The Process of Fan Fiction:
Creating Culture through Alternate Realities
“Fan fiction [is] the whole picture, not just the story… I look at fan fiction as a
complete experience: Reading, writing, art, beta1… Fan fiction gives me the
opportunity…to immerse myself in the creative process of others and let them
carry me away with their plots.” (Sandy)
INTRODUCTION: Entering the Mountain
Despite a questionable status as the “bastard child” in the literary family (Young 2007:1), fan fiction is not only persevering but growing, much to the satisfaction of the fans who passionately defend the worth of their underdog activity. However, the growth of fan fiction continues to be frustrated by debates as to whether fan fiction is a genre in its own right, a “quaintly amusing hobby,” or something that should not be allowed to exist at all (Young 2007:1). Issues concerning copyright infringement and the writing of slash2 have stigmatized fan fiction. The number of well-written stories is equaled or even exceeded by the number of badly written stories. Still, fan fiction persists, and some published writers are beginning to admit that they wrote fan fiction before their career. Seeing it as a way to “re-engage [the] creative writing muscles” (Jones 2007:1), they have even returned to fan fiction after they have been published.
Fan fiction is a product of culture. The Greenwood Guide to Popular Culture defines culture as “a creative response to our environment, an effort to make sense out of disorder, a desire to discover beauty and meaning in the ugliness and absurdity of our world” (Inge 2002:xxiv). The same definition could easily be applied to fan fiction. Fan fiction responds to a previously established source universe, re-making the world and considering the implications of other perspectives.
As noted by Whitehead and Wesch (2009:12), the Internet has presented anthropology with “many opportunities for diverse cultural expression, but as of yet, little comparative work has been done” to explore these growing cyber cultures. In response, cyberethnography has recently entered into the world of virtual communities and begun to examine the vast amount of text being produced. By engaging in participant-observation fieldwork within these cyberfieldsites, a cyberethnographer gains a better understanding of the members’ perceptions of their selves, both online and offline, and their community. In addition to producing a variety of stories, fans are also active in analyzing themselves, their beliefs, and their creation of fan fiction against the backdrop of the source universe. This self-reflection has allowed “a tradition of fannish metadiscourse…to flourish online” (Coppa 2006:58) and provides an accumulation of text for cyberethnographers to investigate.
Although past anthropological studies have explored fan fiction as a cultural product, they have devoted less attention to fan fiction as a process. In Finding Culture in Talk, Naomi Quinn points out the inextricable nature of “the enactment and production of culture” (2005:22). It is important to consider not only what is produced in fan fiction but why and how. Fan fiction becomes enacted through agency, a conscious choice of creativity and interpretation. The fans’ motivations and methods of enactment reveal multiple layers of self and various cultural contexts in which the fans interact. Engaging in the creative process, they demonstrate agency in the way that they re-shape their lives in response to the fandom in which they participate. They also enter into a relationship with multiple worlds, including that of science fiction writing, online community interaction, and construction of their own imaginary universes.
One cultural context of interest is fan fiction’s relationship to play. Play is at “the heart of human creativity” (Schultz and Lavenda 2009:187). Play stretches our ability to be open to the existence of possibilities and fosters our capacity for respecting different perspectives. Play results in an “awareness of alternatives” (Lavenda 1996:938). Play and agency are both acts of continual re-creation that are emphasized within the process of fan fiction.
OVERVIEW: Checkpoint
Using text garnered through cyberethnography, this paper weaves themes of play and agency into an exploration of fan fiction. I will begin with background information to more fully develop the concepts of fan fiction, cyberethnography, and textual discourse. The popularity of the Internet has required newer ethnographical methods in order to analyze the textual discourse available within cyberfieldsites. This approach to textual discourse is utilized in the collection of supporting data from fans.
Many avenues of analysis can be taken, but I have chosen to focus on the interrelationship among fan fiction, play, and agency. Johan Huizinga’s characteristics of play are presented from his book Homo Ludens and augmented by commentary from study participants. I conclude with lessons learned while playing with fan fiction as we consider what it can teach us about self, culture, and our lives.
