On terminology: fic, fan-fiction, fan fiction, fanfiction, and a rose by any other name.

[kitewithfish]

I'm still receiving emails with every new post from Diana Gabaldon's blog here , and I am finding that I keep getting caught up in terminology.

When Ms. Gabaldon used the term, "fan-fiction" in the title of her post, I made the immediate assumption that she didn't know what she was talking about, because "fan-fiction" is a really uncommon formulation of the term.*

The spelling "fan-fiction" got picked up by Ms. Gabaldon's immediate supporters, a number of whom admitted that they had never heard of the term before and were unaware of the concept. Thus, in the course of this conversation, "fan-fiction" has become associated with the perspective of an outside to the fannish community looking in. I perceive "fan-fiction" negatively, at least in the context of this conversation, as holding connotations of mis- or poorly -informed opinions. I believe this has somewhat shaped the way I read the discussion of anyone who uses the term "fan-fiction."

I consider the correct term* to be "fanfiction", one word without spaces or hyphens, and "fanfic" to be an equally appropriate term with exactly the same meaning. In fannish contexts, I consider "fic" to be another interchangeable term for "fanfiction" or "fiction," depending on the context of thw writer to add the appropriate prefix of "litfic," "profic," or "fanfic" to clarify if the point is unclear.

To corroborate my views, I looked at the Fanlore wiki, and I discovered that this issue was under more contention than I'd thought- while my views reflect usage in fandom, academia has difference usages, and "fan fiction" is considered the correct term in academic circles. But, when I looked at the comments to the discussion on Ms. Gabaldon's blog, while I saw "fan fiction," I thought that it was odd and possibly as outsider-ish a term as "fan-fiction." However, the contents of the posts using "fan fiction" suggested that it was an accepted term in fandom- many of those using "fan fiction" wrote as members of the fandom community.

So, what do you think?

*From my own experience as a fandom lurker dating to 2000 or so.

Comments

[franzeska]

*wanders by*

I've seen all kinds of wacky spellings and punctuation choices for pretty much any fandom term. I don't think I've seen fanfic writers using the hyphenated version, but the whole space/no space debate has been going forever in fandom. The last big flare up was last January. There was plenty of stuff on metafandom at the time.

http://transformativeworks.org/fan-fiction-added-merriam-webster
http://quinara.dreamwidth.org/22880.html?thread=45152&format=light


I have to ask: How are you defining 'litfic'? I thought that term had a well-known fandom definition, but when I was trying to write it up for Fanlore, I found that most people I asked either didn't know it or defined it differently from what I'd always heard. (FWIW, I really only use 'fic' as an abbreviation of 'fanfic', not 'fiction' generally.)

[kitewithfish]

I cannot remember where I first saw "litfic," but I remember that it was being used in contrast to "fanfic" and that the context was clear that the person was contrasting conventionally published and paid fiction (novels, etc) to online, not-for-profit works with elements or characters borrowed from and owned by others.

Looking at the fanlore definition, I honestly can't say whether or not the writer who used "litfic" meant to further specify literary fiction (The Namesake as opposed to genre fiction (scifi novels), but I am certain she was not using it to mean fanfiction based on print materials (as opposed to fanfic based on movies and TV). I took "litfic" to be synonymous with "profic" (again, conventionally published novel as an example), and not a specific style of conventionally published work.

I'm not sure now if I've seen "litfic" used to refer to fanfiction based on print materials- if I have I wonder if I was misunderstanding it.... The problem is made a little more dense in that the kind of print-inspired fanfiction I read is usually based off of genre novels rather than literature. This might confound my sources even more.

[franzeska]

Yeah, exactly. I had always seen it in a particular context (in retrospect, I think probably being used by people who thought of "fanfic" as what people in "mediafandom" wrote--and therefore not book-based), and then I realized there were all these other ways it was being used.