Welp there goes whatever inkling of interest I had for the movie right out the window
I experienced something similar in art school, though with fanart. Not that I drew fanart myself, but like, half of the people I knew in the illustration department got into drawing thanks to fanart. So many people bullied them for drawing dumb things and wasting their time on it, especially the girls. I made friends with one of them freshman year because I noticed she was drawing Metal Gear Solid characters in her notebook during one of the mandatory freshman lecture classes. Around sophomore year, she stopped altogether. I remember she wanted to do a comic about the Turks from FFVII and what happened after VII while also ignoring Advent Children. When I asked her about it (because man, I was 200% on board with reading that), she got angry at me and was all, "It's all stupid anyways. Why should we bother with it?" Sadly, we drifted apart after that. I really hope she revisited it later in her life, even if she never published it.
I also remember being met with so much hostility, especially from guys, when it was revealed that I wrote fanfiction in high school. Like it was bad enough that fan communities on LJ attacked me for Shipping Differently Than Them, but to have my supposed peers steal my notebooks and read shit out loud as a joke was not ok. I also knew a guy in college who was very vocal about being anti-fanfiction. He was an English major, because of course he was. I remember him talking about his senior thesis project that was something like a modern day Dante's Inferno, but with something else that wasn't hell (I think it was fairy tales? I can't remember). But I do remember telling him, "So you're writing fanfiction?" And boy oh boy did he shit a million bricks and try to tell me how wrong I was.
It's so odd how that works out. Furthermore, it's sad that when you mention fanfiction, people feel the need to jump in and cry about how all it is is badly written porn about single, fat ladies who are absolutely pathetic. Hell, people get shit for reading traditionally published erotica that's 100% original content. It's like society just doesn't want women to enjoy anything, whether mentally, emotionally, or sexually.
I also remember when I finally decided to dive back into fanfiction (with Darkness/Starlight, actually) and I felt so damn ashamed. I was a month into it and my boyfriend asked what I was working so hard on and I just cried and confessed to him and hoped he wouldn't laugh at me or think I was sick or sad or something. Instead, he was nothing but supportive and thought it was really awesome I was expanding on something that was bare minimum at best and was even more impressed I managed to whip up 200k words for it. Hell, he even helped me out with all the French in it.
In short, I wish people didn't write off fanfiction as something pathetic. I know fic writers who can run circles around published writers. Some of it is actual trash, yes, but lemme tell ya, you also don't need to go far to find equally terrible garbage in published, triple-A, "Hollywood quality" stuff, too.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2019-06-03 01:46 pm (UTC)Welp there goes whatever inkling of interest I had for the movie right out the windowI experienced something similar in art school, though with fanart. Not that I drew fanart myself, but like, half of the people I knew in the illustration department got into drawing thanks to fanart. So many people bullied them for drawing dumb things and wasting their time on it, especially the girls. I made friends with one of them freshman year because I noticed she was drawing Metal Gear Solid characters in her notebook during one of the mandatory freshman lecture classes. Around sophomore year, she stopped altogether. I remember she wanted to do a comic about the Turks from FFVII and what happened after VII while also ignoring Advent Children. When I asked her about it (because man, I was 200% on board with reading that), she got angry at me and was all, "It's all stupid anyways. Why should we bother with it?" Sadly, we drifted apart after that. I really hope she revisited it later in her life, even if she never published it.
I also remember being met with so much hostility, especially from guys, when it was revealed that I wrote fanfiction in high school. Like it was bad enough that fan communities on LJ attacked me for Shipping Differently Than Them, but to have my supposed peers steal my notebooks and read shit out loud as a joke was not ok. I also knew a guy in college who was very vocal about being anti-fanfiction. He was an English major, because of course he was. I remember him talking about his senior thesis project that was something like a modern day Dante's Inferno, but with something else that wasn't hell (I think it was fairy tales? I can't remember). But I do remember telling him, "So you're writing fanfiction?" And boy oh boy did he shit a million bricks and try to tell me how wrong I was.
It's so odd how that works out. Furthermore, it's sad that when you mention fanfiction, people feel the need to jump in and cry about how all it is is badly written porn about single, fat ladies who are absolutely pathetic. Hell, people get shit for reading traditionally published erotica that's 100% original content. It's like society just doesn't want women to enjoy anything, whether mentally, emotionally, or sexually.
I also remember when I finally decided to dive back into fanfiction (with Darkness/Starlight, actually) and I felt so damn ashamed. I was a month into it and my boyfriend asked what I was working so hard on and I just cried and confessed to him and hoped he wouldn't laugh at me or think I was sick or sad or something. Instead, he was nothing but supportive and thought it was really awesome I was expanding on something that was bare minimum at best and was even more impressed I managed to whip up 200k words for it. Hell, he even helped me out with all the French in it.
In short, I wish people didn't write off fanfiction as something pathetic. I know fic writers who can run circles around published writers. Some of it is actual trash, yes, but lemme tell ya, you also don't need to go far to find equally terrible garbage in published, triple-A, "Hollywood quality" stuff, too.