The Original Fandom?

[unclehyena.livejournal.com]

A couple of weeks ago, I posted the following in my main journal:

"Mary Sue Lancelot?
A few people have responded to my thought that there is a really good Arthurian movie still waiting to be made; while responding to them, I realized that Lancelot is a Mary Sue. Think about it: Chretien de Troyes took an existing popular story, and grafted his own character into it, making him better than anyone else. Pure Mary Sue. It's grinworthy, at least..."

Since then, I have given the idea a bit of thought, and while I realize this is not likely to be a new idea, it is new to me: ALL of Arthurian Romance is FanFic, every last bit of it. In the of EVERY existing work, the writer took established stories, tweaked and edited them to taste, and cut or added new characters at whim.

The distinction is that there IS no original, core work on which everything else is based. It has ALL been fans writing for other fans, for nearly nine hundred years.

Yeah, it is a grinworthy idea, but it is also rather wonderful...

Uncle Hyena

Comments

[etherealshores.livejournal.com]

...HAHAHAHAHA.

To be honest, I've never liked Lancelot much. But thinking of him in that way is cracking me up majorly right now.

[ariestess]

*chuckles* Good point!

I definitely got a giggle out of the idea of Lancelot = MartyStu!


And an aside? Love your username! Hyenas are faboo!

[unclehyena.livejournal.com]

Heh. I occasionally style myself as the world's foremost authority on gnolls, which are anthropomorphic hyenas. I am even more or less working on a gnoll novel...

[ariestess]

I've never heard of a gnoll before... Sounds interesting...

[unclehyena.livejournal.com]

This is the story that started my personal descent into gnollish madness: http://unclehyena.livejournal.com/114695.html

And an essay on where they came from: http://unclehyena.livejournal.com/187578.html

[ariestess]

Ahhh... Wiki'd gnolls to see they're of D&D origins.

[unclehyena.livejournal.com]

Well, sort of. It's a bit more complicated than that, though the D&D tie is why I stayed away from them for a LONG time. But then I realized that they had slipped into the public domain, and that made them a LOT more interesting.

And if you are going to write about anthropormorphic hyenas, and a significant percentage of your target audience knows such creatures as "gnolls", there is not much point in fighting the trend.

Though MY gnolls are matriarchal, and hte females significantly outweigh the males (like spotted hyenas...)

[scarfman]

For nearly fifteen hundred years.

[unclehyena.livejournal.com]

The reality was 1500 years ago; the fanfic didn't really start until (very nominally) Geoffrey of Monmouth, which was why I said 900...

[scarfman]

Maybe the written fanfiction didn't start still Geoffrey, but written work wasn't the medium of the people then.

[luna_puella]

Well, Chretien de Troyes didn't really create Lancelot. He was using another source, possibly the German Lanzelet, that was probably given to him by his employer.

I can see how he's sort of a Mary Sue/Gary Stu, as in the early romances that Lancelot figures in, he is the best knight around. But you have to realise that this was common in the Middle Ages: heroes were perfect, villains were the epitome of evil. Shades of gray were not nearly as common as they are now.

Later, the idealism shifted from courtly love to religion. Due to his adulterous relationship with Guinevere, Lancelot makes a huge fall from grace. He used to be the perfect knight, but he became to be seen as a heinous sinner and had to go through some serious penance, and never completed the Quest of the Holy Grail... Instead, that honour befell his son Galahad (and if you want to talk Mary Sue, you should check him out :P).

[seattleotaku.livejournal.com]

I can think of much-earlier Mesopotamian, Hebrew/Greek, and Arabic writings that could fit the same mold, too. In fact, anything that went from vocal to written...

[gwalchmai2007.livejournal.com]

It is arguable, and has been argued, that many of the early tales of Arthur are not so much fiction as we tend to believe. At the very least, somebody did some of the things that Arthur did within a span of about 40 years in the early half of the sixth century. While no one in his time mentioned him by name, some leader galvanized the British people to stand against the expansion of the Saxon people into their territories. Even the Saxons acknowledge that somebody halted their advance, for in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, there are numerous battles up until about 510 or so that are recorded as yet another spanking of the British, and for about 40 years, the chronicle is conspicuously silent on this matter (the Anglo-Saxons had a tendency to only record their victories, not their defeats).

[minstrel-ivare.livejournal.com]

We've only had copyright (in any form) for a couple hundred years--so pretty much any epic story from before then is "fanfiction" of something. An even older example is the Iliad, which has inspired countless spinoffs and retellings, and was itself an adaptation of something else!

[teslabomb.livejournal.com]

I know it's been ages since this was posted but I just wanted to say.
best.fandom.ever.
we could pwn MCR ANYDAY.

[lucre-noin.livejournal.com]

I'm late for this post but YOU ARE RIGHT!