How deep does the fan fiction rabbit hole go?

Question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction_terminology#OOC

An example of what I'm referring to.

An earlier question sent me on a search that has frightened me. I started looking into the fan fiction realm and found that it just kept going and going, with just about every possible sub-movement and style imaginable. It has it's own dictionary apparently.

Coupled with the following article I have a few questions to ask:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin

How seriously do readers take this stuff? What is it's appeal? As authors of fan fiction, how seriously do you take yourselves (directed at fanfic authors, obviously)? Do you think Fan Fiction is positive? Does it make a legitimate literary contribution (I've found articles, and books written by "scholars" on this topic. Some are just sociological/cultural studies, and some are actual textual analysis.)? What impacts does fan fiction have on readers, does it make them less exploratory, destroy their knowledge of grammar and narration, etc?

Please give some feedback. I'm very interested in your thoughts on the topic, no matter which side of the line you fall on.

(And please be respectful, I expect some debate/disagreement but let's be civil about it.)

Answer 1

In this month's Atlantic Monthly magazine is a very interesting article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/go...

One of the article's postulations is that searching the internet can bring you a TON of information, but no real way to evaluate any of it.  I'm not saying that fan fiction or any other genre has no value, but it is interesting how research and reading on-line takes you into the "rabbit hole," as you say.  That's a nice expression, by the way, for a lot on internet research.    

Answer 2

Actually, I think some fan fiction writers are pretty good. It can get ridiculous, especially when you're talking about slash, but a lot of it is pretty well written. I don't think it's something I'd really take seriously, but it's fun for people that are fans of a certain set of characters to write stories about them.  

Answer 3

All the way to Wonderland.

Answer 4

I'm in my teens, and almost all of my friends read fanfiction.

For readers, I guess it's just a fun thing to read!

For author of fanfictions, it lets them connect to their favourite characters I guess.

It's not really positive or negative. Well for some it's positive, for some it's.negative.

I don't think it really affects the readers writing skills, because most of the time the readers are the ones who point out the mistakes to the author.

Answer 5

Be prepared for a few tangents here. =)

I think fan fiction is.... ehh. I guess it's okay to read every now and again, when you want to do something pretty mindless, but I don't think it should be taken seriously. I have trouble reading fan fictions because I'm a grammar freak, and I find myself pointing out every error I can find. I really don't read much fan fiction, though - generally I only read ones my friends send me links to, and even then I'll stop reading one after the first paragraph if I don't think it's written well enough to continue.

I can't believe there's so much out there about fan fiction! I had no idea there was even a Wikipedia article on its terminology (the first link you provided), for instance. And people have actually done studies on it?

I think fan fiction can be both positive and negative. Those who write fan fiction are using their imaginations (to an extent - they'd obviously be using more imagination if they wrote about their own ideas rather than putting twists on old favorites), and hopefully improving their writing abilities. At the very least, a fan fiction writer is developing his writer's voice. As far as a reader's imagination goes, I think fan fiction is equal to a normal published book - no loss of imagination, and if the story is captivating enough, the imagination is being put into use pretty well. Fan fiction readers' knowledge of grammar and writing can be expanded or destroyed; this is completely dependant on the quality of the story being read. Most of the fan fictions I've seen -- though this is a limited number -- however, are written with the same quality as typical text messaging... maybe slightly better, since abbreviations aren't too common in fan fictions as far as I've seen. Overall, I don't think fan fiction is exactly "bad," but it's not one of the best things to be reading.

I read that NYT article a while ago, and found it interesting. I wasn't suprised at the statistics about teenagers reading (well, *not* reading) - I can only think of 13 students in my class (there's around 120 total) that regularly read books for fun. As for reading online, I think that some of it is "real" reading - things like news articles, books on Project Gutenberg, etc. I suppose some fan fiction could be considered "real" reading as a few stories I've come across were actually written quite well. Most reading on the Internet, however... I don't think that you can call it "fake" reading (as opposed to "real" reading); there's no such thing. I think it's a different type of reading. We're learning to read -- to decode, really -- certain abbreviations (lol, omg, etc.). Of course, this usually goes hand-in-hand with poor grammar and spelling, because it's most often found in instant messaging (where one just wants to get his ideas out as quickly as he would in a face-to-face conversation - poor grammar is a given in that sort of situation, unless one is an extremely fast typer).

Having said (typed) that, I'm reminded of a few articles I've read over time discussing the idea of simplifying the English language - changing words' spellings so that we lose some confusions (for instance, change epitome to epitomy), and changing certain grammar rules. I'm not sure how I feel about this idea. It's got its advantages, sure, but I'm still not in total agreement with it.

You know, I started to read that article provided by JCBoyle... and wasn't too suprised to find myself skimming it. The Internet has really changed the way many people read - a few years ago I probably would have read the whole article, skipping nothing, but just now I realized I was only picking out parts of the article that seemed most relevant. I didn't even finish it - the length actually put me off. If it had been broken up into a few shorter pages I probably would have read more, which leads me to think that's why I did read that whole NYT article.

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Edit - Forgot to add this.

I think fan fiction does have a certain appeal. When one reads a terrific novel, or sees a great movie, he gets involved in the story; I think this is particularly true for teenagers. Using the movie Titanic as an example, perhaps viewers wanted to see a different side to the story. How would it have played out from Rose's mother's perspective? Or maybe the viewer thinks Rose should have died, or Jack should have lived. Any of these options could be explored through fan fiction. I think this is what draws most fan fiction readers to the genre (can I call it a genre?) - they want to see something very similar to the original, but with some different twist. It's either that, or they want to see a continuation of the story (Titanic's a bad example for that, I suppose...), which fan fiction can also provide.