Fan Fiction in the 1700s | Hacker News Reader

Fan Fiction in the 1700s

theatlantic.com

40 pointsbenbreen14 comments

I really like how consistent people want/create extra narrative content for things they engaged with. Almost everyone at least goes and looks at reviews after they watched a movie/ go out and talks about it with friends. Not letting a story end at the last page is just an ingrained human trait.

I noticed at one point that this is the main reason why I consume half the stories I do. I want to discuss and daydream about the stories I read or watched.

People really are pretty consistent it seems theoughout the generations.

On a related non-sexual note Lancelot has them topped in the 13th century as a later blatantly out of place French addition. It is only somewhat of a joke to call him a Mary Sue who crept into canon. Mostly because the concepts didn't appear to exist in the same way you couldn't call copying a book in a library by hand copyright infringement.

wasn’t the original intent of copyright law to protect the intellectual property of authors, presumably like gulliver’s travels?

Also i love the idea of the site, and the idea of fan fiction being an opportunity teach the youths to write stories (to a degree, for instance i also worry too many professional instagram photographers can make you feel like you cant shoot photography) Im honestly waiting for a “github” for stories, movies, graphic novels, etc. Perhaps one already exists, perhaps someone’s using github as such.

AO3 covers written fanfic well. I think Tumblr was handling some of the others?

Or fanfiction.net. I find it easier to find things there than on AO3, and in the categories I like reading stories in it seems to have a fair bit more.

Don Quixote did it first. Even with some remarks against the apocryphal sequel.

Dante's Divine Comedy is an even earlier example that’s in the style of self insert fanfiction. With an author avatar talking with famous people of history, myth, and at the time present day.

With early work it’s hard to draw the line between evolution of a story and what we would call fanfiction.

I mean, Don Quixote had unnoficial 2nd volumes made by fanons just to grab money from the top of the wave, just until Cervantes released the official 2nd part. There were even internal puns for those unnoficial "doujintsi" made from Cervantes himself in order to throw off all the fake 2nd Don quixote parts.

Don Quixote very much had fanfiction. But, you can find many examples from the invention of the printing press to the creation of the first copyright laws starting in 1710 that are the same basic idea. It’s like talking about jaywalking prior to the invention of of the automobile.

A major difference is that all the characters in Dante were considered real, historical persons. There is a long tradition of creating "historical fiction" around historical characters, eg. the Pesudepigaphs, the Greek Tragedies.

Don Quixote on the other hand was known as a fictional character invented by an author. Creating new works based on another authors fictional characters and universe constitutes IMHO a distinct genre.

To put it in modern terms, Dante didn't infringe anyone's copyright, although he might be liable for libel.

I doubt Dante actually believed the Cerberus, Charon, Erichtho, Geryon, Harpies, and other characters from Greek myth where actual historical figures. It’s easy to think of mythology as separate from copyright, but it’s still stories created by people not historical facts.

Good point. My suggestion was more that "fan fiction" builds on a particular work of fiction (which the author is a "fan" of).

I think fanfiction starts that way, but a lot of worm fiction is written by people who did not read or did not like the source material. They read a few stories written by fanfiction authors and go from there. Eventually you get ideas from the fan base that takes on a life of it’s own. This is especially true of minor characters who get fleshed out really well in some specific work.

It’s like how Superman’s source material is self contradictory where individual works are different. So, you can have Smallville fanfiction or more generic Superman mythology fanfiction.

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