Borderlands Case Study

Rhetorical Analysis of Gaming Fan-fiction

Understanding how a group creates rhetoric is an important step in defining that group’s literacy practices and meaning making processes.  Gaming literacy based on the creation of gaming fan-fiction establishes the New Literacy Studies’ consideration of “literacy as a repertoire of changing practices for communication purposefully in multiple social and cultural contexts”  (Mills, 2010, p. 247).  That is, gamers who choose to write fan-fiction must shift from their typically private spheres of console gaming and step into the more social context of fan-fiction writing.  The literacy practices they use to communicate with other gamers in an online forum must be modified to appeal to more users, who likely come from a variety of backgrounds. 

And while the cooperation that exists within gamers’ literacy practices offers a nice segue into fan-fiction writing, the collaborative nature of the fan-fiction writing process still offers a vastly different approach to effective communication.  Fan-fiction writers maintain a symbiotic relationship with their readers, which once again relates to the concept of New Literacy Studies.  As Mills (2010) explains, “[In New Literacy Studies] knowledge and literacy practices are primarily seen as constructions of particular social groups, rather than attributed to individual cognition alone” (p. 247).  Gamers will, therefore, be able to take their social attributes as participants in the gaming community and apply them to the social activities of the fan-fiction community, including writing, reading, and reviewing.

To best understand the literacy of gaming fan-fiction, I thought it would be best to narrow my scope while looking at gaming fan-fiction literacy, so I sought a story in the Borderlands fandom that seemed to be one of the most popular on the site.  What I was really looking for was a story that had a lot of reviews so that I could examine the dialogical writing process that occurs between a writer and areviewer.  To this end, I settled upon Discar’s “Gaige’s ECHO Logs.”  As a story with 338 reviews and 40 chapters, [1] “Gaige’s ECHO Logs” offered a prime example of the interactiveness of fan-fiction writing.  Discar’s development of the story also mimicked the original storyline of Borderlands 2, making it an easy to approach fan-fiction for anyone who has played the game.

Like most fan-fiction stories, “Gaige’s ECHO Logs” started with an “Author’s Note.”  These notes typically qualify the story and explain the “limitations” of the fan-fiction.  Some authors apologize for their “lack of skill” or explain “out of character” (OOC) characterizations that take place in the story.  The Author’s Note offers writers the opportunity to tailor the ensuing conversation about their work.  Discar prefaced “Gaige’s EHCO Logs” with

A continuation of the Mechromancer's ECHO logs. Text only, unfortunately (Cherami hasn't returned my calls).

First, this note alerts readers to the origin of the story: “a continuation of the Mechromancer’s ECHO logs.”  Anyone who is interested in the Mechromancer’s storyline will be automatically enticed to read further, and those who haven’t bought the expansion pack with this playable character may also be intrigued and want to learn more about the added character.  Second, the note offers a qualification of the fan-fiction itself.  These kinds of comments are “of particular interest” because they help guide reviewers’ comments (Jwa, 2012, p. 331).  Based on Discar’s note, reviewers know not to comment upon possible multimodal opportunities for the story since it will be a “text only” work.  Readers are even made aware of possible story updates that will occur on a specific day and time.  Once again, this lets Discar tailor reviewers’ comments, essentially asking them to be patient for newly published chapters.

Though Author’s Notes consist only of a few lines, they are essential to the literacy practices of fan-fiction writing.  Since these notes are included at the top of every chapter in a given story, readers inevitably come into contact with them.  Therefore, these notes allow writers to maintain their primary authority over the text by qualifying the kinds of feedback they will receive.  Experienced reviewers will read these notes before offering any kind of feedback so that their comments will be of most use to the writer.

Unlike the more traditional and private writing style, fan-fiction allows writers and readers to collaboratively construct meaning as they collectively gather information.  Story line consistencies, for instance, tend to be the spark of much debate since staying true to the fandom and the original story’s characterizations is important.  As fan-fiction writer Ava Nova (2012) suggested in “Guffie’s Guide to Writing Successful Fanfiction,” “Everyone loves a story more when the characters aren’t Out Of Character (OOC).  A bossy character shouldn’t be submissive.  They should still be bossy.”  OOC moments may occur from time to time in fan-fiction; however, they are always labeled as “OOC” so that readers are aware of the writer’s purposeful shift in characterization.

Accidental OOC moments tend to result in revisionary comments from reviewers, as we see in the comments on chapter three of “Gaige’s ECHO Logs.”  In the review section of this chapter, Argosaxelcaos critiqued Discar’s representation of two characters because the former thought that the characters’ backstories would impede their relationship.  Argosaxelcaos (2012) wrote, “Also I thought Scooter and Gaige got too along [sic], considering he's a redneck who murders anyone who mistreats his cars and Gaige is a nerd who hacked his system to steal some cars...”  In keeping with the polite and supportive tone of fan-fiction reviews, however, Argosaxelcaos still ended the review with compliments and, “Can't wait to see more from you” (2012).

