"PLS Tell ME Fangz!"
Fanfiction, Poetics, and Interpersonal Connections.”
Fanfiction creates an optimal space for the exploration of one’s poetics through the person-to-person aspects of the fanfiction community, the tag systems utilized, and the unique application of scheme and deixis by authors, and as such allows for researchers to evaluate fanfiction's space that allows for self-exploration of one's poetics. Examining one's poetics requires a closer reading than the surface level of consuming media. The poetics used in this research utilizes J. Hillis Miller’s concept of poetics1 As a lesser known craft (compared to literature or even comics), fanfiction and fanfiction’s value can too easily be discounted, especially since no corporate publishing is involved. In the minds of many people, fanfiction is just a cheap repeat/reuse/regurgitation of published stories, be those literature based or film based. More and more, from popular writings to academic research, fanfiction is being seen for what it is: literary works created by fans that address our world, our culture, and our lived experiences, as do other storytelling mediums. The length, literacy level, and number of fandoms are widely diverse. Fanfiction has also been the progenitor to many mainstreams narratives Ed. Note: article on 11 mainstream narratives stemming from fanfiction.. E.L. James, author of the 50 Shades series, created 50 Shades from her own fanfiction of Twilight.
While both Aristotle and J. Hillis Miller views of poetics place an importance on surpassing passive consumption, Miller argues that Aristotle’s view on poetics is flawed since Aristotle was not, himself, a poet. Miller percieves poetics as something that can only be found when we look through a work, past the poet, and into the fine parts the author left of themselves on the paper: “They are codifications, perhaps written, perhaps oral, perhaps tacit, of the formal properties, procedures, themes, and assumptions exemplified in a given 'body of poetry'."1Miller expresses the importance of person-to-person connection in the conveyence and discovery of poetics. Person-to-person connections forged by the fanfiction community creates optimal conditions that open a space for self-exploration and, ultimately, a discovery of poetics. Another way that fanfiction connects authors and readers, unlike mainstream literature and film, is the tag system. One popular feature on common fanfiction sharing websites is both a rating and tag system. The rating of these fan works can range from G to sexually explicit.(Interestingly enough, E.L. James's fanfiction had been taken down from a site due to it being too explicit.) The tag system is used to give a sneak peak at what content can be found inside the work.The fanfiction tag system is more complicated than the typical genres of literature and film. Despite being more complicated, readers can utilize the tags to have a more clear insight into the stories. Tags utilized in fanfiction have a variety of purposes. These tags help readers focus on niche content such as relationship dynamics, family dynamics, levels of gore, explicit or non-explicit, the nature of the explicit content, and many more. The conscious choice of picking a tag and reading the tags of a chosen work compels the reader to begin to dissect what they are reading/have read, creating optimal conditions for an exploration of poetics and propelling the reader beyond passive consumption. Gursoy, Wickett, and Feinberg in "Understanding Tag Functions in a Moderated, User-Generated Metadata Ecosystem” investigate the different methods of tagging across two different fanfiction websites. Gursoy et al. examine two models that are of interest to this research: the first being a combination of user-generated tags and moderated tags like that of Archive of Our Own (Ao3) and the second being controlled vocabulary as demonstrated on Fanfiction.net.2 Ao3 allows for user-generated tags as well as moderated tags, adding more connection and feedback than Fanfiction.net’s method-controlled vocabulary only. Both tag systems compel the reader and writer to begin a dissection of what they are reading/writing and how those readings/writings relate to their own perspective of storytelling, to their poetics.
Many fanfiction websites also act as a secondary form of communication between authors and readers with comment options on every work featured on websites such as Fanfiction.net, Ao3, and Wattpad. This secondary communication is more personal and synchronous than the more traditional communications of authors and readers. While an author of a popular book might be able to converse with their fans through the occasional book signing or convention appearance, maybe even on a social media platform, these interactions will always be separated via a few aspects. Firstly, there is the power dynamic between the author and the reader. Secondly, there is the span of time between the author writing the book and publishing the book, which can often take years. Finally, their reader would have no say in the current writing of the current material. Fanfiction does the opposite of all these things. These tags allow readers and writers to identify exactly what it is that they have written and enjoy consuming. Understanding the basics of the content being written is the first impetus for people to exceed passive consumption. Once the authors and readers can identify exactly what they have written or consumed, they can move on to the secondary question of “Did I like that?” and then the third most important question of “Why did I like that?” In addition, when writing a fanfic, an author must make conscious choices for their scheme, what aspects of canon they wish to keep or remove, what to brush by or what to expand upon. These choices are more telling of the author, themselves, than of the original canon. This intentional focus on the process is a key aspect of poetics. Another aspect of poetics relates uniquely to the readers of fanfiction is the deixis used in fanfiction, allowing the reader to feel immersed within a text and impacting how well the reader interfaces with the writing.
