Essay: Alora Young's "Fanfiction as Critical Play" (2014)
I had the pleasure of having A.B. Young in my GAMESCENES course at California College of the Arts in the Spring of 2014. This semester, Young wrote a terrific essay on fandom and Game Art titled "Fanfiction as Critical Play" which she has been kind enough to share with the readers of GAMESCENES.
FANFICTION AS CRITICAL PLAY
A.B. Young
Writing a piece of fiction based on another piece of fiction is not a new tradition. Anne Jamison calls it “writing from sources”[1] in Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World, stating that as far back as Aristotle, we have recognised that art is imitation, and that most of the great writers since then have openly written from sources, have pulled from other fiction and other writers.[2] What we see today in fan culture when fans write from sources—that is, take a preexisting universe from film, television, a book, a videogame, etc.—is just another iteration of this tradition. Often, we talk about fanfiction in terms of fan culture, participatory culture, and appropriation, but rarely do we talk about it in terms of play. The act of writing fanfiction is, in fact, a form of critical play, and the completed fanfiction, the artifact left for others in the fandom to access and interact with, furthers this critical play. I will spend the first part of this paper going over the concepts of both fanfiction and critical play before moving into a specific example that illustrates these ideas, a fanfiction based upon Bioshock Infinite[3] by Archive of Our Own user dynamicsymmetry, entitled “All the Worlds Aflame”[4].
Fanfiction is appropriation at its most honest. The goal of the fanfiction writer is not to create art or make money. Fanfiction often comes, instead, out of an intense love for a source universe, in this case a videogame, and it comes from an active and productive re-imagining of that universe through criticism. In his book Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture, Henry Jenkins discusses this phenomenon in depth. He says, “Organized fandom is, perhaps first and foremost, an institution of theory and criticism”[5]. Due to this culture of criticism, fans are allowed to be openly displeased with something in the universe; a character whose development is stunted by the writers, or a plot twist that drives the show in an undesired direction.[6] The fanfiction writer wants to explore ways that the disagreeable element could have been used better or avoided entirely. James Newman, in Playing With Videogames, defines fanfiction as follows: “narratives and characters are played with, further developed, and made denser and richer through gamers’ own written production”[7]. Similarly, in Textual Poachers, Jenkins quotes a Star Trek fan who described writing fanfiction as “treat[ing] the program like silly putty,” and he expands on this, saying fanfiction is “stretching [the program’s] boundaries to incorporate [the fan’s] concerns, remolding its characters to better suit their desires.”[8] These descriptions of fanfiction allow the fanfiction writer a social and cultural awareness they are not often afforded. These definitions of fanfiction situate it squarely in the field of critical play.
In Critical Play: Radical Game Design, Mary Flanagan states that “Critical play is characterized by a careful examination of social, cultural, political and even personal themes that function as alternatives to popular play spaces.”[9] Expanding on this definition, to play critically is to interact with a game in a way that explores and points to important social and cultural issues, and to find ways outside of the established outlets to discuss them. Fanfiction adheres to this definition, exploring, as Jenkins and Newman state, characters and narratives in a way that better serve their own desires for the fictional universe. As presented earlier, these desires are not solely placed in enjoyment, but also largely in criticism. When creating fanfiction, a fan is expanding on their chosen source fiction to begin to correct an element that they view as problematic. These elements are more often than not based in “social, cultural, political,” or “personal themes”. For example, many fanfictions depict a romantic relationship between a same-sex couple, although one or, more frequently, both of the characters involved are canonically heterosexual. The most well-known example of this would be Star Trek fans who chose to explore a romantic relationship between Kirk and Spock. (This kind of same-sex pairing is called a “slash ship”—“slash” as in the forward-slash in “Kirk/Spock” and “ship” as in “relationship”.[10]) By rewriting the characters’ sexualities, the fanfiction writer is examining a combination of most, if not all, of the types of themes Flanagan attributes to the practice of critical play. They purposefully highlight the much-discussed issue of societal and cultural responses to homosexuality, and draw attention to the lack of representation, or misrepresentation, of homosexuality in the media by creating their own representations in their fanfiction.
