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The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context
Fandoms as diverse as Jane Austen, Blake's 7 , and The Bill are explored in this guide to the cultural phenomenon of fan fiction. Examining how anonymous authors bring their own gloss and invention to their favorite novels, films, and TV series; develop characters; expand narratives; and, in the slash genre, explore homosexual relationships between otherwise heterosexual characters, this analysis covers fanfic terminology, its mechanisms for participation and support, the differences between fan fiction and conventional publishing, and the genre's literary merits.
288 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2006
3 people are currently reading
160 people want to read
About the author
Sheenagh Pugh
24 books219 followersI was born in 1950. I live in Shetland with my husband. I have published nine collections of poetry and translations, plus a Selected Poems and a sort of mini-Selected, two novels and a critical study of fan fiction (see Books). I translate poems mainly from German but sometimes also from French and Ancient Greek. I read German and Russian at the University of Bristol and used to teach creative writing at the University of Glamorgan. I still visit Cardiff, where I used to live, regularly.
My interests are language, history, northern landscapes from Shetland to the Arctic and all points in between, snooker, mortality, cyberspace (I waste massive amounts of time online) and above all, people. I like to use poems to commemorate people and places, sometimes to amuse, to have a go at things I don't like (censorship, intolerance, pomposity) and above all to entertain.
I have been accused of being "populist" and "too accessible", both of which I hope are true.
I have won many prizes and awards, including the Forward Prize for best single poem of 1998, the Bridport Prize, the PHRAS prize, the Cardiff International Poetry Prize (twice) and the British Comparative Literature Association's Translation Prize. My poems have been included in several anthologies, notably Poems on the Underground and The Hutchinson Book of Post-War British Poetry. They have also been set to music, have appeared on the trams of Helsinki and the St Petersburg Underground, and have been translated into German, French, Italian, Russian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch.
My website is at http://sheenagh.webs.com/ and my blog is at http://sheenaghpugh.livejournal.com/. It's usually about writing-related stuff.
I'm not adding any more friends on Goodreads and will ignore all requests - nothing personal, it's just too much trouble.
My interests are language, history, northern landscapes from Shetland to the Arctic and all points in between, snooker, mortality, cyberspace (I waste massive amounts of time online) and above all, people. I like to use poems to commemorate people and places, sometimes to amuse, to have a go at things I don't like (censorship, intolerance, pomposity) and above all to entertain.
I have been accused of being "populist" and "too accessible", both of which I hope are true.
I have won many prizes and awards, including the Forward Prize for best single poem of 1998, the Bridport Prize, the PHRAS prize, the Cardiff International Poetry Prize (twice) and the British Comparative Literature Association's Translation Prize. My poems have been included in several anthologies, notably Poems on the Underground and The Hutchinson Book of Post-War British Poetry. They have also been set to music, have appeared on the trams of Helsinki and the St Petersburg Underground, and have been translated into German, French, Italian, Russian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch.
My website is at http://sheenagh.webs.com/ and my blog is at http://sheenaghpugh.livejournal.com/. It's usually about writing-related stuff.
I'm not adding any more friends on Goodreads and will ignore all requests - nothing personal, it's just too much trouble.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 20, 2013
My first impression was that the book was very dated, but taking into account that the author had apparently done her research from 2002-2004 and the book was published in 2005, it was feeling more dated than it had a right to. And that was just the beginning.
The initial few chapters of this book do not only set out the research; it spends a very long time explaining fandom to the uninitiated, and by the time it was done with that, we landed in a chapter on slash that seriously altered my opinion of what was up to that point, readable if simplistic.
The chapter on slash showed some clear biases and apparent discomfort on the part of the author, and as the book continued from there, eventual instances of what read like unintended but very obvious snatches of homophobia that made me highly uncomfortable.
This issue aside, the book is snobbish. I am wont to descend into snobbery sometimes myself, but this was beyond an occasional opinion. Highlights include "readers must be encouraged to read outside of their comfort zone," used as an argument against informative headers for fanfic.
When I finally got to the chapter on literary genres and how they applied to fanfic, something that had been bugging me for a while suddenly exploded to the forefront: this book offers nothing new. Thoughts are jotted down in a fairly random manner, but most theories, suggestions, remarks, etc., I have read before in other works, most older, and nothing new is concluded. Bold statements are made without any foundation offered, and while at times the book made me think, it was mostly because it was dated and I knew that practice had not in fact proven the suggestions in the text.
