fan fiction - article - 2011 - What is Fanfiction and Why Are People Saying Such Nice Things About it?

What is Fanfiction and Why Are People Saying Such Nice Things About it?
Bronwen Thomas
Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies
Vol. 3 (2011)
University of Nebraska Press

    Dr. Bronwen Thomas is currently Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and Literature and Group Leader of the Narrative Research Group at Bournemouth University in Bournemouth, UK.
Much of her scholarship has focused on fan fiction and in particular the community orientation of the craft that is made possible through network technologies.  

    Fan fiction is the craft by which an audience member who is enthusiastic about a particular cultural form, Transformers, for example, creates their own stories based upon the fictitious world they love, and the characters who populate it.  This craft involves a great deal of play with the intellectual property of others, and often the content of fanfiction transgresses the ideal boundaries set by the copyright holders (see Slash fiction, for example).  Fan fiction writers often focus their energies on developing those aspects of a fictional world that are less developed in their original form, or imagine the characters in times and places that are not represented by their official authors.

    Thomas’ article What is Fanfiction and Why Are People Saying Such Nice Things About It? looks critically at the field of fan fiction scholarship.  She notes three waves of study of this subject matter: 1) as a dialectic between fans who are acting upon mass mediated popular culture and the creators of that culture 2) as a practice that emerged from the space and potential opened by new technologies and 3) as a reflective, critical view of fan fiction content, and of its prior methods of analysis.  Thomas aligns herself with the third wave of fan fiction study, and proceeds to take critical stock of the first two waves.  

    The critique of fan fiction studies advanced by Thomas argues that there is a tendency amongst the first wave, to speak in (almost) purely laudatory terms about fan fiction communities.  Thomas notes that the scholars who represent the first wave often stress the sophistication of fan fiction writers and readers, which our author suggests is exaggerated.  She noted that while this first wave tends not to criticize fan fiction people at all, within these communities the individual members hold debates over bad fiction.  Thomas also argues that the second wave tends to speak of the practice, in broad terms, as a result of new media technologies, without looking into the specifics of the individual communities. 

    The final section of Thomas’ article, she analyzes a fan fiction community that orbits around the novels of Jane Austin.  The online fan community Thomas described is not entirely accessible and its members have developed a language of its own (its members referr to eachother as ‘dears’, for example).  Thomas looks at an Austin fan story for its narrative form, and the most notable changes made to Austin’s original characters.  Thomas notes the high degree of sophistication of the Austin fan community despite her suspicion that scholars have overemphasized such aspects of fan culture.  The higher sophistication of the Austin fans may be due to a source material that is, itself, more sophisticated than many of the other cultural forms that inspire fan activity.