Fan Fiction Research Articles

Eschatology of the Singularity: “Deus ex machina” in the Construction of Film Images of the Future

The mixed assessment by critics and theorists of the deus ex machina artistic device common in popular cinema requires a more thorough study of its dramatic and narrative functions in science fiction films. It is in the construction of film images of the future that this technique is combined with a fantastic assumption, expressing the narrator’s attitude towards artistic narration and becoming an argument in dialogue with the viewer. The study reveals, based on the analysis of empirical material, the multifunctionality of deus ex machina using the example of the development of the theme of technological singularity in cinema. The analysis of films significant for the development of the science fiction (Sci-Fi) genre and the most popular television series among science fiction fans today demonstrates the evolution of the deus ex machina technique. In addition to the trivial function of arbitrary resolution of peripeteia, it acquires various dramatic functions (accelerating or slowing down the rhythm of action, connecting parts of the plot in a large form), obtains the properties of scaling and fragmentation, synchrony and asynchrony with a fantastic assumption, adding complex narrative functions to the toolkit of expressive means, through which the narrator reveals or, on the contrary, conceals his attitude to artistic reality, involving the viewer into the game of probable meanings. The authors of the article come to the conclusion that the theme of technological singularity has been penetrating cinema since its appearance in the work of L. Lumiere and determines, depending on the narrator’s attitude to the topic, the vector of techno-skepticism or techno-optimism in the eschatological dilemma that characterizes the cosmogony of traditional religions. The article is of interest to researchers and film lovers and contributes to the study of artistic and scientific communication.

Re-Orientalism and Colonial Nostalgia in Pakistani Austen Rewritings: A Case Study of Austenistan

Our paper aims to explore the recent Austen rewritings in Pakistani Anglophone fiction such as Austenistan as an example of professional fan fiction and postcolonial literature. These rewritings, we argue, possess such qualities that not only appeal to Janeites but also adhere to Re-Orientalism. The primary premise of our work focuses on the strategic use of ‘Austenmania’ by Pakistani Anglophone female writers in their fiction and its tendencies to project an oriental gaze on Pakistan, while also aligning it with the ‘benevolent modernity’ of former colonial masters. In our paper, we have critically analysed seven stories from the anthology Austenistan by mainly drawing upon the theoretical lens of Re-Orientalism propounded by Lisa Lau along with other relevant theories of Robert Dryden, Sarah Brouillette, Patricia M. E. Lorcin, and William Bissell, etc. Our research explores that Pakistani Janeites employ the practices of “possession” and “selfothering” in Austenistan through compromised and pejorative representations of Pakistan which is a manifestation of their nostalgia for the colonial past.Keywords: Janeites, Regency era, South Asian writers, Pakistani Anglophone fiction, Self-othering, Re-Orientalism, Colonial Nostalgia.

Language and Style in “Pride and Prejudice” Fan Fiction: Educational Aspect

Language and Style in “Pride and Prejudice” Fan Fiction: Educational Aspect

Neformalių XX a. pabaigos – XXI a. pradžios Lietuvos jaunimo leidinių – fanzinų – leidybos tendencijos

This article analyzes Lithuanian youth subcultural group publications – fanzines (zines) – which have not yet received broader attention from researchers. Paper fanzines started to be created at the end of the 20th century and became popular in the 1990s, spreading Western culture ideas and changing the political, and socio-cultural environment in Lithuania along with technological copying and reproduction possibilities. Using resources from Lithuania’s Youth Culture Digital Archive “Lithuanian Zine Collection” and additionally collected sources, the article analyzes the trends in the creation and publishing of fanzines. By comparing the publishing similarities and differences of fanzines attributed to different subcultural groups, the aim is to understand the cultural context of these publications, their relationship with readers, and the publishing possibilities of fanzine creators. The study applies descriptive metadata analysis and systematization of fanzines, as well as ethnographic research methods (targeted interview, questionnaire, and qualitative interviews with fanzine authors, publishers, and collectors). The research results showed that in Lithuania, mainly in the 1990s, metal music fanzine authors, unlike punks and science fiction fans, created more publications written in English. Metal music fanzines were characterized by greater volume. Science fiction fans’ publications differed from those of metalheads and punks by a greater number of continuous issues and fewer one-time publications. Authors of fanzines associated with punk ideology mostly chose to independently reproduce publications using a copying machine, while creators of metal music and science fiction fanzines more often used professional printing services. The language used in fanzines and its style helped to form a close relationship with readers, revealed the identity traits of subcultural groups, and helped metal music fanzine authors to integrate into the international fanzine culture context. Seeking independence and individuality, fanzine creators disregarded professional publishing standards. Fanzine publishing depended on individual choice, motivation, creativity, reader interest, and technological possibilities (publication reproduction, layout). Fanzines created in Lithuania became one of the main forms of idea dissemination, creative freedom, and self-expression for alternative youth communication.

