I didn’t know fanfiction had such a storied history. (pun intended) There’s this concept called “Death of the Author” which basically states that once an author is done writing the project and publishes the work, the ideological ownership they have over that story and its characters is dead. It belongs to the audience now. This concept dovetails so nicely into the concept of fanfiction. It gives the audience power to wield over the stories they love. I loved the format of your project. I had no idea how widespread the idea of Sherlock Holmes Societies were, even with those novels being some of my all time favorites. This is a fantastic project! I really loved it. I loved all the charts and spent five minutes looking at the one with the number of fanfics in each fandom, trying to see how many fandoms I could recognize/have been in (a lot).
I really enjoyed the format you chose to publish on, as it broke up the text and made it easy for the reader to navigate. I felt as though each section was detailed and gave enough context to understand the topic. They each had an important role in helping the reader understand the what fanfiction is, the importance, and its role in society. You were able to connect fanfiction to the entire audience, through a quote and explanation as to how fanfiction allows everyone to be heard, unlike mainstream works.
The hyperlinks complimented the text and the timelines made it easier to understand the growth of fanfiction through time. I also spent some time playing around with the pictures, which was a way to engage audience members and make it more interesting, but I would have liked to see more picture examples of fanfiction instead of mainstream media. My favorite part was the arguments presented, both how the original authors feel about fanfiction and whether fanfiction authors are creative. It shows how there are so many opinions and new ideas being formed through the advancements of technology. This helped in supporting the main idea of how fanfiction can reach many people, even with differences of opinion, but continues to grow.
Your project is exceptionally informative, highlighting many important aspects of fanfiction, such as their creativity and their interaction with copyright laws.
I found your discussion of specific cases, such as Paramount Pictures Corp. v. Axanar Prods and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. v. RDR Books, to be very interesting. Your discussion of these cases showcases how ambiguous the line between fanfiction and copying is. I always wondered how the courts dealt with these issues.
Also, your project has prompted me to think about how much the creativity of fanfiction writers is underappreciated, as you point out in your webtext. Your discussion of the fanfiction “Rebuilding” by Colubrina emphasized this idea to me. Fanfictions, like “Rebuilding” that expand upon undeveloped or unexplained events in the creative universes of established works are equivalent to sequel or prequel series, which are usually much more respected. For example, there is a Star Wars book series that I used to read in grade school called “Jedi Apprentice.” The series focuses on the adventures of two well-known Star Wars characters that happened before the events of the movies. This premise sounds as if it could be a fanfiction series, but the only difference is that the series was officially licensed and fanfictions usually are not. The creativity in premise is essentially the same between fanfiction and prequel series. The creativity of fanfiction should not be as contested a topic as it is.
It was such a pleasure to explore your webpage. You did an excellent job of hitting on many of the key questions regarding fanfiction today. One question that I was happy you addressed was whether writing fanfiction should be considered “creative.” I would wholeheartedly agree with your stance that fanfiction should be considered a creative act, since fanfiction writers are building off of a story and sharing their ideas with others. Addressing this question of creativity also transitioned very well into your discussion of copyright and how this can substantially limit creativity. As a science fiction fan, I enjoyed your mention of the Star Trek example. Copyright discrepancies really make you wonder where (or if) we should draw the line between two similar concepts. For example, what about Star Wars? Couldn’t Star Wars be deemed similar to Star Trek in many ways? Where do we draw the line between similarity and stealing? These are just a few questions I thought of while reading your webtext.
I also wanted to mention that I love how your title references one of Marvel’s newer T.V. shows, “Marvel’s What If…?” Marvel Studios is definitely a reason why I consider myself a part of the fanfiction community. Your title also reminded me of our class discussion of Laurie Penny’s piece way back at the beginning of the semester.
In terms of formatting, I appreciated the layout of your webpage. The tabs were simple to navigate and the visual elements beautifully complimented the text. I especially liked the way you cited your sources with a simple hyperlinked number. This was perfect for a webpage format. Great job of designing such an informative yet easy-to-navigate project!