BACKGROUND: Touring the Base
Fan fiction
Fan fiction is an inclusive term for stories written by fans and based on a source text, whether that source takes the form of a novel, comic book, TV show, movie, game, etc. Writers of fan fiction creatively reinterpret the source universe, enhancing it with stories that fill in perceived gaps, offer more resolution to endings, or take the original text in entirely new directions. Any pre-established world can serve as a fan fiction’s background. Screenplays about Sherlock Holmes are fan fiction because they are written by someone other than Holmes’s original creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Authorized tie-in novels for TV shows are fan fiction. Sequels to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice are fan fiction. Remakes of Shakespeare’s plays are fan fiction. Stories posted on the Internet3 are fan fiction. It is the last of these that I will examine.
Fan fiction is not a replacement for the source material. It is expected that someone reading a work of fan fiction is familiar with the original so that it remains in the back of the reader’s mind. It is often the “resonance” between the two texts that bestows “meaning and significance” to the new story (Derecho 2006:73-74). Further resonance is created by the archival nature of fan fiction. Readers can compare a story not only to the source text but also to other stories in the archive of fan fiction. As a result, every story “changes the entirety of interpretation” so that meaning is sometimes created by the community as a whole (Busse and Hellekson 2006:7). Each new addition becomes one among numerous possibilities, co-existing with stories that may contradict it, all contributing to an ever-expanding archive. In the following quote, Casey describes these possibilities.
Casey: What I really love is how [fan fiction] adds length and depth to existing
worlds… In the case of shows which were canceled without a satisfying
resolution to their plot, fan fiction can plug the holes and tie up the loose ends, or
perhaps set the characters off on new and longer adventures. For shows which
were primarily situational or plot-driven, [fan fiction stories] give readers and
writers alike the opportunity to explore character motivations, expand
relationships between characters, and provide emotional resolution to the trying
situations the characters experience in an episode.
Fan fiction in anthropology
Anthropological studies of fan fiction are few and far between. Early studies focused on pre-Internet fan fiction, the prevalence of women writers, and the tendency to insert slash within fan fiction worlds (Busse and Hellekson 2006:16-17). Later studies explored the power struggle between media producers and consumers, noting fan fiction’s potential as a subversive text that thwarted the media’s attempt to lull the public into passivity (Dickey 1997:415; Derecho 2006:69-70). Fan fiction, with its “textual productivity,” was often seen as an “extraordinary mode of engagement” (Burgess 2006:202), an example of anthropology’s focus on product as opposed to process.
With the explosion of Internet use in recent decades, textual productivity is now commonplace, and anthropologists are beginning to show an interest in process. They are paying more attention to the role of audiences as the “active interpreters of the material they read, see, and hear” (Dickey 1997:416). In particular, studies of popular culture have opened up understandings into the meanings that underlie audience interpretations. Such studies explore how “the complexities and paradoxes of meaning…
reflect the deeper realities of the social world out of which they arise” (Little 1996:984).
Cyberethnography
Online communication and virtual communities have forced anthropologists to reshape fieldwork methods to encompass “a growing world-wide cultural investment in online life” (Whitehead and Wesch 2009:12). Early cyberethnography, by concentrating on gaming and social networking such as Facebook, observed the disconnect between “online and offline selving” as the online participants could define themselves textually in ways that were “free from the constraints” of their offline identity (Robinson and Schulz 2009:688-689). More recently, cyberethnographers have taken the approach that “online identities [are] extensions of the offline self.” The two selves are not separate and unique, but integrated and interactional layers of the same self.
Virtual communities gained validity as fieldsites when cyberethnographers realized that the members themselves had conferred reality upon the community, even though it did not operate within a physical space. Participant-observation interaction between members and cyberethnographers occurs primarily through text. Online members take on “part of the ethnographer’s task by translating their own experiences into textual form” (Robinson and Schulz 2009:691). Because the text is “recorded verbatim as data,” members communicate their own meanings and bypass the interpretative, and possibly distorting, view of the researcher.
