Are you, like Jackie, completely baffled and intimidated by the world of A03, Wattpad, and all other things fanfiction? Don't worry! Jen's taking down the twisty turn-y path that leads us to all thing fandom, canon, and full of ships...not the three-masted schooner kind, though.

Questions/comments/concerns/suggestions? Email us at ragingromantics@nopl.org!

Terms:

• fanfiction - fictional writing written in an amateur capacity by fans, unauthorized by, but based on an existing work of fiction
• Fandom - the fans of a particular person, team, fictional series, etc. regarded collectively as a community or subculture.
• 'Ships -Shipping (derived from the word relationship) is the desire by followers of a fandom for two or more people, either real-life people or fictional characters (in film, literature, television series, etc.) to be in a romantic and/or sexual relationship.
• Superwholock - ship that involves Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock crossover
• Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) - Amazon's direction publication service
• A03 - Archive of Our Own - a nonprofit open source repository for fanfiction and other fanworks contributed by users
• Wattpad - an online social reading platform intended for users to read and write original stories. 
• OTP - One True Pair
• NSFW/SFW - Not Safe For Work / Safe For Work based on content
• Canon - the source material; in fiction-based fandoms, "canon" is simply the source narrative you're referring to when you talk about that thing you like
• Spiritualism - a system of belief or religious practice based on supposed communication with the spirits of the dead, especially through mediums.
• Fanart -artwork created by fans of a work of fiction and derived from a series character or other aspect of that work
• Genderbent -When a character's gender is changed; usually in fanfictions or fanart
• Fanzines- a magazine, usually produced by amateurs, for fans of a particular performer, group, or form of entertainment
• Slash fic / slash fiction - a genre of fan fiction that focuses on romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex. Sic m/m, f/f
• Dead dove - "Dead Dove: Do Not Eat" is a warning or tag used to indicate that a fanwork contains tropes or elements that may be deemed morally reprehensible without explicitly condemning the sensitive aspects (see fanlore.org)

Specific Fics and books we mention:

• "Master of the Universe" fanfic by EL James/Snowdragons Icequeen
• Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren
• The Office (No longer available online)
• Tessa Dare P&P fanfiction (not available online, but this is Tessa's blog)
• Naomi Novik "His Majesty's Dragons" - Master & Commander fic
• Pamela
• Shamela

Other episodes we recommend:

• #11 The Cult of Snowqueens Icedragon and 50 Shades
• #25 A (not-so-brief) Brief History of Romance
• #27 Howling for Werewolves
• #33 Exploring the Final Frontier with Science Fiction and Romance

Links:

• Organization for Transformative Works
• "Fan fiction" (Wikipedia)
• The Forgotten Early History of Fan Fiction (Hill, 2016)
• "In A Lonely Lockdown, With Books Slow To Come, Fanfiction Booms" (Çam, 2020)
• "Fan Fiction Was Just as Sexual in the 1700s as It Is Today"
• "How TikTok and Young Creators Turned Fanfiction into a Celebrated Art Form" (Weekman)
• "Fifty Shades Of Green: How Fanfiction Went From Dirty Little Secret To Money Machine" (Cucinello, 2017)
• "The early adventures of the apocryphal Sherlock Holmes" (Jamison, up. 2021)
• "Anne Rice Really Hated When People Made Her Characters Bone" (Jackson, 2021)
• "Why Do Queer People Write Fan Fiction? To See Themselves in Mainstream Culture" (Binstock, 2016)