Jennifer's+Second+Exposition+Paper

What is fan fiction? Rebecca Black, a prominent author whose focus is fan fiction, affinity spaces and New Literacies, defines fan fiction as “a fascinating form of writing that involves building on the characters or plotlines of existing media”. (Black, 2008, p.3) Using this definition as a basis, I will explore the idea of fan fiction further. I found that fan fiction is connected to multiliteracies and literacy in the classroom. I will explore these aspects of fan fiction as well as its history and background, and of course the popular website fanfiction.net.

Before beginning research on fan fiction, I believed that it became known and popular with the advancement of the internet and the World Wide Web. But, I was mistaken. Black (2008) discovered that fans and academics found fan fiction texts “ranging from John Lydgate and Robert Henryson’s expansions of Geoffrey Chaucer’s texts all the way to the myths, oral traditions, and folktales that maintain a primary cast of characters even as their narratives grow and change over time”. (p.3) In addition to Black, Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel are also fascinated and interested by the fan fiction phenomenon, and discovered how this phenomenon began and grew. They established that fan fiction was “circulated from person to person….. Authors received peer comments and suggestions for improving their stories usually in face-to-face encounters or, perhaps, via snail mail. Today, however, fanfic narratives in the tens of thousands are posted in open public forums on the internet, to be read and reviewed online by anyone who cares to do so”. (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006, pp. 110-111)

Lankshear and Knobel also found that fan fiction began with the popularity of my favorite series, Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek first aired in 1966 with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. From there, Star Trek has developed four series: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. As a result, Star Trek has grown in popularity among fans world-wide. This popularity is made known by the 20,000+ participants in Star Trek conventions (aka “cult following” by Lankshear and Knobel). Lankshear and Knobel (2006) discovered that Star Trek is credited with “helping to establish fan fiction as a distinct genre and social practice. From the first episode, fans began writing their own stories set within the Star Trek universe and using key Star Trek characters. … Since then, fanfic has become an established genre and the subject of academic study”. (p. 109)

Different media (books, movies, cartoons, television shows, etc.) are used as a basis when writing fan fiction. Fan fiction authors use existing characters and modify existing plots to create a new story. There are many different types of fan fiction. They are: in-canon writing, alternative universe stories, cross-overs, relationshipper or shipper narratives, and self-insert fanfic. In-canon writing “maintains the settings, characters and types of plotlines … and simply adds new ‘episodes’ or events to the original text”; alternative universe stories come together when “characters from an original media text are transposed into an entirely new or different ‘world’ ”; cross-overs are where “characters from two different original media texts” are brought together in a new story; relationshipper narratives “focus on establishing an intimate relationship between two (often minor) characters where none existed or was downplayed in the original text”; and self-insert fanfics is where writers “insert themselves as recognizable characters directly into a narrative”. (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006, p. 110) Even though fan fiction encompasses all of these different types, writers of fan fiction can be as creative as possible and have the freedom to write anyone and anything into their stories. This is possibly what attracts people to fan fiction. They can pick any media that interests them and write about it. Some examples are Star Trek, Card Captor Sakura, Xena: Warrior Princess, Harry Potter, Angel, and Pirates of the Caribbean. (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006)

The website, fanfiction.net, allows people to fulfill their fantasies. This website allows authors to “publish writing based on books, movies, television programs, graphic novels, animation, and even video games and music. …. Within this system of posting stories and reader feedback, a story’s popularity can be measured by the number of reviews it has received from readers”. (Collins, 2006, p. 36) The fan fiction stories on this website are categorized as follows: Anime, Cartoon, Game, Movie, Book, Comic, TV Show and Miscellaneous. (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006) As you can see, authors can write in a variety of genres and the types of stories are endless. Before publishing their stories to the website and accepting comments from people in cyberspace, fan fiction authors often give their stories to a beta-reader, a member of the fan community, who reads and edits a fan fiction. (Black, 2008)

