fic writer who makes web weaves
the odyssey pretty fun movie actually and is not deserving of half the discourse it’s inspired but it is insane to see a movie where every woman’s actions are motivated by fear of or in response to rape and yet the act is never committed, threatened, or even alluded to by any of the male characters except the occasional denial of their intentions to do so. the movie’s big reveal is that the violation of a young woman during the fall of troy is the core point of trauma for odysseus and the tipping point that has led to the downfall of their entire civilization; the entire plot hinges upon this moment. but the movie cannot explicitly present this violation as rape (what it is obviously standing in for, especially within the context of the myth of the trojan women) and instead “softens” it to murder. and why is this? what’s the purpose of not just saying what it is and what this part of the story is about? it’s so obvious to the audience, so intrinsic to the fabric of the legend, that at a point its absence overwhelms its presence. rape exists in nolan’s odyssey, it’s a fundamental part of the story and a textual lived reality for all of the women but it can never be made explicit that the men themselves -even the most heinous- are committing it. it’s truly bizarre. he can’t tell the story without rape but is too offended and overwhelmed by it to know how to sensitively keep it in.
le morte d’arthur really does feel like monty python there’s this extended scene where two of arthur’s knights get in a fight, a genuine brawl, over one of them saying “my lady at the court is fairer” “no mine is” and they’re fighting and fighting until lancelot shows up and is like hey what gives!!! you guys should be friends! what are you fighting about. and one of them goes “I think guinevere is the fairest lady in the world and he says morgause” and lancelot is like damned if im not going to get in on this! and starts ALSO fighting them and then his cousin with him is like lancelot lancelot WAIT. doesn’t EVERY knight think his lady the fairest???? and lancelot is like HMMM??? his cousin goes would you quarrel with ME if i thought MY lady were the most beautiful woman in the world? and lancelot apparently being introduced to the concept of subjective taste for the time in the world pauses and considers. and the knights with him are like ohhhhh. yeah sometimes people DO like different things! and then lancelot is like sorry guys. all women are the most beautiful. in the hearts of their lover <3 and they end the day in peace. also all the women in question are married to someone else
I told a guy his total was 13.21 and he said “wish it were that year, could actually get some good music on the radio”
breaking news from the AP, our boys on the front have just sacked constantinople. take that, heretics. coming up next are the soothing lute dirges of bing crosby
Hildegard von Bingen Crosby**
it’s simple: when I like an adaptation, everyone complaining about changes to the text is a whiny baby who needs to get over themselves and accept that sometimes you have to change the story to enrich the experience/work within the medium. when I don’t like an adaptation, it’s because nobody else understands the core themes of the original work and would be better off just creating a story independent of what they’re trying to adapt.
your favorite iwtv character says a lot about you. mine is the vampire armand and this is because i am a bad person
just finished this month's book club book, went skimming goodreads reviews afterwards as you do, got my breath taken away by this absolutely brutal ending to one of the multi-paragraph 1 star reviews
one argument you often see about fanfiction is that it's like 'training wheels' writing? like 'oh it's fine to do that while you're still learning, it's easier than coming up with your own ideas'. and I have to say I have just never agreed with that.
in my experience it's actually pretty common for newbie fanfiction writers to gravitate towards coming up with OCs rather than writing about the canon characters (hence the infamous Mary Sue); this suggests that many people find that 'easier' than attempting to write about pre-existing characters.
I would say that recreating the characterisation, mood and general vibes of an existing work of fiction is in fact a skill in and of itself that's acquired via practice. A common compliment delivered to fanfiction writers is how well they have captured the spirit of the original work. Inexperienced fanfiction writers fail to do this.
When creating an original character you can, ultimately, say anything about them and now it's canon bcos you created them and you said so. conversely, well, if you are covering a well known song and start playing the wrong notes people will notice immediately.
In addition: a lot of fanfiction, IMO, is in actuality a form of metafictional literary analysis. a story where two characters sit down and talk about their feelings about a canonical event? literary analysis, which is of course a skill. Sometimes fanfiction is bad bcos the writer is not good at interpreting texts.
finally I have made this point before but you never really see anyone suggesting that fictional works based on existing public domain texts are on 'easy mode'. is it 'easier' to write something based on a copyrighted work than a public domain work? Of course it isn't.
I know I said 'finally' but I forgot a point:
A major strength of the transformative work is its ability to create dramatic irony. If a fanfiction's emotional resonance is dependent on being familiar with the source material that's not necessarily a bad thing. sometimes it's a sign that the author has done a really skillful job of engaging with said source material.