What a fun topic to explore! You effectively incorporated course themes into your project, particularly the idea of the remix, what constitutes creativity, and copyright laws, through the lens of fanfiction. Although I had background knowledge of fanfiction going into this, I was pleased to learn about the existence of organizations such as Archive of Our Own, that makes an effort to protect work of fanfiction writers.
Under the “Publication” tab, you discuss how fanfiction writers often have to alter names of characters and specific details of their stories in order to avoid copyright issues in the publication process. Although these are necessary steps to publish one’s work legally, I think that it detracts from comprehension of the piece. What’s special about fanfiction is that, unlike regular novels with a fresh set of characters, readers go into a piece with background knowledge of characters, their histories, personality traits, and so forth. Accordingly, they often have an attachment to these characters, as well as wishes about what could’ve happened to them in another universe. Changing names and details of fanfiction takes this alternate component away, which can interfere with one’s understanding of it and the author’s intention behind writing the text. I would love to hear more about your thoughts on this idea alongside fanfiction as a whole. What makes you so invested in this topic? Do you think that adjusting the details of fanfiction in the publishing process is worth the losses if it’s getting published? I think providing some of your own perspective would help give readers a voice to relate to and connect with. I would also suggest breaking the text up a little bit more to make the format easier to approach. Otherwise, I think the website was organized well in each tab and concisely communicated your material. Awesome work!
Your webpage was really easy to navigate. I like how the navigation bar is on top of the webpage, which makes it easier to access. In addition, I like how your images are under the text. I prefer having the text in blocks because it keeps my attention longer.
The copyright section reminded me of “How the nerds are reinventing pop culture” reading. Both your paper and Laurie Penny’s article say that fan fiction is as old as literature. In addition, both of you describe the balance between copyright and creative freedom. Fanfiction can be seen as paying homage to the original piece of work. Fan fiction can also bring a newer audience to the original piece of work.
When you mentioned “what if’s” I didn’t know that that was considered fan fiction. I enjoy watching “what if” videos about the NBA. For example, “what if MJ played in todays NBA”. Your paper made me realize that I also participate in watching fan fiction.
So for starters, the history section really pulled me in. I thought the section about fanfiction going all the way back to the days of Homer and Shakespeare was pretty. It’s wild to think about the drastic differences that took place between now and then when one thinks about legal rights or the reworking of anothers character/story. I’d be really curious to know more in this department and how they treated that back then whether it was ok, or whether they weren’t cool with using the work of another.
As far as whether fanfiction is creative or not, I do agree that it is creative and I don’t think it dilutes the characters in any way such as something like writing a fanfiction piece about Harry Potter. But I don’t see it as anything more than slight fun. Not to say it can’t be viewed as a stand alone piece of work, but it would be hard to take it seriously in a sense, but that’s just me.
I have never really spent the time to look into fanfictions. All I knew about it going in was that there is a lot of it out there. I remembered an interesting fact that the longest piece of writing is a Loud House fanfiction. It’s truly remarkable the things that can be accomplished with this genre. I didn’t know that it was dominated by women and minorities. I guess it makes sense since you said the media is dominated by men unfortunately. Thankfully, this genre gives those groups a voice and an opportunity to create and express their own ideas and stories. I like how you included novels and other books that were actually created from fanfiction.
The section on the history of fanfiction, I thought, was really well made. I like the incorporation of a timeline on the side. It makes it really appealing visually, and makes it easy to follow along. Who knew that fanfiction went back all that way. It’s also remarkable how much fanfiction has come along. It seems as though it is only getting more and more popular as it is getting more accessible and attainable.
I personally think fanfiction is creative. It is basically human nature to take influence from something to create. Without that, we would not be where we are today would we? Fanfiction clearly requires some form of creativity and thought to produce new story lines and routes that the original takes. I support and agree with creators and authors who are in favor of fan fiction of their work. I can’t really see a downside to it. I guess maybe their character and story may be portrayed in an inappropriate way… but I still think it spreads the original work and its creator’s ideas. This goes into how you discussed copyright. Again, I would say it only has a net benefit on the author and their original work. It’s sad to see these fans get attacked and harassed in lawsuits for their works.
