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.

TITLE: General Views of 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:

1. I need to locate stakeholders from less open-minded places and talk to them why they had a stereotype of fan-fiction.
2. 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.

1. 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.
2. 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).
3. 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.