- The Hindu featured an article on writer Shreya Prabhu Jindal who discussed her start in fanfic. “Most of the audience members were eager to know how Shreya, in her early twenties, managed to write a book at such a young age. Shreya, an English teacher at Vasant Valley School, began writing when she was 13. As a young girl and a budding writer, she discovered fan fiction, and ever since, has written in that genre, relatively unknown in India. ‘A lot of my writing is inspired by fan fiction. I visualise stories as scenes and there are cliff hangers in my stories.'”
- The National of the United Arab Emirates wrote about Kindle Worlds. “[P]ushed to its logical conclusions, it has potentially major implications for the way the creative industries work, and, indeed, for what we mean by ‘fiction’. As fan fiction comes into the mainstream, it’s possible to envision a future in which popular novels become only the first instalment in an ecosystem of further stories. And over time, will the great distinction we maintain now between the original work and the fan fiction simply fade away? Currently, our idea of the creative process, and of ‘art’, is tightly wound up with the idea of a single author – this is the idea of the creative genius, given to us by the 19th-century romantics – but in this networked age, perhaps that conception of art is finally losing relevance. Instead, we may come to see art as the aggregated efforts of a number of networked people: a creation of the global brain, not a solitary author.”
- Malaysia’s The Star Online had two features on fanworks. One focused on online RPGs. “Nurhanani Fazlur Rahman, 19, prefers the unique collaborative effort involved in ‘role-play fanfic’. And she doesn’t do her writing on forum boards like most of the others in the genre – she does it on Tumblr, as part of a community of about 30 authors from around the world. In fact, Nurhanani – or Nani, as her friends call her – has five separate Tumblr blogs, each dedicated to a character from the A Song Of Fire And Ice series.”
- The other feature focused on fanfiction’s evolution. “Known simply as fanfic, this genre of storytelling has actually been around for quite some time. Some even say Charlotte Brontë and her siblings pioneered it when they started writing fantasy adventures based on Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington – an actual person. In today’s world, that’s known as real-person fanfic – very popular among One Direction and Kpop fans. And in the 70s, of course, we had the Star Trek-based Spockanalia fanzine, which was basically filled with fanfic. But thanks to the Internet, e-books and tablet devices, fanfic has really started to grow like crazy in recent years, including in Malaysia.”
What stories have you seen about fanworks in your country? Write about them in 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.