Meta for the Rainbow Book Exchange — Fangirl. Spoilers, I guess?
Chapter 11 - Cath talking to Professor Piper.
Okay, this is the part, in this whole book, that I have a big believability problem with. (It’s not, like, a book ruiner or anything… but it is a pretty big thing, I think.)
Because here’s the thing — it is utterly unbelievable to me that Cath is surprised by this, and by this reaction.
Cath isn’t dumb. She would know that turning in fanfiction to a creative writing class is suspect. (Heck, for most of the school-run creative writing classes I’ve been in (though, granted, those were a while ago), even thinking about trying to turn in anything that could be considered “genre” felt wildly risky and borderline not-allowed.) Less than twenty pages later, while talking to Levi about fanfiction in the diner, it even says, specifically: “She was so used to keeping it a secret—used to assuming people would think she was a freak and a nerd and a pervert….” (p. 124) On page 107 it says, “all the arguments came easily to Cath; they were the justification for all fanfiction.” (“Borrowing… repurposing. Remixing. Sampling. … It’s not illegal.”) She’s been doing this a long time; she’s thought about this, she’s had to defend this…
So why does she seem surprised?
I can believe that Cath writes the story and turns it in (maybe she didn’t have time to do something else, or maybe she was just really excited about this particular story idea and thought it fit the assignment perfectly and knew that she would do a good job on it), but I can’t believe that she doesn’t worry about it at all (especially when she doesn’t get her paper back), and I can’t believe that she’s so utterly surprised and shocked by Prof. Piper’s reaction.
And here’s something that could fix it: if we saw her worrying a bit about it beforehand, maybe rationalizing it — after all, there are TONS of what are essentially fanfiction assignments in all kinds of different classes, including history and English class and all… even creative writing classes, if the fandom is something like mythology. (I have SUCH a list, both from high school and college: newspaper based on The Hobbit; diary of Marie Curie for science class; epistolary retelling of To Kill a Mockingbird; alternate ending for Sense and Sensibility; myth retelling from Orpheus’s lyre’s POV for Latin class; the list goes on…) It would also help if they’d talked in their class about the complex, interwoven nature of inspiration and ideas and the way works play off one another in literature.
But yeah, if Cath had thought about that beforehand—and then decided, “oh, it’ll be okay, Professor Piper will understand.” (Which is a huge emotional risk for Cath, isn’t it. There’d be that sense of hope and daring, maybe a little bit defiant, and trying to reassure yourself, it’ll be alright, it’ll be alright… Thinking that she can trust Prof. Piper to get it, that she’s safe.)
And then SHE DOESN’T. (Like, at all. I love Prof. Piper, but rereading that scene, I almost question whether she even read Cath’s whole paper. She clearly doesn’t understand fanfiction and hasn’t thought about it at all, though it’s possible she’s considered it a little more before their future meetings. As, to be honest, she should; do I even need to mention things like Wide Sargasso Sea, or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead? See also one of my favorite quotes.)
And then Cath, who probably didn’t realize how subconsciously important this was to her (and maybe still doesn’t, consciously), would be obviously just crushed. (Partly because she was sharing something so close to her heart, partly because mother figure, etc etc etc.) Much like she is, anyway, but without that nagging problem of seeming dumb for being surprised that this was an issue.
To me, this would also have the benefit of making her decision to tell Levi about it all, and talk about fanfiction with him, that much more poignant and brave — having just taken the risk of sharing this with someone, and having been shot down painfully, she still decides to do it again anyway. (I mean, this is what happened anyway, it would just be a little more emphasized, maybe.)
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