walkingoutintherain:

shedoesnotcomprehend:

keshetchai:

straightouttaeldamar:

keshetchai:

straightouttaeldamar:

I’m re-watching the Prince of Egypt, and the whole God saying “totally, just kill a lamb and paint your door with it’s blood so I know not to kill your first born children” really strikes me as a ruthless Pagan God move…

So my question is… What the fuck?

Some secondary and follow up questions? are:

God sent plagues, but that feels like a lot more work than just saying “Hebrews grab your shit, revolt, and leave, you easily out number the Egyptians.”

God appeared to Moses as a burning bush… Why not something idk, more obviously god-like? He has ultimate power and chose to look like flaming shrubbery.

This story is so weird, because you could change the names of the people and places, then tell me it’s a fantasy story about some Pagan God that wants to deliver his worshippers out of bondage.

But also fuck everyone else who’s having a rough time? He doesn’t care about delivering anyone else, including future enslaved races? Just the Hebrews… That one time… Dude sounds like some choosy guy who has to use a surrogate… Must not have ultimate power if he can’t come down from his high throne and do it himself??

If someone can give me a real solid answer as to why God sounds just exactly like some Pagan Gods (with the lambs blood, water into blood, plagues and shit) then I will shut the fuck up. Until then, imma be questioning this

So these kinds of questions are always amusing from the Jewish perspective, because well…we talk about this all the time. Why bother killing the first borns? Dayenu. (It would have been enough to just let us go free.) 

But basically, you’re approaching this from a heavily christian-normative atheist perspective. I don’t think asking Xtians about this story will help, because this is the most fundamentally Jewish story to be tackling. 

Here goes:

“totally, just kill a lamb and paint your door with it’s blood so I know not to kill your first born children” really strikes me as a ruthless Pagan God move…

Animal sacrifice absolutely exists in the Torah and during the first and second temple periods. The fact that Judaism explicitly bans all human sacrifice is seen as (in historical context) a huge step away from pagan ritual sacrifice. Many scholars believe the shift to animal sacrifice in general is reflective of understanding man’s more primal urges, and redirecting it away from murder or human sacrifice. 

At any rate, the sacrifice of the lamb and painting of the lintel with lamb’s blood could have any number of possible parallels or reasonings. 

It’s worth noting that sacrificing a lamb would be considered to be inappropriate by the Egyptians, which is mentioned right there in the text of Exodus. (I assume you didn’t read it):

(Chapter 8)
21 Thereupon, Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron, and he said, “Go, sacrifice to your God in the land.”
22 But Moses said, “It is improper to do that, for we will sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to God our Lord. Will we sacrifice the deity of the Egyptians before their eyes, and they will not stone us?
23 Let us go [for] a three day journey in the desert and sacrifice to the Lord, our God, as He will say to us.”
24 Pharaoh said, “I will let you go out, and you will sacrifice to the Lord, your God, in the desert, but do not go far away; entreat [Him] on my behalf.”

The Egyptians had Sheep/Ram headed Gods, so it’s not surprising that sacrificing a lamb for God would indicate that the Jewish people are truly not Egyptians, especially if an Egyptian might be inclined to stone someone for doing this. 

The choice of sacrificing a sheep might very well be completely intentional as an affront against Egyptian oppressors. We have corroboration historically about the importance of rams and sheep in Egypt:

Herodotus, in his survey of Egyptian customs, writes (Histories, 2:42):

Now all who have a temple set up to the Theban Zeus (=Amun) or who are of the district of Thebes, these, I say, all sacrifice goats and abstain from sheep… the Egyptians make the image of Zeus (=Amun) into the face of a ram… the Thebans then do not sacrifice rams but hold them sacred for this reason.

So this isn’t just a random “pagan” act, this is a group of people intentionally sacrificing an animal held sacred as representative of a pagan god, because that is what God requires and asks for. The Egyptians would never sacrifice a sheep, if the sheep represents some of their deities – but the Hebrews, who do not worship pagan gods, most certainly would. 

If you read chapter 9, you will also see Pharaoh try and command that the Hebrews should leave behind their sheep and cattle (in part to prevent their sacrifice) – which they refuse to do. 

