- At Crushable Jill O’Rourke discussed how much entertainment is fanfic. “Fanfiction is also present on TV. I’ll give you one flawless example: the entire Once Upon a Time series. It’s practically a show about fanfiction, as it deals with literal alternate universes, multiple versions of characters within the same story, original characters, and crossovers between countless fairy tales, shipping included (and I mean that in the ‘They should kiss’ way, not in the ‘buying something on Amazon’ way). People have then gone a step further and written fanfiction around Once Upon a Time. Fanfic-ception!”
- Blogger Alan Verill wrote about Fan Fiction, Writing, and the Learning Process. “Anyway, all of this to say that perhaps our first reaction to reading someone’s lousy fan fiction should not be to mock them. Perhaps we, as a community of writers and readers, should actually be encouraging people to learn and try and grow, as opposed to crushing them under the heel of our Internet mockery. And yeah, I know that’s pretty much what the Internet has become these days — a giant room where everyone takes meth and grabs megaphones and screams at each other without pause. I just think it would be better if we all endeavored to change that, even if only in some kind of small and subtle way.”
- Fictorians posted about trying to become a writer. “If I had it to do over, I’m tempted to say that I’d push myself to start submitting my work sooner. I’m not sure, though, how to pinpoint the time in my life where I was mature enough to not interpret a rejection as a portent of doom, personal insult, or sign of my complete and incurable ineptitude. I’m also grateful for the epic saga I wrote that taught me yes, I do have the ability to write a book’s worth of material. So instead, I’d tell myself to keep in mind that fandom is not a career.”
- At The Mary Sue Emmy Ellis defended badfic. “I’m going to stand up for ‘terrible’ fanfiction, in all its bizarrities and failures. I’m going to stand up for smut and slash, for utterly pointless fluff, for high school and college alternate universes, for crossovers of either characters or entire worlds, and – I’ll try – for crackfic. You know, the kinds of fanfiction that are brought up when folks try to tar and feather the whole medium with a broad brush. If you bear with me, I might even go so far as to mount a defense for badly-written and ill-conceived fanfiction. And, for your convenience, I’ll do so in that order.”
What fanfiction has made a difference to you? Write about it 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 Fannews post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.