"I'd Ship That..."

FanFiction vs. The World

LazyDaizy's Profile Has Arrived!

I'm so thrilled to unveil LazyDaizy's profile has been posted on

the Authors' Profile Page!

Please give it a read and (more importantly) click on some of the links to her work!

Mae C.

Thursday, March 29th

The day has come...

Please head over to the Authors' Profiles Page and read all about the fantastic Hockey RPF author,

71tenseventeen!!

It was my pleasure to first read her work and then to interview her (and talk a little hockey - who are we kidding here?) about her writing.

Links to her work are included so if you're not familiar with her work, here is your chance!

Mae C.

Sunday, March 25th

Conflicting Information!!

So I’m working on my author profiles and I’m finding this major discrepancy with what I’ve been reading and what I’m hearing......

Some of the questions I’ve been asking the authors I’ve been working with relate to their online community - who are their friends, their supports, betas, etc? Now granted my sample size is small, but 2 of the 4 authors report having little to no interaction with anyone else in the fandom. Of the other 2, one has a very active online social circle while the other has engaged in some group chat and works with betas, but doesn’t seem to have (perhaps) the same level of engagement.

This conflicts with the reading I’ve been doing in my LIS 517 class (the reason I’m doing this blog). We’ve been reading an older version of Henry Jenkins’s Textual Poachers, and one of the chapters went into major depth about the communities that were created within the fandoms. This edition was pre-major internet access so that kind of made things more difficult to develop community, and yet there were fan letters and group meet ups with sharing of video cassettes and photocopie fan-written scripts and all sorts of things.

What happened? Today, online communities for fans already exist and can be joined with little effort. Compared to the challenge of running a fandom 20 years ago, it’s practically child’s play. So why aren’t people joining in?

The theory I’m kind of noodling with is that, these particular authors are writing for themselves - for their love of the characters and of writing in general - and so they are not online looking for community. They are looking to express and each of them is looking for and finding different kinds of validation for what they do. Community has varying levels of importance to them, from “not at all” to “the more the merrier because it’s all part of the fun!”

I mentioned before that my project topic is looking more and more like it will be about fandom and fanfiction as an online community, and I feel like I’m opening a door into another side of the topic: varying levels of participation in said community.

SHAMELESS PLUG!!

If you look at the top right corner, you will see a new page for the author profiles! I’m hoping to have the first one from 71tenseventeen posted tomorrow. From there will likely be LazyDaizy, IndianSummer13 and then HannahJane. I’m having so much fun compiling everything and I am thrilled to share these profiles. These conversations have honestly made me want to become more active in the fandoms.

Mae C.

Saturday, March 24th

Some Recs for You….

I’m so sorry that I’ve disappeared. Things got a little hectic in real life plus I’ve been doing a lot of work on those author profiles that I will be debuting as soon as the authors give me their approval. They gave me permission to create the posts about our conversations, but I want to make sure that they’re comfortable with everything I plan to post.

To make up for it, I’m posting my favorite stories from the two main fandoms I follow, Hockey RPF and Riverdale. And I’ve only selected completed stories so as not to leave anyone hanging.

Hockey RPF

Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin

*I didn’t intentionally pick two stories by thehoyden but they are two of my absolute favorites and are beautifully written.*

Two to Tango - thehoyden

This is a total AU with neither Sid nor Geno as hockey players and with a distinctive “And Tango Makes Three” tinge (the story even makes a little cameo).

King and Lionheart - thehoyden

Sid and G are still hockey players, but Geno’s daring Finnish escape went a little differently than planned…

Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews

private passions and secret storms series - CoffeeKristin

This is an amazing AU series that follows a fictional Kane and Toews through the trials and tribulations of marriage; bonus because it includes mpreg which seems strange until you read how beautifully it’s written and then forget to notice it.

Paul Martin/James Neal

Then You May Take Me to the Fair - HannahJane

So this is a little tease because HannahJane is one of the authors that I’m profiling, but I had to include it! A fabulous AU with Nealer as a hockey player and Paulie as a single dad and baker.

Riverdale

*I only ship Bughead here so if you’re into Varchie or Cheroni, then you’ll have to look elsewhere.*

fall in light - sylwrites

This is a fantastic nine part series that demonstrates amazing characterization and emotional development.

I ask the stars up above - sopaloma

Adorable bughead in the 1950s; we’re talking greasers, poodle skirts and rumbles in the school parking lot.

ENJOY!

Mae C.

Friday, March 23rd

Tucson Festival of Books

This weekend I had the great pleasure of attending the 10th Annual Tucson Festival of Books. It was so fantastic! I went the second and third years, and I had no idea how much it had grown in the interim. It is amazing what that group has done.

The last session I attended was called “Famous Folks and Fictional Crime.” The three authors, Rhys Bowen, Stephanie Barron aka Francine Matthews and Keith McCafferty, spoke about taking well-known individuals (both fictional and non-fictional) and then writing them into new universes.

Perhaps most interesting to me was Ms. Barron’s book, Jack, 1939 (written under the name Francine Matthews); the entire book was inspired by a photograph of John F Kennedy juggling oranges in Nuremburg in 1939 while Nazi soldiers looked on from the background. This is Real People Fiction - RPF!

Ao3 has a great deal of RPF, and, in speaking with 71tenseventeen about her hockey RPF, she told me how many people disapprove of the genre. Individuals feel it is disrespectful and invasive. Even those within the fandom think that there are certain things that should not be written or included in the story, most notably sex scenes between these individuals.

Ms. Barron mentioned a friend saying how strange it was to read in her book a scene where Jack Kennedy was having sex. For Ms. Barron’s part, she found it odd, pointing out that JFK’s reputation would have you believe that he only ever did have sex (and he did have two children so…).

