#csucomposition

In the video above J. K. Rowling answered questions about the 7th Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, prior to its release. It was the mark of the beginning of the end of a journey, much as this post is the same. While we haven’t been through as much with this writing experience as Mrs. Rowling had with hers, it has still been nearly half a year of writing and reading these things. It’s hard for some things to end, but it does become an unfortunate consequence of everything. Everything has to end at some point, and that includes amazing book series or even awesome classes.

  J.K. Rowling accomplished so much, and at the end of the video she gets to hear fans from across the U.K., including their Prime Minister, praising her work and everything that she has done. She was able to accomplish so much thanks to writing, and she has earned the praise that is given to her. I would like to do the same for this composition class as my farewell through these blog posts.

  Those of us in the 10 a.m. CO150 class have been going through the semester learning about how to improve our writing, all with the help of our awesome teacher Whitney Orth. She fostered the idea for us to use these blogs as a tool to improve our writing skills, give us a medium that we could actually use to present ourselves, our opinions, our skills, our thoughts, and so much more in a meaningful way. Instead of just some writing assignment that would be stuck on a piece of paper that would be immediately thrown away at the end of the semester, we had the opportunity to present this writing to everyone in the class, and to some degrees beyond the class.

The video above is a dramatic reading of one of the most famous bad fanfictions in the Lord of the Rings fandom. The story popped up on popular fanfiction website fanfiction.net years ago to critical appall. The world of bad fanfiction is a precarious one, as each fandom gets that one fic that becomes upheld as the worst of the worst. The problem this poses is people trying to create fanfics that are purposefully terrible in order to gain fame. Not to burst the bubble of the masterpiece presented above, it was unfortunately revealed to have been made terrible on purpose. So how common is this idea to make terrible fanfiction or even books just for the purpose of satire or fame.

  We saw the beginning of the creation of the novel Awoken as a parody of the Twilight-esque Young Adult genre. It was made purposefully bad by the authors in order to properly satire the genre they were representing, trying to make it seem authentic. Therein lies the problem of whether or not this is a thing that society should condone. While the Awoken project did seem to be genuine in its intent, some may have less noble (kind of?) intentions. Like the author of “legolas by laura” some works of horrible fiction are made simply to troll, to earn fame, or earn money. Their work simply takes form what has become popular, whether good or, in this case, bad, and attempts to gain something from the success of those that have already broken ground in this unfortunate field.  

Out is the fantasy romance, in is the post-apocalypse romance.

We saw the trend of fantasy romance within the young adult genre really pick up pace with the popularity of Twilight. When that became a best seller, you couldn’t go to the YA section of the library or book store without seeing things like: Twilight with Fairies, Twilight with Aliens, Twilight with Werewolves, Twilight with Zombies, Twilight with Cthulhu.  This is the genre that a lot of authors either had in the back of their minds and seized the opportunity, or they thought it was the one that would make them money.

But with the fall of Twilight after its movie series ended, and Hunger Games became its box office replacement, we are now seeing an astounding number of dystopia romance novels taking up the YA section. From Hunger Games to Divergent to Cinder, we see that dystopia is now the go to genre for the Young Adult shelves. So why is this?

We could mostly trace this to three different things:

The fantasy romance genre was drying up, so dystopia was the next step. While the fantasy element had its run, there is only so much time you can spend on that subject before it becomes stale. The solution was to move on to a new genre, and dystopia was the solution. It’s futuristic enough that it separates itself from what is seen as an “older” genre.

It became the new popular one. The fantasy romance genre took off for YA with the success of Twilight and its movies. When those began to end (haha), the crowds that both loved and, to a certain degree, hated Twilight moved on to the Hunger Games series. This shifted the popular genre from fantasy to dystopian, to follow the trend of the successful plot line. This allowed authors to form their stories around something that was rising in popularity, and leaving behind the one that was winding down.

It’s easy to write a story around the dystopian premise. While it was popular, the fantasy romance genre was able to pull the basis of its stories from already established material. All that had to go into it was modernizing those stories and introducing a heavy romance element. The same happens with dystopia. They all are able to follow the same premise of “New post-apocalypse government is evil, protagonist has to defeat government, protagonist somehow finds time to find love or fall into the (oh my god I hate this premise so much) love triangle, finally protagonist most likely ends up with the love interest that the majority of fans hated.”

