fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5641 ]

[ SECRET POST #5641 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5641 ⌋

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

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06. https://i.imgur.com/LAMkAaV.png

well, you're free to be wrong

I'm sticking with any fan (of any level, even lukewarm) writing in an established universe with established characters counts as fanfiction even if the license owner, original author, or original author's estate gives them the go-ahead.

to whit, the book of mormon is jesus fanfic you can't change my mind.

*to wit

Yup, I'm with you on this.

I think someone writing fiction as a fan, for an audience of fans, is clearly doing something quite different than someone writing something as an official part of the canon for actual release through official channels! Even if it's the same person doing it, it's a different thing creatively.

And I definitely don't agree that adherents of a religion are "fans" of that religion. I think that's stretching the definition of a fan to the point of meaninglessness.

We didn't have "official channels" until, like, the early 1900s. Before then you just wrote shit, and if you were rich enough you made a lot of copies.

I don't think you even necessarily need to be a fan to write fanfiction, you just need to use a generally understood set of characters or settings. I legit read a fanfiction where Harry Potter found jesus and denounced witchcraft. It was hysterical; the fanfic author was completely serious and NOT a fan of HP. Still fanfic, though.

The book of mormon is totally fanfiction.

By your definition the Aeneid is fanfic unquestionably.

If you read about golden age latin authors you realize a couple things: a) they held literary circles where they read each others work so they all basically knew each other, b) they all stole from each other, c) their work is surprisingly in-group including trends, characterizations, etc, d) they all knew the greek classics and admired them, e) they all stole from greek classics in order to prove their skill, f) you would have to have read the classics AND everyone else's work to get all the inter-texualizations. Vergil is quite literally Cassandra Clareing/E. L. Jamesing the Aeneid. How is that not content written for and by fans within the fandom community?

I can't tell you about more modern novels, but the distinction I think you're making about publishing, i.e. that having a work be intended to be sold to the public excludes there being a fandom nature to the work, does not exist in the Latin Golden Age of Lit. The work is written for and in concert with their friends and then published because they couldn't do shit about it, lmao. They didn't get paid for it, there was literally no copyright my friend. It was no different that somebody commissioning fic and then some other person lifting a copy where it was hosted and posting it on another site.

Edited 2022-06-17 01:18 (UTC)

eta: I should say that some of them absolutely got paid commissions, but that's not necessarily the same as it being intended for publication or official or approved (see: Ovid). And that Augustus supposedly commissioned the Aeneid, doesn't mean Augustus wasn't frankly the same type of fan as those in the that literary set. That he saw it as useful propaganda doesn't mean that's what Vergil wrote it as (there's a significant amount of reason to believe he was digging at Augustus at least a little bit).

I acknowledge that there were communities but the question to me is whether they're fannish communities. And ultimately, I think fannishness is distinct from other kinds of literary influence or affection. Unfortunately I don't really have a cohesive cut-and-dried definition of fannishness worked out but I know relying on Potter Stewartism is not very satisfying, so I'll take a stab. I think to me fannishness has to involve some kind of engagement with the surface-level mechanics of the work in question, with the working out of the plot or the characters or the worldbuilding ideas. And I think it has to involve some kind of fannish enthusiasm, and I think it has to involve some kind of identification with the fannish object. I don't think those are the only things that are going on with fandom - I think there can be a lot of other things going on on top of that, and I definitely don't want to suggest that one has to be positive to be a fan.

But like, ultimately I think things like Sherlock Holmes fandom and early science fiction fandom are crucial for the development of what we today call fandom. and IMO those groups are doing things that are just totally different from what poetic literary circles like the golden age Latin poets or the Scriblerians or whoever else are doing. Similarly I don't think that the Aeneid is engaging with the corpus of Trojan War stories in the same way that Sherlock Holmes fandom is engaging with Sherlock Holmes stories, or Star Trek fans are engaging with Star Trek.

the distinction I think you're making about publishing, i.e. that having a work be intended to be sold to the public excludes there being a fandom nature to the work

Not so much that fanfiction has to be not-for-profit - in fact I think there are most likely for-profit things that are fanfiction. More so that fanfiction is (1) produced by fans acting as fans (2) for and within a fandom community.

