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[shadesofmauve]

On Fanfiction

I was cruising through the net, following the cold trail of one of the periodic “Is or is not Fanfic the Ultimate Literary Evil?” arguments that crop up regularly, and I’m now bursting to make a point that I never see made by fic defenders.

We’re all familiar with the normal defenses of fic: it’s done out of love, it’s training, it’s for fun. Those are all good and valid defenses!

But they miss something. They damn with faint praise. Because the thing is, when you commit this particular Ultimate Literary Evil you’ve now told a story. And stories are powerful. The fact that it wasn’t in an original world or with original characters doesn’t necessarily make it less powerful to any given reader.

I would never have made this argument a few years ago. A few years ago I hadn’t received messages from people who were deeply touched by something I wrote in fanfic. So what if it’s only two or three or four people, and I used someone else’s world and characters? For those two or three or four people, I wrote something fucking important. You cannot tell me that isn’t a valid use of my time and expect me to feel chastened. I don’t buy it. I won’t feel ashamed. I will laugh when you call something that touches other people ‘literary masturbation.’ Apparently you’re not too up on your sex terminology.

Someone could argue that if I’d managed the same thing with original characters in an original world, it could’ve touched more people. They might be right! On the other hand, it might never have been accepted for publication, or found a market if self published, and more importantly I would never have written it because I didn’t realize I could write. The story wouldn’t have happened. Instead, thanks to fanfic being a thing, it did. And for two or three or four people it mattered. When we talk about defending fanfic, can we occasionally talk about that?

[lsbaird]

I once had an active serviceman who told me that my FF7 and FF8 fic helped get him through the war. That’ll humble you. People have told me my fanfic helped get them through long nights, through grief, through hard times. It was a solace to people who needed solace. And because it was fanfic, it was easier to reach the people who needed it. They knew those people already. That world was dear to them already. They were being comforted by friends, not strangers.

Stories are like swords. Even if you’ve borrowed the sword, even if you didn’t forge it yourself from ore and fire, it’s still your body and your skill that makes use of it. It can still draw blood, it can strike down things that attack you, it can still defend something you hold dear. Don’t get me wrong, a sword you’ve made yourself is powerful. You know it down to its very molecules, are intimate with its heft and its reach. It is part of your own arm. But that can make you hesitate to use it sometimes, if you’re afraid that swinging it too recklessly will notch the blade. Is it strong enough, you think. Will it stand this? I worked so hard to make it. A blade you snatched up because you needed a weapon in your hand is not prey to such fears. You will use it to beat against your foes until it either saves you or it shatters.

But whether you made that sword yourself or picked it up from someone who fell on the field, the fight you fight with it is always yours.

[roachpatrol]

Literary critics who sneer at fanfic are so infuriatingly shortsighted, because they all totally ignore how their precious literature, as in individual stories that are created, disseminated, and protected as commercial products, are a totally modern industrial capitalist thing and honestly not how humans have ever done it before like a couple centuries ago. Plus like, who benefits most from literature? Same dudes who benefit most from capitalism: the people in power, the people with privilege. There’s a reason literary canon is composed of fucking white straight dudes who write about white straight dudes fucking. 

Fanfiction is a modern expression of the oral tradition—for the rest of us, by the rest of us, about the rest of us—and I think that’s fucking wonderful and speaks to a need that absolutely isn’t being met by the publishing industry. The need to come together as a close community, I think, and take the characters of our mythology and tell them getting drunk and married and tricked and left behind and sent to war and comforted and found again and learning the lessons that every generation learns over and over. It’s wonderful. I love it. I’m always going to love it. 

[kyraneko]

Stories are fractal by nature. Even when there’s just one version in print, you have it multiplied by every reader’s experience of it in light of who they are, what they like, what they want. And then many people will put themselves in the place of the protagonist, or another character, and spend a lot of time thinking about what they’d do in that character’s place. Or adjusting happenings so they like the results better.

That’s not fic yet, but it is a story.

