We will not surrender to the narrow view of gender

🏳️‍⚧️/🎧/🇦🇺/♿/♾️ pfp: gotchibam

[hollowboobtheory]

[juteanworld]

Fanfiction is just modern myth telling

It ties into the ancient tradition of collective storytelling much more than modern "original" literature.

It's telling stories around a virtual campfire about heroes and villains widely known, or not really known at all that like myths keep changing and exist in many separate versions at the same which all still influence each other And like ancient myths, fanfictions will always be directly shaped by the needs and wishes of their authors and their audience, whether that is the yearning and dreaming about incredible far away places or dealing with the mundane reality of work at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

This is based on my personal views on fanfiction which have only gotten more passionate over the years since I first started reading and writing it in 2008, helped in part in recent times by the wonderful @headspace-hotel articulating thoughts on it much more clearly and radically than I managed to (or dared to) before.

From a recent post I particularly liked this part:

"the buckyfic universe extends way beyond the confines of what 'canon' could offer or appeal to people, and it is not beholden to canon, it is a collective story we are telling together"

It was part of a conversation about a particular character (Bucky from the MCU), but I think it applies just as well to any fanfiction community centered around a character (like Naruto), setting (Vertumna), or even just general premise (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon stories, which are only united by having a world with a pokemon society and no human-looking humans). Because I don't want to derail it when turning that into a general point like that, I thought I could make my own post here.

Like premodern storytelling, fanfiction is a collective experience!

It's (almost) always done in a community, where a bigger or smaller group of people write or read them in the same place together, now usually through a website, or before that through fanzine contributions and conventions.

Whereas both writing and hearing/reading mainstream literature has become much more or even entirely solitary, in a way that fanfiction at the most basic level is not. In fact, writing an "original" story is perhaps one of the most prototypical solitary jobs in modern times, unless they are collaborations (which is rare), or the author has a big team of proofreaders and other people employed that keep close contact (even rarer).

Like myths, fanfictions tend to have many origins, but also always one connecting element!

1. Source materials As the quote above shows, contrary to what many people (wrongly) believe about fanfiction, there's never just a single source material for all fanfics of any community, and much less one authoritative source that all have to follow.

Many authors enjoy using more than one source material, either explicitly in crossovers (making their story part of several communities), or as inspiration the way it is normally seen in mainstream literature and discussions about it.

Even many stories that don't overtly draw from various existing works will ignore whatever they want from their "canon", as the popularity of Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe and parody shows. They exist for basically every fandom, even small ones with just a couple writers and a few hundred stories. 2. Other fanfictions But, as the quote emphasizes, it's by far not just existing works that serve as sources of inspiration! ALL fanfictions rely to various degrees on other fanfictions as inspiration (whether other stories from the same, or from other communities) as much as the single thing that connects them and binds them all together as a community. Which can be, as said above, the passion for someone like Bucky, an exoplanet that you only got glimpses of or the fascination with the idea of a society of a huge variety of weird creatures, but no normal humans at all, that leads to thousands of people imagining thousands of settings each with their own characters! The last one basically requires you to do everything that an author of mainstream literature also has to do, describe and bring to life an original setting, with original characters (even if their appearance is based on existing designs) and an original storyline. 3. Archetypes, tropes and storylines that often originated in fan communities Though it's not just communities like that which end up giving rise to shared archetypes, popular tropes and recurrent storylines, every fanfiction community has those! Some types of characters might reappear in the work of many different authors, or popular interpretations of source material (or "canon") characters that didn't exist in the source get widely adopted across a big range of works, which is sometimes called "fanon". Romance (usually called shipping, from relationship-ing) stories, which make up the bulk of fanfiction, particularly will also re-use many tropes that have no presence in the source either, such as the infamous But There Was Only One Bed, or And They Were Roommates, which originate more as "funny or interesting situations to put characters into". And while many popular storylines will be lifted from "canon", such a journey stories in Pokemon fanfiction taking after the anime or the games, many, especially those that have become popular across communities were entirely fan-created independent of any work, like Coffeeshop AUs! Cozy "original" coffeeshop literature only appeared relatively recently around 2020. 4. Personal feelings, experiences and passions... and the mundane And of course, personal feelings of any fanfiction writers will consciously or sometimes unconsciously show up in what they write, just like with any other author! Fanfiction is used to deal with difficult emotions or experiences just as much as "original" writing is.

Many people will also happily include small and big joys of their lives, their passions, or their jobs in it. And having a more mundane workplace such as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation hasn't stopped fanfiction writers.

They will simply have Naruto and Sasuke's dynamic show up in their approach to office politics and bureaucracy, or have Naruto's ambition include becoming adapt at packing boxes and factory banter instead of ninja stuff. This is known as the Take Your Fandom to Work approach.