I think to me fannishness has to involve some kind of engagement with the surface-level mechanics of the work in question, with the working out of the plot or the characters or the worldbuilding ideas.
Okay, because I think I disagree with you most that the Aeneid is not this, I think I'm not getting your actual point. Could you give tell why you think the Aeneid doesn't do this?

And I think it has to involve some kind of fannish enthusiasm, and I think it has to involve some kind of identification with the fannish object.
I think we might disagree primarily on what the fannish object is. Is there anything more about identification (sometimes to the point of self-insertion, sometimes to the point of insertion of their friends) than golden age latin lit?

Similarly I don't think that the Aeneid is engaging with the corpus of Trojan War stories in the same way that Sherlock Holmes fandom is engaging with Sherlock Holmes stories, or Star Trek fans are engaging with Star Trek.
The only reason we know that some of the components, characterizations, and themes of the Trojan cycle is because of the Maecenas literary set and the Neoteric literary set and engaged with them not as myths but as works in of themselves, with distinct authorship and voice (and for the Neoterics a distinct desire to counter-voice). There's also the point that these circles were not limited at all to poetry, but included as far as we can tell plays, songs, and maybe paintings from the way Plutarch mentions Arellius. So the question becomes what do you think those modern fandoms were doing that distinguishes them?

I personally think this is a mistake to see literary circles in antiquity as non-fannish and to see a modern development in fandom as necessary one to its definition. I understand why you would want to make that distinction, but I don't why you feel you have to.

More so that fanfiction is (1) produced by fans acting as fans (2) for and within a fandom community.
The lack of profit wasn't my point there. I was saying that you are distinguishing the un-directed nature of public publishing from fandom. To me, you are saying that public publishing isn't directed to fandom so it isn't fandom, if I had to parse it. And I don't think that's a useful distinction in antiquity.

Maybe it's easier to define it negatively: I think that the fannish attitude to a work is not primarily concerned with the specifically literary qualities and attributes of the work (nor is it concerned with the religious qualities of the work, which I think we agree on), that is to say, with the technical details of the storytelling, the mode in which the story is told, and the symbolic and literary nature of the text. Rather it's the fictive qualities of the work, the details of the narrative and character and emotion - story rather than text. I might not be using precisely the right words here (and I also want to be clear that I don't think either mode of engagement is better or worse), and also obviously these things can overlap and intermingle to a large extent. But hopefully that gives some kind of idea of what direction I'm going at least.

And then, yeah, to apply that to the Aeneid, I view Virgil as using the Trojan War corpus as a literary scaffolding - where the story of Aeneas presents a rich trove of literary symbols and topoi that Virgil can appropriate and rework to his own artistic and literary purposes, more so than being concerned with the actual fictive narrative of Aeneas as its own end. I definitely don't think that Virgil is engaging with the Aeneas narrative primarily on the fictive level.

I view Virgil as using the Trojan War corpus as a literary scaffolding - where the story of Aeneas presents a rich trove of literary symbols and topoi that Virgil can appropriate and rework to his own artistic and literary purposes, more so than being concerned with the actual fictive narrative of Aeneas as its own end
So yeah, I don't think this a distinction antiquity makes, first of all. I don't think you're not using the right words, although I'm glad you clarified because I think I understand you now. But I do think you're looking about Roman lit from the view of the academics who have framed it (who do I think tend to only value derivations as a method of construction and therefore only look at Vergil as a master of literary construction).

But to decide that the derivation is only useful as a sign of construction in the Aeneid is a decision, not an inherent limitation of text. For instance, I don't think it makes sense to look at Juno in the Aeneid as mere symbol of divine capriciousness like in the Iliad or as a divine obstacle as in Greek plays, when he specifically gives her the unique patronymic Saturnia. Sure, you can read it as a call back to Saturn's control of the skies, and it is, but why believe it stops there? Does it not make sense to see it also as a sign of how Vergil views her as a character? She's not just causing Chaos for Heroes like she does with Hercules in Aeschylus or Euripides. She's not merely being flippant and petty like all the gods in the Iliad. The patronymic isn't necessary for that, the rhetoric for that is very much already there. She, as a character, wants power like her father. He gave her a motivation beyond the necessary. That is an engagement with the fictive nature of her appearances in other work. Why believe the Aeneid doesn't do that?

