Fan Fiction: A World of What-ifs - from Tuesday's (10 December 2013) Boston Globe

[pandemonium-213.livejournal.com]

Matthew Gilbert wrote a surprisingly positive article on fan fiction that appeared in Tuesday's Boston Globe. I posted on my largely f-locked LJ where it engendered lively discussion, so I thought I'd share it with the greater Silmarillion community.

Fan fiction: a world of what-ifs by Matthew Gilbert, Boston Globe Staff.

Because a subscription is likely needed to access the whole article, I will illegally copy n' paste here:

What if meth superstar Walter White on “Breaking Bad” brought his son into the business, while Jesse Pinkman retired to upstate New York, got married, and had three wonderful kids? What if Jane Austen’s Emma Woodhouse from “Emma” and Lizzie from “Pride and Prejudice” became BFFs? What if Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were lovers?

Go ahead, write it up and post it on one of the countless fan-written fanfic — or fan fiction — websites. Put Holmes and Watson in the 1970s, if you want, in San Francisco in bell-bottoms, if you so please. Give Mr. Spock multiple stud earrings.

Fan fiction is the place to get your what-ifs out, to write up your very own version of any of the TV shows, books, and movies you love. It’s an online playground for fans who like to write and who are so steeped in a particular world — in J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter”-verse, or George Orwell’s “1984” dystopia, or the LA of “The L Word,” or the New York of “Rent” — that they want to add their own story lines to it.

Fanfic writers are too fervent and independent to be passive viewers or readers; they’re inspired to be creative by the visions of Stephen King, Shonda Rhimes, Julian Fellowes, Rowling (whose books are the most fan-fictioned of all), and countless other creators. They find joy in expanding plots only hinted at, joining together characters from different sources, and sometimes, correcting what they see as flaws or oversights in a story they otherwise value — it’s all a kind of folk art. To truly be fan fiction, though, the stories cannot be commercial ventures.

The best known fanfic writer may be E.L . James, whose “Fifty Shades of Grey” began its life as online fan fiction for Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” (her fan fiction handle: Snowqueens Icedragon). Ultimately, to publish her “Twilight”-based stories, James changed the names and other details for copyright reasons. Fan fiction is generally considered acceptable under fair use rules, if fans don’t profit from it and if the fiction doesn’t have an impact on the market for the original work.

Some authors smile on the practice, including Rowling, Meyer, and Neil Gaiman. In 2004, Rowling’s spokesman said, “Rowling’s reaction is that she is very flattered by the fact there is such great interest in her Harry Potter series and that people take the time to write their own stories.” Her only objection would be to any pornographic twists.

Other authors, such as Anne Rice, George R. R. Martin, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Nora Roberts, disapprove, both for personal reasons — they think of their characters as their children, in a way — and for copyright-blurring fears. Martin, in a passionate anti-fanfic entry on his website, notes that fan fiction is no longer just a series of zines passed around at conventions: “Now tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, can read these. . . More than ever, we need some boundaries.”

Most fanfic sites refuse to post stories derived from the products of naysaying creators.

Martin is right about the scope of the fanfic community. Fan fiction writers share their work with — and get edited by — a gigantic group of fellow fans, many of whom hang out at the over-4-million-served FanFiction.net and the by-invitation-only ArchiveOfOurOwn.org, which currently has some 236,600 registered users.

It’s no longer a fringe activity for sci-fi geeks; it’s mainstream in the way fantasy sports leagues have become de rigueur and San Diego Comic-Con has evolved into an essential entertainment event. Yes, of course, geek-tastic “Big Bang Theory”-based stories thrive — there are some 31,000 on FanFiction.net right now; but even Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” has sprouted branches of new story line.“Moby-Dick” has inspired 11 works at ArchiveOfOurOwn.org, also known as AO3.

“At this point,” says Sara Rosenbaum, a senior editor at Boston magazine and a fan fiction writer and supporter, “if somebody isn’t aware of fan fiction or is confused or squeamish about it, they’re like someone who doesn’t know what sushi is. Ew, you eat raw fish!”

