truth and justice he loved, and bore good will to all

dude i am so tired all the time. for what purpose bro im youthful as Fuck

Simply Luthien…

February 2022.

Fan Challenge: Two of Ten Relationships: Aragorn and Arwen

Nerdanel seeing Feanor for the first time, probably

*should write it. I'm already in bed and too lazy to change it now

—The Lord of the Rings, “The Return of the King”

celebrian wip anyone?

So I have nothing against fan fiction, I've even done some of it at times.

but I think its important to realize it teaches writers bad habits, namely, when you're writing with established characters you don't have to introduce them, flush them out, characterize them (as much) because that work has already been done, the reader already knows and likes the character thats why they're here for more of a character someone else established.

which is fine, again, totally fine. However, I've noticed more and more in fiction I pick up lately characters seeming, undercooked, and with other stylistic tropes it really seems to be with authors who started off in Fan Fiction.

I do think Fan Fiction is a good starting point for getting an audience and getting feed back and building your confidence, but you have to realize that like there are some things in original work that aren't in fan fiction so you're not practicing them when you write fan fiction.

I actually would argue that one of the signs of a good fan fiction writer (which is a rare, rare breed indeed) is that their story and characters are comprehensible to someone who is not familiar with the source material- that they've done that work of developing things instead of just assuming their reader knows and can fill in the gaps on their paper-thin or hole-riddled story, while still doing so in a way that's engaging to people who do know it already.

I think fanfiction and traditional fiction are just two different types of written media. Like how what works on a television series doesn't work for a two-hour movie, despite both TV and movies being visual media. They require different skills. The problem comes from fanfiction writers going into traditional publishing who don't realize they're in a different form of written media.

^Totally agree, and I disagree that good fan fiction automatically must be comprehensible to someone unfamiliar with the source material. I think one of the biggest parts of writing is having a sense of audience, and tailoring your writing to suit the specific people you’re writing for. This applies to non-fiction writing, too. Academic writing is often criticized for being inaccessible to a layperson, but that’s because a lot of it isn’t intended for them, and is instead intended for other people within that specific field who share a mutual understanding of the subject matter and certain jargon. The writing is fine, it’s just that not everything is for you

It’s the same with fan fiction. The assumption is that everyone knows the story in the source material already, and if you go over those things too much in fan fiction, it might actually be a boring fic! That’s because the intended audience knows these things already and it’s just redundant for them to read. You can argue the best fan fiction is actually really inaccessible to those unfamiliar with the source material, because that’s the type of story that really expands upon and plays with canon. It’s not just the same tropes with different blorbos, it’s highly intertwined with the specific world of its source material But as discussed above, the issue is when people take the same sort of presumptuous writing style (for lack of a better word) and apply it to original fiction, which has a very different intended audience. Fan fiction can absolutely help people develop their skills for writing dialogue, descriptive details for setting up a scene, smut (lol), pacing, and even expanding upon a character, but it’s not going to be very helpful in learning how to take a character from scratch and getting people to care about them, since they’re a stranger to the audience

So yeah, agreed that traditional fiction and fan fiction are just very different forms of writing, and a good chunk of the discourse comes from people thinking that the standards that apply to writing form A also apply to writing form B, but that’s often not true

Arien and the Sun :)

Luthien inspired moodboard

Miranda Otto as Éowyn

The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (2002) dir. Peter Jackson

@feanorianweek Day 7: Nerdanel & Feanor

Feanor is made out of clay because you have to Fire him to make him set. Get it? Hahahaha yeaahhhh....

[Close up of Statue Feanor under the cut!]

Rosamund Pike by Rachel Lum.

Queen Arwen of Gondor

Luthien.

ÉOWYN in the BATTLE OF THE PELENNOR FIELDS