The Guardian Profile Challenge -- Tell us how great you are

[rthstewart]

This article was just infuriating. If you’ve not followed the epic rants on Twitter, a white male pro author (who is apparently pretty good) and the Guardian suddenly discover Narnia fan fic and wildly praise his scintillating tale of the years before Jadis’ rule and the creation of the Stone Table. The article and a separate opinion piece bemoan that this brilliant story cannot be published nor the author compensated for his amazing work because there is that crotchety thing known as property rights in copyrighted material, in this case owned by the Lewis estate.  But, the praise continues, this fan fic is SO good, maybe it's time to re-examine copyright laws!

Oh such a tragedy. Men extolled for writing fan fic (so much so that his friends start lobbying for the law to be changed) and women mocked.

So, I posted an epic Twitter feed of Narnia recs (with self recs specifically encouraged). After bitching with cofax7 , petra , and WingedFlight others, and getting a few super nice comments, we decided we needed to write glowing puff pieces about ourselves and our uncompensated contributions to any fandom.

Winged calls it the #guardianprofilechallenge.  Please write your own few hundred words extolling your virtues as a fan fic or other creator in fandom.  Or, maybe you're just a really awesome fan!  Write that too!  Post it anywhere -- DW, Twitter, Tumblr, whatever.  Style it as a Guardian article, a press release, a blog post, or whatever you like.   After you are exhausted with praise for yourself, post the link here or reprint it in comments so that we might discover and praise you, too.  Because if white dude author guy can print 75 copies of his fanfic and has the gumption to approach the rights holder about publishing it (yes, really), and gets his friends and the Guardian to make that behavior seem reasonable and praiseworthy, well by Gaia, god, a pint of beer, and Aslan, we can do it too.

And I spent this afternoon high on pain killers after my root canal and writing this so you'd better contribute or I'm going to feel like an idiot.

Comments

this was harder than I expected

[cofax7]

Fifty years from now someone will write a master's thesis on the prevalence of apocalypses in the work of the fan-writer cofax, a figure of small repute in the international fanfiction community of the early 2000s. They'll discover that in fact cofax abuses semi-colons but does know how to handle the Oxford comma, and pays close attention to world-building, logistics, and characterization. The student might draw some outlandish connection between the desire of the writer to investigate how characters survive (and sometimes thrive) in times of apocalypse, and the looming ecological and political crises of the 2020s.

After publishing many hundreds of thousands of words in X-Files, Stargate, Supernatural, Farscape, and Narnia fandom, cofax's output petered off after 2013, but their major works continue to be read and recommended as classics of their fandoms.

Re: this was harder than I expected

[alexseanchai]

♥

I should reread Carpetbaggers

Re: this was harder than I expected

[rthstewart]

I thought I responded earlier but it was obviously a pain reliever fever dream post root canal. Cofax, this is just DELIGHTFUL. I just love how you characterize yourself as the purveyor of the apocalypse. I had indeed forgotten that post apocalyptic visions were such an amazing thing in your hands. And as Alex says, I obviously need to re-read Carpetbaggers. It's been too long. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for plugging you, because you deserve it and I'm proud of you and honored to know you and your contributions.