In Critical Play, Mary Flanagan defines “subversion” as “an action, plan, or activity intended to undermine an institution, even or object.”[11] Fanfiction is inherently subversive. Not only does any given fanfiction undermine the canonical events depicted in the source text by elaborating on or changing them entirely, but it undermines the institution of the law by violating copyright. Fanfiction is also often subversive in terms of the same content and themes that makes it a form of critical play. By writing about a homosexual relationship between two canonically heterosexual characters, for example, the fanfiction writer subverts the characters’ expected roles. To give another example, many fanfictions are often sexually explicit (occasionally outrageously so, the characters finding themselves in physical positions that may or may not be possible, and the prose drawing on strange and, at times, disturbing metaphors—if the content of sites like WTF Fanfiction is to be considered[12]). These kinds of intercourse would never be depicted in the mainstream media, so by taking a source text from there and inserting this element into it, the fanfiction writer subverts what the source’s viewers expect. Interestingly, fans who write fanfiction about videogames are somewhat separate from fanfiction writers of other media.
Rather than choose to play the game itself critically, they explore it through writing in order to examine critical themes. Unlike fans who write fanfiction based on a TV show, for example, who have no ability to interact with the viewed universe—the program creators intend passive spectatorship rather than to active participation, and therefore the viewer has to contribute in ways that are separate from the show—gamers have to actively participate with the game world. The games themselves allow for critical play, and artists have often exploited these. Examples of these are the dead-in-iraq intervention by Joseph DeLappe[13] and Marque Cornblatt’s GTA IV Crime Free Law-Abider[14]. Gamers who write fanfiction, however, choose to recreate the game in another form so that they can play it through an entirely different medium. These fans feel that it’s necessary to rewrite the game in order to critically play with the aspects with which they take issue. This is a form of subversion that perhaps transcends both the inherent subversion of fanfiction as a genre and the specific subversive elements and content of any specific fanfiction.
Certain concepts of subversive/critical play that are applicable to fanfiction are also applicable to doll play—that is, the concepts of “unplaying”, “reskinning”, and “rewriting”.[15] While these concepts are present in all fanfiction, they are more overtly present in fanfiction when the writer is aware that they are interacting critically. We can be sure that dynamicsymmetry, the writer of the fanfiction “All the Worlds Aflame” is one of these writers not only from the piece itself, but from her End Notes: “I love these characters, and it was wonderful to have a chance to write something that was both an expansion of and a challenge to some of the themes in the game.”[16] The fan is purposefully examining themes and proposing alternatives functions for the game’s characters. (This statement also perfectly demonstrates how the desire to write fanfiction comes from both a love of the universe and a critical stance when viewing it.) Specifically, dynamicsymmetry accomplishes her attempts to “expand” and “challenge” the games themes through Flanagan’s concepts of unplaying, reskinning, and rewriting.
When unplaying with dolls, the player “reverses traditional expectations regarding care-giving behaviors and allows players to rethink the conventions involved with these social roles.”[17] Players do not interact with the game world as intended by the game creator. In doll play, they “kill” the doll rather than use it to play the expected role within the “’care-giving’ framework”[18]. In fanfiction, the writer modifies story conventions like character development and plotline to reverse the themes or expectations presented in the game. In “All the Worlds Aflame”, dynamicsymmetry does this by giving her narrator, Daisy Fitzroy, doubts about her cause. These doubts are explored throughout the entire fanfiction, but they are stated quite clearly here, for example: “They’ve been invisible their whole lives. This is a war of invisible people, a fight for a future only they can see. But in Daisy’s mind that future is becoming indistinct, fuzzy, questionable.”[19] In Bioshock Infinite, Daisy Fitzroy is the leader of the Vox Populi, a revolutionary group who oppose the white supremacist society that runs the floating city of Columbia, where the game is set.
The player interacts with Fitzroy and the Vox throughout the game, but she is not a playable character. Her fate during the gameplay is self-sacrifice for her cause.[20] Needless to say, in the universe put forth by the game creators, Fitzroy is a character who is sure of the necessity of her actions. If she were not, the ludonarrative—that is, the interactive elements of the plot—would not work so smoothly. Therefore, for dynamicsymmetry to make Fitzroy doubtful of the future she has so long been fighting for, for it to become “indistinct, fuzzy, questionable”, is to unplay her intended role. She is intended to be the unquestioning martyr, and dynamicsymmetry breaks her out of that role.
