/lit/ - Literature

We make fun of fanfiction because most of it is legitimately terrible. However, isn't fanfiction as a medium a legitimate response to modern copyright law?

For most of the history of literature, nobody could claim exclusive ownership of the stories they wrote, the concepts they developed, or the characters they created. This meant that most authors were poor as shit. However, it also meant that those stories, concepts, and characters could freely be taken up and reexamined by different authors, not to mention by artists, playwrights, and musicians. Consider the Arthurian legends. Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Thomas Mallory, and others all took their turns writing these characters. Whoever was the original 'inventor' of the characters and stories and themes in the Arthur cycle couldn't lay a formal claim on them, and as a result we got multiple masterpieces of Western literature.

It even still goes on today with characters in the public domain. Consider all the different interpretations of Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Cinderella, and others. Some of them are bad, but some of them are good, and we wouldn't be getting any of them if those characters and stories weren't free for use by all.

Copyright of stories and characters and concepts enriches authors, but I wonder if it doesn't make Western literature poorer. Does it deny future writers access to things with which they could create their own masterpieces? And looked at that way, is fanfiction such a bad thing? Sure, we're always talking about the need to tell original stories, but there's got to be room for retellings and borrowing in the future, right? It's such an important staple of Western literature that I worry what will happen to us without it. And if writers can't do it 'officially,' we're stuck with fanfiction, for good or ill.

I fear anonymity. This may perhaps be an offshoot of growing up in a dual-parent family with a large extended family. I was showered with attention as a child, so maybe this is a consequence of it. But nowadays I'm terrified of dying in obscurity. I want to be remembered. I guess I want to be as special as I was always told I'd be as a child, and I fear not being so. I want to be legendary and fear being forgotten.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm devoutly religious and pretty spiritual, so I actually also fear ghosts, demons, and monsters. For real.

I'd rather die in obscurity and live forever afterwards than live a big life and be forgotten immediately after dying.

>sail to Troy
>rekt shepherds and farmers
>steal their women
>get keked by based Agamemnon
>throw a huge bitch fit
>refuse to fight with your bros anymore
>pray that your bros are killed so that they beg you to return
>still refuse when they beg and offer gifts
>eventually let your best bro go out in your armor to fight off destruction
>he dies
>instead of blaming yourself, you blame all of Troy
>kill based Hector because your god-forged armor is literally impenetrable
>drag his body behind your chariot
>continue to bitch about how your best bro is dead despite the fact it's your fault
>die young and like a bitch in Troy because of "muh glory"

Holy shit is there a worse person in literature than Achilles? "Best of the Acheans" my fucking ass.

Diomedes and Odysseus are the only reasons I didn't root 100% for the Trojans.

He's not wrong. We need to dial things back to the Medieval Era. We must cast off the false relativism of Modernism and Postmodernism and embrace Absolute Truth yet again.

>>6104675
>>6106219
Homer really is the original writer of action scenes, and he IS great. Homer is particularly good at describing scenes between humans and monsters or humans and gods or normal men and demigods. Achilles killing his way across the fields of Troy is so fucking great. Most modern fantasy writers could learn how to depict the fantastical from Homer.

>>5854079
Oh, fuck off.

What good has your purity of artistic pursuit done you? You probably say it makes YOU happy, but does it really? Art is at its best when it's shared, when others can pursue the meaning in a work and find greater purpose in it.

All great artists want to spread their art around. Even Kafka- Borges makes a great point about this in an interview he did with The Paris Review back in 1966. Borges makes the excellent point that Kafka told Brod to burn his work after he died, but he MUST have known Brod would do no such thing. If Kafka REALLY wanted his work destroyed, he would have done it himself. Even Kafka- and Vergil, and Emily Dickinson- cherished the thought of achieving glory. It is the goal of all writers to live forever.

I have written several literary stories with a slice of life bent. They concern a group of girls studying at an all girls' school. The cast of characters and their adventures was inspired by Azumanga Daioh, but over time they've all become their own people.

I've also continued to write historical fantasy, particularly in my more fantastical/sword-and-sorcery version of the Viking Ages, with a demigoddess protagonist I've used on several occasions.

I've also been writing some fanfiction.

Anyone have any experience with The Fiction Circus? Their "transparent slush pile" is intriguing to me, and I'm told they do a decent job of putting eyes on your writing.

http://fictioncircus.com/index.php

Yes, yes, I KNOW they use Reddit. To get my writing seen I'll put up with it, much like Churchill making an ally of Stalin.