Reading Fanfiction: Alternative Universes, Mythologies, and Sylvia Plath’s Fig Tree

If you’re anything like us, some of your favourite books exist only on a little site called Archive of Our Own, and some of your favourite authors are only known by a weird internet username, and some of your favourite characters are well known fictional characters, but only written by this one specific anonymous pseudonym.

This is the first episode in a two part series about fanfiction. This time, we’ll be exploring the joyous world of reading fanfiction, dissecting the psychology behind our fascination with tropes, how we never seem to tire of reading about the same two people falling in love over and over again in a million different scenarios, and the mythology we create by experiencing this as collective fandoms.

All writing is familiarity and innovation. This episode is about familiarity: true comfort reads, comfort characters, and a home we find in the communal language of fandom. The next episode will be about the innovation we find in the writing of fanfiction - stay tuned.

Music by Max Elliott

Bibliography

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• DoraaTonks. Dolor de Luna. Fanfiction.net, 2008, https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3982420/1/Dolor-de-luna.

• Chrmdpoet. Popcorn Love. Archiveofourown.org.

• Epps, Zach Van. “Trope Talk: Repetition Makes the Narrative World Go 'Round.” Vox Magazine, 6 Apr. 2017, ‌www.voxmagazine.com/arts/books/trope-talk-repetition-makes-the-narrative-world-go-round/article_5bedd70c-1a7a-11e7-8732-6bed4d864d7c.html.

• gabriel and standbyme. Twist and Shout. Archiveofourown.org, 2014, archiveofourown.org/works/537876.

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• Merriam-Webster. “Definition of FAN FICTION.” Merriam-Webster.com, 2020, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fan%20fiction.

• Original Broadway Cast of Hadestown and Anaïs Mitchell. Hadestown (Original Broadway Cast Recording). Sing It Again Records, 2019.¨

• Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Robin Books. 1963.

• Sarah Z. “An Exhaustive Defense of Fanfiction.” Youtube, 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvP_BLMgYBg.

• ‌Wikipedia Contributors. “Myth.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Apr. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth.

• Willis, Ika. “Amateur Mythographies: Fan Fiction and the Myth of Myth.” Transformative Works and Cultures, vol. 21, 15 Mar. 2016, https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2016.0692. Accessed 20 Nov. 2019.

• Yorke, John. Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them. London, England, Penguin Books, 2013.