By Brooklyn Aitken
Fanfiction is the practice of writing fiction based off an already created work that the writer has enjoyed and is a fan of. Contemporary fan fiction is often posted it onto the internet or as it is more commonly known “fanfic”. Fanfiction is defined as “stories involving popular fictional characters that are written by fans and often posted on the Internet” (Fanfiction, 2021). Fanfiction can be based on books, movies or tv shows. There are websites that are designed to house works of fanfiction including FanFiction.net or Archive of Our Own (AO3); websites like Tumblr and Wattpad also have a large base of work known as fanfiction. This report will also discuss where fanfiction should fit into already existing literary categories. This report will also show that women and queer people are the main producers and readers of fanfiction; it will address the value of fanfiction as a form of creative writing and recentering an established narrative to be more relatable to those demographics.
Fanfiction has been around for a long time. Stephanie Burt wrote a piece in the New Yorker magazine in 2017 called ‘The Promise and Potential of Fan Fiction’ in which she discusses the origins of contemporary fanfiction. She writes: “First there was “Star Trek,” the original series, whose viewers—many of them women in stem[sic] fields—organized conventions and created self-published journals (a.k.a. fanzines) with fiction about its characters, a small but notorious slice of which included sexy doings between Kirk and Spock. Or: first there were fans of science-fiction novels and magazines who held conventions and traded self-published journals as early as the nineteen-thirties. Or: first there was Sherlock Holmes, whose devotees, hooked by serial publication, pushed for more stories, formed clubs, and wrote their own. Or: first came Virgil’s Aeneid. Or: first, the Janeites.” (Burt, 2017)
This paragraph shows that the roots of fanfiction are seen in readers responses to the works from the classics all the way up to Star Trek. Many creative genres have been used as a basis for fanfiction. Readers have come together to enjoy the original works and have created demand for more. Readers have become writers. Wattpad- a site for uploading original work- currently recommends 1,590 fanfiction stories to the readers who visit the site. Which might not seem like many but that’s just the top-rated ones.
The Method of Fanfiction
There seems to be two main structures or models to Fan-Fiction: AU and OC.
AU refers to Alternative Universe. In this structure, many things about the established story are changed while characters are kept; The already established characters experience a different plotline or are thrust into a different environment. Take for example Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith. This book takes most of the original love story and adds a plotline about zombies. The author extrapolates the humor in Pride and Prejudice by adding this element. He honours Jane Austen by using her much admired sentence structure as seen in the first line of the novel: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” (Grahame-Smith and Austen, 2009).
OC refers to Original Character. The fanfiction writer has created a new character who is put into the existing storyline. Or sometimes the reader is put into the storyline utilizing Y/N, meaning your name. You are now the original character. A good example of this structure is the new character, Enola Holmes, appearing in her own detective series. Her older brother is the established character Sherlock Holmes. The Enola Holmes series is written by a woman, Nancy Springer, for a young adult audience. She is a smart and resourceful young woman who is shackled to the gender norms of the earlier 20th century. Enola frequently has to pose as a male and has to solves mysterious without the resources or authority of Sherlock. The OC structure allows the writer to explore gender roles in a light-hearted and accessible way for young adults.
Homage, Parody, and Pastiche
This essay has explained the methodology behind fanfiction so it is time to explore where exactly it fits literarily. Homage, parody, and pastiche are all corresponding literature devices which are rather similar to fanfiction but there are some differences between all of them which create contrast between the three as well as unite them as a literary grouping.
Homage is a literature device which pays respect to another piece of literature or style of writing. It is usually used by writers to honour what has impacted or influenced them. Writers who write homage will often use the same writing style or story, but the author will put their own originality into it. “Something that is done to honour someone or something” (Homage, 2021) is the meaning in the dictionary but homage as writing technique is rather new. During the post-modern era it was a very common writing practice. “… they increasingly point to the compatibility of homage and invention, to the coexistence of renovation and variance, novelists today are breaching that paradigm of narrative self-reflexivity perpetuated under the rubric of postmodern free-play.” (James, 2007) as we can see a homage needs a bit of Authors originality to function while it needs to have the largely good parts of the person or literature the homage is being written for. An excellent example of homage is Jeanette Winterson’s Fran Kiss Stein. Which is a homage to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Mary Shelly is even written into the book as a character, and we see her write Frankenstein during that fateful weekend “My husband adores Byron. Each day they take a boat out onto the lake and talk about poetry and liberty…” This compares and contrasts to modern day robotics “I’m here for the global Tec-X-Po on Robotics” which is shown side by side. We clearly have the homage to Mary Shelly along with the originality of the storyline of robotics.
