Title: Lexical Gap
Author: kitewithfish, that would be me.
Characters: Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Alive, son of Awake)/ Absal
Rating: G
Genre: Gen
Warnings: Acknowledges the existence of m/m sexual relationship. Nonexplicit.
Word Count: c. 900

This fic is based off of characters in Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl's The Philosophical Tale of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, first published in the 12th century in Spain. The Philosophical Tale is itself a fanfiction of Avicenna's 11th century Persian Recital of Hayy ibn Yaqzan.
Both are available in English since the 16th century. Spellings vary. Slash goggles make ibn Tufayl's version significantly more enjoyable.

( I do not have the words. )

Hollywood Atheist

Atheists are somehow simply unaware of The Bible and Christianity, and will happily convert on the spot when informed of the rudiments of Christian dogma. Expect them in an Author Tract. (Despite the name this shows up as early as the book Hayy ibn Yaqzan, making this trope older than feudalism.)

Was this reference always there and I just now noticed it?? I swear to God (ha, irony there), that I've checked this page over before and it was indeed not there. In fact, it was edited in 17 November, and that means it is entirely possible that someone from my school added this. Because, hey, let's be fair, there are not a whole lot of people deal with Hayy ibn Yaqzan- the reprint of the most recent (and best) English translation only came out in September. This is not a highly debated text outside of a few rarified circles, which really, really raises the likelihood that someone I've met added this thing.

I will sit and watch and wait.

I just figured out, after receiving 758 messages , that there is a setting for receiving notifications when someone in your flist gets a virtual gift.

Needless to say, it is now turned off.

*Whew*

In other news, My Boy ^TM is taking a final RIGHT NOW, and this is making me nervous. More so than him, as far as exterior stuff testifies. I am officially pathetic.

I have lost or misplaced my wonderous hat, which reminded me of Harley Quinn's uniform/costume/crazy-person-jumpsuit. My Boy^TM has lent me his had, but it lacks pizzazz.

Tea and the saints preserve me.

I miss surfing the Yuletide Archives, but looking through the lists of requested fandoms which have requests and offers.... it makes me really hopeful for a good crop of fic to enjoy in the new year. Some highlights:

1602- A Marvel "What If?" scenario by Neil Gaiman in which the Marvel age begins not in the 1930's with Captain American and heroes, but in 1602, with English colonization of the New World. It is awesome, awesome fiction and lovely art, featuring Nick Fury as Queen Elizabeth's spymaster and

Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novels, which I adore on multiples levels- set in my current city of residence! snark! magic! and a wizard with rent problems! Not to mention "Gentleman Johnnie" Marcone, the crime lord with the soul of a tiger. There are THIRTY requests this year, which makes me really hope that things are picking up for my favorite pairing (Dresden/Marcone), but all of the characters in the series are really multileveled and fascinating people. I've read all the books, I've devoured the short stories, and by and large the fanfiction is written by a number of really clever, funny authors who really get the tone of the books down well. I hope for good things.

Justice Society of America- This comic has a huge cast of classic and new characters and, of the comics currently in publication, I think this one deals best with the concepts of inheritance and generations within the superhero genre. Fic on this? I wait with bated breath.

Mythology- Fanfic reinterpretations of mythology are something I don't come across all that often, but I'm always happy to see them- myths are the fanfic and stories of an earlier age. Playing with them usually gives me happy little shivers down my spine.

I could go on, but I have to stop and try and get some more work done. (Life marches on.)

Just as a note, anyone interested in reading my public life-related journal can drop me a line to get the name. Much as I love and enjoy my fandoms, having it bleed over into my regular life could have some rather unpleasant consequences for me.

Is there an unspoken rule that loud pretty girls must congregate together in library areas and chat near me?

Perhaps it is ineffable.

I am on page five of a 6-8 page final paper and loving the damned thing with every ounce of my being. Why? Because it is fanfiction, friend and neighbors. It's fanfiction.