Rosenbaum compares the rising visibility of fan fiction since it hit the Internet to gay culture: “Being gay used to mean you needed to know the right places to go. There was this underground culture — the hanky code, if it even existed!” Some fan fiction writers are academics and published authors, including S. E. Hinton, who currently writes fan fiction about the CW series “Supernatural.” “They were afraid of being found out and thought their reputations would be destroyed,” Rosenbaum says. “Now it’s everywhere. You can tell your parents about it.”

The goal of writing fan fiction, Rosenbaum says, is not to make great art, even while some fanfic is well done and she and other practitioners have used it to learn to write more gracefully. “The end is to give somebody an emotional payoff rather than an intellectual or ideological one or any of the other things that high literature presumes that art is for.”

The growth of fanfic in the past decade parallels the growth of fandom in general, as we interact with TV series more than ever, something “Lost” producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof pioneered with their unprecedented exchanges with rabid “Lost” fans. When we love a piece of entertainment now, we often want to take our love further, to have a dialogue about it. Movies become interactive video games, and so, oddly enough, do books. Last week, an online role-playing game set in the world of Jane Austen fiction got enough funding on Kickstarter — more than $100,000 — to move forward. Soon, with “Ever, Jane,” Janeites will be able to create their own stories of snubbing and gossip-mongering — when they’re not reading “Pride & Pyramids” (the Darcys in Egypt) and “Mr. Darcy’s Bite” (yup, he’s a werewolf), that is.

“More and more people — not just creators but producers — are realizing that fandom and fan fiction are great for business,” Rosenbaum says. “The more people create stuff of their own, the better. If someone is making their own T-shirts, they’re buying yours. You’re not losing market share. You’re gaining it.”

Some fan fiction is made for money, naturally, and sanctioned. The late Tom Clancy’s publisher, Penguin, is currently considering hiring writers to continue Clancy’s famous Jack Ryan franchise, to follow in the footsteps of franchises such as Ian Fleming’s James Bond, Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne, and Robert Parker’s Spenser and Jesse Stone. The A&E series “Bates Motel”? Fan fiction. “Sleepy Hollow,” Fox’s new hit? Fan fiction.

But Rosenbaum, who has written “Lord of the Rings” and Sherlock Holmes stories, says that part of the joy of writing fan fiction is that it’s done for free, for love. “You wouldn’t ask a bunch of guys playing pickup basketball, ‘Why aren’t you doing this for money?’ It’s almost irrelevant. Maybe someone playing pickup basketball would be really good and end up playing for the NBA, and that would be awesome. But there’s no reason people would stop playing pickup games because of that.

“You do it because it’s fun.”

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.

Comments

[dawn_felagund]

As promised, I am bringing over my original comment too into the public venue. :)

I didn't agree with everything in the article, but all in all, I very much appreciate that the tone was positive, rather than "look at these weirdos!" or "wow legal quagmire!" like many fanfic articles have tended to be in the past. (Although positive fanfic articles are becoming common enough that it doesn't even seem notable ... a good thing!)

I love how the article summarized fanfic as, "it’s all a kind of folk art." Yes yes YES. Finally. It's amazing how a noncommercial art form mostly content to fly under the radar (and mostly practiced by women) has become such a punching bag. I wonder who is truly threatened by it? Hmm ... Fanfic doesn't do anything different than any other story told since people have been telling stories. Obsession with "originality" (and especially commercialism) is extremely recent; retelling and remixing beloved stories has been the overwhelming way in which storytelling was done.

Martin, in a passionate anti-fanfic entry on his website, notes that fan fiction is no longer just a series of zines passed around at conventions: “Now tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, can read these. . . More than ever, we need some boundaries.”

Exactly. Quick, before someone figures out what a shit writer you are and that they can get the same or better for free!

Sorry. /rant

I did disagree with this:

“The end is to give somebody an emotional payoff rather than an intellectual or ideological one or any of the other things that high literature presumes that art is for.”

Because I very much think that fanfic plays a valuable role as a means to critically interact with the texts, and some fans (present company included ;) definitely write with that purpose in mind. This isn't as bad as the typical fanfic-is-pr0n generalization, but I do bristle a bit that fanfic only ever serves an emotional or social function. Since most fanfic writers are women, that seems to play into some icky stereotypes too.

“You wouldn’t ask a bunch of guys playing pickup basketball, ‘Why aren’t you doing this for money?’ It’s almost irrelevant."

