A number of academics have written about the prevalence of fan fiction within the Twilight fandom (Day, 2014; De Kosnik, 2015; Isakkson, 2014). Much of this consideration looks at fan fiction as a mode of transmedia storytelling as characterized by Jenkins (2006). Transmedia storytelling or narrative references a text that is extended through multiple media platforms with each new medium offering a new part of the story and a new way to tell the story. Within this definition, fan fiction is considered an extension of the Twilight narrative or Twilight archive (Derecho, 2006) as a means of engagement or participation that informs how one relates to the source text. In her work on Twilight fan fiction and the increasing popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey as former Twilight fan fiction, Leslie Paris examines the way that women within Twilight fandom negotiate the spaces between girl and woman and use explicit Twilight fan fiction as a means of self-actualization as well as how the writing, publishing, and sharing of fan fiction online fosters a sense of community as characterized by Durrance and Fisher (2003).
Leslie Paris is an Associate Professor of American History at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. According to her faculty profile, her fields of interest include “Modern American social and cultural history, childhood and youth, gender and sexuality, and popular culture” (“The University of British Columbia”, 2017). Her look at the phenomenon of Twilight fan fiction, “Fifty Shades of Fandom: the Intergenerational Permeability of Twilight Fan Culture”, speaks to these professional interests and was published in the Feminist Media Studies journal in June of 2016. Within her research, Paris considers how a franchise that was originally marketed toward young adults was embraced by adult women, how those women faced public ridicule due to their interest in a text that was coded as immature, and how subsequently, they engaged with fan fiction as a way to create and assert themselves in online fandom spaces designated specifically for adults. Paris’s research included observation of a range of online archives from fan sites including twilightmoms.com to fan fiction review sites like tehlemonadestand.com and fanfiction.net as well as reading over one hundred Twilight fan fiction stories and the commentary and reviews of the many readers and writers who posted online from 2006-2013.
As has been acknowledged through Sara Day’s look at Twilight fan fiction (2014), many readers of the original source material were disappointed and/or further compelled by the lack of sexual content in the Twilight books. Within the canon, human teenager Bella pushes her boyfriend, 107 year old vampire Edward, for greater physical intimacy but Edward stipulates he will not sleep with her until they’re married. The couple marries in the fourth and final book, Breaking Dawn, but notoriously their first night as newlyweds concludes with the textual equivalent of ‘fade to black…’ After evoking the specter of sex through her insistence on abstinence, author Stephenie Meyer resists ever depicting a sexual relationship between Edward and Bella. To contend with this eternally delayed gratification, fans of the books began writing their own versions of Edward and Bella’s honeymoon that frequently contained sexually explicit content and posted those versions online (Paris, 2016). From this space of initial exploration, Twilight fans further transgressed the boundaries of Meyer’s canon and multiple alternative versions of Edward and Bella’s romance populated the Twilight fan fiction world. Paris significantly acknowledges that the most popular type of Twilight fan fiction comprises the following characteristics: romance between Edward and Bella, versions of Edward and Bella that are set in an alternate universe in which both characters are human, and interaction between Edward and Bella that is sexually explicit. As such, she limited her reading and research to fan fiction within those parameters.
Paris also acknowledges that both adolescent and adult readers of Twilight engaged in the practice of transforming Edward/Bella’s canonical relationship through fan fiction (Day, 2014; Paris, 2016) and it’s precisely because of this intergenerational activity that adult fans were motivated to create boundaries and communities that addressed their own experiences and interests as adult women. In some cases these boundaries were implicit and conveyed through a warning that cautioned against readers under the age of 17 or a disclaimer that addressed the author’s own age as older than the characters she was depicting (Paris, 2016). But women also used the opportunity to codify their fannish experience through regulated fan sites designed for grown women as in the case of twilightmoms.com. Paris takes the relationship between adult women and explicit Twilight fan fiction to introduce the rise of “mommy porn” marked by the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey. Notably, Fifty Shades of Grey was originally published under the banner of Twilight fan fiction as “Master of the Universe” on fanfiction.net in 2009 by author Snowqueens Icedragon. “Master of the Universe” exemplified popular Edward/Bella fan fiction in that the characters were both human and they had a sexually explicit relationship.
