Familiarity Breeds Content in Online Fiction Creation & Consumption

Abstract

“Fanfiction,” the use of others’ characters to write original stories, is not an especially new phenomenon, nor has it typically been the exclusive domain of the young. Movie and television show “tie-in” novels appeared alongside movies and television as early as the 1920s; the numerous retellings of the tales of King Arthur, Robin Hood, and Cinderella operate on the same premise. In recent years, however, fanfiction has increasingly appealed to young readers and writers. According to “Pop Fiction,” an article by Maryanne Murray Buechner (2002) in Time Magazine, a third of www.fanfiction.net’s 115,000 members were under the age of eighteen. Two years later, www.fanfiction.net has approximately 215,000 members; if the percentage of teen users has remained constant, there are over 70,000 readers and writers of fan fiction on one Internet site alone. Fanfiction has found its niche in the relatively ungoverned Internet among teen readers because it offers them familiar characters and situations, a means of romantic fantasy or sexual stimulation, and an escape from the stresses of everyday life.