Textual Discourse
Quinn (2005) introduces discourse, or talk, as the best method of investigation into cultural understandings. Individuals of any given group will share “largely tacit, taken-for-granted, and hence invisible assumptions” that they use to “comprehend and organize experience” (2-3). These implicit understandings and underlying cultural meanings must be “reconstructed” from what people say (4). For the cyberethnographer, the discourse is all textual, but even this written form of talk reveals internalized cultural meanings that individuals draw upon in their interaction with others.
The majority of anthropological studies related to fan fiction have been written about fans and have done them the disservice of “universalizing interpretations [and] homogenizing…fannish discourse” (Busse and Hellekson 2006:21). Fans have lacked a voice in academic studies, even though textual discourse is their home territory. Because their connection to one another is through cyberspace, text is the medium through which fans communicate.
Agency
Conveying both product and process through their text, fans show that they are active participants in the construction of their own realities. This active participation, or agency, is the practice of evaluating and renegotiating belief systems, cultural meanings, and a sense of self. It is the act of imagination through which all individuals continually “create and re-create the essence of their being” (Rapport and Overing 2007:6). Nothing is static. The person who disagrees with the current situation has the ability to “negate the essence of their own creations and create again.” Agency is imbued with the potential for change. Fan fiction stimulates an awareness of that potential as fan fiction writers utilize agency in the interpretive, creative presentation of alternative realities.
ANALYSIS: Mission Briefing
Data Collection
Given the fans’ inclination toward textual discourse as a means of communication, it makes sense to allow them to speak for themselves on the subject of fan fiction. Since I belong to several fan fiction communities4, I have the advantage of understanding the shorthand that invariably develops among in-members. In October 2009, I chose three Yahoo groups, announced my intention to research fan fiction, and asked for volunteers. All three groups are online communities for the TV shows Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, although many of the members participate in other fandoms as well. Twenty volunteers gated into cyberspace to be “interviewed.” I sent the volunteers a list of questions5 through email regarding their participation in fan fiction. Responses were returned to me in textual format via email. Typical of most cyberethnographies, no face-to-face communication occurred.
Data results
Of the twenty volunteers, seventeen fans completed the “interviews” in the required time period. Of these, all are female except one. The fans in this study range in age from 19 to 57 years old, with 41-57 comprising the majority. Although some responses were received from Europe and Australia, most of the participants are residents of the United States. Most are employed full-time and have completed some higher education. All but two have participated in fan fiction for five or more years. All read fan fiction, though not all define themselves as writers of it. To maintain the anonymity of the study participants, fictive gender-neutral names6 and feminine pronouns are used throughout this paper.
Data presentation
While reading the responses offered by the study participants, what becomes readily apparent is their sense of pleasure in fan fiction. They approach the topic with joy and excitement. Readers speak of enjoying a story during their morning cup of tea or following a hard day’s work. Writers describe their love for the creative process and the satisfaction they derive from writing fan fiction.
Writers of fan fiction show themselves to be persistent in their art despite the lack of compensation. They expend a great deal of time and effort to create a product for which they receive no money. Most are intimately familiar with the source material in order to realistically capture the characters’ voices. Many create complicated plots and original characters or settings to enhance the stories they tell. Some do research to provide convincing descriptions. Others develop an initial story that provokes a sequel or an ongoing series. Lee, for example, wrote her first story five years ago and says of its continuation, “Currently I’m working on Chapter 31.”
One reward they welcome is the feedback offered by their online readers. While writers associated with publishing are forced to wait years for the publication of their book and the reaction of their readers, fan fiction writers are provided instant gratification, validating their experience as writers. Sam describes her relationship with readers as “symbiotic” and appreciates constructive feedback that helps her “focus on my strengths and hone in on my weaknesses.” She clarifies in this example:
Sam: “I love this story” is a nice comment to receive, but it does little to assist the
writer… Whereas a constructive negative, such as: “I like this story overall, but I
think you needed to put in more detail about their surroundings”…works better
for me…to see where I might’ve dropped information that the reader needed or
simply to realize that I need to work on that part of my skills.
