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The Girl, The Myth, The Fanfiction

The Fanfiction Reader: Folktales for the Digital Age

Coppa, Francesca, editor. The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age. University of Michigan Press, 2017.

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Fanfiction as an Archive One of the most key components in fan works is that they reference the work that the writer is a fan of. Drawing from the “canon” or original text/story-line, fan writers can use the framework of the, usually copyrighted, material to explore different possibilities. No matter how far the writer may stray from the original story-line, the canon still exists as a reference point.

If fanfiction is just fiction derived from other fiction, though, how do we begin to define it? Derivative works predate the invention of the novel itself. Folklore, in a form, is derivative fiction, passed down between people, given new details and slants with each retelling (Hellekson & Busse, 6, 21; Coppa, 2017). There’s nothing inherently wrong with tracing fanfiction back that far, but what do we lose in the process?

Tracing fanfiction back to early storytelling shows that the behavior of retelling and reinterpreting stories is far from new, but it hides a key element of fanfiction today. Our relationship with stories has changed. Through copyright law and mass media, stories that may have a profoundly personal meaning to us are mitigated through commercial means (Coppa, 2017, 7; Jenkins, 2014; Bacon-Smith)
“It is only in such a system- where storytelling has been industrialized to the point that our shared culture is owned by others- that a category like “fanfiction” makes sense. Everyone’s always surprised by how huge the world of fanfiction is; I am not. Fanfiction is what happened to folk culture: to the appropriation of fables and retellings of local legends, to the elaborations of tall tales and drinking songs and ghost stories told ‘round the campfire,'" (Coppa, 2017, 7).

The fact that "our shared culture is owned by others" also has implications for how fanfiction exists. A majority of fanfiction remains unpublished, existing in archives on the internet. Before the internet, fanfiction existed as fanzines passed along during conventions and through mailing lists (Hellekson & Busse; LaChev; Coppa, 2017; Bacon-Smith). Either way, the stories exist within a community for a community and each community has its own rules and tropes. Not only are fanfiction stories referential to the canon text, but they are referential to the history and culture of the fan community itself (Coppa, 2017, 7-12). Fanfiction is incredibly specific in its classification, having its own language, specific to the fan community. Genres of fanfiction also have their own language associated with them.

Below is an example of results filtering on a prominent fanfiction website, Fanfiction.net.

Fanfiction, then, is not simply derivative stories, but archival in nature. Communities of writers not only work with source texts in new and interpretive ways, but these works are documented in archives, providing frameworks in which to situate their stories. It's no wonder one of the most popular fanfiction sites created, in part, by fanfiction academic Francesca Coppa, is called Archive of Our Own.
Fanfiction as "Outsider"
As the previous section hinted at, simply defining fanfiction as derivative fiction misses the relationship it has with the realm of publishing and popular culture. If, as many will argue, fanfiction must be understood with its relation to copyrighted material, then fanfiction, almost by definition, is outside of the publishing world. This classification, though, doesn't hold up the way it used to. In the same vein, conversations surrounding the importance of community in fanfiction in Fanfiction as an Archive, can be misconstrued as portraying fanfiction writers and readers as a tight-knit community of "outsiders" choosing to engage with media differently than their peers. Neither of these characterizations are completely true nor false.

In Textual Poachers, Henry Jenkins analyzes fans that produce their own work as engaging in an alternative mode of consumption of mainstream media. He explains that the way we are taught to engage with literature today requires us to engage in “passive [reception] of authorial meaning while any deviation from meanings clearly marked forth within the text is viewed negatively." Individual interpretation of literature is seen as either secondary or flat out wrong (Jenkins, 26, 2014). Jenkins and others of this era of fan studies, applaud fan writers for engaging with media differently, ignoring copyright laws and the fetish for authorial intention (Jenkins, 2014; Bacon-Smith, 6).

“The reader’s activity is no longer seen simply as the task of recovering the author’s meanings but also as reworking borrowed materials to fit them into the context of lived experience,” Jenkins explains (51, 2013). Since the publication of Textual Poachers, many others have painted fan writers as, sort of, "outsiders," working against the original text to produce new, and often more radical, works. Camille Bacon-Smith commented not only on the transformative possibilities for fan writing, but also the gendered aspect of it in her book, Enterprising Women. Calling fan-writing "subversive," Bacon-Smith's book covers the community of female fan-writers who engage with media differently with the potential for radical or taboo topics.

