Hey it's Rowan
I am here with Jen Campbell whose channel I will link below
And today we're going to be talking about fan fiction
and on this video we're going to be having a kind of discussion
I've got some points written down here, and in the video on Jen's channel we've done a 'Fan Fiction' tag
which- go over, watch it and make a video answering these questions please do. (Jen: yes please please please do please).
So the first thing on the list is just starting off with the idea of fan fiction of like
'Authors: do they get a say? What do they say? What are your feelings about like author's ownership of their own kind of creation?'
Well I kind of find it weird because there are two good examples of this.
So JK Rowling is like "FanFiction - yay! Fans love my stuff, they want to extend the stories, that's all great
I might not always agree with the pairings that they're doing
or the story lines they're going with but I find it really thrilling" and she likes it.
George R R Martin's like "I hate it when people take my characters and they put them in stories"
FanFiction is mainly people on the internet who love a certain story and they want to get involved and they want to talk about it too
And I think that's beautiful and I don't get it when authors have a problem with it
When you put your work out into the world, you're kind of gifting it to people
And they're not stealing it, and they're not pretending it's theirs. It's just a way of expressing their love for it
I think knowing how much like joy it's brought to people and brought to me
I'm totally cool with if I ever wrote something people just going off and doing things with it
Like I've got a web series that I'm working on and if anyone did anything for that I'd be like "Oh God I'm so flattered, that's incredible"
Jen: "I have fans and people that want to do things!" Rowan: yeah I'd be like
"This is the best thing that has ever happened to me" rather than just being like
"How could you take a thing that I've worked on and you apparently love and
want to interact with it in a really like intense way?"
I also think nowadays online FanFiction is a huge draw to fandoms (Jen: Yeah)
I know like when you're on Tumblr or somewhere like that where a lot of people frequent and do write and read FanFiction
I've got into a load of fandoms just because I've seen people's FanFiction or people do like Fan Art and things like that
and I've gradually basically been worn down and gone "ooh maybe I should watch that show because it seems really interesting"
So second thing on the list is basically just all the different categories we were going to talk about
that I've kind of grouped under like "Why people write FanFictions"
So the first one being talking about the whole 'as a writer's tool'
Right so between the ages of like 14, 15 to like 19 I was really heavily into the Harry Potter FanFiction
It was a big part of my writing stuff, and I'm an author now
and I have four books out and more coming
and there's no crossover at all between any FanFiction I've ever written and books that I have now
But I have found when I was exploring writing and character development
that FanFiction is a really cool way to do that
Because you come into it knowing a backstory of the character or at least some parts of the character
and you get to expand on that and explore character traits and work out what a certain character would or would not do
Great tool for building up backstories and characters as well
and just exploring world building
So yeah I think it's a really useful tool
and I know certain writers who still write FanFiction
Joanne Harris who wrote Chocolat and lots of other books
has openly said that she still writes FanFiction and goes on forums and does it
as a way to just you know continue writing something else that maybe she doesn't have to think about as much
Rowan: Actually I'm really interested to know if any people who write in America for TV
Because they use writer's rooms
where you basically come in- or anyone that's written on a soap or anything like that
Because you're basically having to do what was the equivalent of fan fiction
so you have to match tone and character voice
you have to know all of the back story so that you can have character continuity
Like that feels like a strangely similar exercise to fan fiction writing in a weird way
Jen: Yeah you get new writers coming in and they have to adopt
and they have to become someone's voice and you get that with ghostwriters as well
There's series such as Animal Ark, a children's book which had lots of writers on it
but needs to continue the same tone in writing
it's interesting
Other reasons why people do it
We were talking earlier about like queer writers and queer characters' representation
and things like that. So taking the original source material that didn't have particular representation and then inserting it
or kind of mapping it onto that as well.
