The mass media give us industrialized storytelling: teams of professionals produce stories for us at a distance on a regular schedule for profit. Television works this way (watch Fridays at 9:00!), as well as Hollywood movies (Iron Man 3), and even books are increasingly published as regular serials (Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Twilight) or with the author as “brand” (one reads an Agatha Christie, a Stephen King, a James Patterson). It’s not that different from making cars or computers or any other industrial product. In mass culture, there are professional producers (writers, actors, directors) and cultural consumers (whose role is the system is to buy and enjoy), but this is the system that fanfiction flouts: in fandom, the “consumer” is also an artist, who turns the industrial story into something local, idiosyncratic, personal, handmade.
Francesca Coppa, “Introduction to the Detective’s Tale,” The Fanfiction Reader
(PS and hrmph, the book was briefly sold out at Amazon but they’ve got copies again. All royalties go to the Organization For Transformative Works, which built and maintains the Archive of Our Own, who are currently having a fundraising drive: go donate and support the work they do!)
Question of Smoke 