I got an email from a reader earlier. The sender was a lovely young woman who had just re-read my first published fic and wanted to tell me how much she enjoyed it—how it made her feel, how it made her smile, how it made her cry, how it made her excited to get home each night and curl up in bed with it, how it helped ease the pain of a difficult patch in her life, and how much she misses it now that it’s over. It was a beautiful letter, and my reaction to it must have been visible enough to make my saner half take notice from across the room. He shot me a questioning look, and I turned the laptop around and gestured to the screen.
I followed his eyes as they scanned each line, saw his lips tip up in a smile that grew broader as he read, then braced myself for the good natured snark I’ve come to expect when my little literary hobby comes up in conversation.
“Wow.” He said. “That was kind of amazing. How does it feel to be someone’s favorite author?”
“Don’t be a dick,” I said, slapping him on the shoulder.
“I’m serious,” he replied, gesturing to the screen. "That’s what she said—right there: You’re my favorite author.”
“I think she means favorite fic author. Not real author.”
“Is there a difference?” He asked.
“Yes,” I said, rolling my eyes. ”Of course there is.”
“Why?”
“Because, as someone in this room who isn’t ME is fond of pointing out, self published gay mystery romance novels aren’t exactly eligible for the pulitzer.” I said, turning the computer back around.
“So what?” he shrugged, “Something you wrote inspired a stranger to sit down write what it meant to them and send it to you. A lot of total strangers, as a matter of fact. You write, people read it and react. That makes you an author.”
“Huh.” I said, very eloquently, then got up and went into the kitchen to start dinner.
Hours later, sitting down to reply to the letter in question I find myself writing this post instead. Because here’s the thing: That wonderfully crazy man who lives in my house is right. (But please don’t tell him I said that)
From the moment I realized that letters made up words and words made up sentences and sentences made up worlds that were mine to explore any time I wanted to I’ve been a reader. I have fallen in love with perfect phrases and epic stories and countless characters pressed between the pages of the thousands of books I’ve read in my life so far—and sitting down to string together those same 26 letters into tens of thousands of words of stories I felt needed telling? That makes me an author.
I have adored the work of countless authors in numerous genres, and the world of fan fic is no exception. I have admired and cherished and savored the words of talented writers whose work is no less legitimate for the fact that their names include random keyboard characters and their words don’t live on bound paper on a shelf.
It’s not JUST fan fic. It’s literature. It’s published. It’s read. It’s loved.
It matters.
Thanks to all of my favorite authors for every word on every page on every screen that I’ve ever loved.
Reblog for the sweet anon who asked me if I thought fanfic was as important as “real” fiction. Hope this answers your question. :)
Thanks for reading my work, so happy you’re enjoying In The Library!
Read this. Take it to heart. REMEMBER IT.
Comments are the best
They really are. Anything that manages to touch another person, make their life – their day, a particular minute – better is invaluable.
True story: back at Northeastern, I took my required Advanced Writing class for English majors, and my professor was very into discussing new, modern forms of literature. I did a whole presentation on why fanfic is actually literature (and opened it with a YouTube video of a dramatic reading of My Immortal: Chapter 1).
It was actually very well received, and I feel like fanfic is being recognized more and more as actual literature. There was even a healthy dose of scholarship I could find on the issue, and this was easily 5 years ago.
It’s literature, it’s here to stay, and it’s always nice to show authors how much they’re appreciated. I mean, most of them/us are working for free to engage with your favorite media in new and different ways. Is there always going to be strange, crack!fic like My Immortal? Yes (and that’s literature too!). But there’s also some of my most favorite works of fiction up on AO3, some lines that I don’t think even the best traditionally-published authors I can think of could have come up with, and some of the most passion I have ever seen from people engaging with media in new, different, and often subversive ways.
tl;dr fanfic is 100% a valid form of literature, and appreciate all your favorite authors who aren’t traditionally published authors.
Yes yes yes yes yes
Also guys Even if you don’t agree with this, which is your prerogative, please please /please/ don’t try to force that opinion on other people. Honestly, don’t even mention it. Especially around fanfic writers.