Another point where I wanted to cheer. This is one of the anti-fanfic arguments--that writing not done for publication or profit is a worthless use of time--that makes me see red. Nor would pro sports teams complain that pickup leagues are stealing their audience; they would probably understand that there is quite a bit of overlap (which I'm also glad the article mentioned re: fanfic) and that this kind of activity has been going on since people played games or invented stories.

[dreamflower]

I loved the discussion over there! I hope it gets just as lively here!

I think one motivation that is overlooked here is the communal pay-off. Part of fanfiction that you never really get with traditional fiction is the interaction between author and reader, the give-and-take of read/review/reply. The dialogue I've had with my readers, and with the authors of some of my favorite stories, has had the result of bringing me many like-minded friends whose enthusiasm and enjoyment of my fandom fuels my own.

Also, I'd love to know Sara Rosenbaum's online name. I wonder if I've read any of her stories.

[dawn_felagund]

I agree. I've participated in a large online writers' workshop for speculative fiction (Critters), and while it was nice to get feedback on my stories, it just wasn't the same. There wasn't the same enthusiasm and willingness to engage; it felt very much like people were commenting to meet their quota (which they were).

Having both dabbled in traditional publication and written fanfic, the latter is far more rewarding to me. The former is really like throwing a story into a black hole, since the likelihood of getting any sort of feedback is slim to none. And it's a whole lotta work for that minor reward! :) Appropriately enough, the only feedback I've gotten on one of my traditionally published stories came from a person in fandom, who read it in an anthology and made enough connections between my bio in the anthology and what she knew of me in fandom to let me know she'd read and enjoyed the story.

In fandom, I've seen writing become almost collective, not in the sense of everyone working on a single story but in the sense that stories often respond to what is being discussed or shared in the community. Each story can stand alone but is often linked to dozens of others, almost symbiotically. That connection just doesn't exist to the same extent--or often at all--in more traditional venues.

[dreamflower]

"In fandom, I've seen writing become almost collective, not in the sense of everyone working on a single story but in the sense that stories often respond to what is being discussed or shared in the community. Each story can stand alone but is often linked to dozens of others, almost symbiotically. That connection just doesn't exist to the same extent--or often at all--in more traditional venues."

Definitely that cross-pollination is a huge part of it all. It creates that thing we call "fanon", and is part of the frequent crossovers, in which we borrow ideas, settings and characters from one another (for example, SurgicalSteel generously letting me use her OFC Serinde in one of my stories) and for things like Round Robins or challenges in which various people contribute to a certain theme.

I wonder if anyone's ever done some kind of study on what percentage of fanfiction is written as participation in exchanges or challenges or as gifts? I would say that probably over half my own output--maybe even more than that is because of such things!

[scarlet1061.livejournal.com]

I agree with everything you both said above, but there's one question that comes to my mind about it:
Is this something that is common to all/ some other fandoms, or is it a special phenomena (the sharing of ideas/ characters, live exchange between writer/ reader, etc) to the Tolkien fandom?

I haven't participated in any other fandom, so, if you have an idea, I'd be interested to hear.

[hhimring]

Would you agree that even this kind of more positive response tends to underrate how varied fan fiction can be? I mean, of course there are major trends and fanons, but I seem to observe people write it in quite different ways and for different reasons...

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

A rather sensible and sober piece.

I disagree about the bit about the emotional pay-off, since while a lot of fan-fiction is indeed clearly written for wallowing in, there are fics written for every kind of pay-off that any other form of fiction (High, Low, Middling or Muddled) is written for too. The supreme example of didactic fan-fiction is the giant Harry Potter fic, "Harry Potter and the Methods of Reality", which I believe currently holds the record on fanfiction.net for the highest number of comments ever received for a Harry Potter fic. It is hilarious and very well written (and therefore provides multiple rewards for the reader), but the author doesn't hide the primacy of the ideological purpose behind it.

George R R Martin wrote some nice fantasy and horror earlier in his career. "The Armageddon Rag" is still quite good. But if I ever wrote fan-fic of "A Song of Ice and Fire", which I would not because then I would have to read all of it, it would be the entirety of the story so far, with all the padding blue-pencilled. Based on the ratio of noise to signal in the first volume, I could get it all into fewer pages than that one.

