Limit Play: Fan Authorship between Source Text, Intertext, and Context

Fans create fiction and art in a space between their imaginative expansive impulses and various restrictions. Indeed, limitations of culture and technology are at the heart of fan creativity. These constraints come in many forms, from the constraints of the source text to those of community expectations, from the broader cultural expectations of genre to the limitations of technological interfaces. These multiple restrictions of text, intertext, and interface help generate the immense spectrum of fan fiction, art, and analyses. Fan creativity thus publicly challenges long-held cultural values of originality, creativity as newness, and ownership of ideas and style.