Christy 1
Cassidy Christy
Ms. Brown
English 12
2 September 2019
Introduction
The topic that I chose is fanfiction, and the message about this topic is, that fanfiction
does not deserve the negative stigma that it has gained over the years, and it should be
recognized as “normal” text that people write and consume. Fanfictions are stories written by
fans about certain celebrities or existing plots/characters. The challenging text I chose was the
audio of a TikTok. This Tik Tok highlighted the common plotlines found in fanfictions in a
humorous way. I chose this challenging text because I knew a lot about the topic and thought it
would be interesting to explain to others who aren’t as educated on the topic. The scholarly
article that I chose is called, What is Fanfiction and Why Are People Saying Such Nice Things
ritten by Bronwen Thomas and published by the University of Nebraska Press. This
about it?, w
scholarly article highlights what fanfiction is and why people enjoy reading it. It discusses the
background of fanfiction and the possible future of it as well. Some things I realized while
reading and analyzing this article was that to the general public, fanfiction is not really known,
and people often question what motivates fans to write/consume fanfiction.
For my first genre piece, I made a brochure because brochures are usually informative,
and I thought it would be a good tool to inform the audience about fanfiction. The brochure
includes different sections that address different questions/topics. I wanted to include answers to
Christy 2
common questions as well as photos for the audience to read and look at to better their
understanding. The intended audience for this piece was for those who do not know what
fanfiction is, and the message I wanted to share was to not immediately stigmatize fanfiction
without reading it. To conclude, I wanted the purpose of this piece to be informative. I
accommodate the audiences’ needs by answering the question of what my topic is and including
some important language and aspects of fanfiction that is often used amongst the community of
readers and writers as well as the common brochure/tri-fold format to make viewing simple and
efficient.
For my second genre piece, I made a BuzzFeed-inspired article. I decided to make this
piece because Buzzfeed articles are easy to follow and many people are familiar with the format
of their articles due to BuzzFeed's popularity. I wanted to capture the feel of BuzzFeed articles
by including casual language for my audience as BuzzFeed articles often do. I took inspiration
from their pop culture articles to format my article. The intended audience for this piece is for
people who have a negative perception of fanfiction, and the message that I was trying to present
is to not judge those who read/write fanfiction themselves and to also not make fun of fanfiction
without reading it first. The purpose of this article is to convince my audience to give fanfiction a
chance before they judge it! I made sure to include some “real-life” examples where fanfiction is
used in today’s society so that it gives the audience another perspective.
For my third piece, I made a comic strip because my final audience is those who read/
write fanfiction, and I wanted to make something that they could relate to. The piece includes
hand-drawn pictures of a made-up character who writes fanfiction. Comic strips are often short
stories in the form of pictures. The language in comic strips is fairly casual and usually funny.
Christy 3
The character is often criticized for their interest, but at the end of the day, they don’t let peoples’
negative opinions affect them. The intended message for my audience is to keep writing/reading
fanfiction because they shouldn’t let anyone’s negative opinions affect what they like to do. The
purpose of the piece is to allow the audience to see themselves in the comic strip and receive the
message in a positive light by giving them words of encouragement.
While composing these genre pieces, I learned that I really love advocating to encourage
young readers and writers to not be ashamed of their work. I also learned that I am pretty
knowledgeable on this topic before even researching due to spending my middle school years
reading and writing fanfiction. I hope my knowledge can lead to people accepting others’
interests and not deeming them weird just because they are different from their own interests.
