"Some
have argued that Virgil's epic poem, The Aeneid, was the first
work of fan fiction, based off Homer's Odyssey."
--Wikipedia.org's definition
of Fan Fiction
How exactly does this work?
Slash and Mary Sue
Online Fan Communites
Online Fan Fiction Criticism
A very broad definition of fan fiction is writing based
on existing works, including, but definitely not limited
to, published novels, television shows, movies, comics, anime/manga and
video games. This section deals with fan fiction in general. It is in
no way the end all of fan fiction. Definitions and opinions vary from
fandom to fandom and from fan to fan. Keep this in mind.
Fan
fiction is, obviously, written by fans. But beyond that, it has become
a way of saying "I am a ______ fan." By writing Harry Potter
fan fiction, one declares oneself as part of the Harry Potter
fan community and, "writing becomes a social activity for these fans,
functioning simultaneously as a form of personal expression and as a source
of collective identity" (Jenkins 154). There are innumerable online
and real life communities dealing with the fan community, or "fandom,"
and specifically fan fiction. Although there are no statistics, it is
probably safe to say that most fan fiction is written by women. A lot
of fan fiction is generated by visual media such as film and television
and the crushes formed on celebrities. Along with fan fiction based on
created media, a whole genre exists of fan fiction involving the actors
and actresess themselves. This segment of fan fiction is beyond the scope
of this site, however it is worth mentioning. In the cases of Lord
of the Rings and Harry Potter, many hard core fan fiction
authors look to the books for guidance or at least greater detail and
elaboration on what they've seen on the screen. Fan fiction authors in
these fandoms have the luxury of films that stuck relatively close to
the book. However, if it comes down to the book or movie version, most
fan fiction writers will follow the book.
At
its very core, fan fiction allows fans to prolong their relationship with
the object of their adulation. It is a labor of love, more than an attempt
to "correct" or "improve" an original text, although
this is also a motivation for fan fiction. For certain fandoms like Harry
Potter, there is, for the time being, fresh material generated by
the original author as well as the movie adaptations. This keeps the fandom
jumping. Fandom being, well, a hobby, people lose interest or find other
fandoms. Being in the middle of the Harry Potter saga, or any
television program, fan fiction writers can not only fiddle with the existing
work, but speculate on where it may end. For fans of a finished work,
such as Lord of the Rings or any cancelled television series,
fan fiction allows the universe created in the original text to live on
and flourish in the minds of those who love it best.
Fans usually express
themselves in fiction in two ways. Authors can tell a story that could
fit within the original story or "canon," such as "Dernhelm's
Ride," which explores Eowyn's thoughts as she rides toward Pelennor
Fields. This author finds a moment in Return of the King that
wasn't explored either in the books or movies, and "fills in the
gaps." This approach allows writers to examine and expand upon characters
or situations they feel drawn to. In pieces such as Lord of the Rings
and Harry Potter, there are many secondary characters whose stories
are just begging to be told. Enter the fan fiction writer.These stories
are deliberately limited by the action of the original work, and do not
add any new elements. Sometimes authors go as far as to try to mimic the
original author's style. The point is to remain as close to canon as possible.
"Dernhelm's Ride" is also an example of a "drabble"
or a fic of 100 words.
The other
kind of story happens outside the canon, such as "Naked
Quidditch Match," which tells of the Weasley twins losing a bet,
forcing the entire Gryffindor quidditch team to play one match stark naked.
The entire story is told in the form of emails or "Mmail." "Naked
Quidditch" for the most part keeps within the boundaries of the world
that J. K. Rowling created. But, it adds action that, debatably, would
not fit into the original Harry Potter books. Most people would
agree that a "Naked Quidditch Calendar" featuring underage characters
probably wouldn't make it past Rowling's publishers. Mmail as well, is
an invention of the fan fiction author. Naked Quidditch is still arguably
in canon.
Other
"non canon" stories don't stay within the original context of
their source. These are sometimes referred to as "Alternate Universe"
stories. These stories have infinite possibilities for setting and circumstances,
although they usually use the original characters. The
Dom-Land Caribou is an entire website of stories of the Fellowship
of the Ring as a hockey team that plays against teams comprised of other
Middle-Earth inhabitants. Once a year, they face off against a team of
Harry Potter characters in what's known as a "crossover,"
a bringing together of two separate fandoms. The Dom-Land Caribou site
has a roster, stats and archives of games all maintained weekly by a single
person. Although, the setting is Middle Earth, there are many modern contrivances.
