seduced by a lot of women.

·        1820: English poet John Keats wrote a poem as a retelling of the Greek mythological creature called Lamia, which was a half-woman and half-monster (description varies depending on the Greek source). A lot of his works borrowed heavily from Greek mythology and literature, and he idolized the English Renaissance poet Edmund Spenser, to a point where his first work was called, “Imitation of Spenser” (1814). In it, he borrowed various images from Spenser’s epic, The Faerie Queene.

·        1843: English writer Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, based off the various stories compiled in the 1841 and 1842 The Lowell Offering, a publication magazine written by a group of intellectual but mostly anonymous women. He borrowed the certain pieces of plot, language, and descriptions for Scrooge’s ghostly encounters from the stories “A Visit from Hope” (anonymous), “Happiness” (anonymous), and “Memory and Hope” (by someone named Ellen). A Christmas Carol is additionally littered with biblical allusions all over the place.

·        1844: French writer Alexander Dumas borrowed The Three Musketeers, as well as many of the story’s side-characters, from The Memoirs of Monsieur d'Artagnan by French author Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras. He didn’t even change the names or who the villain, the Cardinal, was.

·        1845: American author Edgar Allan Poe wrote The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade, in which he has the mythical Scheherazade from the Tales from a Thousand and One Arabian Nights telling another story about the legendary Sinbad the Sailor.  

·        1861: Hungarian author Imre Madach wrote The Tragedy of Man, which reverses the biblical moral principles of God and Satan: In this story, God is the violent and evil ruler, and Satan is the jaded/trickster victim just trying to open humanity’s eyes to the truth.  

Modern Era (1900ish-1950s)

·        1922: Irish novelist James Joyce wrote his stream-of-consciousness novel Ulysses, which was based off of Homer’s Odyssey, to a point where he took the characters and simply renamed them, as well as aligned the structure of his book to the various episodes in Homer’s work.

·        1930: The Nancy Drew series was created under the penname Carolyn Keene, who did not exist. Instead, an American man named Edward Stratemeyer would write three pages of a story, then send it to one of several ghostwriters who wanted to write Nancy Drew. The ghostwriter would take the story and expand it. The anonymous group of ghostwriters all writing about the same character still exists today. Each individual ghostwriter has made changes to Nancy’s personality, looks, and age, as well as the type of plots said character engages in.

·        1937: English writer JRR Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and then Lord of the Rings in the 1950s. He borrowed the names of characters and places after those seen in the Icelandic sagas Poetic Edda and Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson. Tolkien admitted he based the physical appearance of Gandalf off of the Norse god Odin. He modeled the character of Aragorn directly after Beowulf, from the old English epic (700-1000 BCE) Beowulf. Aragorn himself even paraphrases the Anglo-Saxon poem, “The Wanderer,” as an example of a verse created by his people of Rohan. Another fun fact is that Tolkien specifically borrowed the phrase “my precious,” from a Middle English poem called Pearl. Additionally, Tolkien was a big fan of romantic prose/poetry writer William Morris and wanted to write like him, so he borrowed a lot of phrases, aesthetics, and even names from such works like the 1888 The House of the Wolfings by Morris, including the place called “Mirkwood.” Of curious note is that Morris’s work was massively influenced by Virgil’s Aeneid.

·        1938: African-American author Richard Wright wrote a collection of stories called Uncle Tom’s Children, with an obvious borrowing of the title from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852.

·        1930s-present: DC and Marvel comics mostly just updated the mythological gods and goddesses for a modern era, appropriating their names, special relics, and abilities for their heroes, and then mixing them with some modern-day cover identifies. As an example, Wonder Woman was originally a nod to the Greek goddess Diana, a nod to the female Amazon warriors, and a redesigned image of Rosie the Riveter. As another example, the Flash is a reproduction of the Greek god Hermes, his winged helmet further clarifying the connection. Even the name Superman was not entirely original. 1938 Illustrator of Superman, Joe Shuster, took the name “Superman” from the German “Ubermensh,” a term coined by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. As a final example, sometimes the appropriation from mythology is incredibly obvious, as in the case of Thor.