Think about writing about a hallowed former president engaging in intercourse - how bizarre! On one hand, it is true to life and true to him as a real life person so why wouldn’t it be included in a book about a fictionalized version of him? On the other hand, it feels almost sacrilegious or even inappropriate to create and share such an intimate moment.

So here is a fanfic author and a published author experiencing the same quandry. Yet, 71tenseventeen told me that authors in RPF have actually been shamed out of the fandom, taking their work down and then disappearing. Meanwhile, Ms. Barron’s book was held in high esteem by The New Yorker, The Washington Post and other respected publications.

I’m not trying to make the point that Ms. Barron has done anything incorrect or untoward. What I am trying to point out is that there is a such a difference in reception to these two fundamentally similar works. I wonder if the difference is that JFK is long dead and his sexual exploits well known; thus, it doesn’t seem that any lines are being crossed. Meanwhile RPF focuses on real people living here and now.

So is JFK’s death the thing that makes it okay to write Jack, 1939 but not 71tenseventeen’s excellent story “Shelter?” I’d really like to understand.

Mae C.

Monday, March 12th

My First Newsletter!

If you looked at my previous post (and I hope you did and if you didn’t, please scroll down!), you’ll see that I recently learned about The Rec Center. The Rec Center sends weekly newsletters with fic recommendations as well as articles about fanfiction in general.

I received my first email this week - made me feel special and important. I clicked on a link to a podcast about the state of fandom studies and found myself at the site of Professor Henry Jenkins and I had to laugh out loud. Why? Because he is the author of the book Textual Poachers that we are currently reading in the Digital Cultures class that I’m completing this blog for!

I was at the Tucson Festival of Books all day so I’ve not yet had the chance to listen to the podcast, but I plan to.

Interviews are going very well - I’ve managed to complete the part one with three of the four authors and have started part two with two of those three. I’m beginning to put together my profiles and hope to have them up next week.

Mae C.

Saturday, March 10th

Excellent Article!

Interviews are in full swing with three of my four authors, with two agreeing to me writing profiles of them for this blog. I’ve not been able to get ahold to the fourth, but I remain optimistic.

In the meantime, I read a fantastic article from The New Yorker called “The Promise and Potential of Fanfiction” by Stephanie Burt. It had some really great points and some good “further reading” recs.

Burt did a far more eloquent job of explaining what I was attempting to articulate in my posts on February 21st (Who’s Really Shipping Here?!) and February 22nd (“Fanfic with a budget or ‘legitimate works?’”). She pointed out that fanfic is not a new concept - not even close! The primary difference now is the digital nature and accessibility that has allowed a huge volume of work to be produced and shared in a very short period of time.
Burt also shares some thoughts on why people care so much about fanfic and what they get from it.
Burt mentioned one of the appeals for “slash” (having non-traditionally homosexual males in relationships with one another) in something that is primarily a female domain. With the Me,Too Movement in full force and women reclaiming their power while demanding equality, I found this particular point both very true and fascinating:

“[slash is] described it as a kind of safety valve: a substitute for desires that could not be articulated, much less acted out, in our real world. If women want to imagine sex between people who are both empowered, and equal, the argument ran, we may have to imagine two men.”

Ann Jamison, a professor at the University of Utah, wrote a book called Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World that is basically a study developed from different collaborators about the different sides to fanfic.
Francesca Coppa, also a professor but at Muhlenburg College, wrote what seems to be a primer that introduced newbies to fanfic called The Fanfiction Reader. Fair warning that if you’re already a hardcore reader, it probably won’t be that interesting to you.
The Rec Center Newsletter is a weekly source of fanfic news and recommendation. I subscribed and started looking through their past letters. So far it seems like an awesome resource!

Mae C.

Wednesday, March 7th

It’s Fair Use Week!!

Yes, Apparently, That’s a Thing!

Ao3’s parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), made a fantastic post regarding Fair Use. I’m currently studying Library & Information Sciences and copyright law, while very important, is also incredibly dense and difficult to understand.

OTW’s post breaks it down in a clear and concise way that genuinely deepened my understanding of the law, but also helped me to see how fanfiction legally fits within the realm of creativity. One of the biggest (if not the biggest) issue that many people take with fanfiction is that it is in some way stealing from the original author.

The post helps to explain the concept of a transformative work and how fanfiction fits under the umbrella of that term. It’s good reading and I would highly recommend it.

They also allude to Fair Dealing, which is the label applied to this concept in places like Canada and the UK. There was only a tiny bit of information about fair dealing, but I enjoyed seeing how the concept of Fair Use aligns with Fair Dealing (in a very superficial way).

Interviews are going great. I’ve done two of three with one author and my first with a second author. And both have consented to my writing and sharing a profile of them on this blog. It’s been really exciting to see the other side of fanfic, one that I’ve never really been a part of because I was strictly non-commenting reader.

As always, more to come….

Mae C.

Monday, March 5th

Making Contact!!

I’ve made contact with four (count them: F-O-U-R!!) fanfic authors that have agreed to talk with me. I have representatives from the bughead fandom and hockey RPF, including an author that reimagines characters in different genders. I’m so excited!

I’ve already had the chance to talk to with one of the writers, and it’s been very illuminating. I’ve determined that I want to do three different chats with each of them.

#1 - Getting to Know You

#2 - Creating Fics

#3 - Building Online Community

I’ve developed different questions to guide me in this process and I hope to create a post for each of these authors that contains information they shared. This weekend is going to be BIG for me because I have plans to “meet” on tumblr and interview them via DM.

I’m excited to hear from each of them, but also to compare their stories. I’d like to understand the online fanfic community better; I’ve always been an isolationist and I’m definitely missing out on a whole online world that informs the fanfic experience.

More to come…..

Mae C.

Friday, March 2nd

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