Which makes AoOO one of only a few projects in the free and open source software (FOSS) movement created and run by primarily women.

The gender balance in FOSS is horribly skewed – something like 1-2% female. I was at a party recently talking to a bunch of male FOSS-ers about gender in open source and they brought up Archive of Our Own as a sign of how women are participating more.

I’ve always felt hopeful about the way that fanfic encourages women to critique texts and stories by rewriting them. What is Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon, for instance, besides a feminist fanfic? Henry Jenkins writes a lot about slash and why women write it and the gender dynamics it allows them to explore.

I love fanfic. It empowers women to critique and rewrite texts, it’s spurs women to work in a male-dominated field, and it’s really just fun to write and read.

By all means, name your faves ! That’s what this thread is for; I think it’s funny (in a very charming way) that everyone feels compelled to ask first.

… when it comes to Sherlock pastiche, I have a very special place in my heart for Laurie King’s Holmes/Russell series … though I’ve always felt a bit shy of admitting it, since I tried actual Conan Doyle and couldn’t get into it. Sigh. I’m told by close friends this is a serious failing .

I don’t read much fanfic, but what I have read is LOTR and HP. The best one I ever read is The Shoebox Project, which, sadly, has stopped adding entries. It can be found here: http://www.lomara.org/sbp/. It’s Marauders fic with a heavy emphasis on Sirius/Remus, my personal OTP.

I used to go to HP cons with baraqiel, and I would bet that they were one of the first places where slashers and female fic writers could get together and let loose, but I could be wrong about that.

Sherlockians refer to fanfic as pastiche (an older, pre-computer term), and it started almost as soon as the series itself started. JM Barrie, of “Peter Pan” fame, wrote a short one-he and Watson’s literary agent, Arthur Conan Doyle, were friends. There’s a lot of bad Holmes pastiche out there, and some really superb ones. I can name a few if anyone’s interested.

I also like free-form, text role-play, which is basically a co-authored fanfic (when occurring with canon characters/in a canon universe) or a co-authored short story/novel (when occurring with all-original characters in a non-canon universe). I’ve been doing it for nine years, and it’s amazing.

And I’ll add my voice to those asking for the info on that conference paper, Kari. ^^