We Need Diverse Fanfiction Studies: On Shipping Fanfiction and CYA Literature

Abstract:While often celebrated as a space for diverse representation and engagement, fanfiction, including fanfiction based on children’s and young adult narrative, is not necessarily progressive and tends to reflect the representational politics of mainstream media and publishing. Fanfiction generally favors and develops around high-profile book and media franchises and repeats as much as challenges their ideological tendencies. Meanwhile, fan material about lesser-known titles remains largely unstudied despite a wealth of data on fanfiction sites and platforms such as Archive of Our Own (AO3) and Fanfiction.net. This article argues that fanfiction studies, like children’s literature studies and children’s literature itself, needs to become more diverse in its topics, its methods, and its ethical commitments. It recommends structural and comparative approaches to children’s literature-based fanfiction, including the study of its dynamics of canonization and circulation, which both resemble and diverge from those of source texts or “canon.” One model discussed is Emer O’Sullivan’s Comparative Children’s Literature, which might be adapted to comparative fanfiction work. The article also attends to the various feedback loops between canon and its fanfiction, underscoring, for instance, how some fanfiction has been legitimized as literature even as some novels about fanfiction have inspired fanfiction, in turn.