But the best stories grow. This can happen in the language of capitalism—a remake of a classic movie, a series of books focusing on what happened afterwards or before—or it can happen in the language of humanity. Children playing with sticks as lightsabers, Jedi Princess Leia saving Alderaan by dueling Vader; a father reading his kids The Hobbit as a bedtime story as an interactive, “what would you like to happen next?” way so that the dwarves win the wargs over with doggie biscuits that they had in their pockets and ride to Erebor on giant wolves, people writing and sharing their ideas for deleted outtake scenes from Star Trek and slow-build fierce and tender romance with startling bursts of hot sex between Hawkeye and Agent Coulson.

A story at its most successful is a fully developed fractal, retold a million times and a million ways, with stories based on stories based on stories. Fanfic of fanfic of fanfic. Stories based on headcanons, stories based on prompts, stories that put the Guardians of the Galaxy in a coffee-shop AU and stories where the Transformers are planet-wandering nomads and stories where characters from one story are placed into a world from another. Stories that could be canon, stories that are the farthest thing from canon, stories that are plausible, stories that would never happen, stories that give depth to a character or explore the consequences of one different plot event or rewrite the whole thing from scratch.

This is what stories are supposed to be.

This is what stories are.

[headspace-hotel]

I've gotten some really interesting insights by thinking of fanfiction as the "default" mode of storytelling and thinking of original fiction as a variation off of that

Across the (several) novels I wrote as a teenager, nothing ever fit into the "rough draft -> more polished drafts -> final draft" sequence.

I would write something that was supposed to be a first draft, then completely rewrite it to the point that I didn't have a first draft and a second draft, I had two different first drafts. My sense of what I wanted to write evolved very quickly, and I never reached a stable enough sense of what my stories were about that I could begin to refine it instead of being trapped in an endless cycle of scrapping everything and starting over

My adventure with Bucky Barnes fanfiction (first reading it, then writing it) led me to these things:

multiple different, mutually contradictory versions of the same story can exist and all of them can have value at the same time.

The idea that writers imagine "their own" stories and characters out of nothing is a cultural idea we made up. Nothing is really "original," we just have a (legally enforced) cultural norm of making stories appear separate by giving characters distinct names, using different plot and worldbuilding elements, not deriving too much from any one particular influence

Being a storyteller is deeply connected to being a story-listener. You have to hear the story before telling it yourself.

the concept of "originality" makes it really difficult to learn the storyteller/story-listener thing, because the way we're taught to see it is that writers can somehow, like, sublimate everything they read into raw Ideas and then use those ideas as ingredients to create Their Own Thing.

Which, yes you can pick and choose what tropes you want to use, but breaking something down to its atoms means you can no longer see how the thing works as an organism, because you took it apart.

I think our culture has difficulty seeing stories holistically because the idea of "originality" is so pervasive.

Playing in an environment where the storytellers are exchanging the same story, telling and re-telling different parts and in different ways, deriving ideas from each other and refining those ideas with further iterations until they become their own "canons" that sprout more stories, helped me understand a lot of things I didn't understand before.

In the Bucky fanfiction ecosystem, those ideas and tropes that were assembled to form the whole weren't just interchangeable parts anymore: it was clear how they supported certain themes, evoked certain emotions, explored certain ideas, and so on.

The "nodes" of story that clustered together and intensely cultivated new variations were functionally entangled with imagery, symbolism, and particular literary techniques, and seeing how different storytellers engaged these things taught me a deep understanding of their possibilities.

Therefore when I got it in my head to write my own fanfiction I had done a lot of deep thinking about what my take on the story was going to be "about" and the themes it would engage and the techniques it would use to do that. Because I had already read 30+ different iterations of the story of Bucky Barnes, the man who would become the Winter Soldier, that were all compelling in their own way.

I'm starting to think that this is a fundamental part of the storytelling process and the idea of "original fiction" has grimed it up a little bit. You have to hear the story before you can tell it.

