PBS Delves Into Fanfiction [VIDEO]

I can’t even recall any guys heavily involved in fan fiction. The most popular writers and webmasters are nearly all women.

Glad I wasn’t the only one bothered by the complete lack of female creators being interviewed for the show. I mean seriously, they spent the last segment talking about a female artist, and they couldn’t be arsed to get her on to talk about her own work?

While…YAY fanfiction on PBS of all things….no women? Really, you couldn’t find a single one in the entirety of fandom?

Seems odd given the provenance of 50 Shades of Grey, which became a bestseller. I wonder how much of the oral traditions of preliterate cultures were passed on by women? Before copyright, it was normal to make up stories about pre-existing culture heroes; I’m sure the ancient Greeks made up stories about Odysseus and Achilles that haven’t been written down.

Hi! I’m the assistant producer for PBS Off Book. Thank you for the post. We are so excited to be on The Mary Sue! The lack of women in the episode has gotten a lot of attention, and I just wanted to say that it was a completely unintentional omission. We are sorry! Because
of all the feedback, we’re planning an addendum episode to feature female fan artists, so if you have suggestions of female artists that are NYC-based, please send them our way!

Hey, Lisa, is there an email address or other contact point that people could send suggestions to? 

Seriously, I can count on one hand the number of men I know of who write fanfic in my fandoms. It seems like a no-brainer that PBS should be talking to women about this. It’s insane that they didn’t. It’s like, it can’t be serious or legit if women are involved–or is that just my take on it?

Hey Susana, absolutely, people can email me with any suggestions: lisa@kornhaberbrown.com

 It’s great that you want to add women to another Fanfic episode, and I think you for that. But in all honesty, I’m astounded that you could have decided to dedicate an episode of Off Book to fanfic and not asked women writers in the first place.

One of the easiest places to find fanficcers would be Live Journal (livejournal.com). You can pick a movie, book, or television show pretty much at random and you are likely to find a community for it filled with women you can contact via their live journal accounts.

I highly recommend seeing what comes up if you do a search on LJ for ‘White Collar’. It’s set in New York and I know there are at least a few fan fic writers who are in that fandom and locals. That’s mostly for fiction, though, not art.

This video pretty much sums up everything I hate about fanfiction!

 . . . you hate fans of pop culture using digital media to connect with each other and respond to/elaborate on their favored stories and characters?

Okay.

There is just something off putting about it for me. The art work I am fine with. The off the wall insanity is just that insanity. The “Drive/Dog” guy especially. It just feels…. disrespectful in a way.

Also, you can find the most popular fanfiction in certain fandoms by looking on fanfiction.net or 
http://archiveofourown.org/. Hell, even go on Tumblr.

You may want to look into the Organization for Transformative Works (http://transformativeworks.org/). It’s a fan-run and fan-supported group that campaigns for the legal rights of transformative works (such as vids and fic), has an academic journal, a fanfiction archive and is working to preserve the history of fandom. One of the board members is Naomi Novik, an author whose original Temeraire series has been optioned by Peter Jackson.

The organization itself might be of interest to you, plus they can help put you in contact with a community of fans which is largely (but not exclusively) female. They helped Lev Grossman get in touch with fanfiction writers when he wrote an article on the subject for Time last year.

The lack of women in this really really bothered me. I realise it’s not quite the same thing but there’s a historical precedent that many mediums are spearheaded by women, and then when those mediums start to gain more recognition within mainstream society, men become the dominant voices. A lot of the early film makers were women but you wouldn’t know that to look at the film industry today. I’m not saying this omission is malicious (though it has been in the past) but it’s part of a disturbing trend. And frankly, how CAN you leave women out of a discussion about fanfiction? The need for female created things is one of the reasons that fanfcition exists, and it is vastly female dominated.

Thanks for the suggestion, we’re in the midst of looking into female artists and writers now, and I appreciate the input!

Thanks for those sites Amanda!

Thanks for that information!

 You’re very welcome. :)