The “sacrifice” of the lamb fulfills a few different purposes:

1.  it is considered sacrilegious by the Egyptians, thus setting them apart from the pagans (and symbolically showing a willingness to destroy pagan gods)
2. the lamb is meant to be cooked and prepared so that the families can eat it. It’s a meal to be prepared in light of the fact that they’re preparing to flee. 
3. Torah also tells us the blood is a sign for the Hebrews, and not the Egyptians. The blood is actually marked on the inside of the door (as per Rashi’s commentary on the Hebrew), and therefore the only people who can see the blood would be God (who is able to see all) and the Hebrews from inside their homes. It looks more impressive to do it the other way when you animate it, though. 

The verse shows us this: 

And the blood will be for you for a sign upon the houses where you will be, and I will see the blood and skip over you, and there will be no plague to destroy [you] when I smite the [people of the] land of Egypt.

Rashi explains: And the blood will be for you for a sign: [The blood will be] for you a sign but not a sign for others. From here, it is derived that they put the blood only on the inside. — [from Mechilta 11]

and I will see the blood: [In fact,] everything is revealed to Him. [Why then does the Torah mention that God will see the blood?] Rather, the Holy One, blessed be He, said, “I will focus My attention to see that you are engaged in My commandments, and I will skip over you.” -[from Mechilta]

Your other questions are also interesting: 

God sent plagues, but that feels like a lot more work than just saying “Hebrews grab your shit, revolt, and leave, you easily out number the Egyptians.”

Well, again, have you read a haggadah? We uh, talk about this once a year. If God had let us flee Egypt and not bothered with punishing our oppressors – that would have been enough! 

 Ilu hotzianu mimitzrayim, v’lo asah bahem sh’fatim, dayenu!

So like, in general, you can’t attend a passover seder without questioning…why God bothered with the plagues. 

God appeared to Moses as a burning bush… Why not something idk, more obviously god-like? He has ultimate power and chose to look like flaming shrubbery.

A bush that is on fire but does not get burnt is pretty impressive. But again, I guess you haven’t actually read exodus, because it’s not just a burning bush:

An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from within the thorn bush, and behold, the thorn bush was burning with fire, but the thorn bush was not being consumed.

So Moses said, “Let me turn now and see this great spectacle why does the thorn bush not burn up?”

An angel appears in the fire, the thorn bush is on fire, but does not burn. Then God appears. But eh, maybe that isn’t as wild as you want it to be, so the following exchange between Moses and God is a bit more…miraculous. First God turns Moses’ staff and turns it into a serpent, and back into a staff. This is the first sign Moses can use to prove that God is here. And then… 

And the Lord said further to him, “Now put your hand into your bosom,” and he put his hand into his bosom, and he took it out, and behold, his hand was leprous like snow.

And He said, “Put your hand back into your bosom,” and he put his hand back into his bosom, and [when] he took it out of his bosom, it had become again like [the rest of] his flesh.

…you might want to picture it a little bit like this:

– You best start believing in holy stories, Moshe. – you’re in one. 

But again, you don’t need to believe in this literally or accept it as literal. But I think it’s a bit silly to say it’s not “miraculous” enough or something. 

This story is so weird, because you could change the names of the people and places, then tell me it’s a fantasy story about some Pagan God that wants to deliver his worshippers out of bondage.

Except you couldn’t, which is why it’s a story about the Jewish monotheistic God. If you swapped out the name of God and the people, it would still be a monotheistic story. 

You could take “In order that they believe that the Lord, the God of their forefathers, has appeared to you, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.“ 

and instead say “the King, the Ancient One of their forefathers, has appeared to you, the God of Maharba, the God of Caasi, and the God of Bocaj,” but you’re still fundamentally naming a monotheistic deity. 

But also fuck everyone else who’s having a rough time? He doesn’t care about delivering anyone else,

Again, this isn’t true, and even PoE illustrates this! Watch it again, and you’ll notice Egyptians dropping their weapons and walking alongside the Hebrews, even crossing the sea! and why else would God give commandments before the Hebrews cross the sea about what to do with the converts and strangers living among them?

Exodus 12:37-38:

The children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot, the men, besides the young children.
And also, a great mixed multitude went up with them, and flocks and cattle, very much livestock.

These are the others, fleeing with the Hebrews. Anyone who wanted to flee was able to do so, and join the Israelites. 

including future enslaved races? Just the Hebrews… That one time…

Well there’s a few ways to look at this. But I don’t believe this is an issue of “just this one time.” 