Is it possible, I thought, that this is what a "first draft" often functionally is? I ended up writing so many "first drafts" that were just sloppy assemblages of ideas I imperfectly guessed I might like, and once they were assembled, I realized I didn't like those ideas and what they communicated.

So I thought, What if all writing is fanfiction, and when you write a first draft, you are essentially writing something to write fanfiction of.

This way of thinking of it is fascinating in what it implies. Fanfiction is not a linear continuation or refinement of the original; it can be a retort, a further extrapolation, a complementary piece, an antagonistic refutation. There's always an inversion: listener becomes teller. In other words it implies that first draft and further drafts are a call and a response, rather than an increasingly "improved" version of the same thing.

It suggests that it's actually fine or even expected to have multiple drafts that aren't necessarily linear improvements on each other. It also suggests that a first draft shouldn't be read thinking "okay how do I improve this" but "what sticks with me about this?" The failures or inadequacies of the first draft are not so much things to repair as things to respond to.

I don't know what I think about this, because honestly, after experiencing fanfiction, the intensely private nature of writing original fiction seems to run contrary to the nature of storytelling, which is communal.

I have a sort of distaste now for the idea of creating a story, characters, and world that is "mine" and that mine is the definitive and "real" version of. I don't want to be fixed into the "teller" role, it's not right. I don't know what to do with this feeling!

[bookshelf-in-progress]

"Beauty and the Beast" + the Beast's perspective

Beauty Beloved

She was beautiful, of course. They all were, every girl who came through that gate holding a rose in her hand. I’d learned to look beyond that, after so many years. Behind their external loveliness, some girls were haughty, some were timid, some were greedy, some were bold, and all of them—all of them—fled before they finished a month in my company.

But there was something in this girl’s bearing that I’d never seen in any girl before. It made her seem brave, even while she was trembling. It lent elegance and grace to every cautious step. It made her look me in the eye when I appeared—all scales and claws and teeth—before her, and something about it made me want to shrink from her presence when we dined together that evening, as if I were the peasant and she the terrifying princess.

“Beauty,” I asked her (I’d long ago stopped bothering to learn each girl’s name), “are you afraid of me?”

She clutched the rose to her chest—she hadn’t set it down since arriving at the castle. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose I am.”

“That is very strange,” I said, “for I am also afraid of you.”

She looked at the rose in her slender white hands, then looked at the teeth that filled my monstrous jaw—each of them larger than her entire hand. “I can’t imagine why,” she said.

“Neither can I,” I replied. “Do you have fairy blood within you? Are you a siren, nixie, elf, enchantress, harpy or sprite who can take on some harmless shape and tear me to pieces with a wave of your hand?”

“If I were,” Beauty replied, “I don’t think I would tell you. So even if I tell you truly that I am not, I do not think you will believe me.”

Yet the strange thing was that I did. Whatever this unsettling something was inside her, it was no more magical than the salt cellar on the table, no less human than I once had been. Yet I could not taste, see, smell, hear, sense or otherwise define the smallest thing about it, so I—who thought I’d seen every kind of woman the world had to offer—was left utterly unsettled.

I tried to hide my uneasiness, in the weeks that followed. I spent every moment I could in her company, and every evening dutifully proposed marriage to her. Every evening, she kindly declined, and we’d begin the next morning all over again, I no closer to solving the mystery that was her. I never stopped fearing it, but I grew accustomed to it, and over time, began to hold it in a reverent sort of awe. This something kept her steady even when I felt ready to fall to pieces. This something made her gentle when she touched a beast that could crush her with one claw. This something kept her in the castle not just weeks, but months longer than any other girl had stayed before.

“Beauty,” I finally asked her, one evening six months after her arrival. “Why do you stay?”

She looked up from her dinner plate, now cleared of its dessert. “Because I am required to,” she said. “Was that not the condition you set upon me, to save my father’s life?”

“Even if that were so,” I said, for the wording of the conditions left that part intentionally vague, “there are many who would risk the consequences rather than stay so long in a castle with a beast like me.”