Sites and stories such as the Dom-Land Caribou make no attempt to be true
to the plot canon. Instead, characters become cariacatures frolicking
about in absurdity.
Then there is slash,
possibly the most discussed "genre" of fan fiction. The term
"slash" literally came from the "/" between the two
names of a romantic pairing such as Sam/Rosie. However, "slash"
usually refers to a non-canon, homosexual pairing, such as Aragorn/Legolas.
For some writers, any non-canon relationship can be slash, even if the
pair is heterosexual or "het." What constitutes as canon varies
from fan to fan. For some fans, Frodo and Sam enjoy an extremely close
but non-sexual relationship. After all, Tolkien never explicitly published
hot gay hobbit sex. Some fans will argue, however, that there is a strong
homosexual subtext that supports Frodo/Sam, "Sam took his master's
hands and laid them together, palm to palm, and kissed them; and then
he held them gently between his own" (Tolkien, Return of the
King, 270). Frodo and Sam's relationship is intimate enough within
the text, that, for many people, the jump between close friends and lovers
is quite short to nonexistant.
Certain
Harry Potter fans will make the same argument for Sirius Black and Remus
Lupin or Sirius/Remus. A lot of fans. Do it.
Google
Sirius/Remus. One can argue that Lupin's lycanthropy is the Hogwarts
equivalent, more or less, of homosexuality. It is a condition Lupin did
not ask for, despite his name, and cannot control. It is, however, a concealable
condition, but nonetheless makes him an outcast, "the owls will start
arriving from parents...They will not want a werewolf teaching their children"
(Rowling, Prisoner of Azkaban, 423). Lupin's best and oldest
friend and fellow outcast, albeit for different reasons, is Siruis Black,
a shapeshifter whose alternate forms is a giant dog. For Sirius/Remus
"shippers" a romantic relationship between a dog and a wolf
with no one to turn to but each other makes perfect sense. The term "ship"
or "'ship" is an abbreviation of the word "relationship,"
and proponents of a "ship" are called "shippers."
Slash
is not limited to debatably canon pairings. For some fans, the definition
of slash is "non-canon," for instance Boromir/Theodred,
who never actually met in the original text or Frodo/Sauron,
who didn't meet either. In fact, google, Dumbledore/squid.
There's at least one. Websites such as The
Library of Moria house thousands of slash fan fictions involving pretty
much every character in the LotR canon. Their submission guidelines include
amongst rules about grammar and proof-reading, a rule about pairings,
"all stories archived here should feature either male/male or female/female
relationships. Any and all pairings are accepted, no matter how weird.
Pairing pages will be added if they don't already exist, so don't hesitate
if you've written something not already featured. Stories may contain
heterosexual relationships as long as they are not the focus" (Library
of Moria). The stories archived here are all self rated based on the MPAA
ratings system and run from G to NC-17. Most fan fiction writers adhere
very strictly to this method of rating and will frequently add warnings
to their stories for everything from incest (or "twincest" if
it involves twins) to spanking with fish.
In
Textual Poachers, Henry Jenkins claims "slash originated
as a genre of fan writing within Star Trek fandom in the early
1970s, as writers began to suggest, however timidly, that Kirk and Spock
cared more deply for each other than for any of the many female secondary
characters who brush past them in the original episodes" (187). Once
could argue that fan fiction authors just ignored these female characters
because of their secondary nature. Jenkins says in a 2003 Boston
Globe article, "If you're trying to work with well-developed
characters, in most fandoms, that means male characters" (Mayor).
In the Lord of the Rings books there are only eight named female
characters, one of whom is a giant evil spider. Harry Potter,
although written by a woman, also features more "significant"
male characters than female ones. In both stories, certain secondary female
characters, such as Rosie Cotton or Cho Chang, are not much more than
confirmation of a main male character's heterosexuality. Even Eowyn, who
is the biggest female presence in Lord of the Rings, has to dress
up like a man to highlight her one moment of glory before finding her
true calling as Faramir's daily heterosexual affirmation.
