Thanks so much, you guys.

Any websites besides fanfiction.net that my friend should be looking at?

If your friend wants the quality stuff, no way he should look at ff.net.

For Trek, try the Trekiverse archive, which I think is at trekiverse.org.

For X-Files, there's Gossamer, which is gossamer.org.

For Due South, there's the Due South Fiction Archive.

Those are all big fandoms for shows no longer on the air. (Except for Enterprise, the current Trek.) There are tons of others.

Rio, please tell me your friend is going to write an article that doesn't mock fan fic or get half the details wrong.

He is a really smart and sweet person whose jouralism is not based on mocking people or encouranging others to mock them. I can't imagine he'd write anything mean or stupid.

The entire community is pretty gun-shy about this...well, that's not the right word. It's just that these articles are almost always someone on the outside, looking at the strange group of people, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, we've all seen mistakes too often. Conflating fan fiction with slash. Insisting that all slash is darkfic. Focusing only on the stuff that's prurient in some way.

I didn't mean to cast any aspersions on your friend. I'd love to see the article when it comes out.

I know, Dana. I've seen those "ha ha, what freaks!" articles about fanfic.

Even when they're not "what freaks" there's generally a tone of amused condescension that comes through. I'd love for someone to write an article with recognition that people have been doing this for centuries, and all the internet has done is allow us to share these stories.

The one danger is to come up with explanations for why people write it -- because there's no one reason for it, and making sweeping generalizations about it always ends up pissing someone off.

I can think of nothing more educational for a writer than fanfic. Immediate feedback from an impassioned--and around here very intelligent--audience. I suppose getting hooked up with a top-flight professional editor would be better, but I'm going out on a limb and say most writers don't get to take advantage of a situation like that.

YWriterEducationMV

Hey, I have this idea to present to Tom Devaney, the master of all stuff at the Writers House, that he should bring a program about *fic* for the WH next fall. Have a fun mini-lecture thing, a reading, bring some big names to the House for dinner. I'm going to present it to him as this vast underground moment that's been growing, recently, in the popular/academic eye. I'm very serious about it-- I'm going to come out as a ficcer to the Penn lit people; I'm going to write this bigass paper.

It'd be like a con, but supported by an ivy-league university!

I can think of nothing more educational for a writer than fanfic.

Word, Connie. I learned a hell of a lot more through writing and editing fic than I did in my one formal creative writing class (at an Ivy League institution, no less).

But that's not the content, it's the process. Fic is in many ways about community -- fic is how I engage with a show, and how I engage with a fandom. I leave to others the intense 30K character analyses and symbolic explications. Me, I write fic.

Ooh, I can't sleep, and I don't want to work, so I'm rereading my Smallville and dS fic favorites. This shit rocks. You know it's a good story-- or maybe you just know that you're a dork, which, also pretty applicable-- when you can't stop giggling from sheer vicarious happiness *and* you keep welling up with tears so you have to go to the bathroom and just sort of slump against the door for a minute making weird noises, and then blow your nose with toilet paper.