A parody is a work which mimics form and style of another work and often exaggerated it for a comedic effect. A parody can be written anywhere between light-hearted fun and a simple but brutal ridicule of the original work. “a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule” (Parody, 2021) Parody is written purposefully and for a reason“a parody is ‘an intentional imitation – of a text, style, genre, or discourse – which includes an element of humour and which has an aim of interpreting its target in one way or another’” (Chan, 2017) There are many examples of parody in the digital age but even Shakespeare wrote a love poem, ‘Sonnet 130’ that was parody of the poetry at the time.
“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks…”
He was parodying the common love poems of the time, often poems would compare the body to beautiful things like the sun or roses and whilst Shakespeare does compare them, he doesn’t seem to think it’s the right comparison to make, so instead he mocks the common metaphors.
Pastiche is defined as very similar to both parody and homage it does often emulate the original work and often it lightly make fun of it but it is done with love and respect for the original work and often it can also blend more than one authors style. Pastiche in the dictionary is defined as “a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work” (Pastiche 2021) Pastiche can also often be seen as a pasting together of a few writers works but no matter the number of authors it imitates it still is a purposeful emulation. “This practice has an honored heritage and, done well, involves high craftsmanship. The idea is to evoke an older style with respect, which doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with the original. But if you make fun of it, then it’s not pastiche; it’s parody.” Tommasini, A. 2014 An example of Pastiche is Dave McClure’s “The Traveler” a pastiche of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”
“Long ago upon a hilltop (let me finish then I will stop)
I espied a curious traveler where no traveler was before.
As I raised an arm in greeting all at once he took to beating
At the air like one entreating passing boats to come ashore.
or an over-eager whore.” (McClure, 2019)
It duplicates the arrangement of words used by Poe in the original poem. It also utilises the same rhyming style as well. You can compare it to the opening paragraphs of Poe’s ‘The Raven’:
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door –
Only this, and nothing more.” (Edgar Poe, 2005)
The largest difference between the two is that Poe’s is clearly very serious, while McClure clearly is trying to make a poem that, while respectful, has a more humorous tone.
Are these not literary devices we clearly see in fanfiction? A respect and inspiration from the original source, and in some cases, enough self-awareness to see that your favourite media can sometimes be problematic. Therefore it should be sometimes exaggerated in the hopes of at least having a good time? Fanfiction overlaps all three of these categories so why isn’t it just as respected as the other previously mentioned literary classifications?
Who Writes Fanfiction?
A large percentage of readers and writers of Fanfiction are women. “Fanfiction surpasses romance as the most female genre of all, with more of its readers and writers identifying as genderqueer (6 per cent) than male (4 per cent).” (Carvan, 2018) It could be argued that women create fanfiction because media has traditionally been skewed towards men. Women want to see themselves in media, but often the only way to do this is to write for yourself and other women. Fanfiction creates an audience for women writers and has brought women together as readers and writers for generations. in fact as Henry Jenkins suggests in Textual Poachers, “fanfiction is a reaction on the part of a female audience trying to find their own pleasures in media that caters mostly to men.” (Jenkins 2012)
In contemporary fanfiction women often create a different and more equal world out of the one that has been created by the original authors. Women writers use these structures because they want write and read fiction that caters to their wants and needs while still being in the fictional world that they enjoy. “Fans, as one longtime Trekker explained, “treat the program like silly putty,” stretching its boundaries to incorporate their concerns, remolding its characters to better suit their desires.” (Jenkins 2012) Women read and write fanfiction because they often don’t see themselves, their skills or their aspirations represented in the word created by the original authors, so they write it. In NyxEtoile’s and OlivesAwl’s ‘Six Maids A’ shopping’ a fanfiction based around ‘The Avengers, superhero movie, we see badass women take a break from saving the word to do some Christmas shopping and bonding. “The car is idling outside, and Darcy has made a shopping plan worthy of the Normandy Invasion.”
“Copies have been sent to all your mobile devices,” the girl added, waving her phone.
Nat looked over at Jane, who said, “She’s a highly competent assistant.” The “despite appearances” was unspoken.
“It helps when I actually understand the mission parameters,” Darcy added.” (NyxEtoile and OlivesAwl 2014)
In this we have Darcy a woman who is talented in computers and science making a game plan for Christmas shopping. Their skills aren’t just for saving the world and in this instance the most important person in this scene is a sassy computer tech who puts a whole shopping strategy together.