But
beyond these purely practical reasons, slash has been described by Jenkins
as female pornography and androgynous romance. He writes, "both fan
and academic writers characterize slash as a projection of female sexual
fantasies, desires and experiences onto the male bodies of series characters....While
the stories may provide detailed descriptions of specific acts, the emphasis
is much more on the emotional quality of the sex than on the physical
sensations" (Jenkins 191-2). In fact, slash needn't involve sex at
all. Some slash writers focus on the emotional intricies of the relationship
rather than the physical. This is not to say that there aren't slash stories
that involve lots and lots of circus sex and little else. The range of
stories is as varied as their authors. But in general, instead of the
traditional "girlie mag" for males, slash, in some aspects,
is more like a romance novel, in that feelings and emotions have equal,
if not more, time with the actual sex.
Slash,
however, differs greatly from the traditional romance novel in that the
pair in question is, hypothetically, on equal footing. Gone is the tall,
dark and handsome alpha male sweeping some fragile little nympho/virgin
off her dainty little feet. Instead, a slash writer simply ignores the
trappings of gender stereotypes or "combin[es] elements of masculinity
and femininity into a satisfactorily whole yet constantly fluid identity"
(Jenkins 193). This doesn't mean that one half of a slash relationship
never gets turned into "the woman." In an Aragorn/Legolas story,
more often then not, Aragorn is the well-stubbled "man" and
Legolas is the "delicate flower." For pairings such as Sirius/Remus
or Aragorn/Boromir, the possibility is greater for an equal relationship.
As a side note, sometimes a male character becomes "the woman"
quite literally. "Mpreg" is a slash phenomenon wherein a male
character gets pregnant by his male partner. Biologically viable same-sex
nuclear families are not unusual in slash. This does not necessarily mean
that the child bearing member of the relationship is the stereotypical
"woman." Mpreg, just as anything else in fan fiction, has a
wide range of possibilities. "The
Most Boring Life of Master Erestor of Rivendell" is a collection
of slash stories that include a variation of mpreg...sort of.
Slash
has been discussed in various places on the internet by slash writers
and readers. In a 2003 thread at a Journalfen.net
community, writers and readers argue about how fiction as well as
fanfiction revolving around a heterosexual relationship, referred to as
"het," often reeks of misogyny, or at the very least the idea
that a female character is somehow incomplete or invalid without a male
character. Slash, even with its own clichés, offers an alternative
for female readers and writers to explore sexuality without the "het"
cliché. The thread also touches on the fact that many slash writers
just like the idea of two, or more, attractive male characters in a sexual
setting. Slash isn't a conscious, organized movement toward the redefinition
of sexuality. Often slash occurs simply because a writer thinks two characters
(or the actors who play them) are pretty darn sexy. Slash offers a variety
of options for fan fiction writers to deal with sexuality for whatever
reason in a non-traditional way.
On
the other end of the fan fiction spectrum is the Mary Sue, which is, unlike
slash, relatively straightforward. A Mary Sue is basically a self-insert.
An author creates an original character that is the author's hyper-idealized,
often cloyingly perfect, self. Said character then proceeds to seduce
or be seduced by whichever male character the author most adores. That
male character usually looks exactly like the actor who played him in
the film. The two characters then enjoy a Bodice-ripper-esque romance,
with lots of long, flowing tresses and manly thighs. Mary Sues are generally
sneered at by "serious" fan fiction authors. The male version
of a Mary Sue is not common enough to have a standard name. "Marty
Stu" is just one of the names for a hyperidealized original male
character that may or may not be a self insert. These guys are rather
rare in comparison to the innumerable number of Mary Sues. In any case,
just as in slash, Mary Sues, often written by adolescents, offer an opportunity
to explore sexuality at a distance. Sometimes writers begin as Mary Sues
but move on to other types of fiction.
Fan
fiction has a comfortable home on the internet where authors have formed
communities dedicated to their favorite character, ship or just fandom
in general. Fan fiction authors have many options for online "publication."
Fanfiction.net is the most well
known repository of fan fiction on the internet. It has thousands of stories
in a variety of categories from books to anime, games to film. Both Lord
of the Rings and Harry Potter are listed in the book section.
As of November 29, Lord of the Rings had 34,784 entries. Harry
Potter had 164,342. The Bible had 1,455.
Other venues like Fiction Alley and The Sugar Quill are specific to the Harry Potter Fandom. Henneth Annûn Story Archive is strictly Lord of the Rings. Large sites like these are run by fans and allow fan fiction authors to publish their work in a centralized place. They tend to have higher standards for grammar and proof reading. Fan sites that provide primarily news and updates on the object of fandom such as TheOneRing.net and Mugglenet.com have fan fiction sections.