Foreword

As technology advances, there are growing arguments about artificial intelligence, which is still controversial, with both welcome and pessimistic views regarding its role in the future of human life. What was revealed about the development of artificial intelligence is considered very simple in the eyes of specialists and observers, especially in areas that have not been explored, and this constitutes a source of fear for many. The vast leaps witnessed in recent years in the field of artificial intelligence have become a source of anxiety for most people, especially those working in institutions and industrial facilities, even though this anxiety stems from losing their jobs and replacing them with robots. This concern came from statements that the next two decades will witness the introduction of vast quantities of robots to the market. OpenAI was initially established in 2015 by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and others to advance digital intelligence. On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer. ChatGPT uses a large language model to provide users with quick and reliable answers and give enough information about most of the topics. Furthermore, ChatGPT allows users to have more in-depth conversations. The concern about the impact role of ChatGPT on educational and social institutions has led to some reactions from academic institutions, and school districts were hasty and took action to block artificial intelligence platforms from schools, which they quickly retracted in the aftermath. On the other hand, some scholarly academic journals, including our Arab World English Journal, have announced guidelines for article authors. Authors must disclose the use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process. While we are editing the final draft of this volume (April 2024), OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced in a statement that OpenAI has opened its first office in Asia, Japan, and is providing a GPT-4 custom for the Japanese language; it is three times faster its predecessor. OpenAI aims to expand ChatGPT’s global presence. After releasing ChatGPT, which is backed by Microsoft, OpenAI has emerged as a leading company in the history of computing. In this special issue, we addressed the impact of ChatGPT and AI-assisted technologies, an essential topic that will constitute the main features of education and publications in the twenty-first century. The issue contains 21 articles from eight countries (China, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Malaysia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine). It covers a broad spectrum of related topics: Academic writing, the pedagogical potential of infinigoChatIC, Grammar Teaching and Learning in EFL Classes, English Language Proficiency in EFL Classrooms, Grammar Teaching and Learning in EFL Classes, EFL Essay Writing, Distance Learning Environment, Evaluation of the Translation, Improve the Research Writing Process, Role of Artificial Intelligence in Education, Language Learners’ Critical Thinking, Naruto Fan Fiction Writing, and the Impact of ChatGPT on Future Academics. We seize this opportunity to extend our heartfelt thanks to the authors who have shared their research with our Arab World English journal. We anticipate that the articles in this volume will attract a diverse readership and deepen our understanding of ChatGPT’s role in learning and teaching and its associated challenges. We also hope these papers will provide a thought-provoking perspective for faculty members and students to consider ChatGPT’s impact on writing and related assignments.

Лингвостилистические особенности литературы фанфикшн (на материале англоязычного фандома «Пушкин»)

The paper presents a linguostylistic analysis of English-language fan fiction works based on the novel “Eugene Onegin” by Alexander Pushkin. The studied texts are stylistically dependent speech works – stylizations and parodies, and, therefore, the characteristics of the works are considered taking into account the criteria of the theory of secondary texts by M. V. Verbitskaya. The research is comparative in nature and reveals the methods of linguistic transformation of the source text when creating fan fiction works. In addition, the paper touches upon various aspects of “secondariness” as a phenomenon in text linguistics, providing some observations on the place of fan fiction among scientific concepts of derivative texts. The aim of the research is to determine the methods of linguistic transformation of the source text in the creation of fan fiction. The scientific originality of the research is determined by the combination of textual and intertextual approaches to the fanfic. The paper is the first to examine in detail the stylistic aspects of the transformation of Russian classics into an English-language fanfic. As a result, the analysis allowed us to identify the most common approaches to the linguistic realization of amateur interpretations and to expand linguistic knowledge about fan fiction texts.

