I think what probably gets me deeply into my feelings about this “JKR should have just made her students Of Color to start with, she can’t ret-con and pretend she did it right the first time” is that I grew up with Anne Rice and Anne McCaffery, two female fantasy writers who hated headcanons and fandom and sued people for deviating from their original vision or doing any kinds of derivative works without their express contractual permission.
I feel like people who get irritated with her about defending black!Hermione don’t appreciate how much healthier JKR’s attitude toward the inclusivity movement in her fandom is than theirs was. Or Moffat’s is. Or Gatiss’s. Or Whedon’s. Or Green’s. Or even, until very recently, Lucas’s.
She’s not a PCR, but goddamn, at least she’s passing us the milk rather than pissing in our cornflakes.
Jo is actually almost entirely responsible for fanfiction being what it is today.
BUT WAIT, I hear older fandomers cry. X-Files, Star Trek, Xena, how dare you. And yes, I say to those fandomers, you held those banners first! Be proud of the paths you forged. But Jo–
Jo did something no author or creator had ever done before.
She was a household name who encouraged fanfiction.
When I first began writing fanfiction in 1998, it was common practice to preface your fic with this massive disclaimer about how you weren’t selling it, and it was for fun, sometimes quoting the Fair Use part of the Creative Commons act, and even begging authors not to sue. Because in those days, that was a very real danger. Eleven-year-old me had reams of fanfiction on floppy disks I didn’t dare send to archives because I might get arrested and taken to Plagiarism Jail.
And then there was Jo. And no, Jo said, this is not a private amusement park at which you may stare longingly from the other side of wrought-iron gates. It is a giant sandbox. Here are my pails, here are my toys. Come sit and play with me. Eventually you may decide you like some other sandbox better, and all I ask is that you leave my toys here for others to play with, and not try to take them with you. But why should I lock you out of my sandbox? It is, after all, far more fun to play in a sandbox with many people than by yourself.
People were boggled. They didn’t get it. They thought she was crazy. And the fans? They kept loving, and writing, and drawing, and creating, and Jo kept loving them back. Potter Puppet Pals, A Very Potter Musical, Potter!, Remus and the Lupins, all stuff Jo just kind of went “whatever, they’re having fun.”
And attitudes began to change. And then someone else threw her lot in with Jo, someone who doesn’t get a lot of credit for contributing something massive to fandom culture and should:
Stephenie Meyer.
Yeah, you read that right. The goddamn author of Twilight, who refused to sue teenage girls who just wanted Bella to end up with Jacob. (And who is way more gracious than I would be about Fifty Shades.) She actually has a fanfiction archive right on her website! I’m serious: Smeyer has links to a personally-curated list of Twilight fanfiction she personally enjoyed or found interesting. Whatever you may think of her writing, that loving attitude of “we’re all here to have fun, I love that you love my world and my characters, please enjoy” was such a departure from the days of C&D letters and page-long disclaimers.
These two women changed the face of how fandom works forever. Yes, their work is flawed. They are products of their time and upbringing. But just the fact that they embrace the concepts of “my world as I see it and my world as you see it are not the same, and that’s not just okay, that’s good” is something to be celebrated.
I have a lot of issues with Meyer, but her treatment of fans is not one of them.
This is fascinating and all credit to Meyer and Rowling for being so instrumental in changing the culture. I do just want to add that the producers of Xena actually hired a fanfic writer to scriptwrite on their final season. As it often did (with a female TV action hero, with a musical episode), Xena helped to point the way.
I’ve always wanted to talk a bit lenghtily about my opinions on fic, fic writing and the general writer-fic-reader culture and I just saw an extremely unpleasant “article” on ao3 that righeously attacks a certain genre of fanfic that I personally don’t read, nor like, but the existence of which really doesn’t bother me.
First things first, to me the positives of fanfiction vastly outnumber the negatives. I am used to living in absolute certainty that anytime I want to have fun, escape or get a little hot and bothered, there will always be fic to provide that for me. I will always, always find a fic I love. Notice I am saying fic *I* love, not, “fic that is good”. And having this certainty, I become entirely unbothered by the automatically existing other group, aka fics I don’t love.