“I will not risk my father,” she said. “I love him too much for that.”

There, at last, was the name of the something that had unsettled me for so long. The thing she had, that every other girl lacked, was love. The other girls had come by invitation, by accident, drawn by curiosity or by the magic surrounding this place. She, and only she, had come to this place because she loved another more than herself. It had given her strength, ennobled her soul, utterly baffled one who’d been monstrous as long as I had. This love was not the mere heart-fluttering that I thought was necessary to make a girl decide to bind herself to a man as wife. It was something that tore apart every scrap of the self in service of another.

I could not live with myself, keeping such a woman in a cage. I let her go home that very night.

Her eyes were luminous when I told her the news. “Do you mean it, Beast?” she asked me. “Am I free to go, with no harm done to him?”

“Nothing from this palace will harm a hair on his head,” I said. “You are free to return to your home. I only ask…” And here I looked down, bashful for the first time in my life, the words sticking in my monstrous throat. “I ask that you might return someday, to visit a beast with no one to share his palace with.”

“I will, Beast,” she said, placing one small hand on my enormous claw. “I promise I will.”

I didn’t believe her, of course, and when she left, I tried to plan for what I’d do the next time another beautiful girl came through my castle door. Yet I found that I could picture no face in these halls but hers, imagine no voice that I wanted to hear across the table at our nightly meals. I had sent away the only girl I’d ever loved in those long, long years—and doing so was the only time I’d ever shown that I knew what love was.

I think there may have been something in the magic of that place that knew she took my heart with her, because I began to weaken almost as soon as she left. I was strong enough the first day or two, but after I spent a week alone, I was barely able to hold my horned head upright. I collapsed in the garden sometime around sunset, and the sun had risen before I found the strength to open my eyes.

I was dying, then, I knew—dying for love of her. It seemed an excellent reason to die. If I had to leave this mortal realm, let me do it so that she—with her wild, wondrous, awe-inspiring soul—might live to share her love with a million people she might meet throughout her long and happy life. If my life was the price I had to pay to give her goodness to the world, I was more than glad to give it.

I fell into a fitful slumber, and when I next opened my eyes, I saw her face before me. I thought she was a vision, another wishful phantom conjured up as comfort in my final moments before death, but then I felt her fingers on my cold and clammy claws, and felt her hot tears dripping down the scales on my face.

“Beauty,” I breathed—for the name was hers now, and could belong to no other. “Why did you come back?”

“My foolish Beast,” she sighed, laughing and crying as she buried her face into my neck. “I came because I love you.”

There was that word again—given now to me. I think my heart returned with it, because I was able to breathe again, found the strength to raise my head and look into her beautiful face. “How can that be?” I asked. “How can a creature like you love a...thing like me? I am a monstrous, worthless wretch who has lived for countless years and only a scant few days ago even learned what love means.”

“It means we give,” Beauty said. “It means we choose. And I choose to give myself to you—in marriage if you wish it—because you’ve shown love more deeply in these few days than most men show in a lifetime. I am glad of your company, grateful for your goodness, and I think I’d like to live in love beside you, if you’ll have me to stay as your wife.”

“I wish it,” I told her. “I wish it with all my heart.”

The pain that tore through me then cannot be described. It tore apart my flesh and bone and seemed to turn my very spirit inside out before piecing it back together. When I came into myself again, I was whole in a way I’d never been before, even when I’d been a human untouched by fairy magic. The piece that I was missing had been made whole by her—my heart filled in because I’d given it away.

We were married afterward, of course, in the very garden where her father had first stolen a rose. We had her father to live with us, had countless children of our own, and constant visits from the children of her many brothers and sisters. I, who’d been loveless for so long, have love surrounding me every moment of the day.

I do not deserve it. I never did. But I try to show my gratitude by letting love transform me into a better man each day.

