Fan Fiction

Not having an in-depth understanding of the Buffy TV series is a critical hurdle in understanding the Slash fanfiction, but some important concepts do arise from reading it. For one, it highlights some concepts in Jenkins' piece on convergence: in an unprecedented way, fans have the technology to contribute to commercial media; also these contributions may inform the producers of mass media.

In Sean Griffin's blog post on Jenkins' site, he claims that commercial media is lacking in a broad scope of who is viewing the media in question - his counterpart, Robin Reid speaks of advertising for her favourite shows as targeting a completely different audience, for example. Fan culture may be changing this a bit, as the content of the shows may be reflecting the culture of the fans. I'm not sure whether or not, for example, Xena: Warrior Princess was slated originally to be a lesbian cult hit, but in its development, it played upon that idea quite a bit.

What Slash fiction brings to the table, though, is not necessarily informing the mainstream culture, but enriching the fan culture in the folk tradition. It is an expression of the immersion in mass media combined with personal experience.