However, feedback is not a primary motivation for all writers of fan fiction. Chris says of feedback, “I certainly like to get [it], but I don’t write for it, and if it doesn’t come, it doesn’t make me think I won’t write again.” In addition, while some of these writers hope to break into publishing with original material, others remain content to write fan fiction, whether they receive feedback or not, as the following quote suggests.
Terry: I think the process of writing and creating my own stories is satisfying
enough on its own. I just need to remember to look at feedback as the icing on
the cake… I have no illusions that I will become a big, famous author… I’ll just
continue to enjoy what I’m doing.
Playtime
“If I feel like playing, I look around, see who’s on, chat with fellow fans or
writers, or just leave obnoxious comments on boards. It’s all good.” (Mason)
An aspect of fan fiction that is overlooked in most studies is its relationship to play. Fan fiction exists on the nexus of popularity and notoriety. Its connection to play explains how it can balance between the two viewpoints. Those who mock fan fiction point out its association with play. Fan fiction is seen as a frivolous activity that makes no money and serves no purpose. Those who enjoy fan fiction, on the other hand, see its advantages as a writing practice that has no external pressures. They revel in the creative process and take joy in others’ responses to their product. Fans see their desire to play in a source universe as an expression of love for that universe. They want to know “What if…?” and “What about…?” and “What next?” Alex equates fan fiction with childhood playtime: “As children, we play at fan fiction. We want to be Superman, Spiderman, a Musketeer. This is just an extension of that.” Fan fiction is about discovering possibilities beyond the source text. It is the world of alternate realities.
Play in anthropology
Early research has centered on activities that are commonly considered play: games, sports, festivals, children’s play. For the most part, anthropologists have tended to avoid “scholarly considerations of pleasure, leisure, and escape” (Dickey 1997:413). Instead, popular culture studies have taken the forefront into research concerning play. According to these studies, the pursuit of leisure produces people who are “at their best, at their most capable and creative, and in their most liberated state. Thus, the health of a society is directly reflected in the liveliness and quality of its entertainment” (Inge 2002:xvii). In making a distinction between work and play, George Santayana gives a fuller definition of play as “what is done spontaneously and for its own sake [regardless of any] ulterior utility” (Inge 2002:xx). What appears to be a pointless activity actually carries great weight in understanding a culture. As a function of the imagination and agency, play explores alternative worlds by contrasting them with the everyday world that is more familiar. Thus, play has a reflexive quality that constructs a “commentary on the nature of ordinary life” (Lavenda 1996:937).
The whole point
Huizinga (1955) has declared that playing is the whole point (17) and states that “society expresses its interpretation of life and the world” through play (46). He delineates the following characteristics of play:
…a free activity standing quite consciously outside “ordinary” life as being “not
serious,” but at the same time absorbing the players intensely and utterly… It
proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space…in an orderly
manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround
themselves with secrecy… [It is] accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy, and
consciousness that it is “different” from “ordinary life” (Huizinga 1955:13, 28)
This paper will compare the characteristics of play, as defined by Huizinga, to the textual discourse offered by the fans.
Characteristics of Play
Freedom. The first characteristic of play, according to Huizinga, is that it is free. It is undertaken voluntarily because play itself is “superfluous” (Huizinga 1955:8). There is no moral imperative or physical need associated with play. There is no goal except its “expression of human identity” (Chick 1996:473). There is no profit or material gain. It exists simply for its own sake as a means to enjoyment and pleasure. Jess says, “I’ve now been writing since 2002, and although I may not be brilliant, it satisfies something in me, and it’s mainly for my own pleasure.” Play also allows the freedom to experience what one wishes. For Pat, fan fiction gives a “bigger dose of what I already loved… I can pick and choose the aspects of the show that I really loved and focus on those.”
Play is inextricably bound with agency, which also includes the enjoyment of freedom. The creative process offers a space for choice. It provides an escape from the present reality. The use of imagination incorporates “an emergent quality, characterised [sic] by…going beyond a given situation, a set of circumstances, a status quo…” (Rapport and Overing 2007:6). Fan fiction writers take advantage of that ability to go beyond and the freedom to make their own choices in the re-creation of the source universe. The following quotes from Terry and Hayden emphasize the fan fiction writer’s recognition of that freedom.
