Questions for writers/readers of fanfiction

[Elfarrell]

Hello! My name is Beth and I am in an anthropology course with a project on a subculture. I am writing about the subculture of fanfiction and would love to ask questions to some writers/readers who involve themselves in fanfiction. Identities will stay anonymous and information will not be published, simply just presented in my anthropology class and my paper. Participants must be 18 and older.

If anyone would feel free to respond to the following questions, it would be really helpful. You do not have to answer all questions if you do not feel like answering. If you do respond, could you please include your age, gender and what country you're from? Thank you so much for taking the time to do this!

1. How old were you when you began to have an interest in fanfiction? If applicable, how old were you when you started to write your own fanfiction stories?

2. What initiated your interest in fanfiction?

3. How much time do you spend reading fanfiction and writing in a given day?

4. How much do you interact in communities? Do you write your own fanfiction and if so, do you publish it on websites? Do you have betas that help edit the stories?

5. Have you made friends through online fanfiction communities? If so, do you speak to them often and how close are you as friends?

6. Are your fandoms big or small and does the size impact your role in the community?


If you have any questions or would like to respond privately, you can email me at elfarrell@ursinus.edu. Thank you so much again!

 

[daniel_gudman]

Age: 28
Gender: Male (BTW, this board is skewed male, that is, the user-base is more than 20% male); that might affect the responses you get from here
Country: USA

1) Age of start / reason
I was about 12; Tenchi was on toonami and I looked it up on the internet, and found some fanfic boards, and it went from there.

I posted my first story on ffnet in December of 2002; that was 12 years ago, I was 16.

2) Why?
I'm a pretty voracious reader, so fanfiction is easy for me in the sense that there's no hassle getting to it, that is, it's cheap and convenient. Plus, although the quality of the editing and galley-copy isn't at a professional level, compared to an average "literature" book commercially published, the storytelling is usually competitive.

3) Time reading / writing
Hm... well, I probably spend an hour or two a day reading, on average, and about the same amount of time writing.

4) Community interaction
This is where I'm guessing at the numbers. I post on this board, less often on SpaceBattles, and (pretty infrequently) on Beast's Lair.

I read a lot of science fiction, but the fanfiction scene for the kind I like (hard stuff) is pretty weak; generally speaking, the stories themselves are dry as toast once you strip out all the sexy equipment (Alistair Reynolds has written like a dozen books, all of which boil down to one team chasing another team). As a stereotype, fanfiction is mostly about character relationships, usually romantic, but not always.

Betas and story authorship... when I wrote "Spying no Jutsu" I did a very traditional beta-reader thing, where I drafted a copy, emailed it to a friend (this was before cloud-services became popular), and then took his advice into consideration.

My current big project is "Fate Revelation Online"; that one I've got an Idea thread where I post my plans for discussion, and a Preview thread where I post the actual content for criticism and review. So for that one, it's basically an "open" beta for anyone on the board to post in. I've been very happy with how that's been working out.

Oh, I've also written like 5,000 words of comedic nonsense every Christmas eve, for... oh man, six years now.

5) Online friends in the community
I'd say I'm at the level of "buddies" with a lot of people around this board; as you might expect, we talk a lot about different media, what we liked or not, and why.

...I lurked on this board for over a year before I first posted, and then it was probably a year or two more before I started posting at a serious rate. Thinking about it, that's also how I act IRL, where I have to spend time as "acquaintances" before I become "friends" with them.

6) Size and impact
I've been involved in the whole spectrum; from the super-huge fandoms with like a million fandoms on ffnet to following mangas with a few dozen other folks over on some of the other threads.

I don't really lurk on scanlator boards; those communities tend to be small and kind of insular, but they're really important to any anime/manga fandom.

Well, I think the important thing is, it usually breaks down into people and the circle of people they run with, rather than a specific fandom; it's not like people discretely break down different things, where "Harry Potter" fanfiction is on one board and "Naruto" fanfiction is on another and "Star Wars" is a third board. Even the ones explicitly built for one fandom tend to blur it all up, and people gravitate more around what their tastes are, rather than what fandom they're in.

...That's a complicated way of not really answering the question, huh?



Well, those are my opinions.

