I had a big long beautiful post written out, and it just got eaten up by Livejournal. Crazy! So frustrating. No draft saved. In the meantime, since I don’t feel like rewriting it, here’s something else of interest from all-around cool dude, Cory Doctorow. He sings the praises of fanfic, in all its wonderful glory:
Writers can’t ask readers not to interpret their work. You can’t enjoy a novel that you haven’t interpreted � unless you model the author’s characters in your head, you can’t care about what they do and why they do it. And once readers model a character, it’s only natural that readers will take pleasure in imagining what that character might do offstage, to noodle around with it. This isn’t disrespect: it’s active reading.
Our field is incredibly privileged to have such an active fanfic writing practice. Let’s stop treating them like thieves and start treating them like honored guests at a table that we laid just for them.
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