Fanfiction and me – a selection from the autobiography of the Slacker.

Why Fanfic?

Why not fanfic? I’ve heard it being denigrated, of course, or called ‘not real writing’, but that is an opinion that’s plain wrong. Fanfiction is writing, for the simple fact that it is words on paper. Now there’s degrees within Fanfic, of course. There’s work that is very original and work that is - well, not. There are fanfics of such brilliance that they make one wonder if the original might not have benefited from the treatment, and then there is ‘My Immortal’.

The point I am trying to make is that as a creative outlet, Fanfic is as legitimate a form as any other.

My personal journey into the world probably stems to my very early forays into writing, when my age was in single digits and I scrawled block letters into unused diaries trying to write about the Famous Five and the Hardy Boys, before moving on to my version of The Count of Monte Cristo where {SPOILER ALERT] Edmund Dantes dies a horrible death before driving M de Villefort’s wife to suicide. Naturally, all that was forgotten in the years that followed, and I pretty much put aside my pen as I went through college. When I did pick it up again (though it was a desktop keyboard by then) I was writing original stories – the Elver series that some of you have been kind enough to read. For those of you who haven’t, a couple of the stories written at the time are available here.

Then I got a job, and that’s where Fanfiction re-entered my life in a big way.

It went something like this - as a young Management Trainee, I was chucked into the world of finance (a week before the contracted joining date, as I shall curse to my dying day) into a team that was in flux. The international business division was being re-organised, nobody knew what they would be handling a month hence, and as such, were not particularly interested in finding work for a fresh-faced young fellow who, to be fair, was not actually pushing to be given something to do either.

Not actually a photo of the Slacker. My socks are less flashy.

So I had what can best be described as ‘vacant’ time. Time to sit at a desk and do nothing. I’d have liked to bring a novel to the office and peruse it, but even I was not thick enough to think I could get away with that without doing serious long-term damage to my career. Maybe if I could bring a management guru’s book to read, yes, but that was never going to happen.

So I was left with the alternative of peering into a computer screen and trying to find entertainment there, on a network that blocked all forms of social media.

That’s when fanfic came to my rescue. Those sites were not blocked. Schnoogle, FF.net, mugglenet – all displayed their wares, and I spent many a blissful hour reading the works hosted there. That there would be a slant towards Harry Potter was not surprising, the last book of the series was yet to come out, and for many people like me, fanfic was a way to seek an alternate ending, a resolution, to questions we still had. Looking back on it, as much as I enjoyed reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I must say that I can think of at least a couple of Fanfics that did a more convincing and satisfying job of closing the series.

Well, my idyll at the office did not last long, and pretty soon I was festooned in work but Fanfic remained my guilty pleasure, it was where I went to if I snatched a free half-hour at work. But two – maybe three – years into my life as corporate slave, I realised that my own writing had gone so completely on the back-burner that its prospects of ever coming to fruition were weaker than those of Birbal’s proverbial khichdi being cooked.

And yet, writing is a skill, and a skill needs to be practised. Or so I thought. Thinking up original content was virtually impossible at the end of a twelve-hour workday. But I did have an idea for a story that was essentially an extension of Rowling’s Harry Potter Universe. I wanted to explore the next-generation, and avoid the mistakes that other fanfic authors had made by caricaturising the children. If I could bring something of my own writing, my own style and characterisation to the HP universe, I thought I’d be doing a pretty good job of honing my own skills, while crafting a tale I hoped would be engaging.

I named it ‘The Name of the Rose’, which was stupid, in hindsight, but what did I know, right? I had a plot in mind, even if, like all pantsers, it was vague as to the specifics. But I had my characters well-mapped out in my head. They were real to me – Rose Weasley, Scorpius Malfoy, Albus Potter and even the elements from Indian mythology that I was trying to weave into it. For this was rapidly becoming my story.

There was also the Neria Fanfic, based off Dragon Age: Origins, an RPG that still stands up both graphically and in terms of gameplay and which I enjoyed re-imagining as the story of a slutty mage.

Flash forward to today.

While I am writing more original content now, what with Cats and other forms of fiction I still have neither forgotten, nor am I ashamed of, my foray into the world of Fanfiction. After all, if JK Rowling can put her name to ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’, which is essentially a fanfic, even if a good one, I’m pretty sure mine isn’t too bad either ;)

I shall be posting the opening Chapters from my Harry Potter Fanfic on this blog over the course of the next few days, and depending on the response, might put up the whole thing.

Happy Reading, and all that sort of thing.

Wuthering Heights, once again

A hundred and ninety-eight years ago today, Emily Bronte was born. She would die not long after – just a few months past her 30^th birthday. But she gave the world – and me – something that we should be eternally grateful for. The novel Wuthering Heights. 