·        1949: English author George Orwell reviewed a book called We by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. He wrote a rave review on it and declared that he would try to write something similar, which ultimately became 1984, sharing many similar plot points and concepts while bringing the story of We into a more realistic environment. The novel We also inspired Ayn Rand’s Anthem and Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano, for which Vonnegut admitted he also borrowed concepts from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

·        1950s: The Chronicles of Narnia by British author C.S. Lewis was based on biblical stories conveyed through various mythological elements as well.

Postmodern Era (1950s-Present, debatably)

·        1977: African-American author, Toni Morrison, wrote a critically acclaimed novel called Song of Solomon, which took its title name, as well as the names of several characters and plot points, from the Bible.

·        1988: British-Indian author Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammed. Its title is a direct reference to controversial verses once placed in the Quran but then removed. These highly controversial and sensitive connections to Islamic and Old Testament personalities of Gabriel and Satan resulted in the banning of Rushdie’s book from several regions.  

·        1997-2007: The Harry Potter series by British author JK Rowling borrows heavily from historical alchemy, including the age-old legend of the philosopher’s stone and the 1652 book Culpeper’s Complete Herbal, which was about the medicinal and occult properties of plants, which helped her build how magic was used in her stories. Rowling also admits the 1652 book inspired many of the character’s names. She appropriates several historical figures as well for her own purposes (as a sort of real-person fanfiction), including references to alchemists Nicolas Flammel and Paracelsus. She even admits to, while writing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, dreaming about Flammel showing her how to make a philosopher’s stone.

·        2003: American author Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and its twisting conspiracies are based almost entirely on the books of Margaret Starbird, most of which were written between 1993 and 2003.

·        2009:  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by American author Seth Grahame-Smith, is a rehashing of Jane Austen’s 1813 Pride and Prejudice. But with zombies.

·        2015: American writer of critically acclaimed The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton, claims that she has posted anonymous fanfictions of her own novel, as well as at least four Supernatural fanfics, being a huge fan of the show and of the paranormal.

As a professionally educated and trained writer and editor myself, I had to study the intertextualities of several of the pieces I mentioned above. But this is not an exhaustive world list by any means and is missing some other fantastic and influential writers—I’ve included only what has come to my mind in a short time. Plots and characters and ideas have been largely passed around throughout the history of literature. Without fanfiction, a solid portion of well-known literature would not exist.   

In fact, many authors and even inventors will say that there is no such thing as an original idea. Certain pieces get touted as creative because they combine previously suggested elements in a different or thought-provoking way. (Don’t even get me started on how science fiction is a driving force behind many scientific advancements today!)

If you’re writing fanfiction, then you’re participating in a tradition that spans millennia. There is no piece of literature created in some “original” vacuum. That is precisely why literary critics, and those who have professionally studied fiction in an academic setting, use the word “intertextuality” to describe how works of fiction are ultimately interrelated in some way or another.

Therefore, fanfiction is the legacy of literature. If Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Keats, Poe, Dickens, Tolkien, and Brown can write fanfiction about and expand other people’s works, you can too. So the next time someone tells you to stop writing fanfiction, or tells you that it’s not a valid form of art, tell them that they obviously have never read the most important historical works of fiction, or even many popular modern stories, which are all rehashed fanfiction stories, borrowing characters and names and setting and even syntax.  Rant written for @greenappleeyes and everyone else unfairly shamed for writing fanfiction. Content was retrieved from my own class notes, as well as publically available online interviews and articles. 

Anyone who wants to say that fanfiction isn’t “real writing” can fucking FIGHT ME

*anything with a suspicious red splotch or streak on a white background *

tumblr:

I’m still not clear on what his secret weapon is though.

