Things that are not a property of all fanworks

[alias_sqbr]

Inspired by this poll and the surrounding conversation plus stuff I've seen people say before.

The following are examples of things that most people (including their creators) would consider fanworks but still often get excluded from statements saying or implying "All fanworks are...".

"What counts as a fanwork" is a different question to "what should be on the AO3", but I think it 's something that need to be considered before that question can be sensibly answered (plus I just think it's interesting!).


Text: fanart, fanvids, fanscarves etc.

Based on a well known or commercial canon: Lots is based on works by friends or obscure bits of history etc.

Noncommercial: lots of people who are totally ensconced in fanworks fandom sell their fanart or fanfic based on out of copyright works. Plus there's all the stuff that's part of mainstream culture like Wicked. (not that everyone classifies this as fanfic).

Not legally protected: as well as stuff based on out of copyright canon there historical RPF and parody.

Made out of love of canon: sometimes it's an expression of how much canon makes you angry (sometimes this is mixed with disappointed love, too, but it's very much a continuum) Or done as a prompt for a canon you haven't even seen, etc.

Made as part of a community around that work: Lots of fanworks are made in isolation because the creator is just inspired to make them, they either might not be in the fandom for that work (if one even exists!) or not in or even aware of fanwork fandom at all. And sometimes the same people go on to join a fanworks fandom and continue to make exactly the same sorts of fanworks.

Using fannish conventions: see above, and this is also true for some works whose creators are involved the relevant fanworks fandom. Also there's not just one "fanworks community", and conventions differ.

Translatable into original fic with some extra backstory: A parody of your own work just isn't the same. Fixit fics are satisfying because they fix the broken canon in your head, if you made an original story with the same plot the canon story would still be "broken".

Pornographic or otherwise going against community norms: *waves little G-rated genfic flag*

Designed to hit people's buttons (as porn, romance, satisfying angst etc): No more inherently than other creative works, I'd say. Fanworks which are dense, dry, inaccessible etc are less common but do exist.

Using someone else's characters: Stories with original characters in a fictional setting.

Stuff I've seen some argument about:

Fiction: meta, picspams, and depending on how you define things, fanart and crafts etc.

Based on a fictional work: Real person fiction. Anthropomorfic.

Not original: I don't know that I've read any original works that their creators and consumers consider fanworks, but apparently they exist! Of course then there's the question "How do you (and they) define original?". (See the comments for some discussion of this)


So, what have I forgotten?

In my opinion fanworks (and fanfic in particular) are an incredibly fuzzy subjective category, the intersection of many interconnected motivations and approaches. I'm frequently reminded of this since I make stuff like G rated satirical fancomics of out-of-copyright sources that don't fit into a lot of people's preconceptions. If there's one thing that melannen's poll made clear to me it's that even my own internal definition makes no freaking sense, so trying to generalize and include everyone seems almost impossible! Yet saying "fanworks are what ever their creators say they are" can obviously be taken to ridiculous extremes.

So...I guess the moral I'm going for is, be aware that it's complicated, and don't overgeneralise. And you are welcome to say "All the fanworks that I like are X"..as long as you accept that other people may be creating and consuming fanworks for entirely different reasons.

(And yes: I am now, finally, largely over my cold and thus up to long rambly meta again :))

Comments

[hl]

Not original: I don't know that I've read any original works that their creators and consumers consider fanworks, but apparently they exist! Of course then there's the question "How do you (and they) define original?".

You probably haven't read it (or perhaps even seen it?), but you can see subforums for original work on the Austen forums. I don't read much of it, but some reads pretty much like a very OOC fanfic (i.e. the characters are not the canon characters, but the tropes and conventions and style are the same), and some is that sort of borderline stuff that could be classified either way. Like modern fiction 'inspired' on P&P, but not mimicking the plot (vs actual modern AUs). There was a very interesting one about some actors putting on a performance of P&P in a building (it seems this actually happens?), for tourists, and it actually sort of mimicked the plot, but with a twist.