In a world which celebrates material achievements and makes Gods of the rich for no other reason than their ability to extract money from the earth, atmosphere or from human beings, it might not be a bad idea to remind ourselves that a parson’s daughter from a remote village in northern England, who only ever wrote one book, achieved more lasting fame than John Jacob Astor. 

Who is Astor, you ask? Oh, just the richest man in the world in the year 1848, the year the parson’s daughter died.

I wrote this as a tribute to the book and the novelist on this day last year.

“Let me in.”

It was a disembodied, child-like voice. Definitely a girl's though. Wasn’t the first time I was hearing it either. In fact, she had been making her plaintive plea for a while now. How long had it been – how long had I ignored her?

“Nine years,” she said, anticipating my thoughts, as she often did. “Nine years you've left me out in the cold.”

“Nine? Not that many, surely,” I smiled weakly. “And you haven't been out in the cold or...”

“A book unread is a book out in the cold, Jormund,” she laughed her saucy laugh.

“Well nine years…I do feel…surely you’re mistaken.” I said. She was mistaken, wasn’t she? I remembered her face, her form, her words as clearly as though I had seen her yesterday.

“I know you better than you know yourself, Jormund. Do you remember why you sought me out, then? Wasn't it for a grade? A grade to shore up your sinking – what do you call it? A GPA? You wrote about me and got the grade you wanted. Your first year in University.”

I had heard enough. I opened the window.

“Come in! Come in!” I sobbed. “Cathy, do come. Oh, do—once more!”

(c) Duhinta Das

I can't recall how often I've read Wuthering Heights. Deuce take it, I can’t even recall how old I was when I first read it. It was a book that had belonged to my uncle, with the glowing golden stamp of the University of Mumbai on it, already disintegrating in my hands, the pages yellowed with age.

Too young to understand most of the words, too impatient to savour the flavour of Yorkshire's moors that Bronte brought so vividly to life, too stupid to understand the themes it brought forth, I nonetheless devoured it impatiently and when it was over, I was conscious of a feeling of loss, as if this was a book I could read for ever, that I never wanted to end.

Well, I did read it again. And again. And again. Each time, I laughed with Catherine and Heathcliff as they ran through the moors, I cried for Isabella Linton as she sped to her foolish doom, I reflected sadly with Nelly Dean on Hindley Earnshaw's wasted life, I felt sorry for Edgar Linton, ever to enjoy only a pale reflection of the all-consuming passion his wife held for her lover, and then I grieved for the younger Catherine as she knowingly stepped into the abyss prepared for her by her father's enemy.

I have heard people call Wuthering Heights just another love story. I'm told they've made it a part of the syllabus at schools and colleges, thus condemning it to the eternal hatred of generations of students.

It's about as much a love story as the Taj Mahal is just another tomb, or Everest is just another mountain. I am not even sure whether or not a book that's meant to be experienced, to be lived, to be understood, should ever be tried to be taught.

So I close the pages again on Catherine. I hope it's not another nine years before I let her in again. But it doesn't matter, and she knows it. Here, and here, in whichever place the soul lives, Wuthering Heights will always be a part of me.

(c) Muirin

[Anyone interested in reading the Book Report I wrote on Wuthering Heights for which I got an A Grade in my first year of B-school in a subject called OB-I, can click here. I almost never actually praise myself, but trust me, you will NOT regret reading this one]

(c) Leonnack

Curious cats and the virtues of anti-intellectualism

[Ser Pounce-a-lot is a British shorthair cat who earned his Knighthood defending his dim-witted sister, Cat-a-tonia from a bunch of ruffianly dogs. A feline of rare wit and sharp insight, he often condescends to share his wisdom with his human slave, Percy the Slacker (the man behind this blog). In an ongoing series, Ser Pounce's wisdom shall be presented in the form of conversations between him and his scribe, the aforementioned Percy. Below, is one such...]

(c) Kmye Chan

[While I was planning to write on this subject for a long time, I had been procrastinating, as so often happens. Then Ajesh Sharma (better known as Slo-Man) posted this in a place where Ser Pounce could read it, and this blog-post came into being.]

“Oy, you! Yes you, what you up to?”

“Oh, nothing, Ser Pounce, nothing.”

“You’ve been staring out of that window for the last ten minutes when you should have been scratching my ears.”

“I can stare outside the window while scratching your ears. Was just looking at that crow hopping from branch to branch on the tree outside. He seems to have a plan, though a very random one. I wonder what he’s up to.”

“Ooh, a bird. Let me at him, let me at him, I say!”

“Calm down, we’re three floors up, you can’t pounce on him. You’ll break your neck falling.”