In reskinning their dolls, “Players make alternative arrangements and disguise their dolls for subversive roles, altering the appearance or the presentation of dolls in a way that allows dolls to enter forbidden scenes.”[21] Players do this by changing the doll’s outfit, cutting off the doll’s hair, or “literally effac[ing] the surface of the [doll’s] body.”[22] Since fanfiction is textual rather than visual, this definition can be expanded so that it includes not only a character’s physical presentation, but their identity. Once again, changing a character’s canonical sexuality is a prime example here. This is how dynamicsymmetry chooses to reskin the characters of Bioshock Infinite in her fanfiction. She takes Daisy Fitzroy and another major, but unplayable character in the game, Elizabeth, and reskins their sexualities so that they can be in a romantic relationship: “The Vox are a red flood and they fill the streets, but Elizabeth is somehow above it all, high and apart, and Daisy goes to her, frames her waist with her hands. Her dirty little secret is that this is the only victory she really wants anymore.”[23] This reskinning is explored throughout the fanfiction.
Perhaps the most obviously applicable concept of critical play the three discussed here is rewriting. Fictions created by doll players about the dolls “was a way for girls to explore deeper social and personal meanings in play.”[24] The ability to write and revise stories about the lives and experiences of these dolls gave “agency”[25] to the player by allowing for “participant narratives”[26] Similarly, fanfiction writers take agency by creating their own fictions around a preexisting universe. The act of writing fanfiction is in itself rewriting, but some fanfiction takes it further. For example, there are pieces of fanfiction that are entirely canonical, simply a prose version of a videogame cut-scene, for example, like a film novelization. Some fanfictions depict “deleted scenes”, events that happened canonically and that we are told about or are implied after the fact, but that the audience did not see. There is also, however, fanfiction that is entirely invention but still take place in the universe of the game. [27] A fanfiction that explores a possible romance, for example like “All the Worlds Aflame”. (There are also alternate universe fanfictions, called “AUs”, in which the characters are removed from the original universe and placed into a new one.[28])
In this particular case study, the fanfiction rewrites the universe of the source game by setting it in a timeline that we never witness in game-play. However, it is not an AU fanfiction because during game-play, alternate timelines to the one the player begins in are explored, because Elizabeth has the power to tear open rifts in reality.[29] Therefore the timeline depicted in this fanfiction could conceivably exist in the universe of the game. In the timelines players witness, Booker rescues Elizabeth from the tower in which she was being held captive. As a first person shooter game experienced through Booker’s eyes, he is crucial to the game and how the player experiences it.[30] In “All the Worlds Aflame”, however, Booker does not exist: “Maybe there was a man, but there wasn’t.… Maybe there was a lighthouse and a man, but that was a lie. That was wrong. There is not always a man. There doesn’t need to be. Sometimes there is no man at all.”[31] In this version of the game’s universe, Daisy Fitzroy plays Booker’s role, she rescued Elizabeth from the tower. This not only gives dynamicsymmetry agency as a writer participating in a narrative she didn’t create, subverting it for her own enjoyment and critical exploration, but it gives Daisy Fitzroy the agency as a character she wasn’t afforded in the original game universe.
This exploration of Daisy as a character was not only a desirable form of critical play for dynamicsymmetry, but for her readers. The comments left by members of the Bioshock Infinite fan community on the fanfiction demonstrate that the awareness of the critical approach this fanfiction has taken extends to the larger community. One fellow fan said in their comments:
I mean i love your ambition and the way you really made the universe you're own. I really wanted to read someone just really take that infinite possibility-scape for a ride and you totally did it. Thumbs up. You also connected the characters in like exactly the way my mind wanted ... Obviously Elizabeth and Fitzroy are strong female characters.... the character development was amazing. The way the killer starts to question themselves ... It was done so well. [sic][32]
Another said: “Wow, I love this reality and I love your interpretation of Daisy; ‘an expansion of and a challenge to some of the themes in the game’ is an excellent way to put it, as someone who liked Daisy and the Vox but was really frustrated with how the storyline was handled ultimately. Writing's lovely too; very well done.”[33] These two fans point out several of the things that have been discussed in this paper, acknowledging the critical play that is present, only without using the terminology employed here. Even without knowledge of the types of critical play discussed by Flanagan, these fans are participating in an intellectual discussion about developments in the game plot that disappointed them—opposing the fandom’s sense of “potential” for the character or plot, as Jenkins says[34]—and appreciating dynamicsymmetry’s challenging of these elements. They therefore validate the critical play undergone by the fanfiction writer, allowing it to return to the game through the gamers who view it.