The account of Hayy ibn Yaqzan by Avicenna was read by Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl, who then went out and wrote a much longer prequel that was based on ideas that he got from Avicenna. Among other things, he borrowed:
-The main character (or perhaps just his name, if you want to be a stick-up-the-bum kind of academic, but I'm willing to say he outright took the character)
-Several ideas about the conception of God in a mystical journey, and union with the divine as ineffable
-Descriptions of approaching the divine being blinded by beauty beyond the ability of the human eye to understand.

And this is my paper. I get to write about this one instance of fanfic in which a courtier in Muslim Spain thought that someone wrote a really cool idea and which he wanted to borrow. And that, my friends, is why I am a really happy little person right now, because this? Is damned cool.

This is what I want to study and write about. I want to talk about how people take ideas presented to them, and then make them their own by writing and expanding on those ideas in ways that the original thinker/actor/author/whatever did not think about and could not have foreseen.

I want to look at the world like it's fanfiction and talk about what I see in it. How people take ideas and make them from something outside themselves into something that reflects themselves, because nothing is new under the sun, it's only new to you, and making it yours is a fine and noble thing.

I kind of want to switch my field entirely and move to media studies and spend the rest of my life trying to get the Organization for Transformative Works to give me a paying job.

Ah, well.

Not gonna lie, folks. I have gotten the last few fics that I've added to my 'unread' tag from Fandom!secrets, which is kind of my new favorite distraction.

In other news, grad school is kind of eating my life, but in a really interesting and kind of compelling way. I, however, wish I could just read some of this stuff for the fun of it, rather than having to write papers on it. Actually, grad school is making me feel kind of stupid. Which, probably, is good, because it means that there is room to improve.

I am, however, considering meeting the dean of students and shaking her down for an explanation of why on earth they let me in this place. Really, people.

Ganked from veritas_st by means of house_of_lantis.

Happiness

1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for eight days without fail.


A boy brought me roses. :D

I just had a really random thought about how to do a movie with Harvey Dent. For everyone else- have one version of the script. For the actor doing Harvey post-acid- have a script with two versions of each scene- one for if the coin lands good, and one for when the coin lands bad. Make him learn both, and then only when you start rehearsing with other actors do you tell him which is the 'real' version. Make him think about how both options are real and viable and how Two-Face encompasses both outcomes.

Obviously, the actor would hate you. But as a geek, it would be so damned cool.

I can pinpoint exactly how I got into reading fanfic. Exactly. It was sometime in 2000 or 2001 (back when the set up of the computers put them in the den on the main floor of the house- back when people in my family had to share two computers, well before it became common to see us all huddled in the living room illuminated by the glow of separate laptop screens).

I was bored, and of all the random stuff in the world, my sister told me to go to bored.com and find something there to do. There was a link to fanfiction.net. And thus my addiction began.

Now, mind you, I was a geek, but I was a superhero geek. I was delighted with BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, or whatever they were calling it that season, and I was fairly addicted to a number of other superhero offshoots. I was a Marvel comics reader with a guilty love of a few DC characters, but limited by my suburban surroundings and being several years from my driver's permit, I was shit out of luck finding a comic book shop.

But there was fanfiction. On the internet. For free. People were writing stories about characters I liked, and I could get them without ever having to spend money or leave the house! The valkyries had come in the night to take me to my geeky Valhalla. And for a long time, I was content.

For, you see, this was before fanfiction.net stopped hosting NC-17 material. And thus, much of my introduction to fandom was paired with my introduction to porn. And I was happy, happy girl.

I existed like this for a damned long time, actually. I read more Marvel comics fanfic than I read the comics, and I was able to glean canon events and changes from that. Ff.net was still my one and only pit stop on the internet for this sort of thing, however, but it opened my brain up to something completely mind bogglingly different about being a geek.

There were others. Not only were people writing fanfic (and this, for me, was still a shockingly novel concept- authors of books were ephemeral creatures who stepped down from the clouds with completed works in hand. I could love a series to death without having any interest in the author whatsoever- it honestly just did not occur to me at all to care, ) but people reading the same fanfic as me. And writing comments. And praise. And then the author would respond, and the story would go on, and the cycle would repeat.

