I sent invites to fans of the Harry Potter fandom because it has a large fanbase and therefore more people might respond.
Three participants responded to my chat, and I asked them to write a short excerpt of their favorite plot of the universe and send it to me, and I sent the excerpts in ChatGPT and asked them to generate a reply for the authors called “Dear Writer”.
1st participant: Peter Lee
Peter was surprised by this approach and touched because the character inside their favorite universe praised the way they wrote. They immediately wrote a letter back and repolished the story they wrote.
Yilan found the intervention very interesting, and later sent me a link of a Harry Potter fanfic audio that she is currently listening to. I was surprised because this was her first fanfic ever.
For a very long time in my project, I hadn’t felt like I was being heard, and I felt like I was working extremely hard at the wrong angle of what fiction, and fanfiction is. It had something to do with characters, it had something to do with stereotypes and what other people thought, but for several months I couldn’t piece it together.
At the end of September, my project took a heck of a large detour. The medium of my project consisted mainly of TEXT, and I missed VISUALS so much that I tried to wrestle my research question to let me put something visual to it, hence “cosplay”, because that related to fiction, and that contained visuals, and that somehow in my mind related to masks that I was always mindlessly drawing about.
I still remember the objects from my Box of Uncertainties from the very start of the course: the Patronizer, the Pin of Norse Myths, the Book of Narnia, and the Trial Frame that creates fiction through fragments of reality.
Inside the box are two basic things: Rules and Mythology.
When we write fiction in the world we are right now, we have to follow certain rules. The rules of copyright, and the rules of making it a real job. Fanfiction breaks those rules by simply allowing people to have a hobby.
Yesterday I had a conversation with Abani about my project, and I told her that I couldn’t help censoring myself when I faced the tutors (which, however I tried, could not get rid of the student perspective that they were a representation of authority) and how at the start of the course I thought this course wanted everybody to be activists of a certain area. But I wasn’t an activist. I’m just someone who likes stories and likes to tell stories, and I was having huge trouble writing a report about this because I’ll instinctively censor myself again.
Abani suggested that I write a report not to the tutors, but to a fictional character whom I really liked, and since they do not exist in this world, I wouldn’t have the anxiety of how they would think about me.
This led me to think and experiment. I picked Jinx from Arcane 1 and 2, went to ChatGPT, programmed it with my words to make it sound like Jinx, and started a conversation with her.
After a brainstorming during the tutorial on Monday, I decided to conduct an intervention in which I let people compare the difference between slash-fic and actual literature.
I initiated a starter intervention on Nov.9th by picking a fanfic that portrays Mary Bonnet in Our Flag Means Death and paired that up with a dialogue of Sense and Sensibility. I asked 4 of my friends to read two short excerpts of those 2 works, and then guess which one is the fanfiction and which one is the original. The results were pretty unerving…all four of them guessed it correctly.
Reflecting on the starter intervention, I realised that I hadn’t controlled the variates of the excerpts, and the genre of original fiction and fanfiction was similar only in portraying a female character, for Our Flag Means Death is a pirate comedy, and Sense and Sensibility is a romance novel.
Since different fanfic writers research in remotely different areas when writing different genres(Spotify, 2022), I decided to pair original works and fanfics of the same genre together. Because I was working on a time limit, I decided to search for 4 main genres of fiction based on the top 10 most popular fiction genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-fi and Romance.
Based on the 4 most popular genres from the pre-intervention survey, I searched for 4 different novels, paired them up, and sent them to the corresponding participants.
Here is an example of the 2 excerpts from the genre “FANTASY”.
Here are the 4 pairings I chose.
Fantasy: (from The Hobbit) Correct aswer: A
Adventure: (from Treasure Island) Correct aswer: A
REFLECTION: The results from both rounds clearly showed that fanfiction is often seen as lower quality compared to original literature, reinforcing a common stereotype about fan-created works. At first, I might have seen this as a failure. But now, I’m approaching it from a broader perspective. It really highlights the uphill battle in shifting people’s perceptions of fanfiction as a legitimate art form.