Risk and community, for Bacon-Smith, are important components. Due to fanfiction’s relationship with copyright during that era, fan writing had to exist within tight knit communities in order to mitigate the risk of backlash from rights holders, (283-285). There is some truth in these portrayals, especially in the years preceding popular use of the internet. In fact, rights holders for popular franchises such as LucasFilms did attempt, in the 80s, to moderate and control fan writing. While the Star Wars franchise typically left fan writers who wrote family-friendly fanfiction alone, cease-and-desist letters were sent to fan writers who produced more risqué content (Jamison,103-104). Even during the early years of the internet, many fanfiction sites did not allow homosexual pairings or required that they all be rated R or M for mature audiences (Tandy, 171-174). The situation today, however, is much more open.
"With the rise of personal computing in the 1980s and of the internet in the 1990s, fanfiction increasingly has been electronically produced and digitally distributed. The effects of this shift on the community, the literature it produces, and the brought reading and writing public are really only beginning to be understood... In addition to speed, the internet brought anonymity. No more mailing addresses or phone numbers were needed to receive fandom news. At first, emails and IDs (anonymous or pseudonyms) sufficed, and then fanboards sprang up- many requiring no registration. Fanfiction became free, open, public” (Jamison, 112).

The paradox of fanfiction is that it appears "outsider" while continuing to occupy a fairly large space in popular culture. Due to the anonymity provided by the internet, individuals who would never dare step onto a convention floor can still enjoy a good fic in the privacy of their own home. While being a "fan...still remains culturally stigmatized," more people can engage in fannish behaviors without any social implications (LaChev, 85). Shows that have particularly strong fan-bases even reference fanfiction in interviews or at conventions, (Hellekson & Busse, 4; Jamison,132). Instead of actually being a fringe activity, fanfiction seems to have become many people's "dirty little secret," with most people (including those who have never read a fanfiction) able to identify what it is (Hellekson & Busse, 4).

Further, the seemingly integral aspect of fanfiction as unpublished material is breaking apart. Few fan studies papers today don't include at least a passing mention of 50 Shades of Grey. Once a Twilight fanfiction named "Master of the Universe" written under the pen-name of Snowqueens Icedragon, 50 Shades of Grey has demonstrated just how far fanfiction has come (Hellekson & Busse, 5; Jamison, 224-252; Coppa, 11). Fanfiction can be just as popular, if not more, than the story it was based on. But, we knew that already... how many kids have seen The Lion King without ever having read Hamlet?
Fanfiction as Performance

Fanfiction has a funny way of resisting classification. An art form entirely based on the "what if" is, necessarily, diverse. While tropes and trends exist, there is simply too much fanfiction out there to make grand generalizations. While most fanfiction remains free on the internet, more and more authors are changing the names of their characters and publishing their stories (Jamison, 260-262). Whether or not books that were once fanfiction still count as fanfiction is beyond the point, the art form is an incredibly fluid one.

An art form that is so flexible requires a classification that's just as expansive. Fanfiction is performance, or, at the very least, performative.
"If we compare fan fiction to mythological and folkloric retellings, we can see how it functions as the cultural equivalent of collective storytelling. Fan fiction often retells the same events and scenes, but from different points of view, with myriad extensions and elaborations. Other versions of the same story may be just as important to the fan artwork as the primary source,” (Hellekson & Busse, 21).

The framework this project takes views fanfiction, not as literature, but performance. Francesca Coppa explains, in her essay “Writing Bodies in Space,” that “one could define fan fiction as a textual attempt to make certain characters “perform” according to different behavioral strips,” (2014, 223). Fanfiction allows for the retelling of the same story with different interpretations in ways that are not unlike theatrical interpretations of classic plays such Shakespeare’s Hamlet (2014, 229) or Greek dramas.

The format of fanfiction on the internet adds to its theatricality. Unlike books, fanfiction tends to be released chapter by chapter. Both Fanfiction.net and Archive of our Own allow for users to post reviews, letting authors hear feedback during their writing process. Reviews can be posted relatively easily, via comment, allowing the entire writing process to be more discursive with fellow fans than the normal book-writing process. Authors also engage with their audience, responding, in real time, to questions they may have about the plot or motivations for certain aspects of the story. Coppa explains "we can, therefore, define fanfiction as networked creative work produced within and for a community of fans" (2017, 8)
Situating fanfiction as performance allows for the exploration of the possibilities of queer and feminist fanfiction as a form of discursive performance, a call for representation, and a tool for identity exploration. On the flipside, not all performances are radical, with some fanfiction detailing violent or disturbing content. Fanfiction is not, as previously theorized, inherently radical, but it is performative. And like all performances, fanfiction shows us a great deal about our values.