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).