1.) the issue of the Jewish people being enslaved and kept from Israel is an issue because if the Jewish people fulfill their end of the covenant (contract) then God should also fulfill their promises. An exodus from slavery in Egypt had to occur for the return to Israel to happen. The covenant is a contract. God is making good on their end of that contract with the exodus. 

So here, God intervenes lest they fail to uphold a contract. 

2.) But also, ultimately, Judaism promotes the idea that in times of distress mankind should act as if there is no God, and do the right thing. We take action because it is up to us to take that action. It was ultimately up to the Israelites to leave Egypt, even if God made it seem more possible to do so. It was up to the Israelites to pack their things and prepare their rations and even up to them to bravely step forwards into the sea and keep going, even though it took time for the waters to part. (Some say the waters did not part until the Israelites were so far into the water that it would have drowned them.) 

So have other people been liberated from slavery? Absolutely. You have two choices – you can say it was because of “God” or you can say it was because of the hard work of abolitionists and slave uprisings. It’s not a mystery why the African American community references Exodus so heavily in gospel music – Jewish freedom is a template for all freedom (and anyways, there are also black Jews!). So did God free black slaves, or did black men and women and abolitionist allies work tirelessly for that freedom? Couldn’t it be both? Shouldn’t we say, be capable of going “If God freed us then, then now our lives should be also dedicated to freeing everyone else?” Why would you assume mankind is free from the work of liberation? It is our job to work for freedom on behalf of others, not to just sit on our ass and expect God to do the work. 

Again, no surprise that Jewish Americans were involved in abolitionism throughout the world and heavily involved in the US civil rights movements. 

Dude sounds like some choosy guy who has to use a surrogate… Must not have ultimate power if he can’t come down from his high throne and do it himself??

…Choosy, absolutely. Not having ultimate power is endlessly debatable. One way or another, it happened, and certainly God sent down the forces to do so in Exodus. But also, uh, you realize a lot of this was a learning and teaching process, right?

If someone can give me a real solid answer as to why God sounds just exactly like some Pagan Gods (with the lambs blood, water into blood, plagues and shit) then I will shut the fuck up. Until then, imma be questioning this

Like I said, lamb’s blood is in direct contrast/opposition to local Pagan worship.

The Nile running red with blood is actually deeply symbolic – recall that in the beginning of the Exodus story, the first born Hebrew sons are being thrown into the Nile River. So what God is doing is illustrating the fact that the Nile was filled with the blood of the Hebrew people – specifically their firstborn sons – and this is the blood which Pharaoh was responsible for shedding. It’s similar to Macbeth, when Lady Macbeth hallucinates blood on her hands after her murderous act. Except here, the entire Nile turns to blood, haunting Pharaoh with the blood of the slaves his father had murdered. Talk about facing the reality of your actions. This is where the blood comes from. 

Either way, none of these things make God more or less pagan? The issue of paganism is not how a God acts or behaves, but whether or not there are other Gods. Like that’s literally it. Hope that helped? Lmao. These questions aren’t that weird. 

Shoot son, you sure rose to that challenge!
Ngl, you schooled me. Historical context was missing in the movie, so you’ll have to give me that one. The rest of that I never fucking learned in years of Sunday school, (and these kind of questions weren’t encouraged.) Thank you, @keshetchai I’ve learned a lot today!
Forgive me that I remain skeptical, it still boils down to having faith or not having faith; this isn’t a reflection of you though and thank you again for such a thorough answer 🙂

no problem! This is a big example of the massive differences between Judaism and xtianity as a whole. A lot of the questions you touched upon are built in to the passover seder, and are encouraged. We ask exactly a lot of these things! 

There’s also a part of the seder where we discuss the four questions (why is this night different from all other nights?) and then we discuss the Four Children, each child covering a different attitude towards the story. To paraphrase: 

The Wise Child asks: What does this all mean? What are the laws we are commanded, the customs and traditions we uphold? 

The Wicked Child*** asks: What does this mean to you? [Why do you even bother with all this?]  ***wicked isn’t like, “evil” it’s more like “challenging.” or “isolated” from the community by distancing themselves. 

The Simple Child asks: What is it that we’re doing? What’s the seder about?

The Child Who Does Not Know How to Ask doesn’t ask a question at all, and instead can be prompted into thinking of questions to ask, being helped to understand things, or may just be too young to formulate the question– and yet we still must include them. 

Each “type” of question is meant to be met with an answer. So asking these questions might be discouraged in xtianity, but is part of the Jewish tradition. 