Integrating Artificial Intelligence in Naruto Fan Fiction Writing: A Case Study

The paper highlights communicative, ethical, and educational aspects of AI applications for fan fiction writing. This study is the first attempt to analyze opportunities and academic aspects of using AI for fan fiction writing. The article offers a brief overview of research aspects of AI and fan fiction and presents a case study an AI-generated fanfic based on Naruto series. The objective of the work is to study the use of artificial intelligence in the context of fan fiction writing, specifically focusing on how AI technology can assist or enhance the creative process of fan fiction authors. The research questions aim to investigate the implications and opportunities of employing AI in fan fiction writing and education, shedding light on the evolving relationship between technology and creative expression in online communities. While AI technology can offer various benefits and enhancements to the creative process of fan fiction writing, there are also some drawbacks to consider when using AI for this purpose. AI-generated fan fiction may lack the creativity, originality, and emotional depth human authors can bring to their writing. Using AI-powered fan fiction can be a creative and engaging way to assist in learning foreign languages. AI-generated fan fiction can expose learners to authentic language use, colloquial expressions, and cultural references in a fun and interactive format. Reading fan fiction in the target language can help improve vocabulary, grammar, and comprehension skills. When working with already published fan fiction, some ethical and legal issues arise, such as copyright infringement, plagiarism, and misrepresentation.

Brevity is the Soul of Fic Microfiction, Microfic, and Shakespearean Abridgement in Online Fan Fiction

Through a focus on Shakespeare fan fiction, this article discusses ‘microfic’ – short-form fan fiction – as a unique genre of microfiction. Sometimes consisting of fewer than ten words, microfiction relies on clever twists or epiphanies rather than character or plot development for its effect. Although microfic is equally brief and compact, as a genre of fan fiction, it is always engaged in a sustained dialogue with a fan object such as Shakespeare that serves to import whole plots, characters, and metatextual debates into the text with the mention of a name or place. As such, the brevity of microfic is illusory, as it continually draws on – and contributes to – the fan object and its archive. Unlike microfiction in general, micofic is never self-contained. Through an analysis of numerous Shakespeare microfics available in the Archive of Our Own fan fiction database, this article indicates the extent to which their silences are seldom silent.

Analyzing an archive of allyish distributed mentorship in "Speak" fan fiction comments and reviews

Young adult sexual assault narrative Speak (1999), by Laurie Halse Anderson, has inspired a small yet significant fandom, especially across two key platforms: Archive of Our Own (AO3) and FanFiction.net (FFN). The responses to fan fiction inspired by Speak demonstrate compelling discourses—celebratory, critical, vulnerable, and pedagogic—that also show evidence of significant allyish distributed mentorship in the Speak fandom archive. These comments and reviews demonstrate how digital spaces can be generative sites for feminist consciousness building around the topic of sexual trauma and rape culture, precisely because Speak fans produce, rewrite, and connect testimonies, both real and fictive.

Using the Murdoch Mysteries fandom to examine the types of content fans share online

For many fans, much (if not all) of their fan behavior is displayed online, across a number of social media platforms through which they can interact and engage with each other and with the subjects of their fandom. This includes not only fan works such as fan fiction and fan art but also behaviors consistent with simply existing as a fan in an online space. The fandom of Murdoch Mysteries (2008–), a Canadian murder mystery TV show, demonstrates how a single fandom can manifest in multiple different ways across different platforms. Fans appear to make specific decisions about how they are willing to engage with their fandom and where.

The differences between author’s notes on FanFiction.net and AO3

This article presents the quantitative differences in the content of author's notes, treated as an act of communication, in Polish Harry Potter fan fiction on FanFiction.net and Archive of Our Own. It shows the influence that additional communication mediums and tagging systems have on the fan fiction, as well as on users' habits, story length, the visibility of archive tools, and rules.

The fading of the elves: Techno-volunteerism and the disappearance of Tolkien fan fiction archives

The online Tolkien fandom has historically supported dozens of fan-run community fan fiction archives, but recent years have seen a sudden loss of most of those remaining. While platform preferences account for some loss, eroding technology and the invisibility of archivists' and developers' work are areas that can be addressed to preserve existing fan cultures.

Leveraging community support and platform affordances on a path to more active participation: A study of online fan fiction communities

The success of online communities is driven by continuous active community participation, but motivating silent members (lurkers) to participate might push them faster than they are prepared for and demand extra labor from active members. This article explores user participation in online fan fiction communities through empirical interviews of once-silent but now-active members, demonstrating how such platforms afford lurking as a legitimate mode of participation and provide affordances for users to participate at their own pace. We propose a theory of incidental mentorship, where active users become role models within a supportive community and motivate lurkers to participate without doing additional work.

