2004
From Fan History Wiki
2004 was the year that Real Person Fiction officially became main stream and more acceptable in more parts of the fan fiction community. It is also a year where the Harry Potter fandom begins to grow bored and upped the wank level. What appears to have been an attempted fusion of Eastern and Western fan fiction cultures seems to have been called off.
There were several factors that contributed to the mainstreaming of real person fan fiction in the larger fan fiction community. The first reason was that various fan fiction communities were gaining many new members. These members were not aware of the history of fan fiction and the views that more traditional, media minded fen held. A second reason was the ease of use of services like LiveJournal and Yahoo!Groups which made finding like minded fen who were interested in writing and reading that material easier. A third reason was the ability to find this material located in archives along side traditional, media based fan fiction. A fourth reason was the explosive growth of some real person fic communities like Kerry/Edwards and Lord of the Rings Real Person Slash made it harder for media communities to ignore this material or to ostracize members of those communities as they were frequently crossing over into their own space.
For a period between 1998 and 2003, it looked like Eastern and Western fan fiction cultures would merge as each seemed to borrow concepts, terminology and practices from each other. By 2004, this merging seemed to be dead. Yaoi and yuri were not being used in Western oriented fan fiction communities. Slash was not being used in Eastern oriented fan fiction communities. Each community seemed to have retreated into itself. The crossover fannishly was becoming smaller. Anime and Harry Potter fan fiction were not sharing the same fan space at larger automated archives. Since then those who have identified themselves as slash fans have been known to disparage yaoi for allegedly being badly written and unnecessarily "feminizing" male characters.
See also:
- Canon released in 2004
- Cease and desist letters recieved in 2004
- Conventions held in 2004
- Deaths in 2004
- Fan fiction archives founded in 2004
- Fan fiction awards given in 2004
- Fanzines published in 2004
- Legal issues in the fan fiction community in 2004
- LiveJournal communities founded in 2004
- Mailing lists founded in 2004
- Mary Sue litmus tests created in 2004
- Stories published in 2004
- Technology innovations in 2004
