how is it possible to love fictional characters this much and also have people always been this way?
like, did queen elizabeth lie in bed late sometimes thinking ‘VERILY I CANNOT EVEN FOR MERCUTIO HATH SLAIN ME WITH FEELS’
was caesar like ‘ET TU ODYSSEUS’
sometimes i wonder
the answer is yes they did. there’s a lot of research about the highly emotional reactions to the first novels widely available in print.
here’s a thing; the printing press was invented in 1450 and whilst it was revolutionary it wasn’t very good. but then it got better over time and by the 16th century there were publications, novels, scientific journals, folios, pamphlets and newspapers all over Europe. at first most were educational or theological, or reprints of classical works.
however, novels gained in popularity, as basically what most people wanted was to read for pleasure. they became salacious, extremely dramatic, with tragic heroines and doomed love and flawed heroes (see classical literature, only more extreme.) books in the form of letters were common. sensationalism was par the course and apparently used to teach moral lessons. there was also a lot of erotica floating around.
but here’s the thing: due to the greater availability of literature and the rise of comfy furniture (i shit you not this is an actual historical fact, the 16th and 17th century was when beds and chairs got comfy) people started reading novels for pleasure, women especially. as these novels were highly emotional, they too became…highly emotional. there are loads of contemporary reports of young women especially fainting, having hysterics, or crying fits lasting for days due to the death of a character or their otp’s doomed love. they became insensible over books and characters, and were very vocal about it. men weren’t immune-there’s a long letter a middle-aged man wrote to the author of his favourite work basically saying that the novel is too sad, he can’t handle all his feels, if they don’t get together he won’t be able to go on, and his heart is already broken at the heroine’s tragic state (IIRC ehh).
conservatives at the time were seriously worried about the effects of literature on people’s mental health, and thought it damaging to both morals and society. so basically yes it is exactly like what happens on tumblr when we cry over attractive British men, only my historical theory (get me) is that their emotions were even more intense, as they hadn’t had a life of sensationalist media to numb the pain for them beforehand in the same way we do, nor did they have the giant group therapy session that is tumblr.
(don’t even get me started on the classical/early medieval dudes and their boners for the Iliad i will be here all week. suffice to say, the members of the Byzantine court used Homeric puns instead of talking normally to each other if someone who hand’t studied the classics was in the room. they had dickish fandom in-jokes. boom.)
I needed to know this.
See, we’re all just the current steps in a time-honored tradition! (And this post is good to read along with Affectingly’s post this week about old-school-fandom-and-history-and-stuff.
Ancient Iliad fandom is intense
Alexander the Great and and his boyfriend totally RPed Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander shipped that hard. (It’s possible that this story is apocryphal, but that would just mean that ancient historians were writing RPS about Alexander and Hephaestion RPing Iliad slash and honestly that’s just as good).
And then there’s this gem from Plato:
“Very different was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus – his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Aeschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far)” – Symposium
That’s right: 4th Century BCE arguments about who topped. Nihil novi sub sole my friends.
More on this glorious subject from people who know way more than I do
Also a thing with fix-it/everyone lives AUs: at various points in time but especially in the mid 1800s-early 1900s (aka roughly Victorian though there were periods of this earlier as well) a huge thing was to “fix” Shakespeare (as well as most theater/novels) to be in line with current morality. Good characters live, bad characters are terribly punished – but not, you know, grusomely, because what would the ladies think? So you have like, productions of King Lear where Cordelia lives and so do Regan and Goneril, but they’re VERY SORRY.
Aka all your problematic faves are redeemed and Everyone Lives! AUs for every protag.
Slightly tangential but I wanted to add my own favorite account of Chinese fandom to this~ I don’t know how many people here have heard of the Chinese novel A Dream of Red Mansions (红楼梦), but it is, arguably, the most famous Chinese novel ever written (There are four Chinese novel classics and A Dream of Red Mansions is considered the top of that list). It was written during the Qing dynasty by 曹雪芹, but became a banned book due to its critique of societal institutions and pro-democracy themes. As a result, the original ending of the book was lost and only the first 80 chapters remained. There are quite a few versions of how the current ending of the book came to be, but one of them is basically about how He Shen, one of Emperor Qian Long’s most powerful advisers, was such a super-fan of the book, he hired two writers to archive and reform the novel from the few remaining manuscripts there were. In order to convince the Emperor to remove the ban on the book, he had the writers essentially write a fanfiction ending to the book that would mitigate the anti-establishment themes. However, He Shen thought that the first version of the ending was too tragic (even though the whole book is basically a tragedy) so he had the writers go back and write a happier ending for him (the current final 40 chapters). He then presented the book to the Emperor and successfully convinced him to remove the ban on the book.