When I was much younger and just starting to write seriously, I had a friend who insisted that fanfiction was stupid and not literature. It took me years to start writing the fanfics floating around my head because of the opinions of this one person, even after drifting away from them. Even now I don’t let friends or family read my fanfics because I’m embarrassed and innately feel like my fanfics don’t count as writing.
Please let fanfic writers have their well-deserved excitement and pride in their writing, because one tiny comment can ruin it for years.
at work I called out his coffee order and he was like “that’s not how women usually call out my name ;) ;) ;)” so I just blinked and said “I’ll try to sound more disappointed next time then” then walked away
“A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932.
He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World War II, including 6 million Jews.
So what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important.”—
So Disney, since you’re gonna make Frozen 2… I just wanna remind you of a few things.
Same-sex marriage is now legal.
Almost everyone thinks Elsa is gay and wants her love interest to be female.
IDINA MENZEL WANTS THIS TOO!
You’re a company who has been actively supportive of the LGBTQ community for years, so NO BACKING DOWN NOW!
*chanting* LESBIAN DISNEY PRINCESS LESBIAN DISNEY PRINCESS
LESBIAN DISNEY QUEEN LESBIAN DISNEY QUEEN
If Elsa isn’t a lesbian I’m filing a fucking lawsuit
Interestingly, if you look at the lesbian couples who’ve been showing up in children’s cartoons lately, they always seem to be colour-coded red and blue. Korra and Asami, Ruby and Sapphire - take your pick, really.
And, you know, Elsa’s fashion sense strongly favours blue.
All I’m saying is, if the promotional material for Frozen 2 ends up featuring a girl who dresses predominantly in red (fire powers optional), keep your eye on her.
*Chants in the tune of the bill nye theme song* GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY
buddy cop movie with hayley atwell and idris elba as unlikely partners and dwayne the rock johnson as the bakery owner who witnesses a violent crime in the alley behind his shop and has to be protected
#what do you mean you don’t know how to punch? you’re jacked dude! #hey making dough isn’t easy! these are the result of grating carrots for carrot cake!
People need to stop glorifying stretch marks and fat rolls. You can tell people their beautiful all you want, but you know what's beautiful? VS models. Tell your followers to get some coco butter or lazor surgery to look like them. Stop romantisizing imperfections.
These are your VS models
Before they’ve been
altered and photo shopped
to where you can’t see
their stretch marks
or cellulite
or rolls
but you know what?
they’re still fucking beautiful
photos not mine - found on google images under “vs models untouched”
I gotta say, it sounds like you got some pretty shitty EMT training. I'm a pharmacy school graduate and we were always taught how to treat/diagnose ALL patients, if their ethnicity/gender/etc required something different than the standard. You should get your money back.
Hi, anon, thanks for your input. I’m glad your pharmacy schooling was so high quality, it’s great that you were educated in how to treat everyone, and it’s unfortunate that not all textbooks/courses are up to that level. I was personally taught in a relatively small town with an admittedly less-than-diverse population, so it’s possible that there were effect from that. Also, from what I know pharmaceutical schooling is intended to be a career, while–contrary to popular opinion–many EMTs work on a volunteer basis, or work as an EMT in addition to another job. It’s completely feasible that the higher level education in emergency medical services, like Advanced EMT training or paramedic training, is more complete in these matters.
That said, the class I took was thorough in all other areas, and with prompting the teachers were both able and willing to give answers for the treatment of patients of various ethnicity/gender/etc. I did outside research to confirm what they told me, given that they were speaking from experience and not from the textbook. The flaws were not in the specific course, but rather in the official material–textbooks lacking explanations of how to administer CPR to a large-chested individual, or suggestions of ways to communicate with someone who either speaks a different language or who is nonverbal for some reason, just for example.