This book was dated before it was published, and it sadly offered nothing else to make it readable in spite of the narrow subject pool. I had to slog through the last few chapters, hoping the actual conclusions would redeem it, but even that seemed beyond this book's potential.
The initial few chapters of this book do not only set out the research; it spends a very long time explaining fandom to the uninitiated, and by the time it was done with that, we landed in a chapter on slash that seriously altered my opinion of what was up to that point, readable if simplistic.
The chapter on slash showed some clear biases and apparent discomfort on the part of the author, and as the book continued from there, eventual instances of what read like unintended but very obvious snatches of homophobia that made me highly uncomfortable.
This issue aside, the book is snobbish. I am wont to descend into snobbery sometimes myself, but this was beyond an occasional opinion. Highlights include "readers must be encouraged to read outside of their comfort zone," used as an argument against informative headers for fanfic.
When I finally got to the chapter on literary genres and how they applied to fanfic, something that had been bugging me for a while suddenly exploded to the forefront: this book offers nothing new. Thoughts are jotted down in a fairly random manner, but most theories, suggestions, remarks, etc., I have read before in other works, most older, and nothing new is concluded. Bold statements are made without any foundation offered, and while at times the book made me think, it was mostly because it was dated and I knew that practice had not in fact proven the suggestions in the text.
This book was dated before it was published, and it sadly offered nothing else to make it readable in spite of the narrow subject pool. I had to slog through the last few chapters, hoping the actual conclusions would redeem it, but even that seemed beyond this book's potential.
November 16, 2008
Pugh's look at fanfiction is especially interesting because she approaches it not from a psychological or cultural point of view, but from a literary one. That is, she treats fanfiction seriously as a literary genre and analyzes what makes it unique and interesting as a form of writing. Her tone is respectful but engaged, and the sections on authorial voice and style were fascinating--I would have liked to see more, is really my only complaint with the book. The fact that I'm quoted a few times in it is entirely unrelated, but bonus. :)
June 6, 2017
I was aware of fanfic already; had read a bit from some of my favourite universes (from Harry Potter to Lord of the Rings) because I was curious why X said that to Y, what Y really thought of Z, and how the drama of X and Z finally getting it together would play out – but hadn’t thought about how or why fanfic writers went about doing what they did. I’d even written some, without really knowing my reasons for doing so. Pugh’s incredibly well-researched investigation into the genre answered those questions, and raised many more. I must admit that I had always dismissed fanfic (and all its sub-genres) as a silly little aside that ‘real’ writers did for fun; or something that people not good enough to be ‘real’ writers did because they loved the characters that they’d come to know so well from books, films and TV.
Not having explored other fandoms online, I was amazed at how many there were, and the diversity of that range. The Bill, Men Behaving Badly, Hornblower, Blakes Seven… I can understand why people would want more from those universes, but for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone would want to read any more Jane Austen that they had to at school! Since reading The Democratic Genre, I’ve gone on to read and enjoy many excellent stories mentioned or quoted in Pugh’s investigation, even from The Bill which I have never really watched.
My opinion of the genre has changed, and I can totally see the literary tradition that helped to shape modern fanfic. Shakespeare took well known stories, and wrote his own versions of them; correcting what he didn’t like and making the characters interact in the ways he wanted to see them doing (Macbeth killing Duncan in Macbeth’s own castle, for instance). Pugh’s own novel Kirstie’s Witnesses is basically fanfic, from the foreword:
“The real Kirstie’s story is contained in several documents, notably the minutes of the Parochial Board, an application form, and evidence given at a trial and an inquiry. These items are all in the Shetland Archive.” She took these facts, and weaved a life out of them; isn’t that what fanfic writers do? The only difference I can see between this and typical fanfic is that the character was a real person, the methods used to write the novel remain true to fanfic's narrative forms. The same can be said for Tom Stoppard’s amazing play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; it could have been written as a book or story, but Stoppard, in keeping with the source material (Shakespeare’s Hamlet) he made it a play. Fanfic writers use the source material to generate new stories for their characters, in the style of the original. Pugh gives an example of a Bill fic that is written as a screenplay, using “the narrative techniques of [the] source material.”