Terry: With fan fiction, I have the chance to create my own story, to take the
characters I’ve come to love in the direction I would like to see them go, to
experience the situations I would like to see them in. There is an element of
escapism here that is very enticing.
Hayden: If you write fan fiction, you have the ability to control an environment
that you enjoy. It is a form of escapism that allows you to express feelings or
desires that you may or not be able to in your actual life.
Play and not-play. The second characteristic is the consciousness that play operates within a sphere of its own. It is not “ordinary” or “real” life but a transitory world removed from the ordinary world and “dedicated to the performance of an act apart” (Huizinga 1955:8, 10). It alters the everyday world for its own purposes. As a transformative agent, it conveys an “only pretend” quality which can be temporarily abolished when the participants become consumed by their play. Culture tends to set play and work at oppositional poles, one as frivolous and imaginary and the other as productive and real, but the interaction is more fluid that that, as revealed by phrases such as “play at work” or “take play seriously” (Lavenda 1996:938). Cyberethnography reveals that fans often see the play and not-play worlds as equally important and requiring the same amount of attention. Pat enjoys how members of her online community “often feel like they’re half living in the world they’re writing in” while Lee acknowledges the occasional detriment of her involvement in fan fiction.
Lee: Real life sometimes seems less bright, less enjoyable… Sometimes I feel
like I’m sitting in my ivory tower and don’t want to be part of the world outside…
My family is important to me…but I fear if I didn’t have family, I’d be living
more in my head and writing than in real life.
Temporality. Play is a temporary activity, an “interlude in our daily lives” (Huizinga 1955:9). An activity
that recurs on a regular basis can develop a complementary purpose. It becomes an “integral part” of an individual’s life and a necessity to society because of its “significance [and] expressive value…as a cultural function.” Although regularly recurring playtime still comes to an end within a fixed time period, fan fiction blurs the concept of temporality. For some fans, playtime never officially ends. Sandy takes along her laptop and portable internet device when she goes out because she says, “I like to keep up with my list activities and talk with people within the fandom. Going away anywhere where I don’t have access to these things is usually a good excuse for not going there at all.”
Locality. Huizinga (1955) identifies “secludedness” as another characteristic of play (9). Play occurs within its own playground, a special spot isolated from the world and devoted to the function of play. For the most part, the playground for fan fiction is cyberspace. The Internet has blurred “the boundaries between public and private space” and allowed “virtual strangers to connect and interact” (Bowen 2008:572, 587). However, just as fan fiction does not end at an appointed time, it also does not stay confined to the Internet playground. Agency causes fan fiction’s influence to extend beyond the online sphere. Fan fiction can produce changes in perspective that are then passed on and enacted within the wider world. Because fan fiction resides at the “intersection of realism and fantasy, the fantasy life [has]…cathartic or exploratory benefits for ‘real’ lives” (Driscoll 2006:88). Casey says that she has undergone profound changes in her “attitudes of fairness and equality, as science fiction is particularly suited to exploring moral and social issues.” Sidney has also experienced positive benefits from reading fan fiction as she tells in this story.
Sidney: The two male leads in my fiction almost always have different viewpoints on everything, and I can see both sides… It helps when I am dealing with some difficult people at work…[who] always think their own problem is the most important… So I think fan fiction has really helped me grow emotionally and, I like to think, made me a better person.
Community. Play promotes social bonding and “contributes to the well-being of the group” (Huizinga 1955:9). Engaging in playtime together creates a mutual feeling of separation from the rest of the world. Because of the participants’ shared experience, a sense of “being ‘apart together’ in an exceptional situation” persists and gains permanency even after play has ended (Huizinga 1955:12). Cyberethnographers note the close-knit bond among many members of fan fiction communities. The community becomes a group of creative people talking about themselves and what they do—sharing not only stories, but also aspects of their lives. In fan fiction, the community is a source of “collective imagination” (Bowen 2008:576). It is also a source of inspiration, support, and encouragement. In Alex’s view, her online community is family, as the following quote demonstrates.