Also, I would like to politely express that I worked hard in that class, which I took in addition to a full class load at my college, and my family does not often have seven hundred dollars to drop on extra things, even something as useful as medical training. The teachers worked hard to deliver a quality education, and the inherent flaws in the textbook were not their fault. While I’m aware that this comment was in all likelihood intended to be completely benign, and even if it wasn’t I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, it did not completely come across that way. I agree that it is a serious problem that not all medical fields are as on the ball as pharmacy school evidently is, but it is neither my fault nor the fault of the men and women who taught me–indeed, my teachers had clearly gone to some effort to ensure they were capable of treating everyone. Again, thank you for your input, and I hope you have a lovely day.
“If you don’t support Snape and his problems, you hate the mentally ill.”
NEWS FUCKING FLASH
JUST BECAUSE HE HAD A SHITTY CHILDHOOD, JUST BECAUSE HE’S MENTALLY ILL DOES NOT FUCKING EXCUSE HIS ACTIONS.
I am mentally ill, and I ENCOURAGE people to call me out when I pull bullshit. I was bullied, I was abused as a child, and I have NEVER FUCKING called a friend a FUCKING SLUR.
I have never OBSESSED over a person when they didn’t want me around, and I would never TORTURE a child just because of my hurt fee-fees. Everyone wants to excuse him, and talk about how Snape just needed a little forgiveness.
No. What he did, despite mental illness, despite childhood trauma, was not okay. Stop fucking insisting that he is the beacon of mentally ill characters in that book.
You know who suffers from PTSD? You know who lived every day of his life, struggling because of his illness?
Remus Lupin.
Lupin wasn’t a good person despite his illness. He was a good person WITH his illness. Maybe he made some bad decisions, but ultimately, he was a good person. A good person with PTSD, a good person with an illness. He never used it as an excuse, and he never expected anyone to just accept everything he did because of it.
What mental illness does Snape have?
I’ve seen a lot of his fans argue that he has depression and/or PTSD. Don’t think JKR’s said anything about it one way or the other, though.
When boys complain about bra straps being distracting, and start comparing it to pulling out their cock, do they fucking realise that a bra is underwear, not genitalia? And the equivalent would be them walking around with their pants so low that their boxers are showing, which they would never do… OH WAIT
I would imagine that Clint is on a first name basis with a lot of New York’s emergency responders.
Hurt and in the back of an ambulance? The driver is like “Clint Barton is that you again?“ “Yeah, it’s me, you know I like helping people every way I can. Like letting you earn your paycheck, Barry.“
Need police assistance? “Hey, Doris, yeah it’s Clint, I need some help. Oh yeah, Lucky is fine. How’s the husband? Oh that cheating bastard.“
Caught dangling from a telephone wire because the jump to the other roof was farther than expected? “Honestly, Karl, I don’t do this on purpose. No, it isn’t an excuse to get to climb down the engine ladder or play in the fire truck.”
Mistaken for a burglar for trying to help some little old lady and sitting in the back of police cruiser? “You aren’t going to tell Doris about this are you Meredith?”
sometime I just think about how easy it would be to market superheroes toward little girls and I am filled with rage
like do these people not realize how fucking easy this shit would be
there’s the dazzler she’s like a popstar and a superhero do you know how many 4-12 year old girls would dig that shit
there’s the wasp and her superpowers are seriously like zapping jerks, flying, and being cuter than everybody else. also she’s a famous fashion designer. and she’s better than you. (like she shrinks and stuff too but mainly her power is being better than you)
she-hulk is like this nerdy chick with the power to get bigger and greener and be spontaneously tougher than everybody in the vicinity like I don’t even know a little girl who wouldn’t slit someone’s throat for the ability to be stronger than all the boys when they pissed her off
little girl likes magic? scarlet witch
little girl likes science? invisible woman
little girl likes spies? black widow
little girl likes aliens? karolina dean
little girl likes bionic arms? misty knight
little girl likes flying horses? wow. guess who has one of those? valkyrie. valkyrie does.
My point is that’s it’s so fucking easy so chop-chop, Marvel, get on it. Seriously, I went ten years of my life thinking superheroes were boys. That’s ten years of you not profiting off of my inability to refrain from buying even the crappiest merchandise you offer if it has a character I love on it. Little girls are an enormous market; they will buy all your shit if you just suggest to them that maybe they’d like to.
or you could just keep on not profiting when you could be making money selling literally any object that has enough space to plaster a female superhero’s face on it. that’s cool too.
