Huh, well there's a thing. I took a look at my Uni's digital archive (which is linked to seemingly every journal ever) and it's impressive how much stuff there is.

OK, so most of it is newspaper articles rather than reviewed research but there's a lot of it:

Catherine Tosenberger wrote two 'papers': 'Mature Poets Steal: Children's Literature and the Unpublishability of Fanfiction' and 'Homosexuality at the Online Hogwarts: Harry Potter Slash Fanfiction'.

There's also some others that look at slash specifically, like 'The Slash Fanfiction Connection to Bi Men' by Raven Davies.

Or a very detailed look into why people write fanfiction, 'I Love You to Meaninglessness: From Mortal Characters to Immortal Character Types in P&P Fanfiction' by Brett Jenkins.

Most interestingly is a paper suggesting that fanfiction gives insight into reader expectations and understanding of fiction in general, 'Fanfiction as imaginary play: What fan-written stories can tell us about the cognitive science of fiction' by Jennifer Barnes.

Or course there's other stuff that many people have already seen. Like an analysis of fandom pairings or the demographics of the FFN community.

The article by Jennifer Barnes is particularly interesting.

 

It is really simple. Sex.

 

I'd say, that harem stuff's teenage boy's wish fulfillment fics.

 

I've been approached a few times over the years about being part of studies in fanfiction.

I recall... I think it was the University of Edinburgh, back in '05/'06, RossWrock, Barb, me, and a few others took part in a thesis on the reader expectation when it came to fanfiction, and what we 'heavy hitters' thought about our obligation to those readers.

I did a little something with MIT last year, but that's more to do with making the leap to original fiction.

I think if you go looking, OP, you'll find a wealth of past studies on the topic.

 

Maybe not, but not in the direction you intended. I jumped into writing HP fanfiction not because I wanted to educate the public on something, but because I wanted to educate myself in writing better. I wonder how many others had that goal, or a similar one?

 

This, for me.

I am not, by nature, an especially good writer. I am a good technical writer; I can write academic papers in my sleep and I can communicate very effectively my thoughts on various things. Creative writing and communicating the thoughts of the imaginary other is much harder.

And so that's why I write. Engineering, Programming, it gets a little boring after a while without an interesting problem to drive you on. Creative writing is an endless problem, infinite in its variations. Put simply it is hard, and it stays pretty hard even after years of experience.

And that's lovely.

Every story I write is centred around learning something even before I decide what the story is meant to be. It might be writing high-octane fight scenes, or romance, or in-depth character arcs or anything else. The point with each fic is to be better at that specific thing.

Writing a proper book wouldn't achieve that.

 

You might also like to look at TV Tropes. A lot of the tropes originated in HP fan fiction and might help you get an overview of the whole fandom.

 

Do you have a link to your WbA fanfics/PCnet/FFnet accounts?

 

I do remember that, but don't think I ever saw what became of it. If anyone has a link, I'd appreciate it.

 

I'll try and dig it out.

Good to see you, Ross. Hope you've got a story or two in you yet.