What an interesting topic and I just loved your take on it! Personally, I found the impact of “participatory equality” to be the most intriguing because I never really thought of fanfictions to that deep of an extent. The audience demographics of popular novels, movie franchises, etc are grossly diverse compared to the pinhole of characteristics that are commonly represented in the protagonists of these works of media. Fanfictions often are written from a perspective that differs from the typical “blue-orbed” main character, and some even go to the extent to replace the main character’s name entirely with “y/n”.
I disagree with the idea that fanfiction is not creative. To argue against Anne Rice, the very act of taking her characters and deviating away from her plot stems from creativity. I believe that taking something that is already established and reinventing it can be more creative than starting from scratch.
Finally, I really enjoyed the format of your website and was engaged the whole time while I was clicking and scrolling through it. The incorporation of a timeline was genius, and I really did enjoy following along with it as I read the block of text alongside it. Wonderful work!!
This was such an interesting read! I have many friends who both read and write fanfiction and they all seem to really enjoy it. When I asked what they found so interesting about them, many of them replied that it was a way to leave reality for a few hours and jump into a world of “what-if” fantasies. I have always viewed fanfictions as a medium to allow for many people to express themselves through the use of their own favorite entertainment pieces or even complete an open-ending scene based on their interpretations for their own sanity. However, after reading about your project, I came to realize that fanfiction is a platform where people can find a sense of belonging. An example you mentioned was the ability for women and minority groups finding themselves through their favorite stories.
I also found it interesting to read about copyright in fanfiction, specifically the flexibility in it. I would think that people would still have to give credit to such successful works that they are basing their fanfiction writing off of, despite the fact that they are not profiting off of their work. This came a surprise to me, especially since everything on the internet now it emphasized on giving credit to original creators. Moreover, it was astonishing to me when I saw the amount of fanfictions there were for Harry Potter. The fact that every fanfiction writer has created their own story from their imagination is quite impressive.
Overall, I really liked the format of your project as it was easy to navigate. One feature that caught my eye was the cover image of your topic with all the different characters in their fanfiction world. I thought it did a great job in defining what fanfiction really is.
Hi Talia,
I loved your presentation on such an interesting topic, fanfiction, and how you explained what fanfiction was and the large role it plays in society in the “Fan Fiction” section. In your “History” section, I loved how you used a timeline since it helped me visualize the information that you were presenting and it helped show the great diversity of authors whose work may be considered fanfiction. I also liked how you presented the opinions of various authors in your “Creativity” section on the topic of fanfiction as I thought that all authors would support fanfiction but you presented that this may not be the case. In addition, the court cases that you presented were interesting as it highlights that fanfiction may also go through copyright issues.
In looking at how you presented the information, I liked how you used wordpress since it gave the reader the option to use the tabs to navigate the tabs and the use of images allowed me to relate the text to the images and I liked how you used the image of the castle behind the topic titles as it connected everything together well.
Let me start off by saying that your website is just absolutely beautiful. I thought your project thought out and I love the different aspects and takes you decided to use in approaching such a broad topic as fan fiction.
I love the way you structured the history portion of the website as it reminded me of some thing I would come across when doing genuine research for a project of my own; very professional and super intuitive. I was also intrigued, but not surprised, to hear that twilight was originally based off of a fan fiction. To be honest it really reads like one lol.
Overall I loved your project, I definitely appreciate the effort you put into it.
This topic is fascinating to me. I am not a consumer of fanfiction myself–at least not knowingly–but I am amazed at the idea that so many people have let their imaginations run wild with the characters and plots of original creators and then taken the extra step to actually write down the story they have created. I know I often think of scenarios in which my favorite characters *could* have found themselves in had there been different decisions made, but I never thought to write those fleeting thoughts down let alone flesh them out into a full story.