I just had a fucking stroke

IT FITS SO WELL IM SCREAMING

WHY DOES IT FIT SO WELL

I WAS NOT EXPECTING THAT STOP

IM WHeEXIN

pls let this blow up like the other one

This show’s writers were so god-tier they managed to condense a James Bond movie down to five minutes and fit one into every episode, and the running gags never got old.

From The Little Girl from the 1981 Lego Ad Is All Grown Up, and She’s Got Something To Say.

“Toys are supposed to foster creativity. But nowadays, it seems that a lot more toys already have messages built into them before a child even opens the pink or blue package. In 1981, LEGOs were simple and gender-neutral, and the creativity of the child produced the message. In 2014, it’s the reverse: the toy delivers a message to the child, and this message is weirdly about gender.”

HOLLA!!!!

A lot of people don’t realize, but the Friends and Elves themes are actually LEGO trying to fix the massive mistake they made with gendered marketing in the ‘90s.

LEGO panicked in the ‘90s. They were losing money hand over fist as video games and movies occupied more of kids’ time. In response, like a lot of toy manufacturing at the time, they took a sharp right turn into highly gendered marketing. They made sure that all the new parents of the Reagan/Bush era knew that LEGO was safe and not challenging for their little boys’ masculinity. ALL of their advertising went to promoting LEGO as a “boys toy”, and they invested in “action” themes and cartoons for boys, like Clutch Powers and Bionicle. Even plain, non-themed bricks were advertised exclusively by and for boys. They even reduced the number of different colors and the vibrancy of those colors to make sure the bricks seemed masculine enough.

This came back to bite them, as naturally it should. They, along with the other toy companies in the ‘90s, pressed so hard with the gendered marketing, that there was literally no crossover market in most areas anymore. They had alienated half of their customer base. Those Reagan/Bush parents they were so worried about bought into the gendered marketing hook, line, and sinker. Many of these parents (especially the conservative ones with more money to spend on toys) wouldn’t even consider allowing their little girls to shop anywhere but the “pink aisle”. I know many women who grew up in the ‘90s have stories about that, of parents and other adults telling them they couldn’t shop anywhere else. There are parents all over, but especially in conservative markets like the Bible Belt, that will still not buy a toy for their girl unless the box is pink.

Because LEGO had remade itself as a “boy’s toy,” it had now been purged from the market of girls’ toys entirely. They tried to get back into the “pink aisle” with the Belville line, but Belville was shit, because they were made to appeal to the conservative parents rather than the kids. They were mostly about big, awkward dolls with almost DUPLO simplicity to the build aspect, most pieces were incompatible with regular LEGO system bricks, and they were just not fun.

Then, in the late ‘00s, someone at LEGO had the brilliant idea to actually ask little girls. They spent 5 years and millions of dollars doing hundreds of focus groups with girls with their parents not in the room to influence what they were saying. The resounding response? The girls wanted the exact same brick their male siblings had, but with more color variation, detail work, and also could we have people that look like people instead of blocks with arms?

LEGO Friends is the result of this feedback. Released in 2012, it has been the best way for LEGO to sneak past conservative parents and into little girls’ hands again. Friends is all LEGO brick, but as the little girls requested, it comes in more, brighter colors, has more small, storytelling-themed details, and features characters that look more like people. The sets were a bit tentative that first year, not a particular challenge to build, but have since gained complexity rapidly as the line took off. If you look closely and actually build the sets, you will notice that while the boxes are pink, the builds are usually another color. Still generally “cute”, but rarely exclusively pink. The pink is mostly the box to get it past the parents who see nothing but the box.

LEGO Friends is the third most popular LEGO theme of all time, after Star Wars at #1 and LEGO City at #2 (mostly because City has been there forever). Think about that. Five years, and it has beaten the sales numbers of most other LEGO lines in the last 80 years since the company was founded. Additionally, the LEGO Friends theme has entirely shifted LEGO’s statistics. In 2010, surveys indicated that the gender breakdown of end-users of LEGO products across all themes was 90% boys, 10% girls. In 2013, one year after Friends was released, it had shifted to 60% boys, 40% girls. That’s across all themes. Some quick market research discovered that little girls would get a Friends set or two, and then expand into other themes. Because obviously my town with a juice bar and a cupcake shop has to have a police station or a pirate fortress too, mom.

