ceciliatan

Racheline Maltese and Erin McRae were gracious enough to invite me to write a guest blog at Avian 30. I originally met Racheline through Harry Potter fandom, and as those of you who were at my erotica reading at the Geeky Kink Event–or who saw the video of it on YouTube–know that I write Harry Potter fanfic for fun. So I tackled the subject of writing fanfic in my guest blog.

Racheline writes, “So often, when we talk about fanfiction I feel like that discussion is defensive, fearful, or defeatist — there are certainly incredibly good reasons in the history of fanfiction culture for this to be the case. Cecilia’s take is refreshing, because it’s not about that at all. It’s about different ways to tell stories and what it’s like when the world finally catches up with what you love.”

What, I wrote about love? Grin. Of course I did.

“Yep, these days fanfic is not just considered “cool,” it’s red-hot mainstream,” I wrote. “Which puts writers like me in the odd position of being like those hipsters who were doing something ‘before it got big.’ Unlike those hipsters, though, I don’t complain about people discovering our ‘secret.’ We weren’t TRYING to create an elitist cabal that others would long to join. Fanfic writers are the intersection of two of the nerdiest groups on Earth: writers and fans. I don’t think most of us thought of ourselves as ‘the cool kids,’ we were just doing something we love! But these days even nerddom is going mainstream: certainly fandom is.”

In the essay I talk about how fandom’s “arrival” at the same time as widespread acceptance of certain gay rights (a la marriage) and the sudden mainstreaming of BDSM (a la 50 Shades of Grey) is NOT A COINCIDENCE. They’re all part of my fight and my peers’ fight for the right to wear our hearts on our sleeves, to not hide what we love or how.

“Fandom is about love, intense intense love, with dashes of deep devotion and maybe even some obsessive need. Fanfic is about expressing that love–which results in some intense intense fiction, incredible emotional rollercoasters–and about satisfying that need. That sounds like exactly the recipe one should follow to cook up a bestselling romance novel, doesn’t it?”

Go on over to Avian30.com to read the whole thing and comment if you agree or disagree!

Confessions of a Fanfic Hipster

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

Earlier today, J.K. Rowling got everyone’s knickers in a twist when the news broke that, in an interview conducted by Emma Watson (the actress who played Hermione in the Harry Potter movies) for Wonderland, Rowling said that Hermione should have married Harry instead of Ron. (See the story on Hypable.)

With that one statement, Rowling torpedoes not only the one love relationship in the series that she took time and care to really set up (Ron/Hermione), but sinks Harry/Ginny as well. I’ve always felt that the epilogue was forced onto the books. She says she wrote the epilogue first and kept it as a beacon to guide her through the whole series, knowing that the Jane Austen-esque double wedding was waiting at the end.

One of the reasons this particular announcement is causing so much uproar, though, I feel, is that the romantic elements of the Harry Potter books were among the weakest and most ripe for criticism. Reasons below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.