[kotaka-kun]

got to talk to my friend abt book/fanbinding (she was at manga ichiba and now has started thinking abt having her fics printed and bound for next time) and i showed her the couple books ive bound, shoddily done though they may be, and we talked abt formatting and how all that stuff works. and like. i really wanna get into doing it Properly. maybe this summer ill manage it...

[xiaq]

I need a fic where Hayden’s youngest, Amber Pike, is Shane’s flavor of autistic, and as soon as they realize, Ilya is like, oh, step aside, I’ve got this.

Like, he’s generally fab with kids anyway but he has a near lifetime of knowledge figuring out what makes Shane tick (and twitch) and this is just a child who isn’t able to control their environment or modulate their responses to things in the way that Shane can.

So when they’re having dinner with the Pikes and Jackie is tiredly recounting the ongoing process of getting Amber tested and how lost they’re feeling, Ilya is like, oh, I have been training my whole life for this. And when 3yr old Amber inevitably starts having a meltdown, Ilya jumps up and says, “Here. I will fix. You stay.”

And they’re like, you know what, sure, have at it.

Within a few minutes of Ilya disappearing with Amber, the crying stops. When they track the two down a half hour later, they’re in the basement on the rug with all the lights off. Amber is wearing a pair of Christmas Pjs (notably a bamboo/cotton mix) despite the fact that it’s February, and she’s laying on Ilya’s chest, ear to his sternum, alternating tapping along as he hums, spinning his ring on his finger, and rubbing his shirt (also a Nice Fabric since obviously Ilya’s whole wardrobe is Shane-approved).

And when Amber sees the family + Shane trooping down the stairs and starts to get riled up again, Ilya is immediately like, “Turn off hall light. It is Dark Floor Time. Only quiet people allowed to join, okie?” And Amber lets out this relieved, shuddery little breath because she has someone who understands and can advocate for her which nearly ends Ilya’s life but also Shane is like, oh shit, yeah, I’m the the best at floor time, I love being quiet and grounded and aimlessly touching my husband, lets fucking go.

So even when the other Pike children get antsy after a few minutes, and their parents take them upstairs, Shane and Ilya stay, letting Amber crawl all over them and get chill before they get her ready for bed.

Afterward, Ilya gives Hayden and Jackie an exhaustive rundown of all the various things they might want to consider for clothing and food and overstimulation and regulation and they’re very grateful but Shane is listening to this going, okay some of this I obviously knew about myself but some of these things I didn’t even notice? Holy shit? He pays such close attention to me?? Hold on, some of these things I haven’t done since middle school. Ilya, did you talk to my mom about my childhood behavior?? And yes, Ilya gives Jackie Yuna’s phone number for additional consult until they get Amber’s official diagnosis and are provided with more resources.

(And maybe at first Shane wants to be annoyed about the fact that Ilya has been, what, researching and compiling some sort of manual on how to handle him? Right up until Ilya reminds Shane that Shane has an Ilya Spreadsheet that now contains over a dozen tabs of Ilya’s likes and dislikes, injuries and recovery protocols, training and diet and supplements, depression treatment with behavioral red-flags and mitigation techniques, and even sexual preferences. And Shane is like, oh yeah, okay, that’s fair)

But anyway. As the Pike kids grow up, Ilya tries not to be obvious about it, but it’s just Known that Amber is Uncle Ilya’s favorite. And everyone is mostly okay with that.

His doting is so quietly impactful for Shane, though, because here is a child who reminds Shane of his own younger self: a little odd, who struggles to articulate what she feels and needs, who gets overstimulated easily and has obsessive interests, but even so, Amber is a favorite and so loved and accommodated by his husband. That’s gotta be healing.

Also, as much as they try to get Amber to hyperfixate on hockey, I think it’d be hilarious if she became a horse girl and Ilya literally buys her a pony.

(Hayden: Oh my god, Ilya. Do you know how expensive horses are?? Ilya: Yes, yes, maybe for 15th best player on the Metros with one hundred other children, horse is big cost, but not for best player in the league married to second best player in the league with Yuna Hollander in charge of sponsorship deals. I set up fund for board and train. Is couch money.)