Fan fiction can relate to and connect with multiliteracies and the classroom. Rebecca Black and Kelly Chandler-Olcott partnered with Donna Mahar to help identify and explain these connections. First, let’s look at multiliteracies. Multiliteracies can be divided into three concepts: multimodality, intertextuality, and hybridity. Multimodality is the combination of video, audio, and visual designs into a text. Intertextuality is the relationship that exists between and among texts. Hybridity is the process of creating new meanings and new genres. (Chandler-Olcott & Mahar, 2003) Fan fictions are multimodal because they combine text with visual images, videos, and possibly audio (songs). They make intertextuality “visible because they rely on readers’ ability to see relationships between the fan-writer’s stories and the original media sources”. (Chandler-Olcott & Mahar, 2003, pp. 562-563) Olcott and Mahar provide a good example of a hybrid fan fiction. They state “Rhiannon’s story ‘The New Mazokus,’ … blended elements from fantasy, science fiction, and ‘teen buddy’ genres”. (Chandler-Olcott & Mahar, 2003, p. 563) Fan fictions are very complex. They take into account the characters and plots of the texts, connect texts between genres, merge elements of different genres into the texts, and finally add a visual and/or audio component to make the text appealing and interesting to all. Fan fiction authors need to take all of this into consideration in an effort to assure that their story gains fame and popularity, which I believe is essential to the success of the fan fiction phenomenon.

In the classroom, fan fiction can help students improve their writing skills. In the classroom, teachers have students write on various topics and write summaries on stories they have read. For example, in our fourth grade classroom, the students must write in their Daily Writing Journals (DWJ) every day. For their journal entries, the teacher chooses topics from a book, which is the primary resource for the DWJs. They are given challenging questions for their entries, such as: If your tomato plant starts growing something else besides tomatoes, what would it be? What would happen next? If you were caught reading a book, what would it be? Explain. These examples give the students the opportunity to use their creativity and imagination. The hope is that they will write complete stories or at least five sentences with four or more words in them. Some students achieve this standard and go beyond, but other students write a couple of sentences with three words or less. This indicates to us that they are not enthusiastic in their writing and they hurry to finish it as soon as possible. This is where writing fan fiction can help not only these students but also other struggling writers and English Language Learners (ELL). Black discusses how fan fiction can improve the writing abilities of ELLs and struggling writers. She states “Whereas, in fanfiction sites students actively participate in sophisticated composition activities—they draw on and synthesize input from a broad audience of peer reviewers; engage in dialogic interaction with readers and other fan authors; and draw on the metaresources available in the community as they revise, edit, and redesign their texts”. (Black, 2005, p. 127) When students write fan fiction, they choose a movie, a book, a television show, etc. that interests them. They create a story using different characters, but change the story line of the original media as well as the characters’ interactions, personalities, etc. They decide who, what, where, and when their story will take place. They then post their stories to fanfiction.net, where people around the world with similar interests can read their stories and post reviews. The students will either consider their comments and make changes to their stories, or keep them in mind the next time they write a fan fiction.

For her studies on fan fiction, Black chose Grace, Nanako, and Cherry-chan as her participants. They are all ELLs. They spoke either Filipino or Mandarin Chinese as their primary language. Grace learned English for academic activities and fan fiction compositions, and Nanako and Cherry-chan learned English in order to acclimate themselves. Black chose these young women based on their experiences and participation in online activities. While writing fan fiction, their English language and composition skills improved. (Black, 2009) She states “each of these young women was able to find and work with a beta-reader when producing some of their texts. . . Working with beta readers gave Grace, Nanako, and Cherry-chan opportunities to receive explicit feedback on their writing and rhetorical skills”. (Black, 2009, p. 691) On fanfiction.net, beta readers are essential because they help authors improve their writing. These beta readers do not have a personal connection to the authors. Therefore, they have an unbiased view, and are able to provide effective and extensive feedback. In addition, on fanfiction.net, Grace, Nanako, and Cherry-chan were accepted as legitimate writers of fan fiction despite their inaccuracies when writing English. Black states “. . . [It] did not rigidly adhere to the standards and conventions of print-based English. . . . [They] often had grammatical and spelling errors in their texts. Additionally, all three focal participants incorporated languages other than English into their prose, often using Japanese or Chinese to convey certain information or for effect. Notwithstanding errors, within the fan community, focal participants were treated as legitimate participants and interlocutors in their own right”. (2009, p. 692) Fanfiction.net is accessed by people world-wide. Although users know that authors of fan fiction come from different cultures and speak different languages, the authors and readers share a common interest in a particular movie, book, television show, etc. Therefore, readers come to enjoy and review a variety of fan fictions despite its possible flaws. For that reason, Black discusses how acceptance in the fan fiction community is important to ELL authors’ continued success. She states “. . . First, it provided them with a sense of belonging in a community that was important to them. Second, this acceptance of their writing and attempts to communicate using English, notwithstanding errors, provided inspiration and confidence for attempting additional and more complex written and communicative endeavors. Finally, the sense of acceptance and belonging enabled these ELL authors to develop identities as accomplished creators and users of English text”. (Black, 2009, p. 692)