The popularity of “Master of the Universe” within Twilight fandom prompted the author to later publish the story as a series of novels wherein Edward and Bella have been replaced by romantic leads, Christian and Anastasia. In this new incarnation, Fifty Shades was a major franchise success in its own right resulting in three best-selling novels and two feature film adaptations (thus far). Paris uses the example of Fifty Shades to suggest that the community that grew up around explicit Edward/Bella fan fiction is duplicated via the implied community that exists among readers of Fifty Shades. She suggests that there is considerable crossover among the readership of Twilight and Fifty Shades as primarily white women in their twenties, thirties, and forties in mostly conservative, predominantly Christian areas in the United States. While Fifty Shades is a notable departure from the chaste Twilight franchise, Paris acknowledges that it does only consider a heterosexual monogamous sexual relationship that eventually results in the hallmarks of heteronormative domesticity, marriage and child-bearing and as such, it is arguably less transgressive than the space in which it was conceived (AU Twilight fan fiction) would suggest. But it’s precisely because of how little it diverges from the basic structure of the original Twilight source text (and in this way, is similar to a lot of other Edward/Bella AU fan fiction) that it and other stories are so appealing to adult Twilight readers who initially saw themselves in canon Bella and fell in love with Edward (and consequently, Robert Pattinson) (Paris, 2016) and can thus relate to and use the experiences of fictional Bella(s) in their own lives.
Toward characterization and analysis of my own information community, the Robsten fandom, Paris’s work is helpful to establish the prevalence of AU AH fan fiction in the Twilight fandom as a space that elides canonical limitations and opens up narrative possibilities around which sub-fandoms can coalesce. Additionally, her focus on sexually explicit fan fiction about Edward and Bella introduces the fascination and fixation on the relationship between pornography (as the actualization of the virtual) and romance (Driscoll, 2006) that informs much of the Twilight fandom and Robsten fandom. Seifert’s characterization of the Saga as “abstinence porn” (Day, 2014) is picked up and addressed by actors Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson (who play Bella and Edward in the film adaptations of the Saga) and extended into their explicit characterization of their own interaction that then informs how they’re read by the Robsten fandom, as evidenced by the following original and community-based quotes:
Kristen Stewart:
The weirdest fucking themes run through this story—like dominance and masochism. I mean, you always have to realize that the story needs to make sense to the 11-year-olds who read the book and aren’t necessarily going to be viewing a scene as foreplay. But then there is the other segment of the audience—a large percentage—who does see the scene as foreplay. And it’s pretty deep, heady foreplay. [laughs] So it’s fun to play it both ways. (Hopper, 2009)
Robert Pattinson:
Kristen was really into Bella being a sadomasochist…Wait, not a sadomasochist! I mean a masochist (laughs). She was into that whole thing. She’d say, “Yeah, Bella just likes being hurt” (laughs). “Be really rough! (Martin, 2008).
From an interview with MTV on the Twilight set-
Interviewer: Have you guys bonded over any favorite books, favorite movies, anything like that?
Kristen: Last Tango in Paris
Rob: That’s kinda what we’re basing the entire relationship on, in a lot of ways. For Twilight.
Interviewer: So, you guys get together and watch Marlon Brando NC-17 movies?
Kristen: Yeah.
Rob: Just one.
Kristen: Yeah, just that one.
and
Rob: Yeah, I gave her a book of what was it? Virgil.
Kristen: Yeah, Virgil. Doomed Love. It was good.
Rob: And I don’t know. We don’t really get on at all.
[As he says this, Kristen uses her index finger to pick something from his mouth/teeth.]
and
Interviewer: We asked for questions on the website and the number one question everyone asked…
Kristen: Do vampires have sex?
Interviewer: You can answer that one. Do they?
Kristen: Oh no, what was your question?
Interviewer: What’s it like to kiss him?
Kristen: It’s great. I like it.
Rob: Whenever we kiss, I just try to kill her all the time.
Kristen: And I love that. She’s a total sadomasochist if you think about it.