[moetushie]

Thank you for the article! I enjoyed reading it, especially the sushi comparison. :)

Things really are changing, huh? I've actually shared a podfic recorded of my fic with my family and friends -- mostly because I was really impressed with how it turned out and wanted to show off a bit. The response was wholly positive! (Of course, it helped that the canon in question is arty and long out of copyright and the story itself was no more explicit than a PG-13 movie.)

I think fic is really a natural offshoot of how many (but not all) people experience media. After a movie or book ends, you often ask yourself, well what next? Or, what happened before to make things this way? Or -- more importantly, I say only half-facetiously -- what if Character A and B were boning? How would that change things? (And also, I think that for me, personally, sometimes the urge to commit fic doesn't always come from worship of the original text, but rather, it's an attempt to put into words, the best I can, what I felt was wrong in the original text. Like, why is this character such a cardboard cut-out? Or, why aren't there any women in this story? And even they're ... implicit in the text (after all, if we can discount the possibility of mpreg, where are these sons of X coming from, otherwise?) what are their names, their stories?

Sorry. I just have a lot questions.

But as others have pointed out, what makes fanfic unique is the community that's sprung up around it. It's just part of the larger fannish community, of course, but I have to say... It's my favorite part!

[moetushie]

Oh, it's definitely something that happens in other fandoms, though not all fandoms are fic-producing fandoms like this one. :)

[ladybrooke]

You know, I can't recall or find any research into that. It seems like something that should be out there, especially given all the studies that have been done that I can think of...

It might be hard to do though, on a widespread scale. I mean, doing a study based in the Silmarillion wouldn't be too hard or time consuming, if it was limited to say FFN, Ao3, SWG, and a few smaller archives, because there's probably less than 10,000 stories to go through...I'm not sure how easy it would be to scale upwards to larger fandoms. Harry Potter, for example, would a nightmare to try and do as a complete study of all fanfic on any archive.

Would you mind if I got bored this Christmas break and ended up doing that as sort of hobby research/practice for my real research? It sounds interesting to me, and it fits right in with my normal research inclinations...

[dreamflower]

I certainly wouldn't mind! It's the kind of thing I wouldn't have the remotest idea of how to do--but I think it would be fascinating!

[dreamflower]

While I wouldn't say I write fic to fix what's wrong with the source, I would say it's to explore the unexplored corners: Why were Frodo's best friends so much younger than he? What caused Bilbo to forget Gandalf between his youth and the wizard's re-appearance in the Shire? How did the Fell Winter affect the Shire? How come Bilbo waited several years to adopt Frodo? Did Frodo ever meet Balin?

And of course, there are the "what-ifs" that lead to AUs: What if the Ring Bilbo had was NOT the One Ring? What if Boromir had met Frodo years before the Council of Elrond? What if the Three Rings had been freed to full power by the destruction of the One Ring? What if Quickbeam had been a little quicker and stomped Saruman flat before he got inside Orthanc?

Those are all intellectual exercises; yet I don't think preclude an emotional payoff. For one thing, it's an emotion of satisfaction to find a good answer to such a thing. For another, for a story to be really good, the characters have to have emotions.

Even when I am specifically writing for an emotion: angst, fluff, h/c, there's also the intellectual involved as well. It's not an either/or proposition.

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

This would be really interesting to see!

[dawn_felagund]

That was my number-one critique about the article. The person interviewed talks about the motive of "emotional payoff" as the reason fanfic is written, which is certainly not the only reason--or even the predominant, given the fandom! I don't think I've ever written with emotional payoff in mind as a major motive. Now intellectual or critical purposes, even ideological ... those better describe how I perceive my own writing, as well as that of most writers I know.

[brennanspeaks.livejournal.com]

This has been standard operating procedure in every fandom I've been in. I guess there might be a couple of writers who get territorial about their characters/ideas/plot bunnies, but most seem to accept imitation as the highest form of flattery. And the more active/excited a fandom is, the more the cross-talk happens. I wrote for a TV canon right before and just after its much-anticipated series finale, and the energy was incredible. No one was coordinating challenges or exchanges, but we cranked out an incredible amount of fic, much of it building on other writers' fic or borrowing ideas and characterizations. Sometimes the conversations in the comment sections ended up much longer than the fics themselves. There are also remix exchanges, where the whole point is to play in another author's sandbox for a while. I've seen those in several fandoms, and it's always a treat to receive a remixed fic, even if the author went in a completely different direction than you'd originally intended.

