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...About the Emily
Chesley Reading Circle
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Media Coverage | ||
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Stranger than fiction by Mike Doherty TORONTO -- It is a truth universally acknowledged: No matter how much one is obsessed with something, one can always find someone more obsessed -- and increasingly that person can be found on the Internet. The World Wide Web has, of course, become the medium of choice for myriad subcultures, and one of the most impressive -- and bewildering -- is the Internet community of fan-fiction writers. Mostly ignored by the mainstream press and operating under pseudonyms, these authors are inspired by their obsession with certain books, TV shows and other creative works. They toil away at their computers without hope of remuneration or fame. Often the only recognition they receive comes in the unwelcome shape of a lawsuit. Their task is quite literally (and literarily) a labour of love -- in most cases, love for people they've never met and will never meet, but with whom they feel they have deep, personal relationships. Nonetheless, fan fictioneers produce great quantities of work, and in the process raise questions about appropriation of voice, authorial integrity, the validity of copyright, the point at which private creation becomes public property. Anyone seeking a window into the world of fan fiction will find it by visiting www.fanfiction.net, a huge archive of stories, poems, novels and screenplays. Enchanted by Monty Python but unhappy with the ending of Holy Grail? Three fans have come up with alternate endings. Impressed with Nintendo's video games but never thought Super Mario's brother Luigi got the attention he deserved? Several stories set out to redress this wrong. Passionate about Dawson's Creek but upset that Dawson and Joey aren't together? Various authors set out to fulfill your wishes. Of course, some fan writers exalt the more obscure. Remember the 1980s spy show Scarecrow and Mrs. King? Fanfiction.net boasts close to 600 stories based on its characters. Author Kim D., who describes herself as "a stay-at-home mom with a love for writing," asks: "Ever wonder about the scenes we didn't see during The Legend of Das Geisterschloss?" Perhaps a more pertinent question comes to mind: Why should anyone care? Jennifer Hale, who has written pseudonymous biographies of Xena's Lucy Lawless and Buffy's Sarah Michelle Gellar for Toronto's ECW Press, has come across quite a bit of fan fiction over the course of her research. Her theory is as follows: "Some people have always written, whether it be poetry or short stories, but when they discover a show like this that really changes their life (and when it comes to shows like Xena or Star Trek, the fans live the shows as much as watch them), it inspires them to use those characters in their stories. And in many cases, they may be frustrated with the way the plots are going on the shows, so they write them differently, learn to control the characters, and make the plot go the way they wish it had on television." The work itself "ranges from practically unreadable to so good you wonder why the head writers on the shows aren't hiring these people." In a recent survey of visitors to fanfiction.net, 70 per cent of the 56,000 respondents claimed to be between the ages of 10 and 19 -- no stay-at-home moms these. Many, it seems, are aspiring writers. Sixteen-year-old Gareth Owen Jones, for instance, has posted his full-length screenplay Honey, I Shrunk the Kids -- Again! There is, admittedly, a limited audience for such pieces (one reviewer on the site comments, "Do you have a life?"), but Jones writes that he has the "ambition to become actor and screenwriter." Writers like Jones attempt to hone their craft by having their stories reviewed, and sometimes workshopped, on the site. A number of columns and forums deal with issues such as character development, research and even grammar -- the site seeks to provide what schools do not. "Jekkal," a high-school student from the southern United States, writes both fiction (based on the science-fiction book and TV series Animorphs) and a column for fanfiction.net. She remembers how she began writing fan fiction: "It was spontaneous. . . . A great deal of my school writing assignments before I discovered the Internet was fan fiction, albeit done in such a way that most people wouldn't recognize the true source." Much fan fiction is explicit in revealing its sources, and the copyright issues involved are heating up. In some ways, the debate resembles a literary cross between the decade-old war on hip-hop sampling and the current Napster controversy. Jekkal writes a column called "Corporate Bandwagon," in which she regularly takes corporations and writers to task for banning fan fiction and shutting down Web sites devoted to it. "My opinion," she states, "is that most fan works are for personal use, and thus do not infringe on a trademark/copyright as long as the work is not made for monetary profit (feedback and praise is technically 'profit'), and the fan does not make a claim to the trademark." Jekkal's column provides a list of companies that she believes "stomp on personal expression and imagination," including Fox, which is trying to shut down a popular science Web site called The Why Files, and Warner Bros., which appears to be busy stamping out Harry Potter fan sites. |
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