(Transcribed by me from “Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart…”, 2009)
In the Twi Tuesday MTV interviews, Rob tries pretty hard to keep all of his first answers reasonable and professional (mostly) and K is taking the piss. She begins by bringing up the idea of vampires having sex and goes from there. It’s the first time she says she likes kissing him, she discloses that only two pre-production nights were spent working, she claims Last Tango as how they bonded. They watched lots of movies together and she could’ve mentioned music or books or anything really but she sort of jumps into the mike before Rob can answer to say LTiP, knowing exactly how that will be received.
Robstenites only claim LT as evidence because it’s one of the few facts known about filming and we only know it undoubtedly because Kristen wanted people to know. And whatever, in 2009 it’s actually not that explicit and it’s not the equivalent of pornography despite how it’s referenced…but she’s not saying any of that defensively, she’s referencing it provocatively and intentionally. She also swears in that interview, talks about Rob as handsome, and picks something off of (out of?) his mouth. The MTV interviews were the very first Robsten evidence I saw after listening to the commentary and my initial reaction was whoa, so were they sleeping together during filming? Because to me, they (still) come across as two people secretly f—ing.
(emmaleigh, 2009, msg. 196)
Additionally the use of fan fiction introduces the conflation of characters and actors that is perpetuated by both the actors in their discussion of the roles and the fans through their use of the actors images in graphics and banners for sexually explicit Edward/Bella fan fiction. Fan fiction also makes way for Derecho’s work on the archontic principle (2006) and Jenkins work on transmedia narrative (2006) that I will use to shape my thesis that a fandom organized around a celebrity romance presupposes a uniquely transmedia narrative because it is absent a source text and entirely constructed via the information community and their use of official media sources and fan productions through practices that necessarily rely upon the format of online platforms and the use of digital information (Durrance & Fisher, 2003; Jenkins, 2006).
References:
Day, Sara K. (2014). Pure passion: the Twilight Saga, “abstinence porn,” and adolescent women’s fan fiction. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 39(1), 28-48. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/chq.2014.0014
De Kosnik [nee Derecho], Abigail. (2015). Fifty Shades and the archive of women’s culture. Cinema Journal, 54(3), 116-125. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2015.0037
Derecho, Abigail. (2006). Archontic literature: a definition, a history, and several theories of fan fiction. In Hellekson, K. & Busse, K. (Eds.), Fan fiction and fan communities in the age of the internet: new essays. (Kindle version). Retrieved from Amazon.com
Driscoll, Catherine. (2006). One true pairing: the romance of pornography and the pornography of romance. In Hellekson, K. & Busse, K. (Eds.), Fan fiction and fan communities in the age of the internet: new essays. (Kindle version). Retrieved from Amazon.com
Emmaleigh. (2009, August 26). Stephenie Meyer and the Twilight fan club. [Msg. 196]. Message posted from https://madnono.vbulletin.net/forum/madnono-com-content/whatnot/188-stephenie-meyer-the-twilight-fan-club?p=28016#post28016
Fisher, K., & Durrance, J. (2003). Information communities. In K. Christensen, & D. Levinson (Eds.), Encyclopedia of community: From the village to the virtual world. (pp. 658-661). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc
Hopper, Dennis. (2009, October 1). Kristen Stewart. Retrieved from http://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/kristen-stewart-1/#_
Isaksson, M., (2014). Negotiating contemporary romance: Twilight fan fiction. Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, 5(3), 351-364.
Jenkins, Henry. (2006). Convergence culture: where old and new media collide. New York, NY: New York University Press.
[lovelouby4444]. (2009, March 7). Robert pattinson and kristen stewart funny interview. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sSmpSy-Mg4
Martin, Denise. (2008, November 5). Twilight countdown: Robert Pattinson answers your questions. Retrieved from http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2008/11/twilight-coun-3.html
Paris, L., (2016). Fifty shades of fandom: the intergenerational permeability of Twilight fan culture. Feminist Media Studies, 16(4), 678-692.
The University of British Columbia. (2017). Retrieved from http://www.history.ubc.ca/people/leslie-paris
[Originally published 03/19/17 @ SJSU iSchool blog, Heteroglossia]
Emily Moss - Electronic Portfolio 