[brennanspeaks.livejournal.com]

Do it, do it, dooo it! I just took a quick look at my own stories out of curiosity and was startled to discover that out of my last 20 fics, 13 were challenges or gift fics.

[brennanspeaks.livejournal.com]

This. Different people write for different reasons, and sometimes the same person writes for different reasons. Sometimes I write just because I'm in the mood for some h/c or I want to make someone laugh. Sometimes I write because I want to use a fantasy world to make some kind of commentary on the real world (or the fantasy world, or both). Sometimes I write for no other reason than that I can't get a particular idea/image out of my head and I think it'll make a good story, but very often, I have an agenda. That's what these articles still seem to miss: fan fiction as commentary.

[ladybrooke]

Thanks! I'm almost positive I'll end up doing it over break (I'm not sure why I'm so in love with content analysis...)

[ladybrooke]

Awesome, thank you! I'm not, perhaps, the person with the best credentials to do it (my knowledge of how to relies entirely on undergraduate classes in research design), but still, it should be fun to do! I agree, the results will probably be fascinating!

[dreamflower]

Well, if you do, I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

[hhimring]

Well, I do write for emotional pay-off, to varying degrees depending on which fic it is, but it's hardly my only motive and usually the emotional pay-off is more complex than "wallowing-in-it". Although, to be fair, the journalist's article doesn't actually say the emotional pay-off cannot be complex, does it? (On the other hand, if we admit complex emotional pay-off, is literary writing not for emotional pay-off as well?)

What I think the journalist actually hasn't completely missed is the community character of the activity--he doesn't spell it out, but surely the comparison to pick-up games implies it, at least to some extent? You don't play those alone, do you?

[hhimring]

Exactly! Thank you for spelling it out more clearly than I managed to say.

[dawn_felagund]

There is absolutely nothing wrong for writing for emotional payoff, complex or wallowing in it or however people choose to do it. :) I hope my comment didn't give that impression.

The article makes it sound like it's the only (or at least primary) reason for writing, though, which I do take issue with:

The goal of writing fan fiction, Rosenbaum says, is not to make great art, even while some fanfic is well done and she and other practitioners have used it to learn to write more gracefully. “The end is to give somebody an emotional payoff rather than an intellectual or ideological one or any of the other things that high literature presumes that art is for.”

For some--for many, I'd argue, especially in Tolkien fandom--the goal of fanfic is to achieve intellectual or ideological payoff and to contribute to "high art" as far as making thoughtful comment on a work that has become a major part of modern Western culture. For example, the reason I started writing AMC was because I wished to share an opinion on the Silm and other fans' interpretations of it. It continued for as long as it did because I found it satisfying to imagine the development of human characters from the "noontide of bliss," trying to immortalize sacred Light, to those who fell to blind adherence to an oath and murder of innocents and kin, because this is a journey that we see people making in real life too, and I was/am fascinated as to why that happens.

This is probably why my response, when being accused of writing Maedhros as a fangirl in AMC once, I became rather snarky. ;)

But in any case, the failure to acknowledge reasons for writing other than emotional satisfaction felt rather dismissive to me and in a sexist way, i.e., "This is overwhelming a woman's art form, but you don't need to take it seriously as 'high art' because that's not what they intend at all. They're just trying for an emotional payload for themselves and their friends." Again, nothing wrong with that purpose at all but to so blithely push all fanfic under that umbrella seems to me to perpetuate stereotypes that have long been used to dismiss women's creative contributions.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this article, and for the chance to read the discussion. The comparison of fanfic to both folkart and to spontaneous, casual games of whatever sport in the context of the clash with money-earning writing was illuminating - or maybe it's like people starting their own bands and choirs to enjoy music together? Because the collaborative nature of fanfic is very evident.
Anyway, still thinking (also about community - how real is it, the impact of non-response etc - and the meaning and validity of some writers' refusal to allow fanfic). Thanks again for posting such thought-provoking material, both article and comments.