Demonic, red-eyed hoards of insects that rise from the ground en masse to shed their skins all over tree trunks and SCREAM NON-STOP ALL DAY UNTIL IT BECOMES A KIND OF WHITE NOISE THAT YOU DON’T EVEN REALLY HEAR ANY MORE.
Reblogging just for that description
Wait some people don’t know what cicadas are?
i only know what cicadas are because of animal crossing
FUN GAME: GOOGLE THEM FOR YOUR FRIENDS AND WATCH AS THE TRAUMA SETS IN.
Peter Parker caught in an endless five year loop. Reliving High School over, and over, and over. Tasting the victory of adulthood for only a moment before he’s snapped back to a teenage hellscape. Free him.
Okay, but imagine a full fic of this. And maybe he doesn’t always remember, but maybe he gets flashes. Little blips of how things turn out and there’s confusion and- just imagine:
Peter feeling alone, so alone at school and then he only has one friend, just the one, just Harry Osborne and sometimes he glances over and gets a sense of wrong, of this is not right- you are evil. youare- and then it’s gone and he’s blinking in confusion and Harry’s head is tilted in a question and-
He calls Gwen “MJ” once. He doesn’t even know why, it just slips out and she pulls away to yell at him but stops because he looks even more alarmed than she is and they laugh it off. Every once and a while, he will go to take a picture and then think he’s already taken it, it’s already on his computer, he’s already edited it but- but no that can’t be right… he’s never been here before. When he’s skateboarding, he sometimes gets the feeling that he can do tricks, crazy tricks and really, if he leapt just like that he wouldn’t even need the skateboard but-
Aunt May laughs at him when he turns up bloody from one of his attempts. She also laughs because through the pain, he has still stopped to pick up paint for some reason because he swears she said she needed it but… but he guesses he hit his head harder than he thought and isn’t that strange?
The worst though, the worst is when he looks at Uncle Ben. Because usually it’s just Uncle Ben, smiling and kind and laughing softly at his own joke. But sometimes it’s not. Sometime’s his mouth is twisted in pain and there is blood along his hairline and he’s gasping out words that Peter can’t quite make out and- when Peter blinks it’s gone but… but when it finally happens, Peter isn’t even surprised. Not really. Not like he should be.
I really hope this is the direction Marvel Studios takes the next Spider-Man.
I rewatched The Avengers today and I finally realized why Steve is such an ass. I can’t believe I never understood before.
Steve literally crashed a plane into a glacier over the Tesseract. He lost his best friend and the opportunity to be with the love of his life over the Tesseract. Of course he’s pissed off and unwilling to help when Fury comes to bother him about the fucking Tesseract.
This is the same fight he fought in during WWII. It’s the fight they told him he won when they defrosted him. Of course he’s mad. Probably betrayed and frustrated, too.
I was always disappointed in The Avengers for depicting Steve this way and now I’m embarrassed because I never understood the reasoning behind it. I’ve seen the light.
Not only that, but at the time of The Avengers, Steve has been out of the ice for two weeks. He lost his best friend, the love of his life, everyone and everything he’s ever known two weeks ago. He fought Red Skull and saw the Tesseract vaporise him into thin air two weeks ago.
And then Fury interrupts Steve’s PTSD flashback at the gym to tell him S.H.I.E.L.D. found the Tesseract and promptly lost it to yet another villain bent on world destruction, and Steve is all Jesus F. Christ, I JUST did this!
And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Steve discovers that S.H.I.E.L.D. was using the Tesseract to build HYDRA weapons of mass destruction (because S.H.I.E.L.D. is HYDRA, shhh!).
It hasn’t been two weeks since Steve saw whole army battalions vaporised and smashed a plane into the Arctic Ocean to prevent the exact same weapons of mass destruction from reaching New York! And here they are again! In New York, in the hands of his supposed “allies,” who lied to him about their purpose for wanting the Tesseract back!