Alex: Becoming involved in fan fiction has introduced me to some absolutely
wonderful people who are of like mind. Though I haven’t had the opportunity to
meet with these people face to face, I still consider them some of my closest
friends…a family of sorts, you might say.
Order. Play brings order, imposing rules which bind all the participants with a common goal. One frequent rule is that reality exists within the play-world. Ordinary life is not allowed to infringe upon play, and new rules may be generated so that play functions effectively. If the rules are broken or the not-play world interferes, the play-world collapses (Huizinga 1955:11). As the administrator of a virtual community, Sam says, “I have the responsibility of creating the rules and enforcing them with a fair hand to keep the…experience positive for all involved.”
Another standard rule is that the play-world should be surrounded by “an air of secrecy,” permitting only those who understand and follow the rules to participate (Huizinga 1955:12). Lee maintains that secrecy by insisting, “There’s no fan fiction outside my online community. Nada, zilch, non!” Taylor describes fan fiction as her “guilty pleasure” and admits that if someone doesn’t know her well, she doesn’t reveal that she reads fan fiction.
Fan fiction also recognizes the rule of “recognition with a difference” (Derecho 2006:75). It assumes that every text, whether it is source or fan fiction, contains “a wealth of potentialities…in the process of becoming actualized” (Derecho 2006:74). Writers of fan fiction express agency by seeking out variations of these potentialities and recognizing that “innovations…occur in the process of repetition” (Derecho 2006:76). The same source text can yield a multitude of stories, all emphasizing a different aspect, all expanding upon the original, all valid as fan fiction. In the following quote, Mason expounds on fan fiction’s capacity for “repetition with a difference.”
Mason: I love the diversity. It is amazing seeing the different styles and ideas
and executions, and I love a story that makes me sit up and go, “Holy crap! I
never would have thought of that in a million years. And it fits!” Everybody sees
everything differently, and it shows brilliantly when you read stories all set in the
same universe, with the same characters.
Mood. Huizinga (1955) describes the play-mood as “one of rapture and enthusiasm” (132). Play can be either serious or relaxed, depending on the circumstances that surround it. It imparts “a feeling of exaltation and tension” that writers, in particular, attempt to exploit. Using that emotional tension in a story, they transfer the feelings of exaltation and tension to readers, capturing the readers’ attention. Sidney enjoys reading fan fiction because “the written word is so much more expressive than spoken dialog [sic]… When I am reading a [story] that is full of emotion, the writers can give me a glimpse of what someone is feeling but would never say.”
Agency invokes a similar tension. A relationship of conflict exists between the imaginative worlds that could be and the reality of the world that is. When agency results in a conscious decision to create new meanings, the present conditions are “inexorably appropriated, reshaped, and reformed” (Rapport and Overing 2007:7). Thus, agency lifts fan fiction’s process of continual re-creation out of the play-world and applies it to the not-play world.
CONCLUSION: Gating to Another Planet
This paper demonstrates an overlap of old and new. Fan fiction has existed for quite some time, but its presence on the Internet is recent, calling for past anthropological methods of fieldwork to evolve into cyberethnography. Huizinga’s older model of play shows its continued viability for application when it is compared to the more contemporary concept of agency. Both highlight the importance of the interpretive act. Whether one considers them engaged in play or in agency, fans practice a creative process that can offer insights into our culture.
Lessons from the Playground
Writers at play. Fan fiction is a venue for collective construction of identity. Unlike the writers at work who are burdened by deadlines and stifled creativity, fan fiction writers are writers at play. They are not limited by budget concerns or length restrictions that may have affected the source material. Agency is an important part of the process. As Pat says, “There’s a universe I enjoy playing in and I can get the cast to do anything I want!” Like all writers, fan fiction writers invest some of their own beliefs and desires within their textual discourse, causing a “doubling of the self as both inside and outside each story” (Driscoll 2006:87). They delight in creating stories for themselves in order to enact their love for the source text, intertwining product and process as a result.
