OTW Fannews: Fanfic revelations

  • In a piece about Harold Ramis and a mock Ghostbusters article, interviewer Alex Steed said “Your piece stuck out to me because it really changes the way I look at fan fiction. Someone recently asked what the focus of my larger body of writing and I said that I am interested in taking the world at large and making it more understandable by looking at it through the lens of popular culture. I had long known fan fiction as crappy stories people write about their favorite fan universes or erotic stories about their favorite X-Men or whatever but when I saw this it was something I understood immediately.”
  • His revelation is one of many that come about when people start pondering fanworks. Latin Language Blog posted a look at the tragic stories of ancient Rome. “Ovid, in my opinion, is first author to truly take the time to write his version of a ‘fan fiction’…Ovid composes the works known as the Heroides in order to breathe new life into these Heroines and give the much needed character work to these mythical women who have been frozen in time.” Linked from the blog was Quirk Books own post about 4 Famous Authors Who Wrote Fanfiction, notably RPF, crossover, and self-insert fic.
  • At The Globe and Mail, Kate Taylor considered what happens when stories get told by new people. “The characters seem mighty durable; it’s the contemporary sequels that feel more contingent. These books are definitely creatures of their eras – that ‘different light’ is the illumination provided by contemporary sensibilities.” Taylor concludes that continuations of old stories owe “more to the literal death of the original authors than to the theoretical Death of the Author: time marches on and copyright eventually expires.”
  • A guest writer on Offbeat Home & Life had a more personal revelation about writing fanfic: it “changed my sex life”. Discussing her decision to share her fanfic with her husband, she detailed how it increased trust, got them to take risks, boosted her libido, and made her a partner who was more aware and in the moment. “I’m glad I threw caution to the wind and shared out what kind of things I was up to behind the computer screen, because my marriage is better because of it. Would we be fine without it? Would we still be together? Would we still be having great sex? A million times yes. But, I will take the extra boost anywhere I can get it.”

What fanfic revelations have you come across? Write about them on Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

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