It’s okay if you don’t believe everything, or don’t take it literally. Honestly, that isn’t why I answered your questions – I’m not concerned about convincing you of the truth or literalism of the story. I just think it’s fair to want honest answers to interesting questions. Personally, whether or not it happened literally isn’t really a big deal for me, or even where i derive meaning when hearing the story. Faith means something different in Judaism than it does in xtianity, so I don’t have any kind of investment in trying to convince you to “just believe” because someone said so. 

if you don’t want to believe in parts or all of it, it’s no skin off my nose. Frankly, I’m way more concerned with impressing the idea that “slavery is bad and we as people are obligated to help in the liberation of others.” 🙂 the times when these questions become an issue are when gentiles present the questions as if Jewish people are stupid/backwards/barbaric/etc. That would be an issue, but asking “what the hell was going on there??” earnestly isn’t. 

Reblogging because:

(a) this is an excellent and thoughtful discussion of various theological issues;

(b) I really appreciate people doing what @keshetchai does here, giving questions serious, thorough, and kind answers;

© I also really respect people like @straighouttaeldamar being willing to go from the challenging tone of the first post to “wow, okay, that is an interesting thing and I’ve learned something”;

(d) this is just a super sweet exchange all round; and

(e) I learned things from it! (I did not realize about the blood being on the inside of the doors, or about other Egyptians joining the Israelites in their flight.)

This is such a fascinating bit of theological/historical discussion, in which I learned stuff I didn’t know about Judaism, Passover, and Exodus! And now I’m here as a lapsed Catholic to raise the level of discourse with an Eddie Izzard routine about Christianity that it reminded me of:

“I said ‘Drink this wine, it is my blood–’“
“You said what?”
“… I said ‘Drink this wine, it is my blood,’ I was trying to make a ceremony–”
“But that’s, that’s vampirism! Vampiric thing, ‘drink my blood,’ you’ve got pagan things right there on day one of the new religion!”
“… Oh, sorry.”
“Why didn’t you just say ‘Drink this wine, it’s a merlot’?”

more-legit-gr8er-writing-tips:

asynca:

yamaccino:

reading-renditions:

hoenursey:

theglintoftherail:

lazaefair:

thatswhenyouloseyourself:

mikkeneko:

thepioden:

dubiousculturalartifact:

teabq:

oyveyzmir:

griesly:

cracktheglasses:

hils79:

fanfichasruinedmylife:

pagerunner-j:

demonicae:

tiger-in-the-flightdeck:

racethewind10:

emma-regina4ever:

beckpoppins:

adiwriting:

fandomlife-universe:

So I’m on AO3 and I see a lot of people who put “I do not own [insert fandom here]” before their story.

Like, I came on this site to read FAN fiction. This is a FAN fiction site. I’m fully aware that you don’t own the fandom or the characters. That’s why it’s called FAN FICTION.

Oh you youngins… How quickly they forget.

Back in the day, before fan fiction was mainstream and even encouraged by creators… This was your “please don’t sue me, I’m poor and just here for a good time” plea.

Cause guess what? That shit used to happen.

how soon they forget ann rice’s lawyers.

What happened with her lawyers.

History became legend. Legend became myth….  And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.

I worked with one of the women that got contacted by Rice’s lawyers. Scared the hell out of her and she never touched fandom again.
The first time I saw a commission post on tumblr for fanart, I was shocked.

One of the reasons I fell out of love with her writing was her treatment of the fans… (that and the opening chapter of Lasher gave me such heebie-jeebies with the whole underage sex thing I felt unclean just reading it.)

I have zero problem with fanart/fic so long as the creators aren’t making money off of it. It is someone else’s intellectual property and people who create fan related works need to respect that (and a solid 98% of them do.)

The remaining 2% are either easily swayed by being gently prompted to not cash in on someone else’s IP. Or they DGAF… and they are the ones who will eventually land themselves in hot water. Either way: this isn’t much of an excuse to persecute your entire fanbase.

But Anne Rice went off the deep end with this stuff by actively attacking people who were expressing their love for her work and were not profiteering from it.

The Vampire Chronicles was a dangerous fandom to be in back in the day. Most of the works I read/saw were hidden away in the dark recesses of the internet and covered by disclaimers (a lot of them reading like thoroughly researched legal documents.)