FanLore, a wiki encyclopedia dedicated to fan communities or fandoms in general has an article on the Public Bureaucracy Naruto story and how popular it has become with Canadian public servants:

The Factory Operative Naruto idea goes back to the user manta on a small writing community on Discord, the WIP Project:

"ugh naruto, don't you know anything? any REAL factory operative knows you need 612 code cardboard boxes for pouches, not 621s... stop embarrassing yourself and just quit already..." "oh just you see sasuke. I'm going to become the best factory operative you've ever seen. Someday, I'll even wear the specialist green coat. I'll treat all the temps with respect. I'll be the height of efficiency AND playful banter! That's my factory operative code! Believe it!"

--manta (mantaofthebanter)

The only meaningfully different change compared to premodern times is that we now have additional means of communicating and hence passing on stories. But I haven't heard anyone say that this makes other kind of modern literature or stories fundamentally different from premodern ones. Like, love stories are still love stories, stories about adventure are still stories about adventure. etc. Like with fanfiction, the style, themes etc. and means of preserving and telling them has changed, but fundamentally they are still very similar. But as said in the beginning, fanfiction retains in many ways the collective storytelling part that mainstream literature, especially commercial literature, absolutely does not have anymore.

In fact, fanfiction is fundamentally all that which commercial literature struggles to be or simply can't be, because fanfiction is unmarketable and refuses to bend to market or social pressures at large, and so never has to follow what's currently popular, profitable or promoted by a government.

It makes room for all those who find no place in mainstream literature, especially for many of those at the margins of society like queer people or anyone who seeks a community of completely free self-expression, authentic representation, radical themes that does writing exclusively for the art, where money matters nothing and truly anyone can participate. Or to sum it up with an edit of one of Sarah Anderson's webcomics, Sarah's Scribbles:

[juteanworld]

"Let us not forget that [myths, fairy tales, folklore stories] were improvised in social spaces as an early form of collective bargaining, with call and response, give and take, and a chatty back-and-forth that often took the form of 'That's not how I heard it.'"

Maria Tatar (The Heroine with 1001 Faces)

[kurhanchyk]

"errm actually not all ai is bad" bro the internet is fucking unusable you know what ai i'm talking about

[pukicho]

I'd love it if just once a company could admit their own fuck-up without having to drag it out. Instead of feigning ignorance, and giving us the phony "we hear you" speech that always means nothing, they just changed their fucking minds and moved on from their mistake. Why is it always a war of attrition with these companies?

[william-snekspeare]

working memory bad 💚

[william-snekspeare]

ALTERNATE ENDING:

there are lots of coping mechanisms out there but this is the only method that (sometimes) works on my wretched brain. can't remember? predict the Future

[thehighpriestofreverseracism]

Friendly reminder that the intro to Lion King….the non english bits leading up to the “circle of life” is not random yelling in *Africa voice* it is an actual language, Zulu, spoken by 10 million people, it is the most widely spoken language (out of 11) in the country of South Africa (1 out of the 54 countries in the continent of Africa, the continent home  to somewhere between 1500-2000 languages and around 3000 distinct ethnic groups)

this isn’t to say that you have to friggin learn the language to sing along with a disney film, it just means that you should be mindful, respectful, appreciative and respectful. don’t be yelling out whatever noise comes in to your head when you hear it

[melancholic-pie]

Ok but someone knows what does this say?

[thehighpriestofreverseracism]

The lyrics before the english comes in…in “circle of life”

Nants ingonyama bagithi baba [Here comes a lion, Father] Sithi uhm ingonyama [Oh yes, it’s a lion] Nants ingonyama bagithi baba [Here comes a lion, Father] Sithi uhm ingonyama [Oh yes, it’s a lion] Ingonyama [It’s a lion] Siyo Nqoba [We’re going to conquer] Ingonyama Ingonyama nengw’ enamabala [A lion and a leopard come to this open place] (repeats) [queue English lyrics]

I would like to further add that language has there own cultural nuances so something that can sound extremely meaningful in one languages may not sound as majestic when translated to another (I know this as someone who has an understanding of 5 languages and speaks 3 of them fluently) so if you are thinking “oh it ain’t that deep they are just yelling: the lion is coming!” dial it back

[haileyastraea]

Worth noting that “lion” and especially the word Ingonyama is a very respectful word to talk about a Zulu king, especially in praise. It’s so heavily associated with royalty in isiZulu that a different word is used for an animal lion - Ibhubesi. This isn’t just announcing the arrival of an animal, it’s celebrating the arrival (or coronation?) of the king

[thehighpriestofreverseracism]

/\ Whoop, I didn’t know this

[toastbutteregg]

This is so informative thank you so much

[krakenartificer]

Lemme tell you, I was not dividing those syllables into words in the right places AT ALL

[the-loquacious-lark]

I would also like to state that the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” is an extremely washed out version of the original song “Mbube” by Solomon Linda, a South African musician. It was appropriated by the west and he never received credit or money for what became an extremely famous song. His family eventually received a small sum from Disney for the song but again, not much considering the history of the song. There is a documentary about it right now on netflix. 