I’ve read slash stories for various reasons: titillation; the oddness of seeing two people together who would never be like that in real life (the real life of the universe in which they live, that is); the enjoyment of queer writing; the exploration of sexuality. Pugh herself once said “anyone, up to and including a serial killer’s head, is legitimate territory for a writer to explore”. I embrace that sentiment, as have many other writers. For slash writers, changing the sexuality, or at least questioning or challenging it, is that same legitimately explorable territory. I still find it hard to understand why there are so few male slash writers. The answer to the question of why there are so many female writers and readers of slash was always obvious to me, and Pugh answers it so nicely “two good-looking men getting it on appeals to some women just as the reverse scenario does to some men.” She continues "some slash writers who were themselves gay may have wanted to explore this territory partly for ideological reasons, but many fanfic writers, both gay and straight, just followed their insatiable curiosity about alternative scenarios.” They are my reasons for reading and writing slash.
Pugh's investigation has deepened my interest in the genre by showing how fanfic can be a literary genre (albeit a rather odd one), as surely as the writing of the beat generation, pulp fiction or steampunk are. Yet fanfic can also be so much more. Some of the writers Pugh has interviewed in the book have explored their chosen characters by plunging them into different universes: a Blakes Seven/Cabaret crossover; Green Eggs and Hamlet (a particular favourite of mine); the first person tale of a mutoid from the B7 universe slowly reverting to humanity. When reading a book, my partner will often stop and stare at the wall or sky for minutes on end; he recently told me that what he’s doing is continuing the stories and conversations, in his head – what if X took Y to one side before the start of chapter six and explained about Z’s behaviour? Pure fanfic. I’ve told him to start writing them down! Another thing I found refreshingly positive, is Pugh’s assertion that just because someone is not paid for their writing, it doesn’t mean that it’s not good writing. I’m paid for hardly any of my writing! My own experiments in fanfic (mostly slash, I’ll admit) have been shorter fics and drabbles (100 words), character studies, or little in-between scenes to get to know a quirk I’ve read or imagined – but now I want to write more, something as clever and furiously inventive as the stuff Pugh introduces in her book.
Not having explored other fandoms online, I was amazed at how many there were, and the diversity of that range. The Bill, Men Behaving Badly, Hornblower, Blakes Seven… I can understand why people would want more from those universes, but for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone would want to read any more Jane Austen that they had to at school! Since reading The Democratic Genre, I’ve gone on to read and enjoy many excellent stories mentioned or quoted in Pugh’s investigation, even from The Bill which I have never really watched.
My opinion of the genre has changed, and I can totally see the literary tradition that helped to shape modern fanfic. Shakespeare took well known stories, and wrote his own versions of them; correcting what he didn’t like and making the characters interact in the ways he wanted to see them doing (Macbeth killing Duncan in Macbeth’s own castle, for instance). Pugh’s own novel Kirstie’s Witnesses is basically fanfic, from the foreword:
“The real Kirstie’s story is contained in several documents, notably the minutes of the Parochial Board, an application form, and evidence given at a trial and an inquiry. These items are all in the Shetland Archive.” She took these facts, and weaved a life out of them; isn’t that what fanfic writers do? The only difference I can see between this and typical fanfic is that the character was a real person, the methods used to write the novel remain true to fanfic's narrative forms. The same can be said for Tom Stoppard’s amazing play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; it could have been written as a book or story, but Stoppard, in keeping with the source material (Shakespeare’s Hamlet) he made it a play. Fanfic writers use the source material to generate new stories for their characters, in the style of the original. Pugh gives an example of a Bill fic that is written as a screenplay, using “the narrative techniques of [the] source material.”
I’ve read slash stories for various reasons: titillation; the oddness of seeing two people together who would never be like that in real life (the real life of the universe in which they live, that is); the enjoyment of queer writing; the exploration of sexuality. Pugh herself once said “anyone, up to and including a serial killer’s head, is legitimate territory for a writer to explore”. I embrace that sentiment, as have many other writers. For slash writers, changing the sexuality, or at least questioning or challenging it, is that same legitimately explorable territory. I still find it hard to understand why there are so few male slash writers. The answer to the question of why there are so many female writers and readers of slash was always obvious to me, and Pugh answers it so nicely “two good-looking men getting it on appeals to some women just as the reverse scenario does to some men.” She continues "some slash writers who were themselves gay may have wanted to explore this territory partly for ideological reasons, but many fanfic writers, both gay and straight, just followed their insatiable curiosity about alternative scenarios.” They are my reasons for reading and writing slash.