Jen: Yeah and not just do it with queers either, also do it with race
there's a lot of fan art out there with Hermione as a black character
which is fantastic and lots of stuff like that
Which I see some people who are really attached to the canon and the 'book is everything' having a real problem with
Which I don't understand because I don't think it detracts from the original, I think it only enhances it
So I don't get that defensiveness that I see sometimes
Rowan: I was just thinking actually because representation-wise
for me, out of all the identities that I hold the queerness was always the one that was tied with fan fiction
because I wasn't like, it wasn't like my gender wasn't really a part of what I wanted to explore in fan fiction
I don't know whether you felt that there were like other identities that you span that you were really kind of into looking at
Or whether it was still like that kind of situation? Jen: I never looked at characters or explored people who
had like deformities or disabilities or anything like that. I never went into that kind of side of it
But also when we're talking about queerness as well is we're talking about like as queer women here
I didn't always write about queer women, it was queerness in general, it was across the board
Rowan: Totally, yeah. But we were talking earlier about how it can be a safe space in some ways
So you can have like straight women who write about these relationships
because it doesn't involve portraying themselves or their like literal experiences mapped onto like a heterosexual relationship and things like that
Jen: and also something that is talked about quite a lot and just worth mentioning here
is that a reason perhaps that if we're writing romantic relationships
just not from our point of view perhaps from the point of view of a straight woman
if they are writing about a romantic relationship within something like Harry Potter or other fantasy realms
the majority of characters are male and they're the ones who have their characters developed
so much that you kind of feel engaged with them and you want to explore that some more
Rowan: When does something stop becoming fan fiction and become just like a retelling?
Is it something to do with time? Something to do with money?
Jen: We were thinking about this very seriously and getting ourselves in knots
I think a lot of it is time
Because we were trying to think and I don't think now I can think of
-apart from 50 Shades of Grey which is like the exception to every rule that I can pretty much think about
I can't think of a series or a book or something that has made money out of a current thing
When we think of retellings right now, we think of things like fairy tales
which are massively - like especially in the YA world right now - massively everywhere
but fairy tales don't really 'belong' to anyone and they've been adapted and retold many ways and constantly changing
So that is slightly different
And then some examples that we'd come up with for things that tend to be re-told a lot
are things like Sherlock Holmes, so many adaptations; Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland
Rowan: Any of the fantasy (??) stuff so like Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde (Jen: Frankenstein) all that kind of stuff
Jen: Yeah so that seems to be time, when things become part of the literature canon
and kind of there seem to be everyone's property almost
When things are just tropes that you know - I think you said...
Rowan: Yeah it's when it's what I like refer to as 'pre-read'
so often people have never read any of the books that we've just mentioned
they won't have actually read them but you'll still be familiar
because they've sort of entered the conciousness of people's minds.
Essentially it's like almost distilled what's the most important thing about that particular text
You can then go and do a re-telling or something that has like a 'modern version' or something like that
by just taking not necessarily details from the original but just what people have left behind as the most important legacy
Jen: Absolutely and I think also it's who is writing it - obviously that's an obvious thing to say
But you've got things like Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
which is an exploration of the character of Bertha and her backstory
It's still to us very past that. The Wide Sargasso Sea now is part of canon.
and when I think of Bertha I think of her character in Wide Sargasso Sea
and I just take that as - rightly or wrongly - the truth
Rowan: I saw someone point out the other day that the renaissance was basically just like bible fan art
Like that was all that happened (laughing) Jen: 'Bible fan art' I love that
Rowan: Yeah I was like the Sistine Chapel like bible fan art (??)
Let's move onto that fun topic of
fetishisation
Smut/etc
Jen: Okay, so slash guys, I'm sure most of you know but if you don't is same-sex pairings
smut is sexy times. A lot of people I have seen who haven't engaged with the fan fiction world
and maybe are not from the queer community
can look at queer fan fiction and think it's exploitation or that it's fetishising being gay
But I would like there are lots of studies done on this that the majority of writers of queer fan fiction are queer themselves
and it's a way for them to explore their identity in lots of different safe spaces
and also for women to explore sexuality in a way that they're not actually present
So if we're talking about two male characters, it's a way for them to think about sex in a detached kind of way
Rowan: I agree completely. Jen: Yay!