As we saw above, fanfiction was often created to share with other women and is now uploaded onto free to use websites. It has always existed outside of the commercialisation of literature. The writing of fanfiction is less about fame and fortune, it gravitates more towards the pleasures of reading and writing. Becca Schaffner says about her own work as a writer “In short, I am not a big deal – and it doesn’t matter. Fanfiction is about the whole community of fans, not just the stories, and not even just the writers who are a big deal…Community and friendship come naturally in fandom, because the fan world is both free and reciprocal. It is ingrained with practices of sharing and responding, of reviewing what you read, of giving fanfics as gifts, making reading recommendations to friends (and recommendations, not automated searches, are the final word in finding good stuff), and “beta reading” friends’ stories before they’re posted.” Schaffner, B. 2009. It’s this community that’s motivates the writing, reading and sharing of fanfiction for pleasure alone.
Fanfiction is undervalued the same way most of women’s art has been undervalued in a male dominated culture. This is now well documented, in a research article written in 2018 it found “On average, titles by female authors are priced $17.92 lower than those by male authors, with an average price of $37.45 compared to $55.37. Overall, books by authors with female names also receive slightly less investment on average from publishers, meaning that they are less likely to be published in the formats that are more expensive to produce and distribute.” (Weinberg DB, Kapelner A 2018) The quality of fanfiction varies as does the quality in all genres of fiction, but fanfiction is often dismissed by genre alone. Because the reader and writer base is so heavily composed of women it’s hard to avoid the conclusion this dismissal may be due to gender. The value of fanfiction to those who read and write it is based solely in the worlds created by it and the pleasures derived from it.
Queer people seem to write fanfiction for a very similar reason but instead of the love of reading and writing being the main reason, with the secondary reason being representation. Queer people seem to do it the other way around, the main reason for queer fanfiction is to reimagine cis and heterosexual characters as anything but. Whilst the love of reading and writing comes secondary to the representation. “Interactions with slash fanfiction reorient cis/heteronormative content. Reorienting normative content describes participants’ actions that identify and attempt to subvert cis/heteronormative themes in EM [entertainment media]. Participants note gaps in EM landscapes, read slash fanfiction to fill those gaps, and write slash fanfiction to address further gaps that they identify in both more mainstream EM and slash fanfiction.” (Floegel, 2020) As we can see it’s less the pleasure of the writing and more the emptiness queer people see in popular media.
Fanfiction is work that yes, draws upon another persons work but so does homage, pastiche, and parody. Fan fiction has been around for just as long. This essay believes that if we respected the writers of fan fiction more we would realise that it belongs next to those categories. There are not that many original stories left to be told so maybe writers should lean into it more because fan fiction is written because people love to write.
Sources
Burt, S., 2017. The Promise and Potential of Fan Fiction. The New Yorker, [online] Available at: <https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-promise-and-potential-of-fan-fiction> [Accessed 15 October 2021].
Carvan, T., 2018. Fanfiction is women’s work. Overland, [online] Available at: <https://overland.org.au/2018/06/fanfiction-is-womens-work/> [Accessed 14 October 2021].
Chan, LT 2017, ‘Imitation as translation: from Western theories of parody to Japanese postmodern pastiches’, Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 214–226, viewed 6 November 2021, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=121994374&site=ehost-live
Edgar Poe, A., 2005. The Raven. Gutenberg (e-books).
Etoile, N. and Awl, O., 2014. Tales From the Tower. AO3. https://archiveofourown.org/works/2849420/chapters/6389072#workskin
Floegel, D. 2020, ““Write the story you want to read”: world-queering through slash fanfiction creation”, Journal of Documentation, vol. 76, no. 4, pp. 785-805.
James, D., 2007. The new purism. Textual Practice, 21(4), pp.687-714.
Grahame-Smith, S. and Austen, J., 2009. Pride and prejudice and zombies. Philadelphia: Quirk Books.
Jenkins, H., 2012. Textual poachers.
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Fan fiction. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Homage. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved November 6, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Pastiche. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved November 6, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Parody. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved November 6, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary
Schaffner, B. 2009, “In Defense of Fanfiction”, The Horn Book Magazine, vol. 85, no. 6, pp. 613-618.
Tommasini, A. 2014, Pastiche, Parody, Homage and Crimes: [Arts and Leisure Desk], Late Edition (East Coast) edn, New York, N.Y.
Weinberg DB, Kapelner A (2018) Comparing gender discrimination and inequality in indie and traditional publishing. PLOS ONE 13(4): e0195298.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0195298
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