Discord as a fandom platform: Locating a new playground

The VoIP and instant messaging platform Discord has seen immense user growth over the past few years, including among fans involved with transformative works. Analyzing Discord from a framework of polymedia and play provides new insights into what Discord affords these fans and how they navigate the platform as part of their fan practices. It shows how the platform has been adopted and adapted in ways that facilitate fan play and allow for play moods to be created, strengthened, or maintained. Discord provides a suitable playground for fans, because it allows fans to negotiate closed online spaces where they can play freely, without outside disruption. These spaces can be organized in ways that distinguish between play and nonplay and maintain fannish principles of warning and consent. In addition, Discord provides an extra dimension to the experience of taking part in fan fiction exchanges, creating a compelling, collective mood in servers that people can continually come back to. Positioning this within a broader network of platforms and affordances that fans navigate shows how Discord fulfills particular needs and niches, especially with regard to Not Safe For Work material. More generally, this study provides a framework for understanding the reciprocal and dynamic relationships between users, affordances, rules, and structures in contemporary platform society.

The Royal Treatment

The Royal Treatment

Fandom and the Law: A Guide to Fan Fiction, Art, Film & Cosplay, Marc H. Greenberg (2021)

Fandom and the Law: A Guide to Fan Fiction, Art, Film & Cosplay, Marc H. Greenberg (2021)

Feminist retroviruses to white Sharia: Gender "science fan fiction" on 4Chan.

This article demonstrates-based on an interpretive discourse analysis of three types of memes (Rabid Feminists, Women's Bodies, Policy Ideas) and secondary thread discourse on 4chan's "Politically Incorrect" discussion board-two key findings: (1) the existence of a gendered hate based scientific discourse, "science fan fiction," in online spaces and (2) how gender "science fan fiction" is an outcome of the male supremacist cosmology, by producing and justifying resentment against white women as being both inherently untrustworthy (politically, sexually, intellectually) and dangerous. This perspective-which combines hatred and distrust of women with white nationalist anxieties about demographic shifts, racial integrity, and sexuality-then motivates misogynist policy ideas including total domination of women or their removal. 4chan users employ this discourse to "scientifically" substantiate claims of white male supremacy, the fundamental untrustworthiness of white women, and to argue white women's inherent threat to white male supremacist goals.

Readings in queer pleasure

This article analyzes the queer pleasures of the 2015 sf movie by the Wachowski sisters, Jupiter Ascending . We find that these pleasures operate on two intertwined levels: the movie’s campy villains and over-the-top aesthetics reflect the themes of queer temporality and reproduction on the textual level, while the straight romance of the protagonist draws on the queer archive of fan fiction. We engage with queer studies and fan studies as critical frameworks that allow us to center affective pleasures of recognizing well-established romantic tropes and character archetypes. Critical debates surrounding Jupiter Ascending point to a larger discussion concerning the space for pleasure within sf texts and sf fan communities, while the movie’s commitment to fan fiction tropes and narrative practices anticipates recent changes in media consumption and production patterns.

Factors Governing the Amount of Fan Fiction of Smartphone Game Apps

Factors Governing the Amount of Fan Fiction of Smartphone Game Apps

Echolation as Modulation: A Case Study of Chus Pato and Erín Moure’s Secession/Insecession, Accompanied by a Fan Fiction of Moure’s Work More Generally

ABSTRACT This article takes a creative-critical approach to reading Erín Moure’s Secession/Insecession, a translation and echolation of Chus Pato Secesión, originally written in Galician. It subversively adopts the different species of Jean Vinay and Jean-Paul Darbelnet’s procedure of modulation from their 1958 comparative treatise Stylistique Comparée du français et de l’anglais to look at the way translator’s voice, somatic experience and political situation are shifted in Moure’s translation and creative rewriting. Across the different species of modulation, it charts the way that Moure’s echolation is a metacommentary as well as an archive of her translational experience and upon translation itself, modulating author with translator, writing with translation, but also modulating time and space between Pato’s realities and her own. Woven throughout these readings are connections to Moure’s work as a whole, in particular to the provocative heteronymic figure of Elisa Sampedrín, her intertextuality and translation techniques, and how they tell another story for translation. Finally, the body of the article is interrupted with prose-poetical passages in French that carry this reflection into the fan-fictional.