And they do call it 'original fiction' or 'original works', but as I said, they're posted along (or next to) fanfics, and they've very similar if not identical sensibilities.

[alias_sqbr]

I think I am going to have to read some to get my head around the concept, since I would describe much of the published Regency Romance I've read as "Like Pride and Prejudice fanfic, but with original characters" (and generally better written, to be honest). There's less stuff like fourth wall breaking and gay sex and social commentary than you get in a lot of fanfic, but I haven't much of those things in P&P fanfic anyway.

I'm not denying that it is somehow different to mainstream original fiction set in that era, I just have trouble imagining it! Well, beyond stuff that is on that boundary between original and fanfiction, like melannen was poking at. Of course as you say in your post, a story is categorised both by it's content and the context in which it was written. I can imagine that if one wrote lots of regency fic, some with original characters and some with Jane Austen ones then it would make sense to put them all together.

[naraht]

What this discussion has emphasized for me is that everyone wants to make fandom in their own image. This is a natural impulse but it leads to a great deal of wrangling.

Not original: I don't know that I've read any original works that their creators and consumers consider fanworks, but apparently they exist!

The main genre that I understand to fit under this category is "original slash," which grew out of fannish communities and obviously models itself on a fannish genre (slash). So it is inspired by fandom if not by particular fannish texts.

In general I think that the category "works that fit comfortably within the social context of fandom" is much larger than the category "works that are agreed to be fanworks." And the former is much harder to define satisfactorily.

[alias_sqbr]

*nods*

I have these really complicated feelings about the social context of fandom, since I often make fanworks which are unambiguously transformative but not what most people think of when they talk about transformative works. So, following your first point, I am inclined to prefer "is it transformative?" to "Does it fit the social context?" as the most important question :)

Original slash is a good example of fannish original fic, thanks for reminding me of it. I'm not a big slash fan so it's not a genre I've ever looked into.

[ex_peasant441]

I've known people create an OC for a fic and then take the OC off and play with them alone. It still somehow remains a fanwork though because it has its origins and conventions, not to mention the audience, rooted in fandom.

Or there is stuff like the penguin!fic currently doing the rounds in the Buffy fandom - it started with some character names but it has now gone so AU it is ridiculous, anyone from the PTB that seriously tried to sue over that would be laughed out of court, but clearly the fic is of and based in fandom because of who is reading and writing it.

[dharma_slut]

yes, this, and I have been involved in a fandom that grew new branches around of a couple of ad hoc original characters. Now, within that group of writers, those characters are permanent members of the crew of the Pearl, and she would no more sail without them than without Captain Sparrow.

[alias_sqbr]

I get the feeling there's this whole original-but-fannish subset of fandom that has somehow managed to mostly pass me by, I guess because it's so far from what I tend to want from fanfic.

[flamebyrd]

Since I am at this moment trying to figure out how to get gay sex into a Regency Romance, your reply to the first comment there made me laugh.

I haven't been following this discussion because I think I'm too close to the subject matter to be rational about it, since in many ways bb_shousetsu could be said to be my primary fandom at the moment. (I write 3-4 stories for it a year, vs. actual fandoms where I may output 1 or 2.)

I think there are some types of original fiction that really are written by fans, for fans. The aforementioned bb_shousetsu is a zine for original fiction intended to be in the style of yaoi phonebook manga (and presumably read by yaoi fans). When you're writing for a particular audience, there are a certain amount of world-building/details you can just gloss over on the assumption that your readers are familiar with the conventions and tropes of your genre. (One supposes this also applies to Regency Romance and other pulp fiction writing.)

I would not call my crazy-lj-pseudo-bandom a fanfic, but it wasn't written for a general audience, it was written to express my love for some of the tropes in bandom (without the overhead of having to write about real people XD), so I feel like it's on the fanwork spectrum.