Before this course I would have marked this intervention as “failed”, but I chose to look at the results from a more holistic perspective. This demonstrates a prevailing challenge in changing perceptions about fanfiction’s artistic value. Moreover, many fans praised the fanfic they read, saying that they enjoyed reading the excerpts, however “low quality” they were because they loved the plot and characters in the original work and enjoyed the stories that were retold and continued.
Despite the perception of “low quality,” a lot of fans genuinely enjoyed reading the excerpts. They appreciated the fanfiction not because it was polished or literary, but because it brought beloved plots and characters to life in new and creative ways. The familiarity and emotional connection they had with the original works made these stories meaningful and fun for them. This shows that fanfiction doesn’t just succeed or fail based on traditional literary standards—it’s more about the passion and joy it brings to fans, which is a huge part of its cultural value.
EVALUATION: My reflection suggests that comparing fanfiction to original literature is not about superiority but about recognizing fanfiction’s unique participatory state and the importance of exposing the diversity and range of stories within fanfiction. It’s much more useful to give exposure to the range of stories that exist within fandom.
I reflected back on the conversation I had with Steve Penfold(comic artist I met in Comic Con) about the Stories in the Middle. In his theory, fanfiction had a spectrum with sexual and pornographic plots used as fan service at one spectrum, and the original fiction(really splendid ones like Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings) on the right, which had characters that were strictly censored by copyright laws. Both ends have a strong and fixed group of audiences, but we are missing the stories in the middle. The stories that people have told and retold throughout history and slowly became what we call mythology.(I mean that is how mythology is created and formed).
After gaining feedback from the Newspaper intervention, I drew the conclusion that slash-fic can have deep character depth as any original work.
So, in this intervention, I aim to create a propaganda that brands fanfiction as telling alternate stories of the characters we love, rather than simply using original characters for sex.
This intervention has steps:
Step 1: Collect the stories in the middle from slash readers and slash writers;
Step 2: Measuring the stories: (Not quite sure measuring will make sense…)Brand the stories with character archetypes instead of tops and bottoms;
Step 3: Showcase the stories (in newspaper form?) and show it to literature professors, and media industries.
After a conversation about my project with my fellow cohorts last Wednesday, I noticed that slash-fic is quite a niche subject and only the people within this subculture knew what it was. My classmates were seldomly in this circle and the first thing I had to do was to explain to them what slash fic was. That brought to mind the stereotypes of slash-fic.
Intervention Stage 1: Inside London Comic Con(10.26)
To find out people’s negative perceptions about slash fanfiction in general, I decided to conduct an intervention at London Comic Con.
According to my research and the first intervention conducted in Edinburgh Fringe, the general public(even would automatically link the word “fanfiction” to “sex” and “porn”.
I decided to show this stereotype exactly to people who were interested. I eventually decided to spotlight a common stereotype of fanfiction: slash-fic, a genre centered on same-sex romantic relationships. Slash-fic represents a significant category in fan publishing and is arguably one of fandom’s most unique contributions to popular literature. I chose to focus on slash-fic because it exemplifies fanfiction’s creativity and boundary-pushing nature while also serving as a focal point for stereotypes and misunderstandings.
I used a medium which I wasn’t really familiar with before, which was the form of newspapers. Historically, newspapers have been a platform for publishing original fictional works, such as pulp fantasy( which to me is surprisingly similar to fanfiction by content). By using the newspaper format ironically, I showcased slash-fic through a medium that has traditionally avoided fanfiction, challenging perceptions of what constitutes “valid” storytelling.
The point of this newspaper is to generate conversation by immediately providing the worst stereotype of fanfiction to an open-minded crowd. London Comic Con is a relatively open-minded place for really peculiar, even weird, activities to take place, so I blended straight into the crowd. I created the newspaper below, printed out 25 pages and took them to London Comic Con.
REFLECTION: I handed out those newspapers to random strangers. Most people started laughing at the content of the newspaper as soon as they saw it(to which I felt a bit exposed and vulnerable because before this project, reading and writing fanfiction was a relatively solitary and online experience for me). A few even asked to take pictures.
Surprisingly, several artists, who were selling their own works at the convention(there were writers, comic artists, visual artists, curators of comics, and cosplayers), expressed a concern for the fact that fanfiction exists. I asked everybody who actively participated whether I could record their reactions to the newspaper, and I got 6 audios out of about 20 participants.
