Fan (Fiction) Acting on Media and the Politics of Appropriation

Abstract

Fanfiction is the creative appropriation and transformation of existing popular media texts by fans who take stories, worlds and/or characters as starting points and create their own stories based on them. As a cultural field of practice, fanfiction questions prevalent concepts of individual authorship and proprietary of cultural goods. At the same time, fanfiction itself is challenged. Through processes of mediatization, fanfiction grew and became increasingly visible. Third parties, ranging from the media industry (e.g., film studios) and copyright holders to journalism and academia, are interested in fanfiction and are following its development. We regard fanfiction communities and fan acting as fields for experimentation and as discursive arenas which can help understand what appropriating, writing and publishing in a digital culture and the future of writing might look like. In this paper, we outline important debates on the legitimacy and nature of fanfiction and present preliminary results of current research within Germany.

Femslash Fanfiction and Lesbianism: Efforts to Empower and Express Asian American Woman Sexuality

“…The first author named DK who is DK writes fem slash works within the fan fiction writing site. That answer is in line with the definition that said fan fiction fan fiction is the creative utilization and modification of existing popular media texts by fans who take stories, worlds, and/or characters as starting points and create their own stories based on their imagination (Reißmann, Stock, Kaiser, Isenberg, & Nieland, 2017).…”

Acting on Media: Influencing, Shaping and (Re)Configuring the Fabric of Everyday Life

“…First, fans create infrastructures like communities and publics to circulate and share the content they produce; and second, fans act on the political and juridical conditions which frame these publication processes. Reißmann et al (2017) argue that although fans are located in a rather weak position from a juridical point of view-they neither own the material they modify nor do they have a grand legal framework to navigate-fans appropriate exiting media texts and thereby take up power positions. Although fanfiction can take place individually it is often a collective endeavor based on discussing, commenting on or modifying existing media texts together.…”