Pugh's investigation has deepened my interest in the genre by showing how fanfic can be a literary genre (albeit a rather odd one), as surely as the writing of the beat generation, pulp fiction or steampunk are. Yet fanfic can also be so much more. Some of the writers Pugh has interviewed in the book have explored their chosen characters by plunging them into different universes: a Blakes Seven/Cabaret crossover; Green Eggs and Hamlet (a particular favourite of mine); the first person tale of a mutoid from the B7 universe slowly reverting to humanity. When reading a book, my partner will often stop and stare at the wall or sky for minutes on end; he recently told me that what he’s doing is continuing the stories and conversations, in his head – what if X took Y to one side before the start of chapter six and explained about Z’s behaviour? Pure fanfic. I’ve told him to start writing them down! Another thing I found refreshingly positive, is Pugh’s assertion that just because someone is not paid for their writing, it doesn’t mean that it’s not good writing. I’m paid for hardly any of my writing! My own experiments in fanfic (mostly slash, I’ll admit) have been shorter fics and drabbles (100 words), character studies, or little in-between scenes to get to know a quirk I’ve read or imagined – but now I want to write more, something as clever and furiously inventive as the stuff Pugh introduces in her book.
October 2, 2021
A very well written book about fan fiction. My only complaint is I really wish she had written about my favourite fandoms and some of my favourite writers and referenced my favourite stories but I was familiar enough with the fandoms she did focus on and the book was highly informative.
Another problem with writing about fandom is most of the urls directing you to where her source material was..are no longer available. Geocities and Tripod vanished within a year of each other taking archives large and small and thousands upon thousands of stories and resources with them. If a site wasn't mirrored or the contents saved on a home computer somewhere...all that history was lost. Her biggest archive Fanfiction.net was never an impressive example of what constitutes a good archive except in its longevity and storage capacity. It was always too limiting. The latest take down of a major player was the loss of Yahoo as a host of fan fiction sites and mailing lists. At the end of the book where are the listings of story archives are to be found..is like a graveyard of stories and I am reading this book only fifteen years after it was published.
Another problem with writing about fandom is most of the urls directing you to where her source material was..are no longer available. Geocities and Tripod vanished within a year of each other taking archives large and small and thousands upon thousands of stories and resources with them. If a site wasn't mirrored or the contents saved on a home computer somewhere...all that history was lost. Her biggest archive Fanfiction.net was never an impressive example of what constitutes a good archive except in its longevity and storage capacity. It was always too limiting. The latest take down of a major player was the loss of Yahoo as a host of fan fiction sites and mailing lists. At the end of the book where are the listings of story archives are to be found..is like a graveyard of stories and I am reading this book only fifteen years after it was published.
February 19, 2025
If you want to write about fandom communities in the early '00s, this is the book for you. Specific archives for individual fandoms, verbs like "gafiate", "PWP" still meaning "Plot? What plot?", discussions on how unusual it is for slash to exist, JK Rowling as a positive force in the world - it really feels like a window into the fandom world 20 years ago.
But while "The Democratic Genre" is a good introduction to what fanfiction is and a good defense of it as a genre, it has little to offer otherwise that hasn't been said elsewhere in the mean time. I enjoyed the bits where Sheenah Pugh points out there are many instances of similarity to literary fiction (a love of intertextuality, for one), but after some time the book became a bit underwhelming. There's value in it, but it feels like the sort of text that failed to become huge in fandom studies for a reason - and part of that reason is that it's hard to write about fanfic as a whole.
I'd be very proud of my MA dissertation had looked like this, but as a published work of scholarship on fandom, it's not quite it.
But while "The Democratic Genre" is a good introduction to what fanfiction is and a good defense of it as a genre, it has little to offer otherwise that hasn't been said elsewhere in the mean time. I enjoyed the bits where Sheenah Pugh points out there are many instances of similarity to literary fiction (a love of intertextuality, for one), but after some time the book became a bit underwhelming. There's value in it, but it feels like the sort of text that failed to become huge in fandom studies for a reason - and part of that reason is that it's hard to write about fanfic as a whole.
I'd be very proud of my MA dissertation had looked like this, but as a published work of scholarship on fandom, it's not quite it.