(Shane is unavailable for comment because he is feeling a velvety horse nose for the first time and realizing that maybe he is also a horse girl).

[inbabylontheywept]

there is a stripper pole in my attic. i saw it in a dumpster one day, and i went, shit, this is exactly the kind of thing my wife would want. and i didnt really want it in the house, what with it being a used stripper pole lightly seasoned with dumpster juice, but i mentally decided that if she were to see it and ask for it, i would say she could have it, and then sure enough, later that evening, she went soooo baaaaaaaabs there's this thing by the dumpster and i want it but i get it if you don't want it in the house but i have to show it to you- and i went, no you dont, you can have the pole, and that was the most surprised i have ever made her look. even compared to the day when i proposed to her, which she was prepared enough that we both knew she would say yes, and she could also get her hair done up and have a cute outfit, but not so prepared that she was not fucking flabbergasted by the 12 empty decoy ringboxes i sprung on her. i handed her so many decoy ring boxes that day. still one of the funniest things i've ever done to her.

anyway we like pacing around together and ranting in the attic but sometimes instead of pacing one of us will just hang on the pole and spin, and the other person will watch on the beanbag, which makes for these really goofy conversations where the person on the bag will say something that gets the other persons goat, such as, hypothetically, that xylophones do not belong in rock music, and then the other person will go on a tirade about this, but they'll actually only be facing the Hot Take Speaker half of the time, what because of the pole, so the response will sound something like

I can't believe

you would even suggest such

a stupid opinion. You've

been to a Danny Elfman

concert! How can you

have heard Oingo Boingo

live and say with a straight face

that they alone do not justify

rock and roll xylophones

and then that person will continue until they get too dizzy, then they'll get off the pole, and by unspoken agreement, the person on the bag will get up and trade places with them to deliver their rebuttal while also spinning and it just creates this sort of crazy strip-court lawyers debating absolute nonsense for no reason kind of vibe that frankly just really does it for us.

i don't really have any marriage advice for this i guess its just a look at what being married can look like. i thought that being married would involve a lot more stuff like carving the turkey, or barbecuing, or watching the sunset, and if id known how much time it would involve arguing for xylphones in rock music while spinning upside down i might have prepared for it a little differently.

[honeypiehotchner]

i want to read a very specific fanfic and i’m so mad that i can’t (it’s sitting in my drafts) (unfinished)

[honeypiehotchner]

so glad this post is resonating with people bc it’s still resonating with me as i am once again not working on said fanfics that i want to read

[dalniente]

wait. oh my god holy shit i need to check something brb

[dalniente]

i have been writing megamknd fanfiction for fifteen fuckigb years

[sandersstudies]

I think a fun way to have he/she pronouns would be by helping other avoid the ambiguous antecedent problem and taking on the pronouns that are less represented in the current group.

[chip-toss]

"If I don't do that, I don't have a skeleton to put meat on" - me talking about writing an outline

[station18908]

The small voice in your head that says: "I don't need to write down every small detail of this plot idea, I love it so much, I'll remember this."

That's the devil speaking.

[mjfass]

New ask game:

Reblog if you want your followers to tell you what your trademark ™️ is. Like, what’s that thing that really identifies you.

[hooksbooks]

@dalniente's trademark is the most emotionally gut-wrenching backstories

[penwiper]

So a couple days ago, some folks braved my long-dormant social media accounts to make sure I’d seen this tweet:

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.  

(Oh, and for anyone wondering: yes, I’m over 40 now, and yes, I’m still making costumes. And that armor is still in great shape after 17 years in a hot attic!)  