INSIGHT: After the convo with Steve, I realized that the stereotype surrounding fanfiction hinders our ability to fully enjoy the storytelling process. At its core, fanfiction is about retelling beloved stories. While the sexualization of these narratives has boosted their popularity, it has also overshadowed the deeper emotional connections and fundamental reasons why people resonate with these characters in the first place.
EVALUATION: Fans demonstrate a clear ability to distinguish the fictional narratives they consume from the realities of their everyday lives, showcasing their nuanced understanding of fantasy as a creative outlet rather than a reflection of reality.
The stark differences in reactions between fans and non-fans emphasize the need to foster dialogue and understanding to bridge the gap between these groups.
Learning from the failure of the second intervention on Reddit, I took some time to create an educational zine.
P2: Examples of original bestselling authors who started their career by creating fanfiction of existing popular works;
P3: 2 examples of fans taking over the original universe: Fans holding a funeral for Sherlock Holmes, a fictional character, and two examples of fans taking over the original universe as their own after the original authors have been charged with controversial statements online.
P4: Using the Media Specificity Theory, and indicating that fanfiction could be considered a new form of medium, which differenciates to traditional writing.
P5: A moodboard of fan-created content. Visually introducing the definition of fanfiction, fan art, cosplay, and parodies.
PURPOSE: The purpose of this intervention is to inspire new knowledge to the ones within the general public who are ignorant/nonchalant/initially opposed to fanfiction.(which is what I failed to do in the 2nd Intervention on Reddit).
PROCESS: This time I created a google form that included stereotypes of fanfiction, and sent it not only on original writing communities on Reddit, but also on several writing communities on Weibo and Red. By broadening my scope, I eventually found 8 participants who were willing to participate.
TOOLS: Google Forms, WenJuanXing(Chinese version of Google Forms), Photoshop
LOCATION: Online writing communities on Reddit, Weibo
PARTICIPANTS: 8 people who are either ignorant or have negative stereotypes on fanfiction
REFLECTIONS: One reader said it reminded them of the Death of the Author by Roland Barthes, and the fact that the author doesn’t get to define the “ultimate meaning” of a text they wrote, the meaning of the text is transformative and changes according to the reader/audience. This to me signified that it created new knowledge in this stakeholder, and it linked to their own knowledge of the definition of fiction, and it changed their original comprehension of what fanfiction could be.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT: Apart from doing a visual intervention, I would love to experiment on different mediums. I had quite limited time to figure out the deeper and more abstract level of fanfiction, how it linked to participatory culture and transmedia storytelling, but I really loved the idea of media specificity because this sparked the theory that fanfiction could be legitimately marked as a new type of medium. I’m going to experiment on this area in the next intervention.
EVALUATION: Only individuals curious and open enough to consider opposing ideas accepted my invitation, making them ideal for fostering initial change within original writers. However, to create a broader impact, I need to reach beyond this group and engage with those who may not be as open-minded, challenging their perspectives and expanding the conversation around fanfiction.
DESCRIPTION: I went to the streets of Edinburgh, and asked members of the general public to draw their first reactions when they heard the concept “fanfiction”.
PURPOSE:
–Project-wise: getting an idea of how the public view fan-fiction in general, and try to find any direct evidence of social stigma and misconception that would occur in a setting that is considered open-minded.
–Personally: to practice my courage. Redefining my topic took longer time that I had anticipated, which meant spending several weeks frozen in place, terrified of proceeding forward and forcing myself to push forward at the same time. For a while, I was really, really afraid of conducting interventions because I was afraid I would do something “wrong”. However, researching on new knowledge can only be achieved by trial and error. So I decided to practice conquering my fears by taking action.
PROCESS: going around the streets of Edinburgh and asking people to draw their first reaction when they think of fan-fiction, fan-art, cosplay, and parodies, and asking them to explain their drawings or written words, and record if the participant gives consent.
TOOLS: a notebook, several markers, and a phone for recording.
LOCATION: Edinburgh
PARTICIPANTS: Random passersby on the streets.
