Tag Archives: fanfiction

Fan-fiction “Tropes”

Context:

The informant is a 20-year-old undergraduate student studying linguistic at Cambridge. She was and still is involved in both Chinese and the English online community for fan-fictions. In the interviewee she shared a interesting characteristic of the Chinese fandom community.

Text:

The informant explains that in traditional Chinese poetry there is a concept called 词牌名 (brand of a tune), which can be understood as the name of a fixed melodic pattern. In classical poetry, lyrics (词) were written to be sung according to set tunes, meaning the 词牌名 functions like a structural template or musical framework, while the actual content of each poem could vary.

She notes that in modern Chinese fan-fiction communities, a similar concept exists. Certain recurring titles and narrative tropes are reused across different fandoms, and users themselves sometimes refer to these as 词牌名.

Examples include phrases such as:

  • “真相是假” (The Truth Is Fake)
  • “五次他……这一次他没有” (Five Times They …, and This Time They Didn’t）
  • “生长痛” (Growing Pains)
  • “花吐症” (Flower-Puking Syndrome – a fictional illness trope in fandom where a person coughs up flowers due to unrequited love)
  • “斯德哥尔摩情人” (Stockholm Lover)

The informant finds this particularly interesting because it represents a blend between traditional Chinese literary structure and contemporary youth creative writing practices.

Analysis:

This phenomenon shows how classical literary frameworks can be reinterpreted within digital fan cultures as reusable narrative templates. Similar to traditional 词牌名, these modern “titles-as-structures” function as pre-existing emotional and thematic molds that guide storytelling while allowing variation in content. Their repetition across different fandoms creates a shared expressive vocabulary, enabling writers to quickly communicate complex emotional narratives through recognizable tropes. At the same time, the adaptation of a classical term to describe internet writing practices reflects how traditional cultural concepts are continuously recontextualized by younger generations, linking historical literary forms to contemporary participatory culture.

Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons

Interviewer: Can you please dive into what exactly is Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons?

VS: A movie franchise that pretty much raised me. To be shorter, we can call it ROTBTD. It’s a mix of the movies Rise of the Guardians, Tangled, How To Train Your Dragon or HTTYD, and Brave. I honestly don’t think there’s any crossover between the movies, but they came out around the same time and have similar story lines with shared themes and animation styles. OH! And Frozen is sometimes included in there too, but isn’t a main one enough to change the fandom title.”

Interview: Ok, so interesting fandom them for such a random reason…how did the fandom grow and spread? Did people just know to watch them together, or where did you see it?”

VS: “Well I just knew haha, but that was through my older sister. She was old enough around then to have Tumblr and Twitter and read it through there. She would show me and my brother and just laugh, it was all so creative, honestly. The movies came out and people saw the similar styles and made this awesomely random connection to put them together.”

Interviewer: “What kind of things would you see?”

VS: “Ha it’s kind of what wouldn’t I see to be honest. There were edits of them – both photo and videos, Wattpad fanfics, AU stories on Tumblr of them all together in high school. People would ship the characters as well. It mainly revolved around the big four, like Rapunzel, Merida, Jack Frost, and Hiccup. I think Frozen came into it because people loved to ship Jack Frost with Elsa…rip Jelsa, that was a peak ship. Those edits were before AI and always edited so scarily accurate, like they were in the same room. Also, Rapunzel showed up in a blury background in Frozen during Elsa’s coronation scene. That’s pretty much the only part where Frozen’s in the ROTBTD fandom, it mainly consists of the big four.”

Interviewer: “Is it still a thing?”

VS: “Not as big as before, but it comes back sometimes, especially on TikTok. It’s very nostalgic.”

Context: My friend and I were watching YouTube videos together and saw the creator, Danny Motta (a movie and TV show reacter), had started a series on Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons. We started watching his videos on the subject and started reminiscing about it from when we were kids. I was aware of the Jelsa part on the internet, but VS knew the true lore and crossovers of everything.

Analysis: This truly shows the power of fandom and that it can emerge from anything. These were four movies that seriously have barely anything in common, yet people put them together, and it took the internet by storm. It became a true fandom with fanfics, edits, ships, and AU (Alternate Universe) stories of them hanging out. It goes to show the creativity and extend the fan will go to create something new entirely for others to enjoy, and ultimately create a community. These characters have never interacted, so everything made was completely from the fans’ imagination, and one fan would build off the content from another fan. Communities and fandoms can be made from anything.

Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

Text: “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat”

Context: This is a term that is prolific among fanfiction circles, particularly on Archive of Our Own, which uses a content tagging system. EK is a college student in Southern California who has been active in fandom spaces and fanfiction culture for a number of years.

“Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” is a tag used on Archive of Our Own. EK notes the tag’s negative reputation, however, its “correct” usage simply means to pay attention to the other tags on the work, because what is tagged is what will be present in the fic. This often is usd in fanfiction with potentially triggering or upsetting content, because the author wants to emphasize that the content is tagged, and it should not come as a surprise to any reader who chooses to read the piece.

This tag’s origin comes from an Arrested Development scene, where a character opens the fridge to see a paper bag labelled “dead dove: do not eat.” He opens the bag and, when he finds a dead dove inside, says “I don’t know what I expected.” It’s in this way that the tag is meant to say that the fic is going to contain what the tags denote, and the reader should not be surprised by the content.

Analysis: EK discusses the misinterpretation of this tag as having a “scary” reputation–that often, “dead dove” is a red flag for many readers in and of itself, without even looking at the rest of the tags. Because it is often used on works with potentially triggering or taboo content, the tag itself has taken on a taboo reputation. It’s interesting to me, however, that this has become the case for a practice that is essentially a public service–“dead dove” itself doesn’t mean anything scary or taboo, all it does is tell a reader to know what they’re getting themselves into. I also believe that “dead dove” as a tag is kind of a sweet custom, on a fandom’s part; it’s community care, in a way, looking out for others to make sure they won’t be upset by anything they read. It’s also a measure of protection, as online anonymity makes people quite comfortable yelling at fic authors in the comments for things that were clearly advertised in the tags or description of a fic.

No Beta, We Die Like [Blank]

Text: “No Beta We Die Like [Blank]”

Context: This is a term that is prolific among fanfiction circles, particularly on Archive of Our Own, which uses a content tagging system. EK is a college student in Southern California who has been active in fandom spaces and fanfiction culture for a number of years. She explains the meaning of the phrase is that the fic has not been “beta read” by someone else–it has not been read or edited by another person aside from the author before being posted online. While the original form of the phrase is “No beta we die like men,” often the phrase is customized toward the fandom, with “men” being replaced by the name of a character who dies in the show. EK notes that it’s usually a particularly painful death, often a particularly beloved character who died, whose name is substituted in. She also notes that it’s not always solely a character name–in some instances, it’s “my sanity” or other references to the author’s real life, or other times a reference to a commentary about the show’s writing [ie. “we die like [character’s] characterization] or other aspects of the property.

The origin of this phrase comes from a picture of a bumper sticker that read “no airbags we die like men.”

Analysis: EK views this as a public service announcement on a fanfiction, sort of a disclaimer meant to explain any errors or “bad writing” found within the piece. I also view this as a kind of signifier of in-group status, recognizing that someone is a member of a fandom and was emotionally impacted by a character’s death–enough to bestow their name within the tag, almost as a badge of honor. This is a way to make light of any emotional turmoil brought on by a character’s death and find community in the emotional response to a piece of media, as most fandom is fixated on.

Song lyrics as Fanfiction titles

Text: Song lyrics are often used as fanfiction titles on Archive Of Our Own.

Context: Archive of Our Own (Ao3) is a fanfiction site popular in the modern day. EK is a college student in Southern California who has been active in fandom spaces and fanfiction culture for a number of years. She describes the common practice of using song lyrics to title fanfictions because, as she says, “titles are hard, and songs are cool.” She notes that it is common to see this on “one-shots,” or single-chapter fanfics, but if this is found in a multi-chapter fic, she also describes the practice of using different lines from a song for each chapter title, as it applies to the content and characters. EK also mentions the genre of YouTube videos that compile these lyric titles, editing them together to create a kind of “lyric video” made entirely out of Ao3 screenshots.

Analysis: I view this as another form of texual poaching, as Henry Jenkins identifies in his studies on fan practice in Textual Poachers. This is the nature of “transformative work,” as fanfiction has often been called–here, different forms of copyrighted IP are brought together in a fanwork, used for new, explorative creative purposes. This, combined with the age-old tradition of fan playlists, as well as fanfiction often being populated by young writers who struggle with finding titles for their work, gives way to this fan practice. This also acts a kind of signalling to others within the same in-groups as the author–people who recognize the title are able to recognize that the author likes the same music and stories as they do, therefore creating a trust and connection between audience and author.