#e l james

1. Ranted about the development of the vampire diaries and the differences between the books and tv show

2. Sung most of the Hamilton sound track with her

3. Played her the first few episodes of the Magnus archives

4. Played her 3 of the mechanisms albums

We also got coffee bc I’m not afraid to bribe her for love

Female author alignment chart I made with @edgylord. Based purely on their writing and vibes.

" Eu estou chorando por algo que nunca tive. "

As a writer, I don’t have the time to read as much as I’d like. Determined to not feel like I’m completely missing out on something else I love, I gave myself the goal of 12 books in 2022. I was able to meet that goal. At some points, I didn’t read one book a month. Some months, I didn’t read at all. Others, I read an entire series back to back. This post is coming almost a year late, making all of my comments based on memory (with a little Googling for characters I no longer remember).

The twelve books were, not in order:

Blood of Elves (The Witcher, book 1) - Andrzej Sapkowski

A Court of Thorns and Roses - Sarah J. Maas

Throne of Glass - Sarah J. Maas

Ugly Love - Colleen Hoover

A Court of Wings and Ruin - Sarah J. Maas

A Court of Mist and Fury - Sarah J. Maas

Grey (Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian) - E L James

Darker (Fifty Shades as Told by Christian) - E L James

Freed (Fifty Shades as told by Christian) - E L James

These Hollow Vows - Lexi Ryan

These Twisted Bonds - Lexi Ryan

The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air, book 1) - Holly Black

At the bottom of my list, was The Cruel Prince by Holly Black. This is the first book  I put on my DNF list which broke my heart. Growing up I read The Spiderwick Chronicles by Black and Tony DiTerlizzi. It was my favourite series and what introduced me to Urban Fantasy. It was a pivotal point to my childhood because it really made a base for me. I went into The Cruel Prince fairly open minded, but I did have expectations. Fairy/Fae fantasy hasn’t been a genre that’s enticed me. I couldn’t tell you why. I love vampires, werewolves, witches, etc. Fairy/Fae hasn’t caught my attention in the same way. When I began The Cruel Prince, it didn’t draw me in. The main character, Jude was unlikable and I had a hard time finding a hook within it to grab. I always look for an unexpected romance but the abuse from Cardan just wasn’t worth wanting a change. And honestly, that’s all I remember. Maybe I’ll try to read it again one day, only because I hold Black on a podium in my head, but it won’t be in 2023.

Next, is Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover. I’m ignoring the controversy that’s come from Hoover and her personal life between the time I read this book and now. I know Hoover is at the peak of her writing career right now and Ugly Love is considered one of her must read books. But, I couldn’t stand it. From what I’ve been told, Hoover has a tendency to touch on heavy topics within her book. Just from this one book, I do not think she has the writing ability to execute these kinds of topics well or with dignity. With no spoilers, Ugly Love has a character trauma that Hoover writes the situation at an surface level of emotions. I didn’t feel anything while reading it. There was suspense of what happened to Miles as you read but it absolutely did not satisfy. It was like hitting a speed bump and for once, it blew out the tire of your car. This might be the only book I’ve returned after reading because of how disappointed I was. Thankfully, the employee at the bookstore agreed with me. I felt vindicated.

Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski is a book I enjoyed but have a very specific, personal thought about. When it comes to a series, I prefer each book to have its own storyline that also contributes to the overall story. For example, the Harry Potter saga. Blood of Elves however, felt like it was just the starting point of one storyline. It didn’t have a distinctive storyline that was for it alone. It felt long without a satisfying conclusion. The only reason I haven’t entirely put the book in my negative bookshelf in my mind is that I know Henry Cavill is a fan that led him to playing Geralt. So there must be something great about it. It’s also spun off a very successful video game series. I’d be willing to give Blood of Elves another chance, but I would need to be in a cottage, relaxing with the rest of the series with nothing to distract me.

Lumping the next together, is the duology These Hollow Vows and These Twisted Bonds by Lexi Ryan. If I was to rate the duology as one single book, out of five, I’d give it a 3. The first book, These Hollow Vows was a good book but felt like it was missing something. Maybe it had to do with Ryan’s desire to put the story into two books, the first one was just less. Until the end! The end was that amazing cliff hanger where the heroine is shown to be a badass. I loved These Twisted Bonds. It was a swell of the storyline and I felt like I was racing towards the end. The plot wasn’t fleshed out entirely, since I felt like the Queen wasn’t met enough to have her really feel like the villain. The conclusion was satisfying and truly, I didn’t know who the main character would end up with. I’d like to do a re-read just to enjoy the love triangle again.

At the top of my 2022 bookshelf, the books that surprised me the most were Grey, Darker, and Freed by E. L. James. I read the original trilogy (more than once) and I find it a guilty pleasure. It’s a quick read trilogy and decent enough to quiet my brain. It was the first romance only book(s) I’ve read. Similarly to Midnight Sun by Stephanie Meyers, the change of perspective, made the story significantly better and more appealing to me. The trauma Christian brings to the story is enticing in a way that naive Ana didn’t have. You genuinely root for Christian and his growth and success. I definitely will re-read this trilogy.

