Hi. My name is Jasmine. I’m 21 years old, and I’m still learning about writing through writing fanfiction.
Harry Potter Fanfic at The New Yorker?
I wish I paid better attention to The New Yorker. As someone who is more invested in entertainment and (pop) culture news (rather than, say, political), I feel it suits me better than maybe some other outlets.
Alas, I am a lazy and self-absorbed college student who has no time for anything else except schoolwork. I mean come on, look at the state of this blog. I kept promising regular posts. I LIED.
Luckily, because I am a college student writing a thesis, I have some wonderful advisors that seem to look out for the things I miss, like Harry Potter fanfiction that was recently published to The New Yorker.
See what I did there?
Fifty Shades of Grey, Part II: Chapters 3-5
Welcome to the second installment of Jasmine Reads Fifty Shades of Grey. There was a bit of a delay between this post and the last because I decided to read ahead––I do have a thesis to finish, so I need to finish this book.
And a disclaimer on that: I know it seems weird to be writing a huge paper on a book I’ve never read before. I was apprehensive of even including Fifty Shades in the first place because I wanted to focus on the environment surrounding fanfiction, without delving too deeply into pulled-to-publish (P2P) work. However, as my project evolved, I decided it might be worth it to do a case study with Fifty Shades in the bigger picture of my thesis.
Getting back on track though––check under the cut for my reading adventure.
Fifty Shades of Grey, Part I: Chapters 1 and 2
About two weeks and some ago, I promised that I would start liveblogging my read of Fifty Shades of Grey.
Needless to say, that did not happen. Not in the slightest.
However, I finally did crack open the damn book last night and began reading it. I prioritized everything else over this book just so I wouldn’t have to read it. Shit, I Tweeted about starting the book before actually starting it.
(See, I stuck that Post-It there to stave off weirder looks than the ones I would have already gotten carrying this thing around campus.)
I did decide against liveblogging. Trying to blog about it while reading would have just interrupted my flow and instead, I took notes in the margins. I’ll make a slideshow of my favorite notes when I finish the book completely, but for now, let’s delve into the first two chapters of this wild ride.
I’m (extremely) late to the bandwagon…
…and the degree of lateness varies depending on individual definitions. I’m about 2.5 months late on making a new blog post, and about two years late on blogging about Fifty Shades of Grey (to be fair though, I’m writing my thesis this semester, so maybe this is personally relevant now).
Admin Announcement
So I’ve been pretty quiet around here for the past few weeks. Instead of drafting blog posts, I’ve been getting ready for Otakon!
Why does this matter? Because I, with the help of two of my friends, will be presenting a workshop at Otakon this year! It’s from 2-4 PM on Sunday (8/10) in Workshop Room 1. We’ll be discussing fanfiction culture, what it takes to write fic, and then looking at a few samples to analyze an end product.
If this interests you in any way, or you are indeed going to Otakon, please consider stopping by to join in on the conversation!
Fanfiction, A (Brief) History
Is it “fan fiction” or “fanfiction?”
Well, according to Anne Jamison in her book Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World, the term “fan fiction” was used prior to the 1960s to describe original pieces written by amateur authors. These works were mainly published in science fiction zines. It wasn’t until later, when the first Star Trek fanzine was released, that “fanfiction” was coined as a term to refer to fiction derived from already existing sources.
And here’s where we delve into the modern history of fanfic as we know it.
Meet the Blogger
It’s July 1, and if you’ve just stumbled across this blog, then you’ve happened upon the first official post! Welcome!
This week I’m going to keep it simple and just write up an introduction of myself and why this blog exists. More under the cut.
The Fanfiction Code 