Crowdsourced definitions of ‘fan fiction’ hint at a sprawling, formless genre
June 7, 2017 | Uncategorized
Flourish Klink and Elizabeth Minkel, co-hosts of the fandom podcast Fansplaining, recently conducted the loosest of academic studies, all about literature’s most controversial genre. Their survey — nine multiple choice questions, one longform response — has the herculean goal of defining “fan fiction.”
Fanlore, the wiki of record for all things fandom, says fan fiction must be “a work of fiction written by fans for other fans, taking a source text or a famous person as a point of departure.” But that’s just one definition, and bits of it are controversial. Hence the survey.
With 3,564 responses to their survey, Klink and Minkel have an enormous data set, which they’ve made public for anyone who’s curious and wants to poke around. Klink…