PROCESS:
It wasn’t easy for me to encourage random passersby to participate, because the majority of them were on their way to see a show and they either politely refused my invitation to participate in my intervention, or just downright ignored me…What was interesting was that the people who didn’t want to participate varied in age, gender and positions. This broke my initial stereotype of thinking that only the older generation(aged 50 and up) would hesitate to participate.
However, as I gradually grew bolder and started chatting to people on a whim on the streets, people started to slowly respond. One girl told me the definition of Rule 34*, which I didn’t know before; a performer who had been a professional wrestler drew Godzilla vs Kong and told me that it represented his own passion for his career; a group of teenage dancers crowded around me and chattered about their favorite characters and ships from Harry Potter; a girl drew a sex scene out of stick figures, with the woman dominating the man, and claimed that the fan-fic universe was a safe space and psychological sanctuary for her to create and enjoy those fantasies while the real world prevented her from doing so.
* Rule 34: If it exists there is porn of it, no exceptions.
OUTCOME:
REFLECTIONS & LEARNINGS:
ABOUT THE LOCATION
This intervention to Edinburgh was impromptu, and I got the most feedback on areas in Edinburgh where the Edinburgh Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was taking place. Both festivals are relatively open-minded spaces for all kinds of performances and welcomes artistic creativity.
This ultimately means that I’m “preaching to the converted”, in other words, telling people who already have relatively open minds for adapted works that fan-fiction is good. (I knew this before conducting the intervention, but I still decided to do it because it would help me practice my courage. And who knows? Maybe I’ll find something that I wasn’t expecting.)
Even in a location as open-minded as this, there were still people who shied away from my approaches. The people who avoided me on the streets are the exact ppl who I should gather data from if I wanted to “change” or “challenge” the misconception of fan-fics.(Arguably, this was probably because I picked busier streets in Edinburgh and they would not usually pay attention to a random girl with a notebook in her hands.)So I needed to center my research on less open-minded places and less open-minded people.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT:
I need to locate stakeholders from less open-minded places and talk to them why they had a stereotype of fan-fiction.
From the people that agreed to participate, only two people agreed to record their voice on my phone. I have documented the others’ feedback of their drawings as clearly as I could, but I will have to make sure that I find a better way to document the information.
I didn’t find an accurate way to measure the impact of this intervention. The thing I want to measure in this project is “challenge” or “change”, but I didn’t really provide the evidence of the change that occured because of my intervention.
The audience that took part in this intervention were participants of the Edinburgh Fringe. They are considered more or less open-minded. The worst comment I got from my participants was that they didn’t read fan-fics at all. So I needed to relocate my stakeholders to a group of people that doesn’t think fan-fic is legal( for example).
Or, as I said before, the anti-fandom had a valid reason for hating on the fandom(hating pro-shippers(problematic shippers) in general. I would personally agree with the anti-fandom at this point….
OTHER NOTES AND JIBBERISH(COMPLETELY WITHOUT LOGIC)
After reading reddits and twitter that Anti-fandom ppl had sent, I found myself slowly edging to the other side…because there are a lot of gray areas within the fandom. So basically exposing the reality of both parties to each other, and documenting their view on fanfics before and after.(via drawing…or recording stuff)
New Knowledge??? Wtf is the new knowledge generated through this project? That fan-fiction is a playing field that allows some ppl to commit crimes and hurt ppl without breaking the rules.
So do we need rules? What if…we create an alternate reality where we add specific rules to fan-fiction that 100% restricts the crimes(I mean the fictional crimes) This may turn out worse than what is happening in reality but whatever. It’s the idea of an intervention.
Redirecting my research after the Intervention
Let’s just say that the fan-fics and fan art that I read and saw was wayyyy tooo pure compared with the fan-fics that causes the “misconceptions” to the outsiders. https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/n0qt6o/is_it_illegal_to_write_explicit_fan_fiction_of/
After I read this, I was like: should there be rules? There are explicit grey areas in this realm that could potentially hurt innocent people who just wants to be creative in what they thought was a safe space.
I have contacted an expert on worldbuilding and have told them 2 of the fictional stories I created. Their reaction was to immediately come up with 2 storylines to broaden the story further.
I want to emphasize that, if we view this interaction as an intervention, sharing my comic to a worldbuilder does “create change”, because they came up with brand new ideas because they saw my work. The evidence is shown in the pictures.
