Analyzing a Fanfiction Site

http://www.lotrfanfiction.com/

One of the appeals of fanfiction writing that Jenkins talks about in his chapter is the appeal to be able to share ideas in a comfortable setting. When you first open the browser for www.lotrfanfiction.com, you immediately notice the dark color scheme. On the left hand side is a neat display of statistics of the site, such as member count, story count and an impressive word count. Just below gives you the option to change the display theme and below that is a friendly poll asking which Lord of the Rings movie was the best. All of these added features are welcoming to any new user who just has any general questions about what the site contains, an interactive activity to get the user engaged as well as options for aesthetic pleasure. It peaks interest to engage the viewer. For the returning user, on the right hand side is a box containing the most recent story posts for quick viewing.

The meat of the site is structured very nicely. When browsing through the actual fanfictions, one is able to choose whether one wants to look at the stories organized by author, title, category and so forth. Even before clicking on the story you may want to read, there is a display giving all the classifications of the story, down to what characters are involved.

The “Lord of the Rings Fanfiction” is a very tidy site. Finding what you are looking for within the genre of Lord of the Rings fanfiction is very easy. The site is a little lacking graphically but it more than makes up for it in its exact and sensible layout.

Henry Jenkins defines media literacy as not only being able to use media, but also being able to contribute to media. The Lord of the Rings fan fiction website is a perfect example of this participatory literacy. While many fans may go to the website only to read stories posted by others, many fans also post their own stories and provide feedback to others. For each story that is posted, there is a section for the readers to review it. Also in this section, the writer can respond to the comments left by different readers. In addition to this outlet for feedback, each member has a profile through which you can contact them directly. Information provided on the website’s homepage shows that while there are only 2,250 members, there are over 3,000 stories and over 13,000 reviews. This data shows that the members of the Lord of the Rings fan community exemplify Jenkins’s definition of participatory literacy.

On this fanfiction website devoted solely to Lord of The Rings based fanfiction, there are not many problems that some up within the realm of intellectual property rights. First of all, a vast majority of the site’s posts are stories about characters somewhat related to Lord of The Rings but in the main story line. For this reason, it is likely that the copyright owners of Lord of The Rings do not have a problem with people using the basic setting and theme as a basis for their own stories because they are not branching off of the main aspects that make Lord of The Rings so popular in our culture. The site does however have a statement saying “This site is in no way affiliated with the respective copyright owners associated with these works”. The purpose of this statement is to inform the users and visitors of the website that it is not affiliated with the owners of Lord of The Rings. The statement and the site’s content do however raise a few questions concerning intellectual property rights such as what action would be taken if the copyright owners of Lord of The Rings felt that the site had begun to infringe upon their rights?

One of the issue the site may raise for conservative groups is that children may be reading offensive material. The site takes preventative measures against this by giving itself a self-imposed rating system. www.lotrfanfiction.com helps to prevent children from accidentally stumbling upon unsuitable material by warning the user of its contents. Obviously, there is no way to check the age of the user before allowing them access, but the site gives an honest try.

Not all feedback given by readers on the website seems that it would be helpful in an individual’s development of his or her writing skills. Many reviews say as little as “great” or “nice.” It may even be hard for the writer to take some of these reviews seriously because the grammar of the reader may be poor.