Fanfic Forensics

~~~DRAFT~~~DRAFT~~~DRAFT~~~

Description

Advantages

Disadvantages for this project

I believe that literary critique of a handful of samples has considerable limitations in the context of research aimed at a cross-cultural comparison of media that involve both text and images, for the following reasons.

• The lack of previous systematic research into the content of dōjinshi makes it almost impossible to select a handful of samples that could be called 'representative', or to make pronouncements about the characteristis of Japanese fanworks in general from data culled from a limited number of samples.
• Dōjinshi are created within a cultural context that is very different from the one within which fan fiction is created and researched. Methods of literary critique used in English-language fanwork research are too culturally specific to be applied to dōjinshi.
• A comparison involving dōjinshi requires a methodology usable for the analysis of visual as well as textual signs.

For these reasons, I consider it preferable to approach these media within the framework of comparative cultural studies, through a methodology involving data interpretation that combines semiotics, narratology and reception studies (Jenkins 1992, Russo 2002). In order to allow for this kind of data interpretation and thereby resolve the aforementioned three issues, I am constructing a database of numerous easily and objectively verifiable signs1 that fulfill the same function in English-language fanwork and dōjinshi, as they appear in a large number of samples (initally, one hundred dōjinshi and one hundred pieces of English-language fanwork).

1. 1. Signs that leave no room for culturally biased readings as they are transferred into the database, meaning narrative elements such as the identity of favoured main characters, narrators, romantic couples, and so forth.