I appreciated your breakdown of the different subtopics that you chose to write about. The timeline included in the history tab was helpful in placing the different eras of fanfiction. I was surprised to find out that whether fanfiction creators are being creative or not was even a question. As I said before, I am amazed that people have brought those little fleeting thoughts to life at all–it is in and of itself a feat of creativity.
I found this project really interesting and informative to me because I feel like no one around me talks about fanfiction much, so I learned a lot from this. Overall, the presentation of the project was neat and the visuals were really good. I personally liked the timeline that was on the right margin in the “History” section. Also, in this section, you stated that Supernatural has the most fanfics posted on AO3. I’m a huge fan of the show and I had no idea there were so many fanfics written about it. It surprised me that there were more fanfics on Supernatural than Harry Potter. However, I think that one of the reasons could be that the show has been around for about 15 years. After reading this project, I think that fanfiction adds onto the original story and lets the fandom continue to grow, which can build a community.
Great website for your project! I think it was a great way to present your project. The headings on top were simple to navigate. One thing I am curious on is why you chose the visuals for your project. Any reason for the buildings and architecture chosen as the background for your headings?
Personally, I did not know anything much about fanfiction before looking through your site. I have heard about fanfiction and how some people are very dedicated to certain series, but the genre never really piqued my interest. One part that I found quite interesting was copyright and how that ties into fanfiction. Since fanfiction is based on other works, it definitely brings ownership into question. I liked how you were able to integrate court cases into this discussion, bringing to life the reality that many fanfiction creators face.
Your project was very informative on fanfiction. I really didn’t know that fanfiction had this much of a history. I especially like your history section. You gave a timeline of fanfiction’s history and it is very easy to understand and read. I like your statement that fanfiction multiplied after the creation of the internet. The internet allows writers to connect to other writers and also to connect with their audiences. Writers can directly upload to fanfiction sites and they can interact with the comments that audiences put out. People can share their interests and allow writers to get feedback about their reading easier. I also like the copyright section on how they affect fanfiction. I agree with your statement that too much copyright hurts creativity. Copyright laws restrict writers and creators on what they can and cannot create.
I didn’t know fanfiction had such a storied history. (pun intended) There’s this concept called “Death of the Author” which basically states that once an author is done writing the project and publishes the work, the ideological ownership they have over that story and its characters is dead. It belongs to the audience now. This concept dovetails so nicely into the concept of fanfiction. It gives the audience power to wield over the stories they love. I loved the format of your project. I had no idea how widespread the idea of Sherlock Holmes Societies were, even with those novels being some of my all time favorites. This is a fantastic project! I really loved it. I loved all the charts and spent five minutes looking at the one with the number of fanfics in each fandom, trying to see how many fandoms I could recognize/have been in (a lot).
I really enjoyed the format you chose to publish on, as it broke up the text and made it easy for the reader to navigate. I felt as though each section was detailed and gave enough context to understand the topic. They each had an important role in helping the reader understand the what fanfiction is, the importance, and its role in society. You were able to connect fanfiction to the entire audience, through a quote and explanation as to how fanfiction allows everyone to be heard, unlike mainstream works.
The hyperlinks complimented the text and the timelines made it easier to understand the growth of fanfiction through time. I also spent some time playing around with the pictures, which was a way to engage audience members and make it more interesting, but I would have liked to see more picture examples of fanfiction instead of mainstream media. My favorite part was the arguments presented, both how the original authors feel about fanfiction and whether fanfiction authors are creative. It shows how there are so many opinions and new ideas being formed through the advancements of technology. This helped in supporting the main idea of how fanfiction can reach many people, even with differences of opinion, but continues to grow.
Your project is exceptionally informative, highlighting many important aspects of fanfiction, such as their creativity and their interaction with copyright laws.
I found your discussion of specific cases, such as Paramount Pictures Corp. v. Axanar Prods and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. v. RDR Books, to be very interesting. Your discussion of these cases showcases how ambiguous the line between fanfiction and copying is. I always wondered how the courts dealt with these issues.