Since a fanfiction author is often an anonymous user, known only by a screen name, they are separated from any of their real-life achievements. It is undoubtedly easier to approach a faceless person on the internet and muse about shared fandom content than it would be the original creator of the content, especially in the age of celebrity, where the Benjamin "aura" can cause aleination and disrupt person-to-person communication. While some celebritydom may set apart the more popular fanfic writers from their fans, overall readers and writers stand on common ground. Ghosh, Froelich, and Aragon examine the nature of online friendships in fanfiction communities in “I Love You, My Dear Friend”: Analyzing the Role of Emotions in the Building of Friendships in Online Fanfiction Communities.” Gosh et al. identify the formation of digital friendships through three stages:, connections, relationships, and friendships. By analyzing the emotional content in reviews left by users over time, Ghosh et al. were able to identify a direct growth of friendship through fictional works. Ghosh et al. found that the readers and authors were able to communicate about both liking the work, and disliking the work, specifically in a way that treated the characters as if they were separate from the authors decision.3 They could discuss how the events made them feel and what they might like to see in the next installments of the story. This direct person-to-person connection is unlike any other forms of written media that focus on the creation of art and makes fanfiction uniquely capable of supporting Miller’s theory of poetics. The connections are not merely person-to-person, but author/reader-to-author/reader.
Often, users on fanfiction sites are not only a consumer of content but also an author, and these are not two distinct and separate roles; rather, in collaborative writing, as is often done in fanfiction, beta readers review content before it is posted, giving pointers on areas from grammar to plot directions. Many times, these are author/readers working with other author/readers. Another instance of collaborative writing occurs when two or more people will engage in digital roleplay, compile all of their posts from that roleplay, and generate those posts as fanfiction. Angela Thomas in “Fan Fiction Online: Engagement, Critical Response and Affective Play through Writing” explicitly differentiates fanfic authors from poachers. She examined a role-playing-based writing system that involved the collaboration of multiple people to create one storyline, commparable to composite fiction in literature.4 In this form of fanfic, roleplay leading to composite writing, there is no division between producers (authors) and consumers (readers). In this interplay of being author and reader, people are able to engage in a person-to-person connection, or person-to-people connections, allowing for more exploration and undertsanding of their poetics.
Distributed mentoring in the fanfiction community occurs when a relationship between authors and writers moves beyond the discussion of the content being written and their shared joy or distaste for a particular event, but into a critiquing of the content. Comparable to peer reviewing, conversing in the comments of a fanfiction allows for a mentor and mentee relationship to form. Evans et al examined these relationships in “More Than Peer Production: Fanfiction Communities as Sites of Distributed Mentoring”: “seven key attributes distinguish [distributed mentoring] from traditional, offline forms of mentoring: aggregation, accretion, acceleration, abundance, availability, asynchronicity, and affect. Through these attributes, authors gain valuable feedback on their fanfiction that they use to improve the quality of their writing.”5 Evans et. al discuss how this form of mentoring is far different than any other form of mentoring, a uniqueness primarily based on ease of access. In traditional mentoring, a person’s ability to find a mentor would be limited by a variety of aspects, such as wealth, location, gender, and other social driven constructs. In fan fiction, those aspects are, generally, not a consideration due to the anonymity offered by fanfiction writing. In all of these interplays between author and reader, between writer/reader and reader/writer, and with group compositie storytelling lies deixis and schema.
Deixis relates uniquely to the reader’s experience whereas scheme relates to the author’s experience. Deixis relates to the feelings of immersion within texts, which in this case, would be a key aspect in one’s capability of moving beyond passive consumption. When writing fanfiction, an author must be consious of their emendations and with full choice and agency, acknowledge what parts of canon they wish to keep and expand upon versus what to remove. Authorial decions during emendations must then decide how to fill in various gaps caused from exracting and removing parts of the canon stopry. The act of stripping and revitalizing canon, the process itself, is a playground for poetics exploration.For the reader, the deixis concerning the parts of a written work that make a reader feel connected and immersed is a core part of poetics. McCloskey, Ramírez-Esparza, and Johnson in “Strange New Worlds: Social Content in Popular Star Trek Fanfiction Versus Commercial Novel,” discuss how users more easily interface and connect with fanfiction on an emotional level than they do with commercial novels within the same fandom. Through the use of linguistic inquiry word count software, the researchers found that fan-made Star Trek content contains more internal character processes when compared to the commercial novel counterpart. A greater percentage of content relating to categories of affect and cognitive process appears to make the content more emotionally engaging for the reader when compared to canon novels.6 Fanfiction, when considering this user connection with fanfiction, creates an optimal space for the exploration of one’s poetics through a variety of aspects. First, there is the person-to-person aspects such as the line of communication between the author and reader, the friendships that develop, and the distributed mentorships that occur with these three aspects being facilitated by the minimalized power dynamic between the author and reader, the shorter time between writing, publication and interaction, and the collaborative writing that occurs. Secondly, there is the tag system which allows for a more niche classification system than any other form of written story telling, Lastly, there is the application of schema and dextis as defined by cognitive and self-introspection concering one's own poetics, with schema and deixis facilitating introspection and immersion in a text.
When writing a fanfic, an author must make conscious choices for their scheme, what aspects of canon they wish to keep or remove, what to brush by or what to expand upon.
In all of these interplays between author and reader, between writer/reader and reader/writer, and with group compositie storytelling lies deixis and schema.
users more easily interface and connect with fanfiction on an emotional level than they do with commercial novels within the same fandom.
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Endnotes