Uh Oh

like this is what i am talking about people keep thinking there is such a thing as an "actual book" or "professional literature" that is "complex" this is stupid. you are actually uncritically reproducing and valorizing the divisions that class writing and literature and art without examining where these divisions came from and why they exist and whose power they reinforce. and it is not useful that we keep having this same silly conversation in fandom about whether fanfiction is Real Literature Or Not because if you really get down to it there isn't such a thing as Real Literature. and i think that for some reason that's really hard for a lot of people to admit especially when a significant part of their personality is built around the notion that they are Good At Reading And Read Real Books and other people are bad at reading because they read fanfiction which is stupid and bad. but reading real books is clearly not helping you to actually think critically about things so what is the point? i think it would be much more helpful to ask questions like

does my reading constitute a representative sample of what is out there? do i more frequently encounter samples that i would consider "good/bad writing" in fanfic than in published work or vice versa? what shapes my exposure to samples of writing from either medium? how do the samples i am exposed to color my perception of the medium?

how do we perceive the process of publishing? do i feel that it grants legitimacy and ensures quality? what do "legitimacy" or "quality" mean to me? does publishing reliably confer these characteristics and how does it gain the power to do so? on the other hand, do i feel that it only functions as a gatekeeping mechanism, which makes me hostile to its outputs because it is biased against groups and kinds of writing i care about?

am i predisposed to be more generous to one medium than another? what influences the generosity with which i approach a work in either medium? am i more generous to the fanfic author in consideration of the hobbyist and amateur nature of her work or am i more generous to the published author because i feel that there must be something good here that i am missing?

is there a reason there exist more samples of bad writing in one medium than another? is that due to the nature of the medium itself pulling down the quality? or is there some other salient characteristic of the medium which affects the standards to which it aspires? because standards may differ from one medium to another, i am perhaps more inclined to one set of standards - but does that mean the other has no redeeming qualities?

are writers good because they are published or published because they are good? are writers not published because they are bad or bad because they are not published? are all published writers good? are they all good in the same way? are all published writers who are bad bad in the same way? are all fanfic writers good/bad in the same way? if i think the ways in which many different writers are bad can be reduced and traced to the same causes, am i able to reliably discern the quality of an individual work on its own merits whatever those merits may be? can i be aware of and graceful to perceptions of quality and goodness not my own?

what themes does this piece of writing hope to tackle? does it tackle them well? why might an author choose to tackle their themes through one medium and not another? am i able to be both graceful and critical towards a given work? do i feel that certain flaws (bad grammar, cliched writing, poor spelling) have an inherent and indelible impact on the work's complexity, goodness, and precision? why would an author's grasp over the technicalities of language be in this sense poor? is a grasp of language a prerequisite for a grasp of storytelling and nuance? can there be reasons why writers with poor grasp of language gravitate to one medium over another? why do writers whose grasp over other languages may be stronger choose to write in english? what does a hostility towards such writing say about the structures within me and without me that dictate the value of writing and writers?

What's the first "big news story" you remember from when you were a kid?

It's something I love to ask mixed-aged groups sometimes because I think it's really interesting to see the responses. I've gotten answers from the Olympics of [whatever year] to Watergate to more recent stuff from my niblings.

weight of the world

The Serpent

click for better quality

leaf obtained, purpose unclear

ground:

unclear

sibling obtained, purpose: biting

weight of the world