Despite commenting on fics as much as I can, and participating in the fandom, there is still something utterly personal about fanfiction to me. It’s reading it on my phone as I’m shaky and queasy on my way to an exam, to a job interview, to an annoying doctor’s appointment. It’s loading up fics to my kindle and reading them at 3am on the plane when it kind of seems like neither time nor space are real anymore. It’s checking my ao3 subscription emails right after my alarm goes off because finding out a fave WIP updated might actually wake my brain up in a pleasant manner. I’m not exaggerating when I say I go through my life non-stop reading fics bit by bit.
What each and every one of the writers responsible for those fics gives me is priceless. And they are not even asking for a price! Just some damn decency.
The phrase “don’t like don’t read” might seem simplistic and in a way, almost illogical – except with the existence of meticulous tagging system, it becomes reality. Tags are there to warn and to entire. Writers, use them. Readers, read them. But it doesn’t stop there. It is, in fact, entirely possible to open a fic and find it wanting and still follow that directive. How? Close the damn tab. If you want to nitpick it, the phrase becomes “i have read, i haven’t liked, i have stopped reading”.
Now, we are people. We get passionate about fandoms, characters, ships, so I get that not everyone – not all the time – is capable of being so chill about being faced with something they seriously didn’t like.
Don’t inflict it on the author. And – and this is a peeve of mine – don’t passively aggresively inflict it on all the authors who might read your vague, public rant and think “is this me?” or who will add it to that ever growing list of mental barriers and doubts that we seem to be soaking up like sponges. Just tell it to a friend. Punch a pillow. Go and find a fic you love.
Remember that even though it seems your taste might be objective, or “common sense” – and this is easy to fall into especially when things like basic grammar are involved – it’s just not. Not in these cases. That description of my daily fic consumption I wrote above? That has been going on for years and years. Somewhat recently I decided to look up fics for an old ship of mine, remembering how deeply I loved them, how I reread them many times, and I was so giddy about getting to enjoy myself like that again. My reaction was a little “oh”. It was not only me whose tastes have changed, but also fandom and fic writing that has evolved, however, that doesn’t at all alter my past enjoyment. And for every fic you scoff at, there might be a reader who is at an entirely different place than you are, and is loving it. Don’t undo their support by your selfish lash out.
Bottom line, just focus on what you do. Focus on finding what you like. Support what you like. It’s not like “bad” and “good” fic are fighting for their place on the interwebs and only one can get the spot. This is not a limited space library.
If you need a more candid conversation about things like ships, characterizations and so on, turn to meta. Meta is there for people to disagree on, because meta should follow rules of logic and analysis. Fanfiction doesn’t have to.
Wise words from a wise lady, couldn’t have said it better.
Fandom isn’t so different from real life. There will always be people who enjoy things I don’t like and vice versa, no two people are the same. I often wonder if these people harass others in real life, too, if they bitch at somebody just because they like cheese. Because that’s what it comes down to, different tastes. So much energy wasted when there’s so much good to be had.
*nods* well, I feel ya, but it is at least addressed in canon. So much more Daniel and Armand is always needed and wanted, tho! That’s what fanfic is for ;D
@monstersinthecosmos has some good Daniel/Armand stuff on AO3 you should definitely check out.
Essays could be – and probably have been – written on the topic of Daniel’s sanity, and on his relationship with Armand before and after he’s turned. Whether it’s real insanity or a “spell” as Marius calls it in B&G, Daniel and Armand are not compatible for a period of time in canon.
TL;DR: Daniel and Armand’s fallout is at least addressed in canon. It seems to me that Daniel left Armand of his own free will, and Marius took him in at some point. It doesn’t seem to be a secret from anyone involved.
Hit the jump for more, cut for length.
“Also, I got a bit upset that Marius had Daniel but didn’t tell Armand until much later on the books.”