Um, I don't really have a conclusion here, except that I think that while writing fanfic and original fiction are wildly different processes, reading it a different matter. There is plenty of fanfic I'll happily read as original fiction, for example, and (in my opinion) a yaoi fan is far more likely to enjoy works in bb_shousetsu than one who has never heard of the genre. (Much in the same way that it can be very difficult to explain Ouran High Host Club to people unfamiliar with shoujo manga - actually, this fact probably undermines my argument.)

[alias_sqbr]

I get the feeling you and I are feeling similar defensiveness for mirrored reasons: It's easy to know your stuff fits in if it's transformative and fannish, but some of your stuff is fannish but maybe not transformative, while some of mine is transformative but not as fannish, and in both cases there's this niggling worry that it Doesn't Count.

Personally I am usually more interested in the transformativeness than the fannishness, if I can find unfannish versions of stuff I like I often enjoy it as much if not more (het romance for example) So I read descriptions like yours and hele's and think "But..why would you bother? And how is it different from general pastiche?". But this conversation has made me realise that while such works really aren't part of my fannish experience and I find them a bit hard to get my head around they are as much a part of fandom for some fans as the stuff I'm interested in is for me.

(And then I think: But I love pastiche, so why am I not into fannish original fiction? SO MANY QUESTIONS)

[pseudo_tsuga]

And then there's stuff like doujinshi that nobody seem to be talking about. Doujinshi are fancomics of manga, done both by the author themselves and fans, sold in a huge convention every year. A popular doujinshi artist who makes enough copies can make quite a bit of money. Doujinshi's also where many mangaka got their start and it's implicitly allowed since there's only limited runs and it's made out of love. It seems to straddle a lot of those lines you state up above (especially because a lot of them are porn).

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, Doujinshi! (As mod of fan_comics I really should remember them :)) Even in English speaking countries I think fanart/comics fandoms tend to be way more comfortable selling their works than fanfic fandom, both in terms of getting away with it and with thinking it's ethical.

[aquaeri]

Don't laugh, but this reminds me so much of taxonomists and other biologists arguing about how to define species.

From which I conclude there is no definition. There will be the stuff "near the middle" that everyone agrees is very definitely fanwork. And then as you move away from the middle in various ways by changing various features, you get stuff that's less and less fanwork-like, until you're at some point where it's definitely not fanwork.

And good luck being able to draw a clear boundary on that journey, because there will be stuff just inside your boundary that will be more like stuff just outside your boundary, than either is to either "middle" fanwork or definite Not-Fanwork.

You can use the colour metaphor instead if you prefer - there's colours everyone agrees are blue, and colours everyone agrees are green, but good luck coming up with a definition of the blue-green boundary that will keep everyone happy.

I don't have a good icon for this - I picked this one because of the blue and green :-).

[alias_sqbr]

Absolutely.

But as with taxonomy: as impossible as it is making distinctions, those distinctions do have to be made. It's just important to remember how arbitrary and fuzzy they are.

[ar]

I think that RP logs, commentspam, and all other trappings of (fandom-based) roleplaying belong somewhere on the list of Things Which Are Fanworks, too. They're like fic in many ways--and after the fact, rereading them makes them basically like communal fanfic--but the feeling of RPing is completely different to me, to the point that I wouldn't file them in as any kind of fanfic subset. Especially when you get into commentspam, which in many cases makes use of icons to help tell the story as much as the words do.

[alias_sqbr]

And see, there's another part of fandom I know almost nothing about. But yes, from what I know of RP it's it's own separate but definitely fannish subgenre.

[azurelunatic]

And then there's "spinfic", which is a word that I just learned and I'm still trying out, which is works that are clearly fanfiction based off of another work, because they depend on familiarity with the original in order to actually make sense, but the fandom-of-origin is (sometimes) unreleased/non-traditionally-published work, and the author is the same person as the creator of the fandom-of-origin.

The entire concept sometimes makes my head spin, which may or may not be where the term comes from.

[alias_sqbr]

Yet another genre of fannish creativity I had never even heard of! Thanks.