And woe betide anyone who was into shipping anyone with ANYONE in that fandom. You were most at risk, it seemed, if your vision of the characters deviated from the creators ‘original intentions.’ (Hypocritical of a woman who made most of her living writing erotica.)

Imagine getting sued over a headcanon…

Put simply: we all lived in fear of her team of highly paid lawyers descending from the heavens and taking us to court over a slashfic less than 500 words long.

all

of

this

Reblogging because I can’t believe there are people out there who don’t know the story behind fan fiction disclaimers. 

Yep I used to have disclaimers on all my Buffy fic back in the day. The Buffy creators were mostly pretty chill about fandom but it’s not like it is now. You did NOT talk about fandom with anyone except other fandom people and bringing it up at cons was a massive no no because of stuff like this.

I think Supernatural (and Misha Collins specifically) was when that wall between fandom and creators started to break down. It’s a relatively new thing.

I remember going to a Merlin panel down in London and a girl sitting next to me asked the cast about slash and I thought she was going to get kicked out!

Fandom history is important.

Oh, this brings back some not so-awesome ‘90s fandom memories! 

Oh man, let me tell you about the X-Files fandom. Lawyers for FOX sued, threatened, and generally terrified the owners of fan websites on a regular basis. God help you if you wrote or created original art set in their (expansive) universe or worse – dared to write about their characters. Even people who weren’t creating fanworks, just hosting Geocities pages about how much people liked the show would be sent C&D orders or actually fined. When I was first discovering the concept, the first rule of fandom was you do not talk about fandom because the consequences could be devastating.

It was such a strange and uncomfortable experience for me when fans in LOTR and Potter fandoms suddenly started shoving their work in people’s faces speaking publicly about fandom and wanting to engage in dialogue with the creators and actors of the Thing they were into. Fan stuff was supposed to stay online, in archives and list-serves and zines we passed around because it just wasn’t cool to talk about it and it could get you in a boatload of trouble. The freedom we have to create and gather together in a shared space, or actually be acknowledged in any way by people outside the fandom was inconceivable to my fannish, teenaged self. I want fans these days to understand how amazing modern fandom really is, cherish the community, and appreciate what it took to get us here. 

“if you found this by googling yourself, hit back now. this means you, pete wentz”

Oh hey, even more blasts from the past.

I was one of the ones who got a love letter from Anne Rice’s lawyers. Bear in mind that up until that point her publisher had encouraged fanfic and worked with the archive keeper (one of my roommates at the time) to drum up publicity for upcoming books and so on.

I could tell such tales of how much Anne screwed over her fans back then. The tl;dr version is that she and her peeps would use fan projects as free market research and then bring in the lawyers once it was felt Anne could make money off of it herself. (Talismanic Tours being one of the most offensive examples of this.)

But where fanfic is concerned not only did we get nastygrams but one of my friends had Anne’s lawyer trying to fuck up her own privately owned business which had NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING ANNE RELATED. Said friend was a small business owner with health issues who wasn’t exactly rolling in money, so guess how well that went?

On top of that when yours truly tried to speak out about it I discovered that someone in Anne’s camp had been cyber stalking me to the point where they took all the tiny crumbs of personal information I had posted over the course of five years or so and used it to doxx me (before that was even a term and in early enough days of the WWW that this wasn’t an easy task) and post VERY personal information about me on the main fandom message board of the time. Luckily for me the mod was my friend and she took that down post haste, but it was still oodles of fun feeling that violated and why to this day I am very strict about keeping my fandom and personal lives separate online.

Hence why those of us in the fandom at the time who still gave enough of a shit to want to keep writing fic DID keep writing fic, but shoved it so far underground and slapped it with so many disclaimers they could’ve outweighed the word count of War & Peace. It wasn’t just for the purpose of protecting fic but for trying to protect our personal lives as well.

(Also would love to know who @tiger-in-the-flightdeck

knew. Life paths crossing after so many years….)

Lucasfilm also sent cease-and-desist letters to Star Wars fanzines publishing slash.

My favourite bit I read from one included the idea that you weren’t allowed to have any explicit content, of which anything queer, no matter how tame, was included, to “preserve that innocence even Imperial crew members must be imagined to have”.

Yeah. The same Imperial crew members who helped build the Death Star to commit planetary genocide.

(It’s one reason Sinjir Velus, while I still have some issues with him, feels like such a delicious ‘f*** you’.)

Later on, they were apparently persuaded to ‘allow’ fans to write slash, provided in ‘remained within the nebulous bounds of good taste’.