[armoredsuperheavy]

In 2018 I developed a method to bind fanfiction into hardback books. Like penwiper, I was also literally working in my kitchen by myself and trying things out. This solo work was a meditative experience that allowed me to think deeply about the implications of what I was creating and what my ethics and philosophy should be. I got around to the idea that the knowledge I was building should be spread far and wide, so that together, many of us fans could bind all the wonderful fics that made our lives better in a million tiny ways, and wherever possible, create a copy to give to the authors themselves. In 2019 I wrote How to Make a Book From An AO3 Page, a free manual for how to format and bind fanfic, as a gift to fandom as a whole. It took off during the 2020 lockdown and has been going strong ever since.

Now, through the efforts of so many wonderful people, Renegade Bookbinding Guild has developed out of the Discord server I originally created just to answer questions about paper, fonts, printers and such. I figured there would be no more than 15 people joining. We have surpassed 3000.

I hope in another 20 years time my little tutorial still be kicking along out here, my bad photography and potty mouth sitting forever at the foundational level of an exploding practice of radical generosity and community, preserving the best of fanfiction from the ravages of time and digital threats and censorship, and giving authors the best thank you I know how to give.

ArmoredSuperHeavy, March 2026

[fanlore-wiki]

Terminology Thursday: Gratuitous Foreign Language

For this Terminology Thursday, we’re exploring Gratuitous Foreign Language, a term used for fanfics written in English that incorporate non-English words, phrases, or dialogue throughout the story. This term is usually used critically, and is often directed at fanfics where the inclusion of a foreign language is show-offy, excessive, or just embarrassingly wrong. This typically appears in dialogue for characters of color or ESL (English as a second language) characters, who may "slip" into their native tongue, especially during emotional or intimate moments like sex scenes.

The main critique is that it’s generally unrealistic. Most multilingual people speak different languages with people who understand them, and unknowingly switching languages in the heat of the moment rarely happens in real life. When overused or done poorly, it can come across as fetishistic. That said, the use of foreign language in fanfiction isn't inherently bad! It can be very effective for conveying setting, demonstrating language barriers between characters, or signifying shifts in tone or relationship dynamics (like with honorifics or Japanese dialects).

Have you encountered gratuitous foreign language in your fandom? Let us know in the comments, then check out the Fanlore page to learn more!

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[minimalsizeconspiracy]

This is one of those posts where I have such mixed feelings on whether I agree with it or not, and mostly I can only conclude that it lacks nuance.

I’m multilingual and also in a relationship with someone whose native language isn’t my own. We do each speak the other’s language (at different levels of proficiency), but there is a clear and distinct bias toward the language that both of us speak more fluently, simply because it’s easier for everyday conversations. We also in addition speak other languages, some of which overlap, some of which don’t, and we work in environments where multilingualism is the norm rather than the exception.

Hence I’m always cautious when it comes to the question of whether the use of foreign language in a fic counts as “gratiuitous” or not. “Realistic code-switching”, from where I stand based on those experiences, most often occurs spontaneously, in everyday interactions and both consciously and unconsciously. And it’s always stupid little things. Like me asking my colleague to hand me a cup for my tea and forgetting the bloody word for “cup” in every single language I speak and I know she will understand (that’s three, by the way. I could have said it in three different languages and she would’ve understood it, and the only word I remembered was language #4, which she doesn’t speak).

Or it’s me starting to teach a lesson in the wrong language, because I’ve taught the exact same lesson in a different language just an hour before, and only noticing it when my students are giving me blank stares.

Or my partner and me discussing a specific topic that we’ve both studied, but in different languages, and using our native terms for particular concepts and ideas because we don’t know what they are in the respective other language. This isn’t me being pretentious, there are topics I can only talk about in my third language, because I don’t know the right terms in the first two. Because I never studied the subject in the first two languages and never read literature about it in those languages.

To people who aren’t familiar with these issues, I can see how that comes across as show-offy or excessive. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s my actual, lived experience.

Multilingual people do speak different languages with people who understand them, and they also unconsciously switch languages in the heat of the moment, or if a word has suddenly dropped out of their brain, or because the only word they know for the concept is in a different language. It can be conscious and it can be unconscious, it all depends on the situation and how preoccupied you are with trying to convey your thoughts rather than how you’re conveying them. In my relationship, we also consciously use terms in a different language because they encapsulate the exact feeling/concept we’re trying to express better than the word in the predominant language.