[This was pretty shocking to me, actually. I was the weird kid in school who'd moved in late when everyone else was already friends, and my social activities were greatly limited. Either as a cause of this, or just as a result, I read a metric shitload of books at a time. And no one ever read the same thing as me. Never. The Library was a place I went to restock on books, about a half dozen at a time, and other people went to socialize at the little tables together. No one ever read the same stuff as me.

[At least, no one I ever wanted to talk to- certainly none of the other girls. (I have vague recollections of geeky boys at school avidly discussing the logistics involved in the Yeerk invasion of Earth in ANIMORPHS, but I never talked to them because I never spoke to anyone of my own free will during the school day.) I read HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE around the time it came out, not because it was recommended to me, but just because it was in the public library in the scifi/fantasy section, and carried it around with me at school and I was flabbergasted when another girl wanted to talk to me about it. Befuddled, bewildered and utterly taken aback. Weirdest thing that had ever happened to me, and honestly was probably the point at which I began viewing that series with suspicion. But I digress.]

So there was fanfiction.net, haven of geeks, freaks, and other assorted weirdoes who were better geeks than me, because they were spending more time and energy thinking about their characters and backgrounds. Seriously. Nowadays I hardly ever visit ff.net because the ratio of awesome to crap is sadly skewed, but I was young and foolish and I didn't judge stories on their bad grammar. I just went with the flow and liked the Mary Sue even if she was unrealistically perky.

But one thing that ff.net did have going for it, was it was multifandom. You could find fanfic on just about anything there, and while I was initially too faithful and too fearful to leave my comicbook bailiwick, eventually I began to explore. I ignored Harry Potter because I just didn't like their conception of magic compared to that depicted in the YOUNG WIZARDS series by Diane Duane, but I went out into the world and found Star Wars, and Jane Austen, and more than a few others things.

Which brings us to about 2002, the year when NC-17 material was banned from ff.net. I remember some of the outraged posts about this, but honestly, this was a good thing for me, because it forced me to decentralize my fannish attentions- there was no more smut to be found on ff.net, so I went further afield, and bumped accidentally into really good authors writing really good porn. And honestly, just other really good stories.

Clearly, this marked a turning point. Teland.com became my new favorite place on the internet, and introduced me to a concept that (had I any functional social network) would have occurred to me before: recommendations. People who wrote good stuff were usually reading good stuff too. My intake grew exponentially in my given fandoms, and it was all good. I didn't have to wade through crap anymore to find well-written stories. I didn't have to deal with horrific punctuation. There were good writers making interesting works, and all I had to do was follow one link to another to find what I wanted.

There were even sites where people did nothing but write recommendations for fic, and this was where I came across thefourthvine. While TFV and I do not interact hardly at all, her recommendations for fandoms I liked were great. She found really, really good stories. The only problem was, large fandoms tend to produce more authors, and when you get a bigger pool of authors, you get better chances of finding really good stories. And the stuff she was reccing? Not in my fandoms, generally. Some were! And they were great stuff, but many were not, and I was loathe to read fic stories where I did not know anything about the canon.

But going through her TFV's lj looking for my fandoms, I found an older post of hers, where she detailed this shocking truth: she often didn't know the fandoms either. She often read fic from fandoms where she only had the most basic information about the canon. In fact, she threw another shocking concept my way: she did not even feel guilty about this. She didn't seem to think that she really needed the canon. She read the fanfic because she liked the fanfic.

And in that moment, friends, I was set free.

I don't need to know the canon. I don't need to feel like I need to watch the first season of a series before I can read the fic authors I want. I don't have to care about spoilers. I can just read the fanfic because I like the fanfic, and forget about the canon entirely if I want to.

This attitude changed my interaction with fandom entirely. It opened doors into fandoms I never thought I would care about, with shows that had been off the air for years or things that were only available in languages I don't speak. I became a fan of fandom in and of itself, not merely as a means to worship of canon, but as a concept of shared creative endeavor without any hope of profit.

And here I stand.

why I'm not engaging in the ritual 'first post' humiliation. This is not my first post, nor my first journal. It's a place marker for a project that's going under the title of "Kite with Fish," as it's been an image running around in my head for as long as I've had the notion to equate the trailing bows on a kite's tail with little tropical fish.