Also, your project has prompted me to think about how much the creativity of fanfiction writers is underappreciated, as you point out in your webtext. Your discussion of the fanfiction “Rebuilding” by Colubrina emphasized this idea to me. Fanfictions, like “Rebuilding” that expand upon undeveloped or unexplained events in the creative universes of established works are equivalent to sequel or prequel series, which are usually much more respected. For example, there is a Star Wars book series that I used to read in grade school called “Jedi Apprentice.” The series focuses on the adventures of two well-known Star Wars characters that happened before the events of the movies. This premise sounds as if it could be a fanfiction series, but the only difference is that the series was officially licensed and fanfictions usually are not. The creativity in premise is essentially the same between fanfiction and prequel series. The creativity of fanfiction should not be as contested a topic as it is.
It was such a pleasure to explore your webpage. You did an excellent job of hitting on many of the key questions regarding fanfiction today. One question that I was happy you addressed was whether writing fanfiction should be considered “creative.” I would wholeheartedly agree with your stance that fanfiction should be considered a creative act, since fanfiction writers are building off of a story and sharing their ideas with others. Addressing this question of creativity also transitioned very well into your discussion of copyright and how this can substantially limit creativity. As a science fiction fan, I enjoyed your mention of the Star Trek example. Copyright discrepancies really make you wonder where (or if) we should draw the line between two similar concepts. For example, what about Star Wars? Couldn’t Star Wars be deemed similar to Star Trek in many ways? Where do we draw the line between similarity and stealing? These are just a few questions I thought of while reading your webtext.
I also wanted to mention that I love how your title references one of Marvel’s newer T.V. shows, “Marvel’s What If…?” Marvel Studios is definitely a reason why I consider myself a part of the fanfiction community. Your title also reminded me of our class discussion of Laurie Penny’s piece way back at the beginning of the semester.
In terms of formatting, I appreciated the layout of your webpage. The tabs were simple to navigate and the visual elements beautifully complimented the text. I especially liked the way you cited your sources with a simple hyperlinked number. This was perfect for a webpage format. Great job of designing such an informative yet easy-to-navigate project!
Hey Talia,
What a fun topic to explore! You effectively incorporated course themes into your project, particularly the idea of the remix, what constitutes creativity, and copyright laws, through the lens of fanfiction. Although I had background knowledge of fanfiction going into this, I was pleased to learn about the existence of organizations such as Archive of Our Own, that makes an effort to protect work of fanfiction writers.
Under the “Publication” tab, you discuss how fanfiction writers often have to alter names of characters and specific details of their stories in order to avoid copyright issues in the publication process. Although these are necessary steps to publish one’s work legally, I think that it detracts from comprehension of the piece. What’s special about fanfiction is that, unlike regular novels with a fresh set of characters, readers go into a piece with background knowledge of characters, their histories, personality traits, and so forth. Accordingly, they often have an attachment to these characters, as well as wishes about what could’ve happened to them in another universe. Changing names and details of fanfiction takes this alternate component away, which can interfere with one’s understanding of it and the author’s intention behind writing the text. I would love to hear more about your thoughts on this idea alongside fanfiction as a whole. What makes you so invested in this topic? Do you think that adjusting the details of fanfiction in the publishing process is worth the losses if it’s getting published? I think providing some of your own perspective would help give readers a voice to relate to and connect with. I would also suggest breaking the text up a little bit more to make the format easier to approach. Otherwise, I think the website was organized well in each tab and concisely communicated your material. Awesome work!
Your webpage was really easy to navigate. I like how the navigation bar is on top of the webpage, which makes it easier to access. In addition, I like how your images are under the text. I prefer having the text in blocks because it keeps my attention longer.
The copyright section reminded me of “How the nerds are reinventing pop culture” reading. Both your paper and Laurie Penny’s article say that fan fiction is as old as literature. In addition, both of you describe the balance between copyright and creative freedom. Fanfiction can be seen as paying homage to the original piece of work. Fan fiction can also bring a newer audience to the original piece of work.
When you mentioned “what if’s” I didn’t know that that was considered fan fiction. I enjoy watching “what if” videos about the NBA. For example, “what if MJ played in todays NBA”. Your paper made me realize that I also participate in watching fan fiction.