I am currently very aware of the fact that my current research question: “How can we measure the impact of fantasy-based fiction?” has yet to generate new change into this world and that has made me quite anxious and hesitant to do interventions.
After discussing this problem with the course tutor, I was given the advice to explore the area of both fantasy and magic tricks via traditional research(first and secondary) as well as action research(interventions).
So for action research(7.13~7.15), I decided to put the comic I showed the expert out publicly and show it to different people.
I printed out the comic, went to Kings Cross, and tried to interact with the pedestrians who were passing by. This proved unsuccessful and only one person wrote down a dream that they wanted to do.
So I changed tactics, and decided to reposition my intervention online. [There were 24 participants in total]
I asked each participant 4 questions:
Quantitative data:
1. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you think the comic influenced you personally?
2. Do you think that this transformation of the concept of an “unfinished building” into a story has a greater impact on the real world than it did before?
Qualitative Data:
3. What does this story remind you of? Do you have any thoughts about this story? Please feel free to write down any feedback you have on this comic.
(This question generated a lot of very long feedback that I’m still integrating into a readable format for a learning log. I will update bullet points of audience feedback shortly.)
e.g. I really liked the theme of giving meaning to things that seem otherwise meaningless. Personally, I like this subjective, materialistic way of understanding the world, and I feel quite strongly about this theme. Because everything in the world is meaningless in itself, it is we who give meaning to it. The unfinished building remind me of ruins, like when we go to see a historical site that is objectively just some broken rocks and mounds of earth, but just because someone says that it was once the splendour of a dynasty, we instantly feel a lot of emotion. And I really like the meaning you’ve given to it, it’s very cute and cosy, for me it can hold not only buried dreams, but also more of those carefree old times, childhoods that I can’t go back to.
4. Please recommend a work of fantasy (novel, film, TV show, musical or any other genre) that has had a profound effect on you, and explain briefly about the impact this work has had on you in real life.
(Same.)
e.g.1. I’m a big fan of “The Three-Body Problem”. It has a very ambitious setting, but if I were to say how it affected my actual life, I’d probably say that the line in the book that stuck with me the most was “To the civilisation of time, rather than to life in time”. This line is actually originally from Pascal’s “to the time to life, rather than to life in time, that is, “to give time to life, rather than to life in time”, Liu Cixin extended this line from individual life to the survival of the whole civilisation. He extended this phrase from individual life to the survival of civilisation as a whole. In the book, human beings, facing the invasion of the Trisolarians, and realising the disparity in the level of technology between the two sides, after complete despair, established a calm mindset: since human civilisation is bound to be destroyed after a century, we might as well make the most of our last years and live our lives to the fullest. And it is precisely this mentality that has made the human mind break free and soar freely, and in this short span of 100 years, the level of human science and technology has taken an unprecedented leap forward. This is the meaning of the saying that what we should pursue is not the continuation of civilisation, but to let civilisation blossom most beautifully in the years of its continuation. In the same way, each of us, with regard to life, should seek not to extend our life span, but to live out more values in our limited life.
e.g.2. There are countless fantasy and sci-fi works that I’ve read and enjoyed. Sci-fi still has quite a few logic holes, and fantasy relies even more on strange powers that don’t quite fit the rules of the real world. That said it may lead to a new question, what if the fantasy elements in this work are just observers of the real world and not interlopers? Or if we only look at the part that observes the real world and ignore the part that interferes with it for the time being, are there any works that have had a profound effect on me? Reality itself is full of “fantastical” but reasonable things, and compared to the sheer size of the real world I live in, a particular work of fantasy would be a drop in the ocean, and its effect on me would be like a handful of salt sprinkled in the ocean. So it’s a slight shame that there doesn’t seem to be any fantasy that really has a profound effect on me, it’s basically just fun to read.
Reflection
Although I received a lot of positive and constructive feedback from this intervention, the process in designing it felt forced. The fear of not being able to link this intervention to my research question had been paralysing to me, and was slowing my research process down distinctly.
The fantasy I created has different amounts of impact to different individuals. I will try my best to use the data I collected from this intervention and form a logical link to my current research.
