Have you
ever finished a book, or series, or experienced the cancellation of a television
show, and wanted more? Have you loved something you read or watched, but found
some aspects frustrating or missing? That feeling has motivated people to write
their own stories of characters or settings
originated by other authors. This is fanfiction,
or fanfic, or as English
professor Anne
Jamison puts it in the title of her book, simply Fic.
Fanfiction
has a long history.
Jamison starts her history with the first hugely popular, serial character in
English literature,
Sherlock
Holmes. Arthur
Conan Doyle’s stories inspired others to write their own tales of
ratiocination, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, featuring the consulting detective
and his physician companion, John Watson.
Those with means sometimes had their works printed and circulated among
friends. Other may have changed the names and sought to publish
their stories.
Sherlockian
fanfic introduces one the themes of the book, the relationship
between authors, and their works, readers and publishers. Jamison traces how
attitudes about these relationships have changed over time.
Another
thing that changed over time, with significant effects on fanfic, is technology.
The rise of television inspired fanfic based on media, rather than exclusively
on written sources, particularly the in relation to Star Trek. Access to mimeographs and
photocopiers allowed the community of fans to communicate, and distribute
fanfic, through ‘zines.
The medium
of choice for fanfic is now clearly the internet
because it allows for such inexpensive and easy distribution. As an example of
how the internet changed fanfic, Jamison turns to the example of Harry Potter,
whose ascendancy in popular culture corresponded with the development of the
internet as we know it. Twilight
fanfic, in contrast to many others, was born in the age of the internet, and
has been home to views that put it at odds with other fandoms, though
such conflicts have been common as fandoms have expanded.
If you are
unfamiliar with fanfic, you should probably be warned that a lot of it involves
romantic
and sexual pairings between characters who were not romantically involved in
the source material. There is a lot of sex. There is every
type of sexuality you can imagine, and possibly a few you’ve never heard of.
Fanfic communities have provided an outlet for people to explore alternatives
to the mainstream, often from the safety of some anonymity, especially in
relation to sexuality. Interestingly, fanfic has been less adventurous in other
areas, such as racial
and cultural diversity,
sticking close the relatively narrow diversity of the source media, though some
fanfic attempts to depict a more diverse world.
Though I
have only spoken of Jamison as the author of Fic, many contributed to the book. Most are writers with some
connection to fanfic, and a few are academics. I would describe the book as
semi-academic. It has the form of an academic book that describes the history
and various aspects of a topic (fanfic) through a collection of related works
by various authors. It is unlike typical academic books in that the style of
all the contributors is personal and informal. Like fanfic is to its sources,
Fic takes and academic form that is familiar and loved (at least by an
academic) and brings to it something else that is loved, and even
transformative.
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