This happens throughout the work. It wasn't necessary to give Dido interiority in order to call back to Punic Wars. Vergil is sympathetic to Turnus in a way that academics still don't understand (I mean they are genuinely confused about Turnus's characterization, it's only fair to call him an OC). The underworld is very much "hey this is how all your faves from the Iliad are doing!" in a way that is re-collective of fanfiction in that it is clearly for people who enjoy the Iliad and Odyssey, not merely people who see the Iliad and Oddysey as foundational texts of Latin lit.

So again I understand why you're making that distinction especially with more modern derivatives of other work. But I don't it's useful to apply to the Aeneid. Yes, there a ton of rhetorical devices and functions, but I do not think that you can separate that in antiquity from enjoyment of the fictive.

Bit short on time but - I really appreciate the thoughtful nature of your replies, even if we don't agree, and I think this is a really good reply for figuring out where we differ.

Two quick points - one, I definitely don't read the Turnus material or the underworld material the way that you seem to. And I should say I absolutely love that material, I think it's great, but I definitely view those things are examples of Virgil intentionally going for literary effects and thematic points. In particular with the Turnus stuff I think there's a rich vein to mine in terms of Virgil's less sanguine, more double-edged or even pessimistic views about the Roman state, which I think his treatment of Turnus is very relevant to. Another example I would point to is the Carthaginian temple stuff, the "sunt lacrimae rerum" part of the text - that's something where Virgil is bringing back material that's relevant to the Trojan War narrative rather than to the story he's trying to tell about Aeneas. But it seems to me that his intent in doing so is to raise and to treat poetically certain thematic concerns that he has, to deal with this topic of mortality and grief and frailty counterposed against renown and fame, and so on. And I don't think that's a fanfictional attitude to take. But at the same time, this is definitely a case where the text is very much open to multiple readings!

Two - I think that there's a lot of truth to what you say about the differences between ancient and modern attitudes towards narratives and texts. But in general, I tend to view this as a reason to think that there's a break between the ancients and the moderns. I think that difference undercuts the continuity between the two periods. But I'm generally very inclined to think that there's big differences between attitudes to culture before and after the age of mass production of culture. So, I'm probably biased to see things in that direction.

(no subject)

meadowphoenix - 2022-06-18 07:42 (UTC) - Expand

I find the distinction you're making here interesting, and worth considering, but I ultimately disagree with it.

Yeah, I am just tired of the "everything is fanfiction" essays. But not nearly as tired as I am of "they complaon about us taking a dozen selfies a day with our phones but 200 years ago people sat for portraits and that is EXACTLY THE SAME THING." Stop it. Really.

I'm pretty sure Neil Gaiman won an award for some published fanfiction.

He did, for "A Study in Emerald", which is a Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu crossover. He openly calls it fanfiction.

Unfortunately it was shit but there we go

Yeah I'm gonna say you're just wrong on this.

You're maybe half right for the ancient and early modern worlds, but probaly not in the direction you mean. They definitely had communities swirling about the topics they were writing on, so they could have ideas that developed among peers, but intellectual property didn't exist as we know it. There were no works to actally 'fan' that held more weight than anyone's new vision. The contemporary ones I would wager you're just flat out wrong. Who becomes a writer for star wars or star trek without first being in the fan community? They are literally fans who got sanction for their fiction. I've had many discussions about this, and I think it's a topic that can go many ways. I take a broad view of transformative works as I think it serves as a good jumping off point for a discussion of creative

Dante's Inferno is literally fanfiction and published AND classic lit and you can't tell me it's not.

Self-insert fanfic no less.

YEP IT IS. I studied La Divina Commedia in high school and Dante is ridiculous about his "crush" for Virgilio. Such a shameless fanboy....

i hope you expected this kind of reaction from a fandom community. for what it's worth i find it as obnoxious as you do

Bold opinion in a fandom community, OP.

I agree with you 100%, though.

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