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

[scarlet1061.livejournal.com]

I didn't read the article, but based on what you say here, if she visits FF.net mainly, (and AO3, rather than the more fandom specific archives), the she indeed lacks the feeling of the community which is found really in the specific archives.

I remember that I also started in FF.net (ages ago), and when I wanted to comment, it was very hard to register (technically, it simply rejected my attempts over and over).
I didn't really had much motivation to comment.

It was only later, on more specific archives, that it changed. So, I am not THAT surprised she's a lurker.

But I agree on the main quote you posted: I started reading fan fiction because I wanted to read more about characters I already knew

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

The reality is that most people probably do start at the Pit of Voles - and doubtless many of them never stray from it - possibly never really realise that other archives exist. And I'm like you - I've read there but never commented.

But that quote does go a long way to explaining to anyone who has no idea at all why we write, and why so many others read.