/lit/ - Literature

it already is: Faust part II

Dear god, I hope not

But there are some fanfics that are really well-made, that actually have good plot, good use of grammar, etc.
Is this not literature? And if not, why so?

You should check out this guy Milton, he wrote a killer fanfic set in the Bible universe. Good stuff, it even is better than a lot of the canon.

Nope.

It's why I could never take Wide Sargasso Sea seriously.

YOUR BEST KNOWN WORK IS A PREQUEL TO JANE FUCKING EYRE, YOU'RE A FAILURE AS A WRITER.

>>1400785
or Virgil you know, greatest greek fanfic author out there

>>1400772
http://www.4chan.org/rules#lit
Rule #3

well i think fac-fic is to original content the same way mods are to "built from the ground up" vidya gaems. They may very well be built by competent, albiet amature, designers, but their only using assets from the original content.

>>1400792
i think they just don't want people making ERNEST fan-fiction threads. i e "do u think "x" fan-fiction is thematically congruent with it's source material?"
I think a discussion of how fan-fiction relates to the literary ethos should be ok

>>1400804
>>1400792
>implying all the rules aren't broken flagrantly everyday
>implying we have mods or that they care

>>1400808
ya i guess that's true, this board is SERIOUS BUISNESS about what it's designated for

Why can't fan fiction be literature? Who ever said it wasn't? Because they're an idiot.

Well, ive read tons of good fanfics that i would consider to be real works.

>>1400796
I'm gonna steal this comparison and look smart and there's nothing you can do about that!

>>1400785

>well i think fac-fic is to original content the same way mods are to "built from the ground up" vidya gaems. >They may very well be built by competent, albiet amature, designers, but their only using assets from the original content.

This is ridiculous and probably even a counterexample to the point you're making. First of all, apply your logic to any computer game. They're "only" using assets provided by the operating system. Therefore they haven't produced anything original that the makers of Windows (or OS of choice) couldn't have done itself. No, the nature of fanfiction requires going beyond the literary assets of the source material, otherwise you're just describing a transcription, which while artistic in process hardly counts as an artistic statement and I wouldn't count it as literature.

Second of all, there are mods that are inarguably games unto themselves. Portal basically made one change to the Half-Life engine. The rest is "borrowed assets". Other games are built on the Unreal engine that are as encompassing in many respects as the Unreal games. In "serious literature" already, novellas routinely take place in an author's universe or as an homage to or in response to other author's constructions.

What's the hole in this seemingly logical post? Well, that a vast preponderance of fan-fics are basically ridiculous wish-fulfillment fantasies, romantic detours that use the names of the characters, and rarely add any new sorts of messages or themes, etc. But even though it's true, this is a generalization and hardly encompasses all possibilities.

I don't think that 'literature' is a really important category, one that's easy to define, one that really means anything. So I would say don't worry about whether it's 'a form of literature'. The statement is meaningless.

Judged on its own merits, I think that, although fanfiction can be quite entertaining and well-made and enjoyable and even meritorious, I think that fanfiction which has artistic content and depth is going to be extraordinarily rare

(and yeah artistic relevance isn't much easier to define than literature but w/e)

What about Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality? It's an HP fanfic written by this philosopher or something pointing out how a human scientist exposed to the magical world could basically become God.

>>1401134
it's by a scientist

and it makes an interesting point and its cool and all. but it's not good 'from a literary standpoint' (as problematic as that notion is)

Is And Another Thing a fanfiction of HHGTTG?
If yes, then is it literature simply because it was published?
If no, then what is the difference between what we consider a fanfic and what we don't? Authors approval? Popularity?

>>1401140
i would argue that there's some notion of 'canonicity'

actually i would argue that fanfiction is specifically things that are produced by the fanfiction community but that's probably too pat

>>1401144
yes, yes it is

>>1401144
'Literature' is not synonymous with canonical validity by any means, it is rather the fact that fan-fiction 99 times out of hundred is aesthetically inferior. It is not though categorical, look at Milton and Dante.

So the term literature depends on the quality of work?
Is this the real definition or is it just what we think about when we think of literature?

this is the definition I found (5s on google)
:
Imaginative or creative writing, especially of recognized artistic value.

So it has to be
imaginative, creative
in writing
recognised as art

I think a lot of published books only ever manages to do one of those.
Are they not literature then?

Okay, fuck fanfiction.

What about fictionpress.com? I've read some pretty good stuff on there; very decent and respectable. There are many people on there who could hit it as legitimate published authors, but just decide to post their stuff on the Internet.

im going to be honest and tell the truth, most of my ideas start as crackfics, they go so far away from the original content that become independent; later i just change names

>>1401176
links or dint happen

no
but so what?

It's highly unlikely.

There are cases where specific genre fiction, due to quality and perhaps popularity, can transcend genre into literary fiction. However, I would imagine such an occurrence for fan-fiction in particular is a rarity.

Sure. It's usually not good, but it's still literature. And some slash is pretty hot.

>>1403955
>some slash is pretty hot

underageb&

>>1404336

Pff. Underage kids don't have the patience to READ their porn.

>>1404345
do you know what slash is? romance

>>1404345
actually that's only true of underage dudes

it's kind of a truism but in general women are much more responsive to written porn, men are much more responsive to visual porn

>>1404357
not... not really... i mean, some of it is, but a lot of it is just hardcore fucking

>>1400785

For every Milton, there's a self insertion like Blake writing his Mary Sue stories

>>1404368
fucking is lemon or lime

>>1401176
Fictionpress is a pretty decent site, but it's definitely not fanfiction.

Fanfics are good for a fap and laugh, and there is the occasional gem, but there is so much crap out there noone wants to take it seriously.

Are you serious? I mean, here:

>Literature (from Latin litterae (plural); letter) is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word literature means "acquaintance with letters" (as in the "arts and letters"). The two most basic written literary categories include fiction and non fiction.

That's from Wikipedia, and it's 100% correct, by the way. If it's writing, it's literature.

>>1404580
ENTIRE THREAD IS LITERATURE

>>1404590

Sure. Why not? Using the word as a designation of quality/whatever is fucking retarded.

Encyclopedia Britannica

>literature, a body of written works.

It's a pretty general term that's subject to tons of misuse and misunderstanding, yet it's so easy to just LOOK IT UP and sort through the dumb definitions.