Well, that’s our unreliable narrator/retconning that AR does. Daniel is turned in QOTD and we see some of his fledgling struggling. I don’t think Daniel’s in TOBT at all, bc that’s a mostly Lestat book, as is MTD, so it’s TVA when we find out from Armand what’s happened between him and Daniel. Then we get a glimpse of Daniel living with Marius in B&G. So Marius couldn’t tell Armand about it sooner than that.
So no, they don’t get a whole book in canon, but we do see where Daniel went and we get some explanation about it.
It seems to me that Daniel left Armand of his own free will and at some point, Marius took Daniel in. Armand says in TVA:
With Benji and Sybelle I rejoined the world in a way which I had not done since my
fledgling, my one and only fledgling, Daniel Molloy, had left me.
Marius tells Thorne in B&G:
“… I took Daniel with me because he needed me. I took Daniel because it’s unendurable
to me to be utterly alone…”
And then in PL, there is a closer relationship implied between Daniel and Marius, possibly a legit canon ship.
I don’t know how much Marius was trying to protect Armand or anyone else from Daniel’s insanity. I wouldn’t necessarily label it “insanity” either, but that he was going through a difficult time. Everyone has their own headcanons about it.
Armand in TVA, he doesn’t say Daniel is insane, just that he and Daniel are out of tune:
Daniel, though alive and wandering, though civil and gentle, can no more stand my
company than I can stand his.
…
I was no Marius to him afterwards. It was too exactly as I supposed: he loathed me in
his heart for having initiated him into Living Death, for having made him in one night
both an immortal and a regular killer.
…
There was never any innocence for us, there was never any springtime. There was
never any chance, no matter how beautiful the twilight gardens in which we
wandered. Our souls were out of tune, our desires crossed and our resentments too
common and too well watered for the final flowering.
Marius explains it to Thorne in B&G, it seems more like being “under a spell,” not a loss of sanity:
“Have you ever seen one of our kind under such a spell?” Marius asked.
Thorne shook his head, No, he had not. But he understood how such a thing could
happen.
“It occurs sometimes,” said Marius. “The blood drinker becomes enthralled. I remember
centuries ago I heard the story of a blood drinker in a Southern land whose sole passion
was for finding beautiful shells along the shore, and this she did all night long until near
morning.
She did hunt and she did drink, but it was only to return to the shells, and once she looked
at each, she threw it aside and went on searching. No one could distract her from it.
Daniel is enthralled in the same way. He makes these small cities.
He doesn’t want to do anything else. It’s as if the small cities have caught him. You might
say I look after him.“
Thorne was speechless, out of respect. He couldn’t tell whether Marius’s words affected
the blood drinker who continued to work upon his world. Thorne felt a moment of
confusion.
Then a low genial laugh came from the youngish blood drinker. “Daniel will be this way
for a while,” said Marius, “and then his old faculties will come back to him.”
^Marius seems to be saying this is some kind of temporary spell, he doesn’t seem to be doing much in terms of mental health care for Daniel other than being supportive and taking physical care of him.
Now listen here you little shit one tiny kudos does not fully express the how I feel when I read a good fanfic and I am no where near being able to express in words the shear heartbreak or pure happiness that these authors can make me feel so let me send another fucking kudos
once upon a time young young teenage me used to write fan fiction like my life depended on it, new fics every week and I had no idea there was someone out there printing out my fics and putting them in a box to read when they needed something to cheer them up
anyways fast forward to 20 year old me on my third date with Emily and she mentions offhand that she’s got this box of fic she printed out and saved
it’s a few months later after that and she shows me one of the fics in the box and holy shit that’s my garbage fic from so long ago
anyways my point is life is a fucking trip my dude
i still remember when we found this out. i don’t think either of us stopped yelling for hours
look it’s been eight years and I’m still like LMAO I MARRIED A FAN
This is the cutest thing I’ve ever read in my whole life
Lestat de Lioncourt is a high-flying businessman out for revenge on ruthless boss Santino, with the help of his best friend David Talbot. There’s just one complication: on Santino’s side is Lestat’s ex, Louis de Pointe du Lac.
…but I don’t remember if it’s mafia-related or all legal business.
I-want-my-IWTV 