And finally, the first three ACOTAR books and Throne of Glass. I genuinely don’t remember much about Throne of Glass, other than the fact I fell to my urges and googled how the relationships go throughout the series. I’ll be the first to admit that spoilers don’t bother me 95% of the time. I wasn’t a fan of the results and that’s what stopped me from reading more. I plan on trying again to read them, most likely at the end of 2023 or in 2024. I will say, I’m displeased about the cover change. I own the first three books in the 2nd released covers, where Celaena Sardothien is featured. That’s too many for me not to want the rest in that cover. The new ones are nice, but I don’t want to have to re-buy them. 

A Court of Thorns and Roses may be the only Fae books I’ve ever immersed myself into. It’s been a very long time since I’ve fallen into a series/universe that I want to ingest over and over again, especially from a new author. Falling in love with characters (especially Azriel) is a happy and personal feeling. I cried during A Court of Wings and Ruin, from the comradery and love that the characters share, which I don’t do often. Yes, there was a hint of a love triangle in the beginning which always tugs at my attention, but Feyre and Rhys were beautiful. The demise of Tamlin was an incredible side plot that I could hear more about. Maas really knows how to keep her readers actively reading. ACOTAR being a Beauty and the Beast retelling was a great starting point for the series. I read A Court of Frost and Starlight this year and that review is to come. I haven’t read A Court of Silver Flames and that’s from pure stubbornness. I love Feyre’s point of view and yes, Nesta is incredible and her love story with Cassian is intense but I’m picky. From my own opinion, I don’t think this should’ve been a part of ACOTAR but its own independent series. Unless the entire series is jumping POVs, it makes it weird for me. I will definitely be re-reading this series again at some point. The fanfiction online satisfies me for now.

While texts that we might call fanfiction in the most basic sense of the term have been published in the past (think Wide Sargasso Sea), modern fanfictions have only started to go pro in the past few decades. Fanfiction authors will pull all their fic from the internet, change the character names and other ties to the source media, and publish their works as original fiction. This is a process known in the fannish community as “filing off the serial numbers,” and it’s generated a lot of controversy as more and more fan writers take their work to the professional publishing stage. In this iteration of Fic History, we’re going to explore three of the most well known professionally published fanfictions.

The Mortal Instruments

Cassandra Clare is a household name to any fantasy or YA fiction lover, but you may not know that she also used to be a household name in the Harry Potter fandom. Then writing as Cassandra Claire (peep the i), Clare was a Big Name Fan who was revered in fandom circles for writing The Draco Trilogy, among other fics, which helped to shape how the fandom characterized Draco. She pulled all of her fics from the internet prior to the publishing of City of Bones, but the name of the series that City of Bones belongs to, The Mortal Instruments, shares a name with a Ron/Ginny (yes, incest) fic Clare penned in 2004. 

I want to clarify that The Mortal Instruments is not officially a published fanfiction, but fans have noticed similarities between main characters Clary and Jace and Clare’s characterizations of Ginny and Draco, and a passage from one of her Draco fics appears verbatim in City of Bones, save for a few name edits. Due to the popularity of the series and Clare’s past as a fan writer, I chose to include the series here.

Fifty Shades of Grey

Starting in 2009, an author going by the screen name Snowqueens Icedragon began publishing a Twilight BDSM AU fic titled Master of the Universe. It was deleted from the internet in 2011, and in early 2012, Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James was published to international acclaim and revilement. These two texts are the same story by the same author. While Fifty Shades generated a lot of stir in the media for being a doctored fanfiction (something many people had never heard of before), it generated a lot of stir in fandom spaces for a few reasons. One, many beta readers had worked on the story when it was a fanfiction, and those readers received none of the profit (Jamison 2013). Two, the book was now essentially mainstream media’s only perception of fanfiction, and given that it was being heavily criticized for being a poorly written inaccurate (in terms of the BDSM stuff) smut-fest, it gave fanfiction a bad name. 

The After Series

The most notable and recent example of filing off the serial numbers I can think of is the After series by Anna Todd, known to the internet originally as Imaginator1D. You may know the series now as a best-selling set of novels featuring college students Tessa Young and Hardin Scott that received a set of movie adaptations starting in 2019, but the original iteration of After was a college AU that starred characters Tessa Young and Harry Styles of One Direction fame. Harry’s then bandmates were featured as friends and stepbrothers of Styles, while Tessa is an original character. The After series also received/receives a lot of flak from fannish communities for not being a very high quality example of fanfiction, as well as glorifying what many viewed as an abusive relationship between the two leads.

Publishing your fanfic is forever going to be a touchy subject in fannish communities. Some are completely fine with it, and some fans see it as the ultimate fan sin. As Anne Jamison wrote in Fic (see Bibliography page),

“The fan culture tenet that ‘thou shalt not profit from fanworks’ has been, depending on who you talk to, an almost sacred and inviolate, wholly necessary founding principle of fandom. To others within the same community, it’s only been a necessary evil.”

She also notes that the fact that the term fanfiction doesn’t have one solid definition, and doesn’t actually clarify how close the story is to the material it was based off of. This doesn’t even bring into question the ethical dilemma surrounding profiting off of a fic that beta readers worked on for no cost. All in all, filing off the serial numbers will always be hot button issue in fandom, and I’d love to hear what thoughts y’all might have on it!

Happy reading,

KP

Further Reading: