Dr. Chandler - I offer my deepest sympathy to you and your family in the time of your loss.

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Since about September, I knew what I wanted to write about: fanfiction. Until this morning, I think I finally found what exactly I want to target upon and discuss in the web essay (um, at least I hope I do). So I'm pretty much going to throw up, in a rough stetch, what I'm planning to achieve and to see if any of the info I do post is usable.

The Idea

I was planning on creating the web essay about why people write fanfiction (and I might even focus more upon the reasons why women write slash fanfiction). Why do people spend sometimes hours of their time developing and creating stories in which probably a hundred (or less) will read? It may all fall within the creation of the fandom. A fandom is the creation of a community wherein individuals share ideas and common interests.

The Aspects of Fandom

Fandoms are mostly created within the communities of: film, television, novels, music, and comics. I'm mostly going to focus upon the fandoms of film and television.

The Slash

Slash fiction are stories based around characters of the same sex who have an attraction toward one another. The term 'slash' was created due to the '/' between the character's names. For example, Kirk/Spock.

It'll be interesting to see why mostly straight female writers decide upon writing slash instead of the traditional het fics.

The Way Stories are Shared

Currently in the new millennium, the most popular way to share fanfiction is upon blogs (a blog is a personal diary or journal where people continuously post their topic of interest). LiveJournal seems to be the leading blog where author's go to write and share their fanfic. Before 2000, the main way of sharing one's work was through zines (aka - fan magazines. Zines were fanfic magazines printed with contributer's stories. Think along the lines of Creation Space.) and mailing lists (for example, Yahoo! groups. On a Yahoo! group, one could subscribe to a community of interest that serves fanfic and have the stories posted upon the group delivered directly to their email services.)


The Authors and Sites

By digging around the 'net, I discovered several authors who are quite cruicial to the development of fanfiction and fandoms.

Henry Jenkins. He has several books that extensively go into fandoms and fanfiction and how each work. A particular book of interest is Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture (Studies in Culture and Communication which describes the various ways writers create fanfiction and participate within fandom.

Camille Bacon-Smith, the author of Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth (Publication of the American Folklore Society). She too also focuses on fandom and the different aspects of it. Differently from Jenkins, Smith speaks of the involvement of women.

Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity (The Hampton Press Communication Series). Yet, another book focusing on fandom. But yet, to know about fanfiction, you first have to begin the slow steps of knowing the fandom itself, yeah? This book goes into the culture of fanfiction.

Of the three books listed above, I haven't fully read as of today. I did read what Jenkins has available on his personal site. In case I can't get my hands on the material, I also found a couple of websites.

Fanfic Symposium. A website that has various columns on many discussions within the fanfic fandom. There's also a column about an author's response to those who believe that fanfic writing isn't 'real' writing. Tie in to this could be Lee Goldberg's curt response on realizing a particular ezine called Jack. "So fanfiction really is practice for writing...if you want to write for an online magazine featuring homoerotic stories." And then of course, there's the bazillion responses left underneath his opinion arguing whether or not fanfic is legit or not. He also seems to highly dislike fanfic (edit: it seems as though the posted link doesn't work properly. Here's the direct link: http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/a_writers_life/fanfic/index.html). This particular idea I might explore.

The Generic Slash Defense Form Letter by Susan Beth. A letter answering anti-slash questioning. I personally work about 98% in the slash fandom. I do believe that I can find a way so slash could be discussed in this essay - perhaps with the connections of 'why people write fanfiction?' with the target upon straight women (and yeah, I know that heterosexual men write fanfic about favorite female characters having sexual attractions toward each other, but I'm going to focus upon the female's point of view. It seems as though there's still this surprise in hearing when a woman enjoys thoughts of men attracted to each other. Would really like to flesh out the reasons why a lot of women pen fanfic of that nature) writing slash fic? The ethics involved and the motivations why.

I'm still digging about trying to find more information.

I think I'll end the essay with links to websites that host fanfic Like Fanfiction.net, Mirrormere, et cetera.

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Presentation of Web Site

I wanted to have the site appear simple. Just the essay with end notes and my references featured on the bottom of the essay. I was thinking about including a sidebar with further links that may link to various fanfic author's thoughts on different areas of fanfic (genres, and various problems within fanfiction). I might even link to a couple of fanfic stories (including mine? But that could drive some to drive sporks into their brains, heh).

The topic of my web essay will revolve around the topic of fanfiction.

Fanfiction are pieces of work based upon either films, novels, television programs, comics and real persons (which could also fall into the ethics).

Within the essay, I was thinking about researching the various copyright issues facing the fanfic author today. There are two kind of authors running about. There are the authors who utterly despise fanficers basing any of their work upon their published work. Then you have the authors who don't really mind when fanficers use their work for their creativity.

I think I would also discuss how modern fanfiction has changed through the years. It went from a small fandom of Trekkies writing stories about Captain Kirk suggestively rubbing Spock's ears to, uh, well, the same thing - but the way the stories are now available are much more convenient. If you wanted to read any fanfiction before the Internet, you had to subscribe to a fanzine. Now, you could easily post a story directly to the net and maybe have a hundred people read your story (of course, you probably won't get 100 replies, but that's another gripe).