Multilingualism is so much more complex and individual than “being able to speak different languages”. There’s all kinds of weird phenomena that happen. Carrying over words, intonation, even grammatical structures without noticing is a completely normal phenomenon and usually referred to as “interference”. Languages aren’t distinct silos in our brains, they mess with each other all the time.

Proficiency also plays a big role. I’m much more likely to fall back on my other languages when speaking a language I’m only capable of using at the A or B1 levels. And the kinds of interferences I get also differ between languages. Sometimes it’s more the words, sometimes it’s more the grammar that carries over. So just because I don’t struggle with or have experienced a specific kind of interference doesn’t mean that the kind of interference described in a fic doesn’t exist.

So, at the end of the day, as so many things, I believe this mostly boils down to the actual experiences people have had, because what is unrealistic for one person may be what happens to another person every single day. “Gratuitous Foreign Language” use in fic would be “during sex”. Because that, in my experience, doesn’t happen.

But I’m a sample size of 1.

[hooksbooks]

I'll add another person to your sample size. My spouse and I share two languages. He speaks mine better than I speak his so that's what we usually use, but I'm decently proficient in his. He also speaks a couple more that I don't, and I speak a bit of a couple more he doesn't. It's decently often we can't think of a specific word for something and so toss out the word in another language, even if it's one the other person doesn't speak. It's more likely we can guess that way instead of just saying, "you know, the *thing*".

And falling back into your native language is definitely more likely in times of stress or high emotion. When I was at the hospital giving birth, there was so much going on with my body that my brain decided speaking the local language was way down on the priority list and I told my husband to translate for me, even though I'd been living there for years and was perfectly able to speak for myself at any other time.

Some affectionate terms I only use in one language, and some in another. Some kinds of flirting I only do in one language, other kinds only in another. I'm so used to certain phrases in my husband's language that if I'm distracted I'll use them with my siblings or parents, who don't speak that language at all. One time I was spending the weekend at my mom's house with the whole family together, and we adults had been using a language we all spoke but the kids didn't as a "secret language" to discuss things we didn't want the kids to overhear that when I called my husband I used it without even thinking about it. He very politely waited until I was done rattling off whatever it was, and then said "You do know I have no idea what you just said, right?"

So some inclusion of foreign phrases is gratuitous, but multilingual people aren't all a monolith and just because some people are really good at code-switching and not using the wrong language with the wrong person (even when distracted or in times of stress!) it doesn't mean we all are.

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

I genuinely like salad I am just also fully convinced that the vast majority of people and restaurants are doing salad wrong. Listen to me. Hold my hand. You have been taken in by Big Lettuce. A salad can be primarily other things. Crunchy leaves are the foundation of the salad but you cannot build a whole building out of them. The other stuff in the salad is not just "toppings" it is the rest of the salad.

[rederiswrites]

The real thing with ADHD is not "I forgot", but that forgetting is this ongoing process. I remembered! And then I forgot.

At ten this (hypothetical) morning I remembered that I have a meeting at six. And then from 11 through 3 I worked on other stuff and had zero thoughts about that meeting. Maybe even thought about what I was gonna do with my evening at home. Got attached to the idea of taking the time to make a good dinner, maybe play some video games.

And then at three I said, "Oh! Fuck!" and remembered again, hopefully long enough to set an alarm. And then I went to the bathroom and remembered that I need to clean the counter and spent twenty minutes cleaning the bathroom and went to get a snack and then at five I said, "OH! FUCK!" and had to scramble to dress like a real adult and get out the door.

It isn't one clean forgetting. It's a constant process of forgetting and then, with an exhausting adrenaline spike, remembering. And then forgetting. Baby, I can forget the same thing more times in a day than you ever forgot your parents' anniversary.

[cparti-mkiki]

amen