In the above video, you see the beginning of a crowd-sourced project to create a parody of recent fantasy and/or romance novels such as Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey. These two internet critics decided to team together with a bunch of their talented fans to create a parody work akin to the 1969 novel Naked Came the Stranger.

The concept came to them when one of them, going by critic name Nostalgia Chick, decided that she would start her own romance novel. The project quickly turned into delving into the world of Young Adult fiction in the modern era. Quite a few rows in the YA sections of bookstores and libraries seem to be littered with these paranormal romance stories, a fact that the group creating this temporarily marked “50 Shades of Green” took a long, critical look at.

Throughout their series, the Shades of Green group delved into the different aspects that went into books writing as they themselves reached those points, discussing how these elements are being used for modern novels. One of the biggest points they brought up was the recent insurgence of paranormal elements into the romance genre. While it may have been more common in adult romance literature, it is a more recent development for the YA audience, ever since the popularity of Twilight. The next big point they bring up is the use of the “blank slate” female lead of these novels. Starting with Bella Swan in Twilight, the protagonists of these teen romance novels seem to be bland, “average American” in terms of appearance, and usually do not do much of their own accord. This topic was breached as being a way for female teen readers to slip into the character, using them as a sort of avatar to put themselves into the story.

Before the spoilers, here is a link to the playlist of their entire series, covering the writing process and other aspects of the book making process. The playlist starts at the most recent video, so go to the last one up to see them in order:

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/team-nchick/50-shades-of-green

  *SPOILERS FOR THE VIDEOS, IF THIS TOPIC INTERESTS YOU, I HIGHLY SUGGEST YOU WATCH THEIR SERIES AND STOP READING THIS BLOG POST RIGHT NOW.*

  All of these aspects led to the creation of the teen paranormal romance parody book, Awoken by Serra Elinsen. The novel is described as Twilight with the Cthulu mythos, spawning from the series’ original idea of doing 50 Shades of Grey with aliens (hence the title 50 Shades of Green). If you want to buy the book (according to fans of the video series, it’s actually better than Twilight, which isn’t really saying much but oh well) you can get it here: https://www.createspace.com/4388546

While I could easily research about a million “experts” on the topic of whether or not writing can or should be considered art, I’ve decided for today to just inject my own opinion on this hotly debated topic.

In my opinion, writing should be considered an art form. Visual art like paintings, movies, and TV shows are used to tell us a story while providing the visuals directly, letting us infer most of the inner dialogue and struggles of the characters without directly telling us. Writing is, in essence, the exact opposite. The inner dialogue and struggles are stated almost directly to the audience, and it’s up to them to visualize this world.

Writers are forced in a way to create whole new worlds with which their characters can occupy. And they usually are constrained to do this only through writing, allowing themselves no visualizations except what they picture in their head. They have to convey this entire new world and all of its inhabitants to the reader, try to get them to have the same or a similar mental picture of this setting when they view the work. This skill is the same employed by artists, the only difference being that one is text based while the other is paint/pencil/marker/etc.

The skills used for effective writing are, much in the same way as visual art, honed through years of practice, patience, and pure drive in the field of their work. Fine crafts of work are produced by both, comparing the Mona Lisa to The Lord of the Rings, or The Scream to the Ernest Hemingway six-word novel, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” They all have their deep impacts on society, it’s just a matter of seeing them as equals in the field of art.

As is so common with novels, there is usually a string of spinoffs and sequels to go with them. From Harry Potter to Twilight, Percy Jackson to Ender’s Game, all of these franchises have several books and spinoffs in their bookshelf lineup. So what is it about sequels that can make them amazing or make them go horribly, horribly wrong?