According to incomplete estimates, A Dream of Red Mansions spawned over 20 spin offs, retellings, and alternate versions (in the form of operas, plays, etc.) during the Qing Dynasty alone.
In 1979, fans (albeit academic ones) started publishing a bi-monthly journal dedicated to analysis (read: meta) on A Dream of Red Mansions. In fact, the novel’s fandom is so vast and qualified and rooted in academics of Chinese literature that there is an entire field of study (beginning in the Qing dynasty) of just this one novel, called 红学. Think of it as Shakespearean studies, but only on one play. This field of study has schools of thought and specific specializations (as in: Psych analyses, Economics analyses, Historical analyses, etc.) that span pretty much every academic field anyone can think of.
(That being said, I’ve read A Dream of Red Mansions and can honestly say that I’ve never read its peer in either English or Chinese. If for nothing else, read it because you would never otherwise believe that a man from the Qing dynasty could write such a heart-breakingly feminist novel with such a diverse cast of female characters given all the bitching and moaning we hear from male content-creators nowadays)
the beauty of archival research *sigh*
i went to a building that is a “fan recreation” of one of the buildings from Hongloumeng and my like bitter, angry, never smiled once 78yo male teacher was like squeeing and giggling and kept sitting down and fanning himself and posed dramatically for photos
this guy was like the voldemort of staff, a man of legendary terror-inspiring mien. swooning.
A more recent example of fandom in history is the original Sherlock Holmes fan base! It’s one of the earliest coherent models we have that closely represents the fandoms of modern media.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s first two Sherlock Holmes novels weren’t hugely popular, but when he began to write stories for The Strand magazine involving Sherlock Holmes, the public basically went absolutely mental. He used to get fan mail – predominantly from women, apparently – addressed directly to Sherlock Holmes, some women even offering to be his housekeeper.
He eventually got so fed up of writing stories about a character he didn’t really like (he considered Sherlock Holmes to be an irritating distraction from his ambition to write historical fiction, once saying “he takes my mind from better things”) that he took measures to end the series once and for all. First, he raised his fee for writing the stories to an extortionate amount, hoping that the magazine would refuse to pay it and fire him. However, there was such a demand for new Sherlock Holmes stories that the magazine just agreed to pay his ridiculous fee. So, he killed off Sherlock Holmes in 1893 in the Reichenbach Falls, and when he did that, shit hit the fan. People reportedly placed Sherlock Holmes obituaries in newspapers. Many of them cancelled their subscription to The Strand, and wrote angry letters to Arthur Conan Doyle explaining how he’d broken their heart. To fill the gap left by the death of their bb, some people wrote fan fiction and shared it in literary groups and book clubs.
Conan Doyle caved to pressure in 1901 and wrote Hound of the Baskervilles, partly because the fan fervour never really died down, and partly because cash dollah. You know how fans lobbied for the return of Firefly, and ended up getting Serenity made? The original Sherlock Holmes fans totally got there first.
You forgot the bit where Holmes fans wore honest-to-god *mourning* attire after the death of their fave. Men wore crepe armbands in the streets for Holmes. It was redonk.
One of the distinctive features of Old Norse poetry is the use of kenning: a circumlocutory device in which a straightforward noun is replaced with an allusive phrase.
For example, a ship might be referred to as a “wave’s horse”; a sword, a “wound-serpent”; a shield, “the shame of swords”, and so forth. Sometimes, kennings could be embedded in other kennings – thus, one might have “feeder of war-gulls” = “feeder of ravens” = “warrior”; this is known as a doubled or extended kenning.
Though many conventions of English literature can be traced back to Old Norse roots, kenning isn’t much encountered these days – at least, not in most genres. There’s one particular genre where the art of kenning is alive and well, though.
I’m speaking, of course, of erotic fanfic.