By allowing the larger fan community to access and interact with the fanfiction, the piece contributes to the larger agency of the fans over the source universe. This allows for more fans to participate in the remolding of a fiction that they did not create, examining societal, cultural, political, and personal themes through both the inherently subversive act of writing fanfiction, and through the content and themes contained within the individual fanfiction. The fanfiction writer employs concepts such as unplaying, reskinning, and rewriting in order to acknowledge and further explore the subversive elements of their version of the source. This makes fanfiction a form of critical play.
Bio: A.B. Young is a fiction writer based (sometimes) out of Perth, Western Australia, (most recently) out of Oakland, California, and (soon) out of Melbourne, Victoria. She just finished a BA in Writing in Literature at California College of the Arts, graduating with half of a young adult novel written, and a very long critical essay entitled "Veronica Mars Is Stronger Than You", about Veronica Mars and the Strong Female Character archetype. You can find links to her writing at alorayoung.com.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cornblatt, Marque. GTA IV Crime Free Law-Abider. 2008.
DeLappe, Joseph. dead-in-iraq. 2006-2011.
dynamicsymmetry. “All the Worlds Aflame.” Archive of Our Own, December 13, 2013. Accessed April 23, 2014. LINK
Flanagan, Mary. Critical Play: Radical Game Design. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.
Irrational Games. Bioshock Infinite. Novato: 2K Games, 2013.
Jamison, Anne. Fic: Why Fanfic Is Taking Over the World. Dallas: Smart Pop, 2013.
Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Newman, James. Playing With Videogames. Abingdon: Routledge, 2008.
Wikipedia. “Alternate universe (fanfiction).” Last modified 23 April, 2014. LINK
Wikipedia. “Shipping (fandom).” Last modified May 4, 2014. LINK
RELATED RESOURCES ON GAMESCENESInterview with Joseph DeLappeInterview with Marquee CornblattMORE ESSAYS FROM CCA STUDENTSTed Levine, "Videogame Art as Anticompetitive Expression" (2010)Michelle Hubacek, "Christ Killa: Transgressive Art in Gaming" (2012)NOTES
[1] Anne Jamison, Fic: Why Fanfic Is Taking Over the World (Dallas: Smart Pop, 2013), 26
[2] Jamison, Fic, 26-35
[3] Irrational Games, Bioshock Infinite (Novato: 2K Games, 2013)
[4] dynamicsymmetry, “All the Worlds Aflame,” Archive of Our Own, December 13, 2013, https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068868
[5] Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992), 86
[6] Jenkins, Textual Poachers, 103
[7] James Newman, Playing With Videogames (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), 51
[8] Jenkins, Textual Poachers, 156
[9] Mary Flanagan, Critical Play: Radical Game Design (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009), 6
[10] “Shipping (fandom),” last modified May 4, 2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_(fandom)#Slash_and_non-conventional_relationships
[11] Flanagan, Critical Play, 10
[12] “WTF Fanfiction,” last modified May 4, 2014, http://wtffanfiction.com/
[13] Joseph DeLappe, dead-in-iraq, 2008
[14] Marque Cornblatt, GTA IV Crime Free Law-Abider, 2008
[15] Flanagan, Critical Play, 33
[16] dynamicsymmetry, “All the Worlds Aflame”
[17] Flanagan, Critical Play, 33
[18] Flanagan, Critical Play, 33
[19] dynamicsymmetry, “All the Worlds Aflame”
[20] Irrational Games, Bioshock Infinite
[21] Flanagan, Critical Play, 33
[22] Flanagan, Critical Play, 33
[23] dynamicsymmetry, “All The Worlds Aflame”
[24] Flanagan, Critical Play, 33
[25] Flanagan, Critical Play, 35
[26] Flanagan, Critical Play, 34
[27] Newman, Playing With Videogames, 52, 53
[28] “Alternate universe (fanfiction),” last modified 23 April, 2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_universe_(fan_fiction)
[29] Irrational Games, Bioshock Infinite
[30] Irrational Games, Bioshock Infinite
[31] dynamicsymmetry, “All The Worlds Aflame”
[32] TheDoodyPoo, December 26, 2013 (3:44 a.m.), comment on dynamicsymmetry, “All the Worlds Aflame”
[33] prodigy, December 25, 2013 (7:23 p.m.), comment on dynamicsymmetry, “All the Worlds Aflame”
[34] Jenkins, Textual Poachers, 103