  First let’s look at a series that I believe to have kept up its quality over its very long lifespan. The Percy Jackson series has survived its initial 5 book Percy Jackson and the Olympians story arc, and is approaching completion of its 5 book half spinoff/half sequel Heroes of Olympus story arc. The series is also joined by two graphic novels, two info books, and a spinoff Egyptian series called the Kane Chronicles. Over all of these books the writing has remained at the same, if not improved, level throughout. What is it that keeps this series going? Rick Riordan has shown that he retains a lot of passion for this series. He is not just doing this because the franchise is popular and he feels obligated to continue. He has a story that he legitimately wants to continue telling, and that shows through his work.

  On the other hand is a series that has gone downhill in writing quality over time, through the wild cat adventure series, Warriors. For those that don’t know, Warriors is a series about clans of cats that live in the wild and have to face the challenges of gathering food, defending against other animals, and protecting themselves from each other. This series has been ongoing since 2003, with 5 series spanning 6 books each, 6 independent novels, a field guide, 5 manga adaptations, 6 online-only books, and two spinoff series (Seekers with bears and Survivors with dogs). The series is obviously popular to the extent that it has expanded to such a degree. Unfortunately the quality of writing has declined for all three of the intellectual properties. The problem seems to stem from the way the series is written. The author is Erin Hunter, a pseudonym used originally by three writers and an editor. Over time the writing has been extended to include a group of 6-7 people, all trying to contribute to the work. Unfortunately, this large a group of people makes the writing of all of the series disjointed to a degree. This shows in the decline of the writing near the beginning of the 3rd Warriors series, when 2 of the new writers were hired.

How Spoken Word can be like Written Word:

  “A friendly desert community, where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale.”

What you hear in the video above is the Welcome to Night Vale radio show, a podcast from iTunes created by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor that has become increasingly popular since its initial release in 2012. The show is a fictional NPR style news broadcast from the town of Night Vale, a location where Lovcraftian oddities are the norm.

And that’s where we get to what inspires this show. The unusual locations, the horrors being treated as normal events, and things that are normal for us are treated as hellish things beyond our imagination. But that’s just what this podcast does. Just as with books, many things are left to our imagination when it comes to what is going on in Night Vale. We are told the general idea of what is happening, but, just as with books, the specific appearance, the situations, the people, are all left to our imagination. It is obvious that the podcast blends the spoken word of movies and TV shows with the imagined visual nature of books.

What do the totally-non-existent Angels that care for Old Woman Josie look like? What does the radio station look like? What does the entire town look like? Just like a book, we are given snippets of information, but the details are left up to us to imagine and interpret.

It is also obvious that the podcast draws roots from literature, the unusual town seeming very similar to novels written before. Many times Night Vale has been compared to the works of H. P. Lovecraft, eldritch horrors seeming to be a norm for the town. With monsters and cults, it is easy to see where the comparisons get drawn. Other comparisons have also been made between Night Vale and Steven King, who has been known to write about unusual happenings in what would otherwise be normal towns, which Night Vale could certainly fall under.

While some fanfiction and webcomics fall into the trap called “being terrible”, some of this work is able to transcend this pit of despair to become masterful works of literary art. You can ask any fandom what fanfiction are famous in their own walls and they will most likely spit out a list of either the best written or the most infamous. I could even recommend some that are up there with some of my favorite novels in terms of readability. Webcomics on the other hand are a visual medium similar to comic books, which already have a hefty debate on their literary merits.

  So do either have the stuff to be talked about like Shakespeare or F. Scott Fitzgerald? I say yes!

Fanfictions are mostly seen as the crappy “Twilight”-esc pieces of writing that anyone on the internet is able to publish on a whim. And that’s a little like how the regular book world is anyways. You will have your Harry Potters and your Fault in Our Stars, but you will also have your Twilights or your 50 Shades of Grey. Not all fanfiction is going to be up to snuff, but some of it will still be quality work.

And you may be saying, well fanfiction shouldn’t count because it just copies others’ work! Well nuts to that I say! Complain to all of the Renaissance painters/sculptors that made fanart of the Bible and had them become talked about as masterpieces.

  Now the next question is, how can webcomics be modern literature?

Homestuck, one of the most popular webcomics on the internet, has been calculated, not counting its Flash animation or game-mode pages, to contain more text than the novel War and Peace. If webcomics are able to get to this scale of writing, why should they not be included in the textbooks as a legitimate form of literature?