Limit Play: Fan Authorship between Source Text, Intertext, and Context

Fanfiction as imaginary play: What fan-written stories can tell us about the cognitive science of fiction

“…It should be noted that we will be focusing here on the activity of writing fanfiction, rather than reading it; however, it is important to note nonetheless that one key difference between daydreaming about fictional characters and writing fanfiction about them is that the latter is significantly less likely to occur in isolation (Stein and Busse, 2009). Fans tend to seek out other fans (Jenkins, 1992;Van Steenhuyse, 2011), making the writing of fanfiction a social activity, as well as a creative one.…”

“…Further support for the connection between fanfiction and daydreaming comes from reports of fanfiction writers first composing these storieseither in written form or in their own heads-without having any idea what ''fanfiction'' is, merely for their own pleasure (see Black, 2005;Bonnstetter and Ott, 2011). In other cases, fanfiction may be the direct result of Role Playing Games (RPGs), where two or more people pretend to be different fictional characters interacting with each other and then transcribe the outcome in story form (Stein and Busse, 2009).…”

“…Gerrig argues that a reader's experience of a narrative will be affected by (1) his or her narrative hopes and preferences, (2) the suspense he or she feels about how things will turn out, and (3) the mental replotting that takes place when he or she wishes things had turned out differently. Now consider that within the realm of fanfiction, stories often focus on preferred characters and hoped-for relationships (Zubernis and Larsen, 2012), jump into the future to resolve narrative suspense (Jenkins, 1992;McGee, 2005), or actively re-plot undesired story events (Stein and Busse, 2009). If, as Rosenblatt (1978) suggested, the author is the equivalent of a composer and the reader a musician bringing a work to life, then the fanfiction writer can arguably be seen as a musician who subsequently composes and records his or her own variation on the original tune (e.g.…”

“…Fanfiction is not written for profit, but rather, as part of a wider array of activities that fans use to engage with fictional stories, including fan art, fan videos, and critical analyses and reviews (Stein and Busse, 2009). A variety of scholars have argued that fanfiction is transformative of the original text (e.g.…”

“The most passionate cover I’ve seen”: emotional information in fan-created U2 music videos

“…In cultural studies language, the author is an "aca fan", which means she is a fan of U2 as well as an academic undertaking research about U2 fan culture. It is common practice for academics who study their own fan communities to identify themselves as an aca fan in their research because it has implications for their insight (Stein and Busse, 2009). …”