Whether you’re referring to a penis as a “porn-truncheon” or a vagina as “squish-pocket” (both examples I’ve seen employed in all apparent seriousness, incidentally), that perfectly fits the form and function of a kenning. Indeed, these examples even adhere to the idiosyncratic grammatical structure of many Old Norse kennings, with the base word being modified by an uninfected noun determinant inserted as a compound prefix.
Euphemisms for sex acts, meanwhile, can be even more baroque, forming multi-level allusions in the manner of doubled/extended kennings. “To ride the baloney pony”, for example, employs the act of riding a horse as an allusion to penetrative sexual intercourse – but the contained phrase “baloney pony” is, itself, a kenning of the simple type, with “pony” as the base word and “baloney” as the determinant, making the whole phrase a doubled kenning.
There are practical reasons for this sort of practice, of course; e.g., complex euphemisms can help sexually explicit works sneak through content filters. Still, it’s kind of fascinating that smutty fanfic has managed to preserve – in virtually unaltered state – a poetic form that’s otherwise been largely extinct in English literature for the better part of a thousand years.
amazing
This is the kind of content I want on my dash!!
*head asplode* Right, I love kennings in old Anglo-Saxon and Norse poetry, I love them, and it NEVER OCCURRED TO ME that that thing that terrible porn does is kenning. *falls over laughing* I LOVE IT.
*props chin in hands* Talk dirty and historical linguistic devices to me baby.
I love how humans have literally not changed throughout history like the graffiti from Pompeii has people from hundreds of years ago writing stuff like “Marcus is gay” “I fucked a girl here” “Julius your mum wishes she was with me” and leonardo da vinci’s assistants drew dicks in their notebooks just for the banter and mozart created a piece called “kiss my ass” so when people wish for ‘today’s generation’ to be like ‘how people used to’ then we’re already there buddy we’ve always been
The Hagia Sophia has inscriptions that were considered sacred for centuries until they were deciphered in the 70s to be Nordic runes saying “Halfdan wrote this”
my old english prof told us that theres a cave in Scandinavia where a viking gratified some runes like 14 feet up on the wall and when they finally reached it all it translated into was “this is very high”
Ancient Shitposting
Now on the History Channel
‘People have literally just always been people’ is genuinely my favorite fact about the world
Well, not going to miss a chance to post this again:
“Flashy people may burlesque these things,” sniped Mather in 1702, taking aim at the “learned witlings of the coffeehouse,” the latte-sipping liberals of the day.
The Witches by Stacy Schiff
I can’t believe coffeeshop hipsters existed as far back as 1702
Hamilton was not content to write [under the pseudonym] Camillus alone. Two days after his second essay appeared, he began to publish, in the same paper, a parallel series as ‘Philo Camillus.’ For several weeks, Philo Camillus indulged in extravagant praise of Camillus and kept up a running attack on their republican adversaries. The prolific Hamilton was now writing pseudonymous commentaries on his own pseudonymous essays. He also tossed in two trenchant essays under the name ‘Horatius’ in which he accused Jeffersonians of ‘a servile and criminal subserviency to the views of France.’
Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton
alexander hamilton joined a forum and created multiple accounts so he could agree with himself in a political discussion thread
If anyone ever complains about celebrity culture today, or despairs at how we’re all obsessed with actors, just hit them with some facts about acting in Imperial Rome:
Romans were obsessed with actors called pantomimes, masked, silent dancers who told stories through movement, not unlike our modern ballet dancers. You might not think that sounds exciting, but people went apeshit over them.
Seriously. People formed fan clubs for their favourite pantomimes. There is an inscription on a wall in Pompeii that gives endorsement to a political candidate from the Paridiani – the fan club of the pantomime Paris. The Paridiani were like the ancient equivalent of our Hiddlestoners and Cumberbitches.
These fan clubs could get really, really violent. They formed factions that would sit together at the theatre, and brawls often broke out as they fought over their favourites. (For some reason, riots hardly ever occurred at the amphitheatre, where people were getting murdered and torn apart by beasts, but at the theatre, where they were watching ballet dancers of all things, riots broke out all the time. Unbelievable.)
In 14 CE the populace rioted when one of the pantomime actors hired
for the Augustalia refused to perform unless his pay was
increased; the tribunes had to request an emergency meeting of the
Senate so they could beg for more money before the people tore them apart. (Dio
56.47.2).