When a writer releases a story to the wider world of his or her online community, the entertained becomes the entertainer. Solitary play becomes collaborative play. Readers become an integral part of the story’s construction, employing their own agency by using “knowledge and imagination to fill in the empty spaces” (Bonvillain 2010:398). They find the parts of the story that resonate with their own beliefs and desires. By providing commentary about their reactions to the story, they share the writer’s love and validate the writer’s contribution to the archive of source text and fan fiction. Connected in an “emotional catharsis stimulated by the creative process,” both writer and reader benefit from the mutual fulfillment of psychological needs (Bonvillain 2010:386).
Through textual discourse, fans reveal to cyberethnographers that they negotiate their sense of self in the context of multiple possibilities. Living in someone else’s world, they can play with alternatives and explore strange new worlds. Fan fiction allows them to step outside the boundaries of their everyday lives. By identifying with the fictional characters and seeking to understand the characters’ responses to a variety of situations, fan clarify their own belief systems.
In addition to discovering self in multiple contexts, fans are discovering layers of self within their own individualities. Creative engagement with their cyber environment forces them to face choices concerning their online identity. They decide how deeply they will reveal parts of their selves to others. Whether through construction or reaction to fan fiction or through the sharing of personal information, fans communicate multiple facets of their personality. They define their own answers to the question, “Who am I in the world?”
Fan fiction at play. Fan fiction and play acknowledge many of the same observations about life. Both recognize that “no perspective on reality is absolute” (Lavenda 1996:938). Both situate the reality in which we live against a different reality and suggest that a comparison between the two offers more understanding of the reality we know and the choices available to us to alter that reality. Both ask us to reflect on “what can be rather than…what should be or what is” (Schultz and Lavenda 2009:168). Fan fiction plays with the “what if?” question, knowing that what is presented is only part of the story. The story is much bigger than any one person can imagine.
Fan fiction and play are both cooperative ventures that require their participants to accept different players in their midst. Tolerance is necessary to play the game. Fan fiction accepts that “alternative and competing [stories] can and must coexist” (Busse and Hellekson 2006:8). Every story can be told in multiple ways. Every person can be revealed in multiple contexts.
As both product and process, fan fiction serves a dual role of representing culture and providing a “reflexive commentary” about it (Little 1996:985). Fans acting within multiple contexts and through multiple selfways have the agency of change. When they negotiate their identity through alternate realities, they are creating culture. They make decisions about “what is” and in response, revise their own lives. Fans are playing with “what could be” and rewriting our culture accordingly.
Summary. Cyberethnography has opened a doorway into the worlds of fan fiction and allowed the fans to have a voice concerning the product they have created. The fans’ textual discourse reveals that the process of fan fiction is as important as the product. Fan fiction is a form of play that explores alternate realties against which our present reality can be evaluated and re-created. The fans’ textual discourse captures the agency that enters into other worlds and generates multiple constructions of self and cultural contexts. Fan fiction is more than a dubious hobby; it is the gate through which we have the opportunity to re-examine the present reality of our culture and our lives.
Footnotes
1. A beta refers to a editor who double-checks a story for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors before it is posted. Some betas will also read for continuity with canon (source text) and flow of the story’s plot, but this job is typically referred to as an alpha.
2. Slash is a fan fiction term for a story containing a homosexual relationship, often between two male lead characters. Variations on slash can include anything from casual romance to graphic sex scenes.
3. Online sources for fan fiction include live journals, blogs, award sites, Yahoo groups, archives, websites, online communities, etc.
4. I joined my first online community in 2005 and began writing fan fiction within the year. As of October 2009, I participate in six fan-related groups, mostly involving Stargate SG-1. I also visit several websites on a regular basis to read fan fiction in other fandoms, and I correspond by email with friends I have made through fandom.
5. Interview questions included:
a. Why do you participate in fan fiction?
b. Describe how your participation in fandom began and how it’s evolved.
c. Describe the influence of online communities as they relate to your participation in fandom.
d. Outside online communities, what attitudes have you encountered toward fan fiction?
e. What do you like best/least about fan fiction?
6. The fictive names bear no resemblance or relation to the participant’s real name, pen name, or online ID name.
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