[ SECRET POST #2732 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2732 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 020 secrets from Secret Submission Post #390.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - spam ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Roman a clefs are not fanfic, historical fiction is not RPF fanfic, rewritings and adaptations of classic stories are not fanfic, resettings of Shakespeare in particular are not fanfic, classical literature referencing previous elements of the corpus of classical literature is not fanfic. there is a qualitative difference between those things and fanfic, and it really annoys me when people try to defend fanfic by completely changing the definition of it and defending a lot of stuff that really has nothing to do with fanfic. The idea that the Aeneid or the Divine Comedy or Kurosawa's Shakespeare stuff is fanfic is just wrong unless you pretty much extend the definition of fanfic until it encompasses just about every derivative work ever. Fanfic's a specific iteration of derivative literature that comes out of a specific cultural context that doesn't really extend past the latter bit of the 19th century, and it tends to deal with its source material in specific ways.

That person's written a great defense of derivative fiction, but it's not a defense of fanfic. And the really annoying thing is that they don't need to do this - fanfic doesn't really need this kind of argument to be defended, it's perfectly fine on its own, and there are things on that list that actually ARE published fanfiction. but no. fanfiction cannot be defended unless every author in history is defined as a writer of fanfiction, because that will somehow prove something.

god I'm sorry but that sort of argument just grinds my gears, whether it's being applied to fantasy or science fiction or fanfiction or whatever.

[(Anonymous)]

+1000

Thanks for writing this.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know about your other examples, but I've read the Divine Comedy: it's totally fanfic.

[(Anonymous)]

I honestly don't see it

ways in which The Divine Comedy is fanfic

1) Virgil is in it

ways in which The Divine Comedy is not fanfic

1) Virgil isn't especially close to any historical account of him and is in a lot of ways an original character; the reason Dante is invoking Virgil is because of the ethical and aesthetic purpose of his own broader work
2) Literally everything else about it

Seriously, what's your argument for how it's fanfic? It never seemed at all like fanfic to me, and it's always mystified me that people talked about it that way.

[(Anonymous)]

It's a poem that has Virgil in it, plus the author and the woman he was in love with. It's already working with real people and plopping them openly in a fictional setting, one of those people is a self-insert of the author, which makes it pretty close to RPF. And let's not forget that Virgil isn't just "in" it--Virgil rescues Dante, and then guides him along for a while while Dante runs into other historical figures and saints he meets in heaven, where he then understands all of Christ's teachings. It really reads like fanfiction, specifically of the "self-insert raised up in power level" type.

You're free to disagree, of course, and I'm not saying the poem itself doesn't have other merits in terms of style or story. It just reads like a classic fanfiction plot to me in addition to that.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for this, you put how I feel into words

[(Anonymous)]

THANK YOU.

[(Anonymous)]

You're splitting hairs. I've always thought of fanfiction as simply derivative fiction. Sometimes set within the same "universe" as the original story or taking parts of the original story and transforming it into something new.

"Fanfiction cannot be defended..." in what way? Frankly it just sounds like you're afraid someone might think of fanfiction as literature in some form or fashion. I read plenty of published fiction/non-fiction and frankly see a lot of similarities.

[(Anonymous)]

[Pretend that Dreamwidth has a like button so I can say I liked this post]

[waterfall8484]

That just depends on how you define fanfic. If you, say, define it as "fiction written by fans of an already existing work using the characters/settings/other elements from that work" then yes, most derivative works are fanfic.

If someone is a giant fan of Cleopatra and writes an historical fiction series about her - fanfic.

If some anonymous guy was into the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and decided to write a Celtic-mythologic version, complete with fairies - totally fanfic. :~D

Of course, you may define the term differently.