Hey Talia,
So for starters, the history section really pulled me in. I thought the section about fanfiction going all the way back to the days of Homer and Shakespeare was pretty. It’s wild to think about the drastic differences that took place between now and then when one thinks about legal rights or the reworking of anothers character/story. I’d be really curious to know more in this department and how they treated that back then whether it was ok, or whether they weren’t cool with using the work of another.
As far as whether fanfiction is creative or not, I do agree that it is creative and I don’t think it dilutes the characters in any way such as something like writing a fanfiction piece about Harry Potter. But I don’t see it as anything more than slight fun. Not to say it can’t be viewed as a stand alone piece of work, but it would be hard to take it seriously in a sense, but that’s just me.
I have never really spent the time to look into fanfictions. All I knew about it going in was that there is a lot of it out there. I remembered an interesting fact that the longest piece of writing is a Loud House fanfiction. It’s truly remarkable the things that can be accomplished with this genre. I didn’t know that it was dominated by women and minorities. I guess it makes sense since you said the media is dominated by men unfortunately. Thankfully, this genre gives those groups a voice and an opportunity to create and express their own ideas and stories. I like how you included novels and other books that were actually created from fanfiction.
The section on the history of fanfiction, I thought, was really well made. I like the incorporation of a timeline on the side. It makes it really appealing visually, and makes it easy to follow along. Who knew that fanfiction went back all that way. It’s also remarkable how much fanfiction has come along. It seems as though it is only getting more and more popular as it is getting more accessible and attainable.
I personally think fanfiction is creative. It is basically human nature to take influence from something to create. Without that, we would not be where we are today would we? Fanfiction clearly requires some form of creativity and thought to produce new story lines and routes that the original takes. I support and agree with creators and authors who are in favor of fan fiction of their work. I can’t really see a downside to it. I guess maybe their character and story may be portrayed in an inappropriate way… but I still think it spreads the original work and its creator’s ideas. This goes into how you discussed copyright. Again, I would say it only has a net benefit on the author and their original work. It’s sad to see these fans get attacked and harassed in lawsuits for their works.
Hi Talia,
What an interesting topic and I just loved your take on it! Personally, I found the impact of “participatory equality” to be the most intriguing because I never really thought of fanfictions to that deep of an extent. The audience demographics of popular novels, movie franchises, etc are grossly diverse compared to the pinhole of characteristics that are commonly represented in the protagonists of these works of media. Fanfictions often are written from a perspective that differs from the typical “blue-orbed” main character, and some even go to the extent to replace the main character’s name entirely with “y/n”.
I disagree with the idea that fanfiction is not creative. To argue against Anne Rice, the very act of taking her characters and deviating away from her plot stems from creativity. I believe that taking something that is already established and reinventing it can be more creative than starting from scratch.
Finally, I really enjoyed the format of your website and was engaged the whole time while I was clicking and scrolling through it. The incorporation of a timeline was genius, and I really did enjoy following along with it as I read the block of text alongside it. Wonderful work!!
This was such an interesting read! I have many friends who both read and write fanfiction and they all seem to really enjoy it. When I asked what they found so interesting about them, many of them replied that it was a way to leave reality for a few hours and jump into a world of “what-if” fantasies. I have always viewed fanfictions as a medium to allow for many people to express themselves through the use of their own favorite entertainment pieces or even complete an open-ending scene based on their interpretations for their own sanity. However, after reading about your project, I came to realize that fanfiction is a platform where people can find a sense of belonging. An example you mentioned was the ability for women and minority groups finding themselves through their favorite stories.
I also found it interesting to read about copyright in fanfiction, specifically the flexibility in it. I would think that people would still have to give credit to such successful works that they are basing their fanfiction writing off of, despite the fact that they are not profiting off of their work. This came a surprise to me, especially since everything on the internet now it emphasized on giving credit to original creators. Moreover, it was astonishing to me when I saw the amount of fanfictions there were for Harry Potter. The fact that every fanfiction writer has created their own story from their imagination is quite impressive.