I cannot overstate how serious some of these theatre riots were. In Tiberius’ reign, it is believed that the rivalry between the pantomime fan clubs was the biggest threat to law and order in the city of Rome. They were so bad they required Senate intervention. Actors
were targeted and punished for inflammatory behaviour, expenditure on
entertainment was slashed, and the crowd was brought to heel by threats of exile for
disorderly conduct. They were threatened with exile to stop the fighting. Suddenly the Cumberbitches don’t seem so bad.
Sometimes the rioting and the licentious behaviour of the actors meant that emperors would banish entire theatre troupes from the city of Rome, or from Italy itself, to keep order.
The rivalry between the actors themselves was no less intense. At one
performance, the pantomime Pylades heckled his rival (and former pupil)
Hylas, who was playing Blinded Oedipus, by calling out “You’re seeing!”
In another story, Pylades was playing Insane Hercules when
the spectators heckled him for using inappropriate gestures. Pylades
ripped off his mask and yelled, “Fools! I am playing a madman!” and tried to fight the audience. (Macrob
Sat. 2.7.15-17.)
This same Pylades (he got around a lot) also shot
actual poisoned arrows into the audience when he was playing Hercules.
Similarly, the tragic actor Aesopus (not a pantomime) is said to have gotten so into his role as the villain Atreus that he actually killed one of the servants crossing the stage.
Emperor Caligula was so passionate about acting that when a clap of thunder interrupted the performance of his
favourite pantomimes, he tried to fight the sky. Seneca says: “Emperor
Caligula was angry with heaven because it kept drowning out
his pantomime actors… and when his revelry was terrified by lightning
bolts (which must have fallen short of their mark!) he called on Jupiter
for a fight to the death, exclaiming the Homeric verse: “Either lift me
up, or I will lift you!” (De Ira, 1.20.8).
Many emperors and aristocrats had pantomimes as boyfriends (Maecenas, Caligula, Nero, etc.) Those chosen as imperial consorts were the best of the best; it would be like monarchs or presidents today taking Oscar winners as their lovers. Tom Hanks and Vladimir Putin, anyone?
Certain emperors became so caught up in the celebrity and entertainment-fuelled culture of Imperial Rome that they started acting themselves (something that was hugely degrading for any freeborn person, but especially an aristocrat or an emperor to do). Caligula was assassinated when he was on his way to the theatre, to prevent him from making his public debut as an actor. The famous Nero often performed and acted in tragedies, weirdly enough, while wearing masks fashioned after his own face, or (if he were playing a woman’s role) after the face of his dead wife Poppaea, whom he kicked to death. Nero was so into performing that he forced people to stay and watch him, and there are (probably exaggerated) stories of women giving birth and men shamming death so they could escape because no one was allowed to leave. (Could you even imagine Barack Obama starring in Broadway shows? Or Queen Elizabeth spending her nights playing Lady Macbeth at the Globe? Incredible.)
People complain today about girls being obsessed with actors, but it was the same in Rome. Juvenal says: “When nancy-boy Bathyllus is dancing the Leda pantomime, Tuccia wets herself. Apula whimpers, just as if she were in a man’s embrace, drawn-out and with sudden anguish.” (Satires, 6.63-5). I need a cold shower.
Another, humorous description of female infatuation with actors: “Some women burn for sordid folks and cannot rouse desire
unless they see either slaves or servants in short tunics. The arena ignites
some, or a mule-driver flooded with dust, or an actor made low by exhibiting
himself on stage. My mistress is one of these; she jumps all the way from the
orchestra and the first fourteen rows and with the plebs in the upper seats seeks
what she loves. (Petronius, Satyricon, 126).
Empresses were not immune either, and pantomimes were involved in sex scandals at the highest level. The Empress Messalina forcibly seduced Mnester; the Empress Domitia Longina seduced Paris. (Both of the actors were executed.)
And that doesn’t even scratch the surface!
In conclusion, if you think our modern obsession with celebrities or the tendency for teenage girls to obsess over actors is in any way new, think again. This has been happening since the years BC. It happened in Greece, it happened in Rome, it happened in Shakespeare’s time. At every point in history, people have been obsessed with actors and celebrities. Just be grateful we don’t have to watch our world leaders acting anymore.
Kimchi and Justice 