Steve doesn’t like bullies, he doesn’t care where they’re from. In The Avengers, he realises he’s working for the new bullies and doesn’t have a choice if he wants to save humanity.
So yeah, Steve is pissed. He f–ing hates that f–ing Tesseract, and he’s 100000% done with it and with S.H.I.E.L.D. making all the same mistakes again.
aka “I’m a 22 year old newb and needed to find some resources”. Here’s what I’ve found so far that has really helped me! Lots of these are youtube tutorials; I find it more helpful to see someone doing it rather than just reading about it.
*Important Note: Some of these brands may or may not be sold in other countries that require animal testing by law in order for the products to be sold, but I don’t have the time to research animal testing laws outside the US as well as what brands sell in those countries. So I’m leaving this one up to you.
Okay, this has been in my drafts for at least 3 months now. Time to roll it out! Keep in mind, these are videos/bloggers that helped me specifically and there may be some videos/links that aren’t as useful to you. That’s okay! I recommend you get lost in the beauty blogger side of youtube at some point, it’s a lot of fun and you never know what you’ll find!
And on a last note of disclaimer: I don’t follow the personal lives/twitter feed/rumors about anyone in these videos. I don’t know if someone is problematic or not, I am simply recommending the video.
wonderful resource for nonbinary/trans people who have a desire to wear makeup, but were never taught because of gross gender roles
All of those brands are cruelty free and don’t sell in countries that require testing on animals. Two other good cruelty free brands are Tarte and Too Faced!
Okay non-European tumblr, I’m gonna explain to you why ‘white’ isn’t as simple here as it is in the rest of the world
- Shades of white in Europe range from ‘freshly fallen snow’ to ‘I am frequently mistaken as being from the Middle East’
- White European is a thing. When you fill out a form, under ethnicity, there are several options for white; white British, white European, white other. Because people make that distinction
- There are Europeans who don’t class their ethnicity as their skin colour, but as their nationality. I have family who don’t think of themselves as white, they just think of themselves as Italian and don’t really give much thought to their skin colour
- People here in Britain always question if darker skinned white Europeans are ‘actually white’. I get it a lot myself. My response is always ‘well I’m not anything else, so obviously I must be’
- Despite being white, a lot of Europeans from Italy, Greece, Spain etc, don’t feel white in the traditional sense. We’re not white like white British people. We’re not white like white Americans. We’re our own white. White British is one thing. White Italian is another thing. White Greek is another, etc
- Which is why we have this notion here in Europe of ‘nationality over race’. Being white isn’t as important as where you’re from
- So this really only becomes an issue if you’re an immigrant
- So being white in Europe doesn’t save you from racial discrimination, because sure, you’re technically white, but you’re not white white. Not the right white
- Here in England, Europeans with really blatantly foreign names, such as myself, find it more difficult to get job interviews, because they take one look at our name and don’t bother reading the rest of the CV. A guy I know was actually told by his boss to reduce the pile of CVs he had by ‘chucking away any with a name you can’t fucking pronounce’
- And then even when you do get an interview, half the time you walk into the joint several shades darker than everyone else and feel like you’ve walked into the ‘Swedish supermodel’ clubhouse and you just know you’re not getting hired
This is all basic stuff and it’s very much taken for granted here. Race and ethnicity are not as clear cut, so it can be very confusing for non-Europeans to wrap their heads around. Which is fine. But I implore you to stay in your lane, because when you say things like ‘no white person anywhere in the world ever knows what it’s like to face racial discrimination’, it’s really fucking offensive to all of the European immigrants who are denied jobs, harassed by the police and beaten by racists, because foreign is foreign to these people, and they don’t give a shit if you’re technically white. So when you mean white American, say white American.
i want spock to give someone the vulcan salute and have that person misunderstand and give him a jubilous high five and spock just stares at his hand in confusion as an awkward silence ensues
What if that’s part of the basic sexual harassment training Starfleet gives at the academy like “do not highfive the Vulcans. Don’t do it. They look like they want highfives. They do not want highfives.”
