Roundtable: the past, present and future of fan fiction

Geraghty, Lincoln, Chin, Bertha, Morimoto, Lori, Jones, Bethan, Busse, Kristina, Coppa, Francesca, Santos, Kristine Michelle “Khursten” and Stein, Louisa Ellen 2022. Roundtable: the past, present and future of fan fiction. Humanities 11 (5) , 120. 10.3390/h11050120

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Abstract

Fanfiction as a cultural practice has rapidly evolved in recent years, from a community-based form of social interaction to a globally recognised form of narrative world-building. Once a niche genre of writing, shared mainly within small communities to express emotional connections with popular media texts, fanfiction is now viewed as a means to create new content that extends and builds on those texts beyond national and industrial boundaries. Moving from notions of the mass audience to individual levels of fandom—and thus from the sociological to the psychological—early studies largely explored the psychological processes and motivations of female fans in the forms of pleasure, fantasy, and desire, as evidenced in key examples drawn from science fiction series such as Star Trek. By critically assessing notions of gender and sexuality in fan culture, these works highlighted the need to account for sexual desires and pleasures in fandom while illustrating the limitations of such approaches in their inability to conceptualise sustained and regular consumption practices. More recent work has recognised the increasing popularisation and professionalisation of the genre, where authors are able to reach a wider audience, create their own readership, and see fanfiction of their work emerging. Digital platforms and alternative forms of storytelling have helped to change what we might now consider fanfiction. It is not just about textual inspiration; celebrities and other personalities in the public eye have become the subject for fanfiction authors. Social media platforms, fanfiction websites, and other digital spaces for sharing content, such as YouTube and TikTok, have caused the genre to become an international phenomenon that crosses linguistic and cultural borders. This Special Issue of Humanities seeks to explore the new and changing forms of fanfiction and consider the importance of new technologies, social platforms, and global audiences in creating new methods of storytelling in a digital world. By way of an introduction, we invited four leading experts in the field to discuss what they consider to be the key developments in the study of fanfiction and what important work remains to be done on this ever-evolving medium. We want to thank Kristina, Francesca, Louisa and Khursten for agreeing to be on this roundtable discussion on the past, present, and future of fanfiction.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Journalism, Media and Culture
Publisher:	MDPI
ISSN:	2076-0787
Date of Acceptance:	17 August 2022
Last Modified:	15 Apr 2025 09:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/177517

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