Conceptual Analyses of Fanfiction, and Why They Don't Work

[alixtii]

So many of you, the ones who follow metafandom at least, will be familiar with the rough outline of the discussion: kradical--Keith R.A. DeCandido, the author of, among other things, the Serenity novelization (which I own but have yet to read)---made a post discussing the difference between fanfic and professional media tie-in fic in which he had the bad sense to

Comments

[carmarthen]

Ooh, I'm glad you expanded your reply. Very well said.

(WRT to Wicked: we in fandom commonly call any-two-guys (girls, whatever) PWPs that don't engage with the source material except in having characters with the same name "fanfiction" without a problem. Bad fanfiction, perhaps, but I've yet to see anyone question it. So that argument just strikes me as odd.)

[alixtii]

I was born into the English language, so to speak, in the sense that I cannot remember a pre-linguistic self, a "me" which existed before things had names. As much as I can remember, things have always had names, and I used the names I already knew to get a rough idea of how new names were used, at least before I could see them in action and get used to them that way. Then I learned the names for things in other languages like French and Latin, names which sometimes worked the way the names I knew worked, but most of the time didn't.

I don't try to define things, but I'll try to do my best to explain my usage to someone who is unfamiliar with it, so then I can have a rough predictor of how I and others will use the term in the future.

Language works. Not always well, but it works. So that's sort of a starting point. The only problem is that it renders birth impossible or, to speak less gnomically, this viewpoint cannot make sense of language acquisition, it only understands language-using selves as things which appear ex nihilo (the

[alixtii]

Ah, shared meaning. How many times did we hash that out in my Wittgenstein class? Actually, I'd be interested in hearing how other post-structuralists, particularly those coming primarily from a different perspective, would answer the question. You'd expect cathexys to be all about the shared meaning.

Practically, "assume it works and lump along until we realize we're misunderstanding each other and call a time out to hash out a more precise blend of fuzziness" sounds like it should work, and it reminds me (forgive me for totally going textbook on you, but I'm not sure of myself to do anything but retreat into my studies) of Wittgenstein's appropriation of St. Augustine's theory of language (insofar as he had one) at the beginning of the Philosophical Investigations: language is a tool we (learn as children to) use to get what we want, and when we don't get what we want we assume the tool is broken. Note this isn't really an account of shared meaning so much as a constant translation process between two foreign languages; any other sense is

[inalasahl]

I really enjoyed reading this post.

[alixtii]

I'm glad. Thank you!

[alias_sqbr]

What an interesting post. I'm rather tired but have a Thought That Must Be Shared, sorry if I'm incoherent :)

Something that strikes me is that many of the "defining" features being applied to fanfic also apply to lots of other creative stuff shared on the web. I know a couple of people (including myself) involved in the original fiction/webcomics community who share and discuss their work with others online for free with no interest in being published, especially since this would mean changing the way they write. As I discussed here, some of these "original fiction" writers are in fact writing historical fiction ie RPF

[alixtii]

it just shows that fanfic (however you define it) is one small part of an intersecting Venn Diagram, including stuff like original slash, anthropomorphic, historical fiction, published derivative works etc. Where each intersecting set has fuzzy, impossible to define fractal edges :)

That's it exactly!

[oblomskaya]

(via metafandom)

Thank you for this post, that's a neat round-up of the problem. I more and more tend to say: 'ff is what defines itself as such' and leave it at that. That is, if its author calls it a fanfic - fine (even if readers might not - cf. your "Fanfiction "reads like fanfic" except when it doesn't."). If its author has nothing to do with fan fiction, but the readership perceives it as a fanfic - yep, it's a fanfic too. Not much of a concept, but at least it seems to work, or doesn't it?))

[alixtii]

It does!