"But this is my story and this is how I wanted to write it": Author's notes as a fannish claim to power in fan fiction writing
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| Academic Commentary | |
|---|---|
| Title: | "But this is my story and this is how I wanted to write it": Author's notes as a fannish claim to power in fan fiction writing |
| Commentator: | Alexandra Herzog |
| Date(s): | 2012 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| External Links: | "But this is my story and this is how I wanted to write it": Author's notes as a fannish claim to power in fan fiction writing |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
"But this is my story and this is how I wanted to write it": Author's notes as a fannish claim to power in fan fiction writing is a 2012 academic paper by Alexandra Herzog.
It was published in the eleventh issue of Transformative Works and Cultures.
Some Sections
- The conception of A/Ns: A space for tensions and negotiations
- A transactional space: The inherent power of A/Ns
- Subcategories of A/Ns: A reflection of fans and their understanding of the role of the author
- Interpreting the author in A/Ns: Fandom asserts its power
Abstract
Issues of power have always been an important factor in fan fiction writing. The publishers of the source texts were long regarded as a dominant force, with fans conventionally relegated to the status of an audience largely deprived of authority, even when they produced fan fiction and thus challenged the sovereignty of interpretation original authors often preferred to keep for themselves. This essay argues that author's notes as a part of fannish paratext are an essential means of supporting the fan authors' claim to power by providing these writers with an explicit space to make their voices heard. They allow fans to express their interpretation of different models of authorship and give them the opportunity to assume a variety of author roles. Thus negotiating between a belief in the significance of the individual author, Barthes's death of the author, and newer collaborative forms of writing, fans constitute themselves as an authoritative body in regard to rights of interpreting text or writing fan fiction. Focusing on their own identity as writers, on the fannish community, and on their text and its position in the larger archive of the fandom, fans reconceptualize themselves as powerful producers, whose agency becomes obvious in the vast body of their texts. Author's notes, I claim, are thus crucial in fans assuming and exerting control and authority.
Some Topics Discussed
- author's notes on fan fic as a way to convey and emphasize fannish agency
- "the power negotiations that have pervaded and shaped the fan community for decades"
- author's notes as "a space for tensions and negotiations"
- the fandoms Supernatural
- disclaimers and how they have become rote and often something sassy and reactive
- author's notes as a way "to ensure that the text is read properly"
- "initial sample of about 2,000 stories in the fandoms of Supernatural, Twilight, and Star Wars on FanFiction.net from the last six years" (roughly 2006-2012)