Rowan: So I actually looked this up for a video I don't think I even used the stats
but basically they did a massive massive survey of AO3 or Archive Of Our Own
which is like definitely the biggest place right now to put fan fiction
and basically found that the majority of fan fiction was written by people who were not male and who were not straight
Because I think the stereotype a lot of the time in the wider world is that it's straight women who write these things
and I think that when you look at the facts it's mainly queer women and non-binary people who are writing this stuff
It's suddenly like "oh! maybe we have to think more complexly about why someone might write about these two men"
and I think partly that's because in the mainstream when we see two women being portrayed, it is sexualisation
like that's the reason why, it's like it's in porn, it's in all this stuff and that's the reason why
Ans so as soon as you see two men it's kind of like "oh! that must be the reason that must be how it is" Jen: the same but the other way around
And i think it also kind of relegates fan fiction as being just smut
Whereas I think I read a- Jen: Yeah, filthy teenagers (laughter)
I do read a lot of that because I think it is an interesting way of exploring sexuality
but I think there are so many aspects of sexuality around romance and around socialisation
and around the experience of being queer and all of those milestones that you go through
that are different to straight milestones in terms of coming out to yourself, coming out to other people
being outed, finding- like dating even is hard, like all of these things kind of get explored
without you having to kind of create these new characters or put yourself in there or see yourself directly
Jen: What I find quite interesting and I think that some people don't realise that they do it
is that if you mention this certain fandom that you might ship, the reaction of "They're not gay!"
like you're doing something wrong by thinking in a different way and putting people
or thinking about people in different situations, like that is inherently 'bad' is problematic
Rowan: Yeah. Jen: Because that does seem to be -
where that backlash against women 'this is wrong because we're saying that you're exploiting because we don't want to think about what you're actually doing'
Rowan: Yeah. The last one I had for the discussion that was like noted down was the idea of
which kind of goes into your idea of like fixing the situations between like fan fictions stuff
when you have particular tropes or a 'fanon'
which is basically a canon that the fans make up that then becomes so used that it gets normalised and everyone kind of picks up on it
Jen: Sirius is this you know, ridiculous like player type along with James who was also an asshole
which is canon, like they were both assholes at school
And Remus being very, you know, quiet about it all and admiring Sirius from afar
and then Sirius getting drunk and them having this like discussion and then falling into bed with each other
And often it being kind of angsty
Rowan: Well there's also a really- I find fascinating I don't read it but there's ABO fic
which definitely wasn't there when you were writing or reading
Jen: What is ABO? Rowan: Alpha, Beta, Omega fic
Which is basically the idea that instead of- there are like men and women and male and female
but the predominant gender that is- runs through society is the idea of Alpha, Beta and Omega
So everything to do with what we currently think of as being like a gendered idea
So if women have the babies, that doesn't correspond with that gender, it corresponds with Alpha, Beta, Omega
So Omegas, regardless of being male or female can get pregnant.
But what I think is interesting about it is that it often is a way of- I see it often as a way of female writers
writing about gender relations without having to go into like current sexist language and ideas and relive that
So they'll have a character who's an Omega which is clearly like a thinly-veiled version of like being a traditional woman
so often they're meant to be submissive and they're meant to be housewives or husbands
It's almost never that the characters actually fit into their categories they're given
It's much more that it's like they move away from their biology and they rebel against the idea that they should be this one thing
and for me it's fascinating because it's so obviously like a mapping on of gender between male and female
Jen: Something I just thought of when we were talking about tropes and stuff
the thing that I also love, which I think happens in the book anyway
-constantly talking about Harry Potter here-
but the Dumbledore being the mastermind behind romantic relationships - I love that so much it's my favourite
Rowan: Yes I'd also forgotten that happened (laughter)
Jen: Fan fiction I think is increasing awareness massively of diversity and feeding back into canon stuff
which is doing good things
Rowan: Yeah, nice. That was a lovely way to end
So yeah that was just our thoughts about fan fiction in general
if you have any thoughts about any of the stuff that we talked about or any other ideas about fan fiction that you want to chat about
put them in the comments, don't forget to go over subscribe to Jen. Jen: Thanks
Rowan: Have a look at that other video which I'll link below which has the nice fan fiction tag
and please do a video in response
Jen: and let us know on Twitter, like send us links please please
Rowan: Yes do. Cool. Alright then, so see ya later Jen: Bye