March 10, 2024
this was a really interesting discussion of the concept of fandom and fanfiction, exploring the communal nature of the work, exploring its origins, and reflecting on five specific fandoms for examples (four of which i have no interest in, which sort of killed the vibe occasionally).
hopefully some of this will be useful for my fantasy essay if i end up doing it on fanfic. but it is quite outdated now - published in 2005 ish - so the way it talks about the internet is quite archaic. interesting to see how times have changed, but the basic concepts of fanfic remain.
really cool to have austen fanfic considered equally with tv and film stuff - breaking down the classical literature barrier nicely. also nice distinctions drawn between the definitions of fanfic and profic.
also - im logging this because it looks like i've not ready anything for like two weeks but i promise i've been fighting for my life with secondary reading. pride and prejudice reread almost complete too
hopefully some of this will be useful for my fantasy essay if i end up doing it on fanfic. but it is quite outdated now - published in 2005 ish - so the way it talks about the internet is quite archaic. interesting to see how times have changed, but the basic concepts of fanfic remain.
really cool to have austen fanfic considered equally with tv and film stuff - breaking down the classical literature barrier nicely. also nice distinctions drawn between the definitions of fanfic and profic.
also - im logging this because it looks like i've not ready anything for like two weeks but i promise i've been fighting for my life with secondary reading. pride and prejudice reread almost complete too
October 16, 2012
Entertaining and somewhat illuminating. She basically categorizes fanfic as either “more of” – that written to provide more of the same as the original – or “more from” – that written to take the characters in other directions or put them in new contexts (most slash falls here). She identifies one source of the urge to write slash as the wish to explore the vulnerabilities of male characters. She explores the continuum of fanfic to profic. I found interesting and plausible her discussion of the way the fanfic community supports a writer (especially a woman writer)—giving tons of feedback, encouragement, shared interest, etc.—much more than the profic community with its inherent competition between writers does.
October 8, 2008
This review is also posted on my blog at http://inputs.wordpress.com/2008/12/1...
This book offers an excellent and sympathetic overview of fan fiction as a literary form. The author uses material from both media and literary fandoms as illustrations, including The Bill, Discworld, Blakes 7, Hornblower and Jane Austen. The book is eminently readable and a great resource for anyone wishing to learn about the practices of fan fiction communities.
The author is a poet, novelist, critic and translator and teaches creative writing at the University of Glamorgan in Wales.
This book offers an excellent and sympathetic overview of fan fiction as a literary form. The author uses material from both media and literary fandoms as illustrations, including The Bill, Discworld, Blakes 7, Hornblower and Jane Austen. The book is eminently readable and a great resource for anyone wishing to learn about the practices of fan fiction communities.
The author is a poet, novelist, critic and translator and teaches creative writing at the University of Glamorgan in Wales.
June 24, 2012
A very enlightening book, coming from a different direction than other books on fan fiction: not the "Who are those weird chicks?"-angle but the "Let's see how they are doing things!"-angle.
Refreshing, to say the least.
Plus, this book made me curious about "Blakes 7" and, should the fanfic authors of that fandom really have said they had the best writers they appear to be right. Some of the most amazing fanfics I've ever read are B7. Which makes me a person to approach a series via its fanfics instead of first watching the originals and that again links me to medieval times when a story was actually thought less of when there was no source.
Refreshing, to say the least.
Plus, this book made me curious about "Blakes 7" and, should the fanfic authors of that fandom really have said they had the best writers they appear to be right. Some of the most amazing fanfics I've ever read are B7. Which makes me a person to approach a series via its fanfics instead of first watching the originals and that again links me to medieval times when a story was actually thought less of when there was no source.
August 29, 2015
Aunque el libro empieza muy bien hacia la mitad pierde fuerza. El concepto más interesante (fanfiction "more of" o "more from") es explicado en las primeras 100 páginas y el resto carece de mayor interés. Se nota que la autora se ha ceñido a los fandom que más le gustan y a sus escritoras y géneros predilectos y se tiende a minimizar la importancia de otros movimientos. Además, para haber sido publicado en 2006 parece demasiado desfasado. Por ejemplo, no hay mención de Livejournal ni de los cambios en el fandom que supuso por no decir que todos los fandom analizados tienen más de 15 años de vida y nacieron off-line. Una lectura curiosa pero poco más.
February 12, 2011
Really interesting book on the genre of fan fiction and how it functions as a literary genre.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews