On the basis of our research, my colleague Katie Davis and I at the University of Washington believe fan fiction could be more than just a source of support and self-expression for lonely kids; it could also be an important tool in formal education.
In the past 20 years, over 60 billion words of fan fiction have been written and posted on Fanfiction. Both of us had teenage relatives who defied this stereotype. The young people we knew were skilled writers and thoughtful readers. They were also heavily involved in online communities and fan fiction. This apparent contradiction, backed up by my childhood experience, struck us as fertile grounds for research.
We recruited four students to join us in the project. Our group started out by selecting three fandoms, representing a range of genres and media types: one book, one cartoon, and one TV show. For each fandom, it was important that at least two of us were deeply familiar with it, and that it was popular enough to have plenty of material for us to study. We started out by reading stories and interacting with authors, and we each wrote and posted our own fanfic stories as participant observers.
On our profiles we explained that we were researchers as well as fans of the communities we studied. As a group, we spent about 10 to 20 hours per week immersed in these communities.
We ended up with over 1, hours of participant observation and several hundred pages of field notes and memos. We also interviewed authors both formally and informally. The overriding reason that authors wrote fan fiction, we found, was for the love of it. They unanimously believed that it had helped them to become better writers, an evolution we could see for ourselves.
They were very clear that support from other members of the community was critical. As one anonymous author told us:. When I was 13, I had a major crush on a certain fictional character. As a result, I learned to be sensitive to these types of bad writing. I think if a teacher had simply red-penciled my childish scribbles, I might have been so discouraged as to never write again. Although privacy concerns prevent us from directly quoting from the stories written by the authors we interviewed, a well-known example illustrates how bad fan fiction can be.
I have pale white skin. Workshopping with a larger community, which might be an alien experience for many entering my department, is almost a daily routine for me by now. We found that not only were fan fiction authors writing original fiction; they also learned life lessons, becoming more tolerant and willing to help others. When I started writing fan fiction at age 13, I was a queer, autistic middle schooler who had not yet realized that she was either of these things.
I had difficulty with many of the social situations that came naturally to others my age, and I became isolated from my peers at school. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. The Fascinating Statistics Of Fanfiction. Prev Article Next Article. One shot : Just this random story where Bill basically loses his mind and tries to get animals to talk. THings get whacky when bill nye starts an arguement on facebook between young children cartoon charactars.
Bill Nye the science guy vs Barney the dinosaur by sorasblade For those who have had enough of that creepy purple dinosaur, and are ready for someone to step up and take over the thrown of child show entertainer.
Graphic, dont read if you happen to like that purple menice to society. Josh wakes up a little too drunk to recall what had happened the night before. Donna leaves him sleeping in her bed, while she cries and jumps onto plane to fly across the country. After the first family welcomed a new member to the family, D. B went off to the Navy struggling with his feeling. About The Author indyz More from this Author.
Related Posts. Any fan fiction based on your Last Exodus characters? Log in to Reply. Indy Z April 3, Nick Verboon April 3, Tip of the iceberg, Nick. Brian Merritt April 3, Alexander1 April 5, And fanfiction is not only "unmasculine" but actively feminine, designed for women rather than men — and that makes it gross and dangerous.
To some, feminine media has always been considered gross and dangerous, going back as far the novel. In , an anonymous pastor pronounced it the greatest threat in the world to young women:. I have seen a young lady with her table loaded with volumes loaded of fictitious trash, poring day after day and night after night over highly wrought scenes and skillfully portrayed pictures of romance, until her cheeks grew pale, her eyes became wild and reckless, and her mind wandered and was lost — the light of intelligence passed behind a cloud, and her soul was forever benighted.
She was insane, incurably insane from reading novels. When presented with slash fic, Dan Bergstein writes , you can do only five things:. Historically, whenever young women are interested in a form of media, we like to tell them it is bad for them and that they are bad for liking it — unless the media goes mainstream, in which case it becomes no longer feminine and hence okay.
Novels are dangerous and cause insanity, until they become classics worthy of being studied in college. Beatlemania is the province of "the dull, the idle, the failures," until the Beatles become a band that everyone loves.
Young women are so attacked for loving the media they love that it is a radical act for a young woman to love something unashamedly. And transformative fandom is the most radical act of all, because it reverses that "lady thing to respectable thing" process. It takes a piece of media that may not have been designed for young women and makes it for young women. The all-male creative team of Captain America: The Winter Soldier may not have intended for the movie to be read as a homoerotic love story, but young women are willing and able to make it one, writing fanfiction and drawing fan art about Steve and Bucky in love.
Fans are well aware that Disney has no plans to put that story onscreen, writes Charlotte Geater. They make their fan works anyway:. We all wrestle with feelings and we can recognise them in stories when we see them. What is scary about transformative fandom is that it's a place where young women love their media without reservation, and where they can make stories for themselves.
Because fandom is the province of young women and, culturally, we find young women terrifying. Previous entry: Canon, fanon, shipping and more: a glossary of the tricky terminology that makes up fan culture. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today to help us keep our work free for all.
Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Why we're terrified of fanfiction. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Beatles fans in Indiana. Getty Images This article is part of a series on fan culture and its many related topics.
A new "fandom is broken" article and the ensuing avalanche of responses is only the latest iteration of a familiar cycle Most recently, Birth Movies Death editor Devin Faraci declared that " fandom is broken. All of these arguments are very familiar. To wit: Fandom is a mass of lightsaber-clutching nerds camping out all night on the sidewalk to buy movie tickets, and fundamentally either sophomoric or solipsistic.
All fanfiction is slash , and all slash is pornographic. All slash is by straight teenage girls. No, all slash is by middle-aged gay men. Or, worst of all, fandom is a group of oversexed teenaged girls writing porny and borderline illiterate fanfiction, which is wrong for moral , aesthetic, and legal reasons.
And the fan counterpoints: Some fans are curative , which means they're into knowing all the trivia about a given piece of media or canon and discussing it in minute detail.
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