Unlike fan fiction, the stories in the classroom are curriculum-based. Then, the teachers use curriculum-based assignments to assess the students’ writing ability and to provide feedback on the students’ writing skills. The students are required to correct their answers based on the teachers’ feedback. They do not have access to various technologies to improve their writing. Some schools fear that using the internet can provide the students with the opportunity to buy papers or to plagiarize. Black and others feel that using technology can be beneficial. She states “. . . students have the freedom to draw on the multiple resources available via online, networked, and digital media in order to publish and convey meaning in ways that are rhetorically appropriate for the medium”. (Black, 2005, p. 127) Technology can open the doors for improving students’ abilities in reading, writing, etc. I believe that for today’s generation of students, who are already technologically savvy, the use of fan fiction sites and other new media (blogging, wikis, etc.) is inevitable.

In conclusion, fan fiction allows people to fulfill their fantasies. They choose many types of media (books, movies, television shows, etc), and use existing characters and modify existing plots to write their fan fiction. Multiliteracies can connect fan fiction to the classroom. To review, I would like to identify each type of multiliteracies and reiterate its importance to fan fiction. Intertextuality is the relationship that exists between and among texts, hybridity is the process of creating new meanings and new genres, and multimodality allows authors to combine images, video, and audio to their fan fictions. Intertextuality, hybridity, and multimodality help authors to be creative and add special effects to their fan fictions. Also, fan fiction writing can help English Language Learners and other struggling writers with their writing abilities. Students choose any media (book, movie, television show, etc.) that interests them as a basis for their fan fiction. Next, they create a story using the characters of the original media but change the story line and the characters’ personalities and interactions. Then, they post their stories to fanfiction.net to get comments and reviews from people world-wide. Afterwards, they use the comments and reviews to modify the fan fiction or keep them in mind for future fan fictions. In addition, beta readers, who have an unbiased view, provide effective and extensive feedback to fan fiction authors which can help to improve their writing skills. Even though ELLs’ fan fictions may have inaccuracies when using the English language, readers understand that ELLs come from different cultures and speak different languages. Therefore, they read their fan fictions for pure enjoyment. Even though fan fiction provides many benefits, the classroom differs by comparison. First, the teacher uses stories based on the school’s curriculum, which may or may not be of interest to the students. In addition, they are the only ones who provide feedback on the students’ writing. Secondly, schools do not provide students with access to various technologies which may improve their writing. To conclude, fan fiction provides students with the opportunity to exhibit their work world-wide and is not limited to just the classroom. As a result, they develop a sense of accomplishment and enjoyment that their work is read and loved by many.

__Bibliography __ Black, R. W. (2005). Access and affiliation: The literacy and composition practices of English-language learners in an online fanfiction community. //Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy//, 49(2), 118-128.

Black, R.W. (2008). Publishing and Participation in Online Affinity Spaces. New Literacies: A Professional Development Wiki for Educators. Developed under the aegis of the Improving Teacher Quality Project (ITQP), a federally funded partnership between Montclair State University and East Orange School District, New Jersey. Available from: http://www.newlits.org/index.php?title=Publishing_and_Participation_in_Online_Affinity_Spaces

Black, R. W. (2009). English-Language Learners, Fan Communities, and 21st-Century Skills. //Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52//(8), 688-697.

Chandler-Olcott, K., & Mahar, D. (2003). Adolescents' anime-inspired "fanfictions": An exploration of Multiliteracies. //Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy//, 46(7), 556-566.

Collins, T. (2006). Filling the Gaps: What's Happening in the World of Fan Fiction. //Library Media Connection//, 36-38.

Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2006). //New Literacies> : Everyday Practices & Classroom Learning.// New York: Open University Press.

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