 

[FinalMax]

Age: 32
Gender: Male
Country: USA

1: When did I begin to take an interest in fanfiction? I was roughly 20, back around 2002. Was involved with a group of gamers/anime enthusiasts, and a few pointed out a website that I subsequently got the address wrong. What should have been fanfiction.net was instead fanfic.net, an archive of some of the older stuff at the time. About a year later, I had become interested in writing fanfic. So that would put me just shy of 21 years old. Made a go of it up until roughly 2004-2005, when the inevitable writers block hit.

2: Why did I get an interest in fanfiction? I had become interested in some series and began to ask the reasonable question of "What if?" "What If?" can change a lot about one's worldview. I became initially intoxicated with seeing the ideas and queries other people made about the series I had initially taken interest in: Neon Genesis Evangelion.

3: How much time per day do I spend reading/writing fanfiction? Given that I am more of a live-in housekeeper at present (had to take care of family when circumstances arose), I'd say I spend at least 4 hours a day perusing through fanfiction. Sometimes, it's simply rereading a story I particularly like. Other times it is looking for something interesting. Writing wise, I don't do much for fanfiction. I'll get a bit of inspiration from time to time to write a scene or get an idea across.

4: How much do I interact with fanfiction communities? Not as much as I used to. Back when I first started, I somehow hooked up with the old Evamade group. Was fairly involved with that group for 3-5 years. I actually started doing beta reading in those days for one of the guys in Evamade, and when I later joined TFF, I continued to beta for a few writers. As I mentioned in a couple of other questions, I've made attempts at writing fanfiction and have posted them to fanfiction.net. TFF has a few of the other scattered ideas and snippets I've written when I moved beyond the Evangelion fandom.

5: Have I made friends in online fanfiction communities? I'm not sure. I think that's true in any real online community where text is the primary medium of conversation. I've spoken to a few people from TFF through Skype, but that was less from fanfiction and more from gaming. Haven't heard from them in a while, but that's partly because Skype likes to try to eat my computer. I'd say at this point in time, I'm still in the category of "acquaintances" for the most part. I'd like to think that a few consider me a "buddy" and hope some can find me a friend.

6: How big or small are my fandoms and does the size impact my role in the community? Given most of my interests are in the anime fandoms, I'd say they are small in comparison to the fandoms that surround sports teams or some really large mainstream games. Some of the series have larger relative fandoms (such as Evangelion, Naruto, Fairy Tail), but I'll enjoy stuff set in smaller fandoms (like Rune Soldier and Burst Angel). Size of the fandom doesn't really impact my role in the community, unless it's just starting up and I find myself among the early contributors/thinkers.

I hope that helps a little.

 

[H-Man]

Age: 26
Gender: Male
Country: Brasil

1. How old were you when you began to have an interest in fanfiction? If applicable, how old were you when you started to write your own fanfiction stories?
Kind of a toughie in my case. Always worked on the damn stuff since at least grade school... though I only officially started sometime at the very end of the 90s and only REALLY got into it in 2002. So, I was 13.

2. What initiated your interest in fanfiction?
Big dominoes. Can't confirm everything. But the best I can say is that I was already starting to look into the stuff by the turn of the century online, and then I found the Ayanami-Sohryu Fanfiction Archive. There, I found the translated version of Rakna's The One I Love Is, which led to me finding the original version before too long. I tried writing my own clone, it sucked, but by then I got to FanFiction.net and that's when it really started.

3. How much time do you spend reading fanfiction and writing in a given day?
Eh, I 'unno. I'm doing it much less nowadays, but I still read sporks and sometimes I read actual stuff. Writing is also not as often, but I do try to make some time a month. As it is, I'm currently translating one, so... well, anyway, if the day has 24 hours, fanfiction is something like 8 in my life, if only from ideas.

4. How much do you interact in communities? Do you write your own fanfiction and if so, do you publish it on websites? Do you have betas that help edit the stories?
I'm not the best at interacting with communities, no offense... just can't get along with people. I do post my stuff, but there was a period where I stopped due to personal disinterest and wrote original stuff. No betas, but that's more because I already do that work for others so I do it for myself as well; I more share with my friends for opinions and all first.

5. Have you made friends through online fanfiction communities? If so, do you speak to them often and how close are you as friends?
Yep! Quite a few, and they're pretty cool. I usually speak to them once a day, and at least two are my breast friends!

6. Are your fandoms big or small and does the size impact your role in the community?
Vary a lot. In part because I don't publish that often, so regardless, I'm minor and ignored. But that's okay, I'm used to it already.