Filling in the Gaps: Fans and Fan Fiction on the Internet
From Fanlore
| Commentary | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Filling in the Gaps: Fans and Fan Fiction on the Internet |
| Commentator: | Sue Hazlett |
| Date(s): | 2000 |
| Medium: | online essay |
| Fandom: | X-Files,Meta, fan fiction |
| External Links: | archived here |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Filling in the Gaps: Fans and Fan Fiction on the Internet is an essay written by Sue Hazlett at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
"This study is intended to be a case study of fan fiction. I chose to focus on a specific television program, the X-Files, which has a wide variety of fiction devoted to it, but in which the scope of writing is fairly narrow. I also chose the X-Files because of my familiarity with the show and because the relationship between Mulder and Scully limits the varieties of fan fiction written about it. There are several archives of hundreds of stories, but most focus on the characters as a team. I contacted, via email, thirty authors of fanfics posted to the Haven site. This is an edited site that reviews fan fiction and posts the best stories on its fan fiction pages. The site posts about eight stories per week. Based on past experience with surveys, I hoped to get five or six responses to my queries. I was pleasantly surprised to receive answers from every author that I contacted. Some respondents were curious as to how I came to be doing this kind of research, some were surprised that I found their stories to be of interest for academic research, and most were very supportive of the project and happy to answer my questions."