Overall, I really liked the format of your project as it was easy to navigate. One feature that caught my eye was the cover image of your topic with all the different characters in their fanfiction world. I thought it did a great job in defining what fanfiction really is.
Hi Talia,
I loved your presentation on such an interesting topic, fanfiction, and how you explained what fanfiction was and the large role it plays in society in the “Fan Fiction” section. In your “History” section, I loved how you used a timeline since it helped me visualize the information that you were presenting and it helped show the great diversity of authors whose work may be considered fanfiction. I also liked how you presented the opinions of various authors in your “Creativity” section on the topic of fanfiction as I thought that all authors would support fanfiction but you presented that this may not be the case. In addition, the court cases that you presented were interesting as it highlights that fanfiction may also go through copyright issues.
In looking at how you presented the information, I liked how you used wordpress since it gave the reader the option to use the tabs to navigate the tabs and the use of images allowed me to relate the text to the images and I liked how you used the image of the castle behind the topic titles as it connected everything together well.
Hey Talia,
Let me start off by saying that your website is just absolutely beautiful. I thought your project thought out and I love the different aspects and takes you decided to use in approaching such a broad topic as fan fiction.
I love the way you structured the history portion of the website as it reminded me of some thing I would come across when doing genuine research for a project of my own; very professional and super intuitive. I was also intrigued, but not surprised, to hear that twilight was originally based off of a fan fiction. To be honest it really reads like one lol.
Overall I loved your project, I definitely appreciate the effort you put into it.
Hi Talia!
This topic is fascinating to me. I am not a consumer of fanfiction myself–at least not knowingly–but I am amazed at the idea that so many people have let their imaginations run wild with the characters and plots of original creators and then taken the extra step to actually write down the story they have created. I know I often think of scenarios in which my favorite characters *could* have found themselves in had there been different decisions made, but I never thought to write those fleeting thoughts down let alone flesh them out into a full story.
I appreciated your breakdown of the different subtopics that you chose to write about. The timeline included in the history tab was helpful in placing the different eras of fanfiction. I was surprised to find out that whether fanfiction creators are being creative or not was even a question. As I said before, I am amazed that people have brought those little fleeting thoughts to life at all–it is in and of itself a feat of creativity.
I found this project really interesting and informative to me because I feel like no one around me talks about fanfiction much, so I learned a lot from this. Overall, the presentation of the project was neat and the visuals were really good. I personally liked the timeline that was on the right margin in the “History” section. Also, in this section, you stated that Supernatural has the most fanfics posted on AO3. I’m a huge fan of the show and I had no idea there were so many fanfics written about it. It surprised me that there were more fanfics on Supernatural than Harry Potter. However, I think that one of the reasons could be that the show has been around for about 15 years. After reading this project, I think that fanfiction adds onto the original story and lets the fandom continue to grow, which can build a community.
Talia,
Great website for your project! I think it was a great way to present your project. The headings on top were simple to navigate. One thing I am curious on is why you chose the visuals for your project. Any reason for the buildings and architecture chosen as the background for your headings?
Personally, I did not know anything much about fanfiction before looking through your site. I have heard about fanfiction and how some people are very dedicated to certain series, but the genre never really piqued my interest. One part that I found quite interesting was copyright and how that ties into fanfiction. Since fanfiction is based on other works, it definitely brings ownership into question. I liked how you were able to integrate court cases into this discussion, bringing to life the reality that many fanfiction creators face.
Your project was very informative on fanfiction. I really didn’t know that fanfiction had this much of a history. I especially like your history section. You gave a timeline of fanfiction’s history and it is very easy to understand and read. I like your statement that fanfiction multiplied after the creation of the internet. The internet allows writers to connect to other writers and also to connect with their audiences. Writers can directly upload to fanfiction sites and they can interact with the comments that audiences put out. People can share their interests and allow writers to get feedback about their reading easier. I also like the copyright section on how they affect fanfiction. I agree with your statement that too much copyright hurts creativity. Copyright laws restrict writers and creators on what they can and cannot create.