today it'd all be posted on AO3

[cmdr_zoom]

"The entire Divine Comedy is one man coping with being exiled and his family fucked by writing self-insert Bible fanfic, where the people who exiled him are burning in hell and his political faves are in Heaven, and both his favorite poet and his childhood crush appear to help him deal with things and tell him he deserves love.

Dealing with bad shit by writing is kind of very old.

(Dante also pioneered the explainy fanfic, as he basically took like two sentences about Hell in the actual Bible and worldbuilt them so well he became accepted fanon for most of the Jesus fandom)"

Comments

[gwydion]

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is blatantly fanfic two. (what if we made Mercutio cool? what if we gave Juliet a fully developed character?) So's Hamlet. Both were loosely based on poems.

Every carving of cupid and Psyche on a tomb is fan art based on a story from a novel.

Humans have always loved fanfic.