hello i am thinking thoughts abt crimson rivers

this is gonna be another essay nobody asked for but this time i'm thinking about crimson rivers specifically + fanfiction wips in general and the ways in which they actively preserve forms of storytelling that are slowly being lost to the meat-grinder of capitalism (buckle up this is gonna be a long one)

okay so this thought started to form the other day when i was talking to my sister about how i think crimson rivers is so cool because it's so much truer to like...the actual message behind the hunger games when compared to the movies. like, the movies essentially became everything the original hunger games critiqued--flattening the characters to focus on a contrived love triangle, obsessed with the spectacle of celebrity, prioritizing financial gain over everything, white-washing characters, and just overall taking the bite out of most of the radical messages behind the story. cause like...let's be honest, it's hard for a hollywood blockbuster to truly threaten the system that creates it.

in comparison, crimson rivers isn't driven by profit. it's being created out of a love for writing + storytelling, and also (at least, based on the impression i've gotten) from a desire to share stories about a diverse cast of characters, unpacking varying forms of trauma + oppression in the process and overall turning a critical eye on entrenched power structures that reflect those in real life, thereby encouraging readers to remain both aware + critical of the systemic oppression surrounding them. and that's just...so much truer to what the hunger games was about.

ANYWAY so i was pondering all that and then i was like y'know it's also such a cool and unique experience to read a story that is currently being written. Like. throughout history, it was much more common for storytelling to be this...journey, where you'd get a magazine or a newspaper or turn on the radio or the tv and there'd be a new installment or episode or chapter or whatever every week (or two weeks, or month, etc etc etc), y'know? like, it used to be so much more common to pick up a story that hadn't been finished yet, and to follow along with the writers as they crafted the story, and to get to experience the process of storytelling with them. even going back before film and radio and written word, think about like. the experience of sitting around a campfire and telling stories or just like oral storytelling traditions. like i have not by any means studied the entire history of storytelling worldwide, but if we think back to our oldest forms of sharing stories, it was about telling and re-telling and tweaking and changing and stories were these fluid things that evolved as they were shared amongst people and communities. and that's!! so!! cool!!

and nowadays i feel like a lot of that tradition has been lost. with the advancement of late stage capitalism--with the advent of streaming services, of entire tv show seasons posted all at once, of books churned out at a rapid pace by these mega-huge corporate publishing houses, it's like more and more there's this expectation created where stories are products for consumption. like. as an audience, we are so used to demanding an entire finished product all at once--we don't want to wait anymore, we don't want to pick up something unfinished, we want it fast and we want it now and it's a product we're buying--we're consumers and we're paying for it and we want to consume it all at once, alone, and then go on to find the next product for consumption. and we are all getting caught in this spiral where media and stories and everything is just....a product. it's not a journey; it's about what's going to make the most money. and that creates this like...cultural deterioration where we're losing so much depth and diversity in our storytelling because all these publishing houses and tv studios and hollywood producers care about is what's going to be palatable to the broadest audience, what's going to make them the most money. and it sucks!! it's soulless and mind-numbing and it fucking sucks.

and when thinking about all that i am just...really amazed by how unique fanfiction is as a form of storytelling. like. it is so unusual these days to find stories that are completely separate from any form of profit, from any sort of product-consumption economy. and because fanfiction isn't concerned with profit, there aren't the same pitfalls with trying to market to the broadest possible audience and in the process censoring and flattening stories to remove the most radical and meaningful messages. in so many ways, fanfiction actively pushes back against consumer culture by fighting to make space for stories that would otherwise go unheard.

and along with that, fanfiction continues to preserve this experience of storytelling as a journey, where you can follow a writer as they tell their story and you can oftentimes even talk to the writer and like build community and just....it's so cool!! and it's so human!!! like i know that there is community surrounding books and finished stories and people will get together and talk about stories they've read but there is something so unique and beautiful about finding community in a story that isn't finished....like i think reading a story that is being written lends itself to finding community in a way that finished works don't, because there's this broad room for imagination. the story's not done, so anything is possible!! and it's not done, so of course you want to find other people to talk about it with!! and it's not done, so it becomes a little piece of your life, and it grows along with you as you read each new chapter. there is something so beautiful and so incredibly human about that.

anyway, i think this all applies to anyone following any wip, but crimson rivers is just so cool to me because i think the popularity it's gotten (aside from showing that zar is just an amazing + talented writer) really illuminates that as humans, we have a desire for this form of storytelling. we want stories as journeys, we want stories that are about finding and sharing community, we want stories that challenge us and engage our imaginations and reflect the pieces of ourselves that we don't see reflected in mainstream media. and i just....idk!! it's so cool!! it's so human!! i'm emotional about it!!

in conclusion @zeppazariel thank u for creating a story that is also a journey and providing a space for community and also writing something that has made me reflect on the cultural storytelling zeitgeist at large this essay has been unknowingly sponsored by u