“True. Curiosity and cats don’t mix well, you know.”

“Yes, like in the adage.”

“Like, as you say, in the adage. How is it for humans, though?”

“I dare say curiosity must be bad for us too, so few humans seem to have it.”

“What are you talking about? Don’t you always complain about nosy relatives asking too many questions?”

“Well, that’s different. I meant true curiosity – a desire to know how things work, where things came from, why things happened.”

“You’re talking about intellectual curiosity now, aren’t you?”

“I suppose I am. If ‘intellectual’ wasn’t such a bad word nowadays…stop scratching my arm, Ser Pounce!”

“Eh sorry, I thought it was the arm of the chair.”

“We are sitting on a ledge, not on a chair!”

“Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to.”

“Anyway, as I was saying, between those who are dumb as bricks and pretend to be intellectual, and those who pride themselves on being dumb as bricks, the ability to think, the desire to learn is being lost.”

“You know, human, you do have a point. It is part of what makes cats the superior race. Despite the ever-hanging threat of curiosity killing us, we retain the desire to explore and learn.”

“During the 4 hours of the day when you’re neither sleeping nor eating, you mean?”

“I prefer to express it as a range between two hours and six.”

“Do you have a point?”

“Yes. You see, humans – and there are some decent sorts amongst you – have a formal education system. So you go to school and then to University, learn, give exams, and then join an office or start a business or something.”

“That about sums up human existence, yes.”

“Now some of you treat the classrooms and cubicles as closed spaces.”

“They are closed spaces, Ser Pounce, as you would know if you were an office cat.”

“Mentally, human, mentally. If you think about it, what your teachers tell you is a starting point. It should make you want to know more, to understand, rather than just absorb.”

“Even if the teacher is bad or boring?”

“Especially if the teacher is bad or boring. The good ones anyway expose you to a broad spectrum of learning. Think of it like this - a good pet, like a cat, enriches your life by sitting silently and judging you, filling you with existential questions, while a bad pet – like a dog – makes your life revolve around it, providing mindless entertainment in the form of tricks and chasing sticks.”

“I think you lost the analogy a bit there, but I think I understand what you mean. We should aspire to know more, rather than just see learning as a compulsion, or as a means to an end.”

“Yes, just as I see killing rats not so much as being for food but as a mental exercise.”

“Killing rats is a mental exercise?”

“Indeed it is. You see, the rat knows – and the cat does too – the battle is over before it really happens. We size each other up, and we know how it ends. Everything else – the chasing, the stalking, the leap – is but an expression of an art. The art itself is within us. Within me.”

“Have you overdosed on catnip again?”

“Nothing of the sort. Well, maybe a little. You need to keep it more securely locked up. Anyway, take how you consume art, for example. Music, movies or literature.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“Now there’s one sort of person who would listen to a song he likes and then try and find out who the singer is, what other songs she has sung, and if all her repertoire is good, find out what artistes she was influenced by and so on – basically maximise both knowledge and enjoyment.”

“And similarly for authors, composers and painters…”

“Or photographers, movie-makers and chefs.”

“And so on, yes, I get the point.”

“While there is another sort of person who would listen to a song, like it, maybe listen to it a few more times, but never even know the name of the singer, and definitely not the name of the album.”

“And you see this as a bad thing?”

“I think a person who fails to ask questions has failed at life.”

“You know, Ser Pounce, those people – those who do not ask the questions, or indulge in curiosity, as you put it – tend to be happier.”

“They are more certain in life, I’ll grant you that, because they do not think beyond the apparent. They work because they must, never asking why they are tied to their jobs, and whether they really need to be. It is the great virtue of anti-intellectualism, Percy – the happiness of not knowing what you do not know.”

“I say, Ser Pounce, now you are attacking the foundations of modern society!”

“Am I? Take my sister, Catatonia. She sees lunch and she eats it. No reflection on where it comes from, who provides it, or why she is provided lunch while other cats have to hunt for a meal.”

“As far as I can tell, you do the same thing.”

“Shows how little you know. I recognise that my inherent, excellent qualities led you to adopt me and treat me with the respect that I deserve. Therefore I strive to always remain worthy of that respect.”

“I thought you saw yourself as a Cat Overlord of a superior species.”

“Well, of course, but being an Overlord is a status that has to be earned and maintained. Like now, I am shedding fur all over your towel to remind you that it’s high time you washed it.”

“Ugh, get off it, you beast!”

“A fearsome beast I am, indeed. Anyway, while you gnash your teeth and curse at the world, I shall go off to explore the staircase and learn more and more about the habits of your subordinate species, for understanding is key to subjugation.”

“Yes, go, you odious cat, and if curiosity kills you, I’ll write her a thank-you note!”