Article about Fanfic.

[curiouswombat]

My friend lindahoyland posted a link on her journal to this article about fanfic.

It is interesting in a number of ways; the writer clearly enjoys reading fic, understands the 'why' of so much of it - I started reading fan fiction because I wanted to read more about characters I already knew, and gives an interesting history of fanfic.

But... she is clearly one of the lurkers - not really involved with the feeling of fandom as a community, I think, so there is little sense of that existing. And she mainly discusses FF.Net (aka The Pit of Voles, around here) and AO3, rather than the more fandom specific archives. And so she quotes a piece of research that concluded that the average user of FanFiction.Net in 2010 was a 15.8-year-old girl from the United States who didn’t write fan fiction herself. Not to say that 45-year-old mothers and adolescent boys don’t also read it, or that fan fiction is only written in English; but the odds are not good. ...the community is 80 per cent teenage and 80 per cent female.

We've seen this before - quite a few of us think it is probably not a true picture of fanfic at all - and the person who wrote the article should have really thought about it when she quoted it - as she also pointed out that from her first forays in the Pit of Voles she lied about her age and always ticked to say that she was over 18... I mentioned on Linda's journal that I have a feeling that quite a lot of the over 40s probably knock a few years off, as well... Linda agreed that she did, just because she got fed up being asked her age.

So logic suggests that any measure of age should tend towards a modal age in the early 20s really - not one of under 16!

Still; an interesting article, I think.

Comments

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Re your first paragraph - that was almost exactly what I thought. She is, no doubt though, fairly typical as most people read but don't write, and read but don't comment. So, in many ways, she is fairly typical of the people those of us who write are being read by... at least at FFNet if we post there. (I don't - I've never got around to it!)

It would be interesting to read an article sometime that actually said 'A lot of readers and writers are in the 20 - 90 age group, a few may be older. And there are a good few things around that are much better written than many things that are published. Better, too, than a lot of the fanfic that is published, like 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies', or '50 shades of grey' etc!'

But this was at least a little more realistic than some of the articles we've read in the past.

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

Most of the really good fan fiction is on smaller archives, yes. I get a bit fed up when I read articles about fan fiction based solely on ff.net (and no, I've never found a good reason to post there). All else aside, it's incredibly sloppy research. At least she brought in AO3, though I don't think she was as familiar with it.

I've never understood someone reading and liking a fic enough to come back chapter after chapter and still never comment. Just 'this was cool' or 'gosh, I never saw that coming' makes so much difference for the writer. I suppose that's why you'll find most people who comment also write. I mentioned this once and one of my readers delurked and admitted she never knew what to say, which I guess is part of it.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

scarlet1061 was pointing out that she had found it difficult to register and comment at The Pit of Voles. And I must admit that I make a point of commenting at the smaller archives - but on the odd occasion I do read at FFNet I have never commented either...

I guess she is not really writing about fanfic in general so much as about her own interaction with it - so it is not really an article that required background research - but the once piece of published research she did look at came to a conclusion that most of us would disagree with!

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

I acquired a the habit over the years of interacting also with writers outside of fanfic myself (successful and making a living, published in the big, wide world writers). It is so easy to do online. I think a lot of people do not do that. I guess lurking in fandom seems less acceptable because commenting is one's only payback to the writer.