Dr. Chandler, along with talking about the relationship between author & reader. Can I also talk about the different sorts of genres alive in fanfiction? Like, sci-fi, drama, comedy, romance, AU (alternate universe), slash, het, general (the last three are sort of categories), etc?

Of all the topics discussed in Rheingold's essay, Smart Mob, the one particular thing that calls my interest the most is the ability of cyberspace to connect hundreds of individuals with one click of the mouse. The idea of having the ease of sending out messages to entire cities via text messages is still an astonishing thought. How simple a thing it is to type in such little words that in the end, have a major impact on a country and it's political/economic/social future.

With this one example, one can see the beginning shape of how the use of this technology is a very powerful thing.

But with one thing that might bring forward a positive response, there's also a chance of SMS being used in the negative. SMS is in the hands of the user. They have the power of what could be transmitted over thousands of miles. Anyone could end a relationship, dish out harsh words about a co-worker, use it to talk to friends who are pratically two seats away from you, but you rather text because it's quite rude to talk while the professor is teaching, or maybe the person will use their SMS to alert members of their group when to strike down upon sensitive buildings/bridges/tunnels, etc to bring fear to an entire nation.

SMS is a very useful tool. We could all get our point across in as little words as possible and get the message to as many people as we choose. SMS is taking our everyday 'normal' speech and converting it to little shortcuts that are sometimes undecipherable. With this technology, perhaps the future of writing will become symbols, acronyms, and shorthand. Gosh, this is the place where whatever takes us to point A to point B the quickest is the best route and makes the person the happiest. Will the further development of SMS make the formal languages we currently speak cease to exist?

In 1995, while half of the American society were in various forms of discussions about whether or not O.J. Simpson had a hand in murder, eBay was created.

Within the essay, Reading, Writing and Ratings at eBay.com, Knobel and Lankshear give explicit detail about literacy in the form of feedback. By watching eBay, one gets a first hand look on how an Internet community can and could work.

For eBay to run smoothly, it partly depends on its' community to behave civil as though it's functioning in the real world. eBay tries to get this to occur by setting up a rating system that consists of selections that include a positive, neutral and the dreaded negative review of an user. As the essay states, the rating is used to rate "the reputation, trustworthiness and reliability of a person." With the leaving of a negative rating, it could in the future impact the sales of the particular seller or buyer. The person making the rating could also leave further feedback in the form of the written reply and with this, conflicts may appear.

There are individuals who would purposedly leave negative feedback even though the buying experience was relatively a positive one. Or the seller could slander a buyer for reasons of their own. Wherein our society uses money to make certain things happen, on eBay, ratings get a person to an other level. And it mostly rests on which side of the coin the feedback rests.

But another issue appears. With people hiding behind online personas, it makes some a bit harsher, meaner, and downright horrible to others in the same creative space - and eBay is not exempt from this. The social practices shown upon eBay between 'eBayers' is sometimes a place of well-being and at others, uncomfortableness. And with the ability of users to go beyond with harsh words, it's a much more common feat to tackle because they are not facing the other person in a physical world (of which will be displayed within various forms of feedback).

The different forms of literacies and social practices shown upon eBay is quite a learning experience that should probably be the front runner for an example of how life online could be.

LiveJournal (LJ) is a mixed bag of mixed genres sharing one (sometimes creatively created) workspace. The user can spend an unlimited amount of their time discussing politics, abortion, gay rights, sports, religion, the latest fandom kernuffle, and harassing non-Firefly folk to go and see Serenity (because Joss Whedon needs your money love). But when you first come upon LJ, you don't really get a hold of any of the above, instead, you meet and greet a homepage with Frank the Goat on it and maybeperhaps a feature that tells you the improvements done to the site in the last previous month.

But what you don't see is the vast (very, very vast) topics and discussions being brought up on a daily basis that fits in the many different genres and discourse displayed in Kress's Multimodality, Multimedia, and Genre article.

LJ falls into the wonderous category of the blog. With a blog, a user can express their various and complicated emotions within an entry and let hundreds of other complicated emotional individuals see (that is if it isn't friends or private locked) their words. The user has free range of dissucussing whatever topics they choose to discuss because, hey, half of them paid for the webspace and they have that right. But the individual that views their emotional rant about, lets say - abortion and why it should be illegal - has that right to argue their position for pro-choice.

The social relations on LJ is complicated itself. Unless the particular entry itself is 'private', anyone can read what you're writing. And since LJ is basically anonymous, there are users who feel as if they have free will to say whatever they have to say. I myself have a LJ and I feel as though my LJ self is much freer than who I am in reality. Sure, I'm sharing myself with the 60 people on my friendslist and others who wander innocently onto my ramblings, but I feel as though I'm talking to and for myself. It's a small little place where I can express my opinions openly and not be all that nervous about sharing them.

You see, in the LJ world, even if you manage to anger someone and the both of you have a falling out, you can easily cut them out from your LJ life and never see them again. In the amusing world of reality, you'll just constantly bump into them over and over again.

The social relation could at times be at ease, but at other times, tense. But for the most part, the world of LJ is a place where new ideas, worlds and genres can open up and thoughts are here anew.