[thehighpriestofreverseracism]

full article here

[thehighpriestofreverseracism]

This is one of my most favourite posts I’ve made but I hate all of the typos on my part….but I’m grateful it landed with people

[cricketcat9]

Learned something new 👍👍👍 today

[usaghinanami99]

And The Lion King is the only Disney film officially dubbed in Zulu! https://disneyinternationaldubbings.weebly.com/the-lion-king–zulu-cast.html

[creatingblackcharacters]

so it won't let me insert the link, but that may be normal. The Flint clean water fund is still ongoing, and they need help making that final push! Lance has been running it for eight years now

https://gofund.me/c74f7cccd

Donate to Water The Planet: Relief Fund, organized by Lance Cooper

Water The Planet is dedicated to combating injustice and providing clean water, aware… Lance Cooper needs your support for Water The P

Money for war, but never enough for the poor! Paraphrased Tupac.

[pritheworld]

A half-century of powerful and proud Nigerian hair - J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere

[eggpngg2]

RUDEGYAL, an Ode to the Masc Caribbeans of NY, shot by Jaadyn Rogers

[creatingblackcharacters]

hi! first of all happy Black History month. i really love your blog and the work you do, thank you.

i just got out of a showing of a beautiful documentary called ‘Seeking Mavis Beacon’ and wanted to recommend it to you (if you’ve not already watched it) and also to your followers. it grapples with a lot of different themes that i feel are relevant to what you want to platform on your blog (like Black People’s ownership over their bodies stories and images, the concept of Black Women permeating the social consciousness as guiders and teachers but never people unto themselves, racial identity in the digital age, and a lot more that i can’t possibly summaries in this ask). it’s also just visually beautiful, i think Jazmin Jones (the director) alongside her team did a really wonderful job of showcasing what it feels like to be a POC navigating yourself and the stories of your people in a world that actively devalues such work.

i hope you’re taking care of yourself, and i hope today is kind to you 🫶🏼

Oh this looks Good. And apparently people were really tearing them down in the comments and reviews, too. Which, not surprising given that the same people who benefit from Black labor do not appreciate having it pointed out. How we're expected to show up as teachers and providers (which, ‼️‼️) but then are expected to slip right back into obscurity. Thank you for sharing!

[sardonyxlestrange]

Happy black history month my lovely ghouls🖤

This is your reminder that black goths and afro goths are valid in their skin, they do not have to change their hair texture or paint their face white in order to be considered goth! Every black feature on you is absolutely gorgeous, do not let anyone tell you that you are ‘white washed’ for doing something you love and being you who are. Wear your skin with pride and do not let anyone tell you it’s not beautiful.

[creatingblackcharacters]

Wasn't as excited about the Grammys this year BUT

DURAND BERNARR WON A GRAMMY!!!!

Black queer musician and icon 🤌🏾🔥 with superior vocals! We're all listening to Fist Bump now 🎵🎶

[creatingblackcharacters]

AND KENDRICK WON TWO MORE AWARDS 🤌🏾🔥 all is not lost

[mermaid-lounge]

Happy Black History Month!!!

[2thicc2function]

The little taps are my favorite.

[chokesngags]

Those taps tho lmao

[padawan-historian]

Original Post: Keith Porter was tragically taken from us by an off-duty ice agent, and his family is seeking justice during this difficult time. Every donation can help support their fight for truth and accountability. Please consider clicking the link below to contribute or share it with others who might want to help. Thank you for your support! https://gofund.me/530afb61e

https://gofund.me/530afb61e

[plavoptice]

Community demands accountability at vigil for father of 2 killed by off-duty ICE agent in Northridge

Advocates say that before Keith Porter was shot and killed by an off-duty ICE agent, he fired gunshots as part of a New Year's Eve celebrati

[heterosexualgayhusbands]

link for the fundraiser is down this is the new one

Donate to Support for Keith’s Daughters After Tragedy, organized by Keith Porter

My 43-year-old son, Keith, was tragically killed on New Year's Eve in Northri… Keith Porter needs your support for Support for Keith’s Daugh

[kasaneteto]

DO NOT CHECK UP ON THAT FRIEND YOU CUT OUT OF YOUR LIFE!!!! DO NOT CHECK UP ON YOUR EX!!!! DO NOT CHECK UP ON THAT OLD COWORKER YOU HATED!!!! IT WON’T HELP YOU!!!! CHOOSE YOURSELF!!!!

[stephenroot]

Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting

The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agen

The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.

[stephenroot]

[luthientinuvielss]

Queen Latifah and Doechii presenting the Grammy for Best Rap Album (2026)