LiveJournal,
features online journal communities devoted to fandoms and fan fictions.
Some of these are just single journals with one or a few authors and many
readers. Others are communities where all members can post and comment
on fan fiction. These communities reinforce the idea that writing fan
fiction is a social event, reaching out to other fans, first through a
book, then through the internet. As well as communites for specific fandoms,
there are communities such as little_details
where fan fiction writers can ask questions ranging from translating "Oh,
for the love of God!" into Spanish to the paperwork process of donating
one's body to science. Elsewhere there are online forums, bulletin boards,
groups through providers such as Yahoo!
and msn.com. Sometimes reccomendations
just bounce around through plain, old email. If it can have a fandom,
the fandom is somewhere online.
Of course fan fiction authors can simply create their own websites. The Dom-Land Caribou is an independant website, as is Blatherskite, which features "Happy Pothead and the Fornicating Phoenix," a creative commentary on Harry Potter critics. These websites as well as other posting methods have a way of creating a new fan base for the fan fiction. Widely known fan fictions such as The Very Secret Diaries have spawned imitators, and popular fan fiction authors can develop quite a following.
Fan fiction authors can win a variety of online awards as well. The Middle Earth Fanfiction Awards (MEFA) are an example of awards voted on by fans. This is one way to familiarize onself with some of the genres within fan fiction. It's also a good place to look for reccomendations. The database is large and well-organized.
This
doesn't mean that the fan fiction community is a happy, sexually mature
utopia. Sometimes "community" turns into a warzone. Fans bicker
endlessly about pairings. "Ship wars" can get particularly ugly
in the Harry Potter fandom simply because Rowling hasn't finished
her magnum opus. The sexual fate of Hermione is greatly debated, whether
she'll end up with Ron, Harry, Draco, or Ginny as a bonded pair of lesbian
intellegensia super-spies. Many fans have their "one true pairing"
or OTP. Some fans have their "one true menage-a-trois" or OT3.
The debates and discussions range from vicious to absurd, and the sides
often express themselves through fan fiction. Authors ponder how the future
Harry Potter books will foster their OTP, and write out their
theories. Proponents of certain ships will "win" and others
will "lose" when Rowling puts the last word to paper.
Fanfiction
has critique communities as well. Livejournal.com
has communities such as con_crit,
where authors can go for constructive criticism, and beta_readers
for constructive criticism as well as copy editing. In fan fiction terms,
"beta" generally means "copy edit." One of the biggest
complaints of fan fiction readers, who are very often fan fic writers
themselves, is poor spelling, grammar and punctuation. Proofreading, more
than anything, is the biggest difference between fan fiction and "real"
writing. Uploading a piece of fan fiction is a form of self publication,
and most readers would agree that a fan fiction author, just like a "real"
author, ought to have clean spelling, grammar and punctuation before inflicting
their work on the public. Beta readers often come from within the fandom
community simply because a fellow fan has a better grasp on the characters
than a non-fan.
Rant/mocking
communities have sprung up as well. These include fanficrants,
where fan fiction writers and readers go to vent their frustrations about
trends they see in fan fiction and fandom. Some mocking communities are
very specific. For instance deleterius
is a community of self proclaimed "canon nazis" who really enjoy
poking fun at Mary Sues and other blatantly non-canon fan fiction. They're
mean, they know it and they don't care. A cute saying for fans slavishly
devoted to canon is, "my canon can sink your 'ship." Godawful
Fanfiction or GAFF is an extensive community brought together by the
worst fan fiction available. Another well known fandom mocking community
is Fandom_Wank,
hosted on journalfen.net. Fandom_Wank
is not a popular community with those who take their fandoms too seriously.
It has been thrown off of livejournal.com
as well as other platforms. Fandom_Wank
mercilessly makes fun of excessive, histrionic behavior in any fandom.
However, because members of many fandoms belong to Fandom_Wank,
the discussions there about what fandom is and how people particiapte
in it can be quite interesting. At the very least, it is a catalogue of
extreme fannish behavior at its worst (and sometimes funniest).
Fan fiction is an integral part of the complex social phenomenon known as fandom, and fandom is huge. The number of people participating in fandom and fan fiction may be up in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. Those interested in pop culture need to take a good look at fan fiction and decide whether they want to cheer or cry.
To email me, click the penguin
handsqueeziedeath@yahoo.com
© 2004 F.B. Pendergast
Last updated 12/19/2004