(On a related note, if I wasn’t quite so attached to my URL, I would 100% change it to ‘Nebulous Bounds’, because that’s just downright catchy)

Anne McCaffrey had this huge long set of rules about how exactly you were allowed to play in her sandbox. Dragonriders of Pern was my first online fandom, and I was big into the Pern RP scene – and just about every fan-Weyr had a copy of these lists of rules McCaffrey wanted enforced. One of which was ‘no porn’ and another was basically ‘it can’t be gay’ (and for a while ‘no fanfiction posted online’? which??? anyway.)

She relaxed a little as time went on, but still. 

Let’s not forget: the reason AO3 is called ‘Archive of our own’  is because it was created in response to some bullshit that assholes were trying to play with fan creators. Basically (if I remember the fiasco correctly) trying to mine fandom creators for content which they could then use to generate ad profit on their shitty websites. When the series creators objected, the fans tried to pull their content, only to find that the website hoster resisted, claiming their content was all his now.

That wasn’t even all that long ago…

fandom history class

To this day, *talking* about writing or reading fanfiction – just acknowledging that it exists – to anyone other than people I know are in fandom as well, feels like a dangerous act. The strict separation I maintained between my real life identity, my online identity, and my fandom identity (yes, they were separate, because some of the most vicious and mocking people were fellow nerds) has broken down a bit these days, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to integrate them as freely as some younger fans do.

Everybody should know that AO3 is just one project of the Organization for Transformative Works. Their mission is much broader than just hosting a (very good) fanfic site. They do all kinds of fandom history archiving and publish an academic journal, but most importantly, they perform legal advocacy to protect the fair use rights of people who make fanfic or fanart.

The OTW Legal Committee’s mission includes education, assistance, and advocacy.

• We create and post educational materials about developments in fandom-related law on transformativeworks.org and on archiveofourown.org.
• We assist individual fans when their fanworks are challenged, we answer fans’ questions about law relevant to fanworks, and we help fans find legal representation.
• We partner with other advocacy organizations and coalitions in the U.S. and around the world.
• We advocate for laws and policies that promote balance and protect fanworks and fandom.
• And much more!

I haven’t been involved in fandom stuff all that long, but I find this stuff so fascinating!

whew, i feel old, but that’s mostly bc i was on forums way way waaaaay too young. but this? yes. all the way.

people had password protected forums on the weirdest, most unconventional websites. before you could even be approved by the mods they would search your blog, your other accounts, question you, everything, all because we were broke teens and preteens trying to do something for fun and if someone got in who could doxx you or send your work over to a lawyer? that was it, you were OVER. that’s also part of where fandom wars and the defense of fandom came from: quote unquote “enemy” fandoms would infiltrate just to hurt you.

@theglintoftherail makes a very good point: ao3 is a goddamn haven. and they’re a great team of lawyers and people dedicated to protecting fanworks! part of the reason it’s so great is because they know there’s no one like them out there. they also go to the ends of the damned earth to protect you and to be inclusive, which is why there’s shit like tentacle porn and underage and dubcon. because they’re dedicated to protecting readers and creators to the death. they don’t advocate for it and they have the extensive rating and tagging system because of that (legit the best tagging system i’ve ever seen) but they don’t know if you’re dealing with trauma or if you need to get something out.

do not forget your fandom, kids. jesus

Who else knew nothing about this? A show of hands

I’m just the right age to remember the disclaimers and to have HEARD about the Anne Rice, Anne McCaffrey, and X-Files fiascos, but I was never in any of those fandoms and I was more or less on the tail end of that. I can’t imagine having to be scared to tell people I write fanfic. So glad we’ve come so far.

20+ years ago, I used to be terrified someone would try to sue me for the fanfic I was writing. I covered my work in disclaimers and posted it from school PCs on the ‘guest’ account so no one could track me. I remember looking up at the school security camera as I posted my work, wondering if the school got a Cease & Desist letter if they’d trawl through the footage and discover it was me and know I was writing naughty gay fanfic. I imagined the entire school finding out what I’d written.

Conversely, last year, I featured in the ‘notable fans’ section of the Tomb Raider 20th Anniversary’ book – an official publication – as a fanfic writer. 

It’s fantastic how fandom is becoming a part of enjoying content and is slowly, slowly being normalized ❤

This is where we can all say thank you to JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer for the major role they played in mainstreaming fanfic.