And LEGO added the Elves theme last year, specifically because older girls wanted to tell more complex and fantasy-themed stories with their LEGO builds. Elves is targeted at a slightly higher age group than Friends, and the complexity of the Elves constructions rivals any Star Wars set of similar size. Every single development with “girl” LEGO in the last 5 years has been at the express feedback of actual girls.

LEGO still has a long way to go to fix the mistakes of the ‘90s. There are still marketing people in the company who don’t fucking get it, and think that they’re just shilling “girl LEGO.” There are still a lot of old white men in very high positions in the company who don’t understand what’s going on, they’re mostly just coasting on what market research and focus groups are telling them. And some themes, like Ninjago, are still very clearly marketed for boys while Friends and Elves are marketed for girls. They have a long way to go to fix what they broke.

At the same time, if you’re unwilling to allow a pink building toy to be a gateway to other building toys just because it’s pink, the problem is not the pink building toy.

LEGO Friends I’m sorry for all that I said about you

This is why I am a huge fan of Lego Friends

Could you maybe reblog this post if you think respecting trans peoples' names and identities is a basic right and not a political opinion?

No pressure. Just seeking some validation of my sentiment. Due to some. people

Original credit to NonRock on R/Funny

Cats have the need to spill blood.

but we love the doofus murder-floofs so please keep your tiny psychopathic predators INSIDE your house

no thank you, owen

Jude sleeping in Cardan’s bed at Hollow Hall because it’s the place she feels safest is the level of ridiculously in love I aspire to be

the cruel prince quotes: jude and cardan

I fix him with a look. “I can be charming. I charmed you, didn’t I?” He rolls his eyes. “Do not expect others to share my depraved tastes.” - Holly Black

Jude: Just don’t like… say that I’m a bitch and you don’t like me. 

Cardan: I would never say that, not even as a joke. That is not true. *to everyone at the revel.* My wife is a bitch and I like her so much! She is a dynamite, five-foot, mortal bitch and she’s the best.

🚨 SUPER DUPER QUEEN OF NOTHING SPOILER ⚠️

So I’m in a lovely little group on Facebook for The Folk of The Air fans and one of those amazing ladies was kind enough to post Cardan’s letters from the Queen of Nothing Barnes and Noble edition. According to Holly these should be read after the book however I just couldn’t help myself. I’m posting them here in case you’re also like me and have no self control. I haven’t actually read any of Queen of Nothing yet but these letters made my heart ache.

The Cruel Prince Characters as John Mulaney Quotes

Jude:

Cardan:

The Bomb:

The Roach:

The Ghost:

Vivi:

Taryn:

Locke:

Madoc:

Cardan’s toast after Jude made him king: “And to Jude, who gave me a gift tonight. One that I plan to repay in kind.”

This reads at first like a vow of revenge, but considering that the “gift” she gave him is the crown, Cardan literally repaid it in kind. 

Holly Black is the goddess of foreshadowing. 

one of my most fav part of the queen of nothing

is that hug. THE HUG. that mfing hug. Only the devil knows how long I've waited for this and how MUCH I wanted jude cardan to hug the hell out of each other. Yes ofcourse they've done alot more than hugging but they always brushed it off as attraction. But a hug? That's the softest.. no way you hug someone and say you did it to get them out of your system lol and we got it and I'm just—

because Jude REALLY said fuck everyone and everything and ran straight into cardan's arms. My girl followed her instinct and I'm so proud (all the more because entire elfhame witnessed it) like—

This is also the first and only hug my bby cardan ever got in the trilogy and it makes it all the more special my heart's in ruins.

I gave this book an extra star just for that hug hell yeah

PS - Hope they're cuddling as I type this 🤗