Bringing the fanfiction project I had used for the past 6 years in Malmö Sweden to a US university course in TESOL posed several challenges. This included not only adapting the instructions for the assignment to an audience of teacher candidates going on to teach widely different ages and proficiency levels but also finding a way to help students envision how fanfiction tasks could be developed to draw upon their students’ varied interests and backgrounds in a way that inspired them to want to write creatively in English.
The most significant change made in the assignment for students was that they were given the opportunity to not only select a fanfiction genre but also to select a source text that was potential interesting and relevant for them and their future students. I still drew upon the Harry Potter fandom as a source of example fanfiction in the wild to serve as models for the different genres and also incorporated work from the FanTALES project, including the Fanfiction Learning through Doing Module but also The Storytelling Prompts and the Evaluation Rubric for Fanfiction. Below are links to 12 of the final stories, all written individually and covering a wide range of source materials, some of which I was completely unfamiliar with. I’m looking forward to using these as models for the next fanfiction project in Fall 2020.
Fall 2019 Fanfic
Black Widow – After the Fall – Fanfiction inspired by my student’s own interests and a desire to find something of relevance for elementary school learners – an Avengers/Sesame Street Fusion
Elizabeth and the Chocolate Factory – An alternate point of view and Author Self-Insert of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Final Thoughts – An alternate POV of a scene from the film A Star is Born. Content Warning.
Luna Lovegood: Queen of the Slugs – An alternate point of view of a scene from the Harry Potter novels, must have an account on Ao3 to view
One World – Two Hermiones – An alternate point of view from the Harry Potter novels
Rescuing Each Other – A sequel/continuation of the movie Pretty Woman
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Christina – An alternate point of view of a young adult novel from the perspective of the mothers instead of the daughters
Spring 2020 Fanfic
The Corvids 2020 -A fusion of The Crow, The Birds, and The Raven which relates the perspective of the street prophet Sarah after she has been apprehended and interviewed by police in 2020.
An Honorable Profession– A short story set in the world of My Hero Academia about the events leading up to the capture of Toxic Chainsaw told from the point of view of Sansa Tamakawa.
The Last Flight of the Cant – An alternate point of view story from the perspective of Shed Garvey, a medical technician during a pivotal event in Leviathan Wakes.
My Stepsister Cinderella – An alternative point of view of Cinderella’s story from her more sympathetic stepsister, Anastasia.
The True Story of How Freddy Bailey Launched the Career of Mr. E.A. Poe, or, A Tale of How a Baltimore Slave Boy Influenced World Literature – A real-person historical piece of fanfiction that explores a chance encounter between two of Baltimore’s famous historical/literary figures (a young Frederick Douglass and Edgar Allan Poe) which results in the publication of Poe’s first published story.