This nonthreatening and supportive way to supplement information for writers is what makes fan-fiction so unique.  Peer editing advice is not only accepted, but also anticipated and welcomed as writers use their peers’ suggestions to revise and improve their stories.  For instance, by chapter 10, Discar seems to have heeded Argosaxelcaos’s insights and modified Scooter and Gaige’s relationship, making them more antagonistic: in chapter three of the story, Gaige referred to Scooter as “kind of funny, I guess,” and by chapter 10 Gaige yelled at Scooter until another character had to step in to diffuse the conversation.  This reciprocal relationship between readers and writers forces both parties to uphold the original story’s sentiments to make sure that writers are maintaining the “true” representations of the fandom—avoiding OOC moments and unlikely encounters. 

Similarly, this collaboration epitomizes the social nature of fan-fiction writing. Writers of fan-fiction must be able to communicate with one another in order to make active contributions to their community.  Because that community is built around digital identities, the literate practice of collaboration and support is even more crucial since it is easy to distance oneself from others in an online forum.  As Gunther Kress (2003) noted, “Literacy, in all its aspects, is entirely social, cultural, and personal” (p. 24).  To maintain an active social connection, fan-fiction writers and reviewers need to communicate consistently and effectively.  Their cultural familiarity, as defined by their fandom, offers them a chance to relate to one another and close any cultural gaps that may otherwise exist.  By offering insights and heeding what others have to say, Argosaxelcaos and Discar respectively participated in the literacy practices of fan-fiction.  They each took a personal interest in the characters’ interactions and development.

Establishing relatable and believable pathos is another important aspect for fan-fiction writers.  Readers need to be able to feel the same emotional connections to the characters they encountered in the game.  The tone of the story is heavily dependent upon the original characters’ tone.  Discar established this believable tone in the opening lines of the story:

GAIGE: Greetings, fifty—fifty thousand subscribers? Holy...okay, um, so a lot has happened since my last ECHO cast.  I landed on Pandora, dodged Hyperion customs, Deathtrap killed like, three or four people, blah blah blah, it was no big deal…. Had to hack the greeter bot to let me on the train, but that was easy, it barely even had a rudimentary sentience matrix. I had more trouble with the vending machine. [snorting laugh].

In these few lines, we can see how Gaige’s tone is similar to the official ECHO recording.  She started the story by greeting her “subscribers,” wandered off topic with “blah, blah, blah,” and even snorted as she laughs at the end of line one.  Discar maintained Gaige’s playful (though somewhat angry) tone throughout the story, adding in technical babble to help readers associate even more with the young mechanical genius.

Discar also maintains a good reputation on the site.  Reviewers constantly ask for more updates and praise Discar for the writing done so far.  Under Discar’s profile, we are even provided with links to other works by the author, including a blog and Twitter account.  The only serious complaint against Discar is a lack of reviews for others’ works (see walter’s review in chapter 29).  Not reviewing others’ works is a fan-fiction faux pas, but it hasn’t seemed to affect Discar’s rating as a writer.  With 281 followers, “Gaige’s ECHO Logs” is the most popular Borderlands fiction, and it has more “favorite” tags than any of the other stories under this thread.

Discar’s attention to the fandom and clear writing style is praised throughout the reviews for “Gaige’s ECHO Logs.”  And by strictly following the original plot for Borderlands 2, Discar was able to engage more fans than other writers who created side stories and unique encounters for the playable characters in the game.  It is also worth mentioning that the first chapter of “Gaige’s ECHO Logs” was published in October 2012, while the most recent chapter was published in July 2013.  This also shows Discar’s dedication to the story, a trait that is widely respected in the fan-fiction community.

As a literate practice, “Gaige’s ECHO Logs” revealed the compositional benefits of gaming fan-fiction.  The story hybridizes the social language of gaming literacy and the narrative development of fan-fiction literacy practices to create an acceptable storyline for the game’s characters.  Besides using the social language of the Borderlands fandom (i.e., using esoteric knowledge of the characters, plot, and landscape), Discar drew upon the social language of gaming literacy by appealing to the visual preferences of gamers in the author’s log (where the “Text only” note explicitly apologizes for a lack of visual aids) and in the playwright style of the overall story.  By writing the fan-fiction as a play, Discar encouraged the audience to visualize the actions of the characters, much like readers of a play would do.  These kinds of narrative choices were made easier because, as a gamer who writes fan-fiction, Discar could acquiesce to the obligations of the gaming narrative and free up creative thinking for more diverse and distinct dialogue. 

Moreover, the compositional benefits of writing in a fan-fiction community allow for recursive revisions and an incentive to keep writing.  The fan-fiction community establishes a “semiotic domain” (Gee, 2007, p. 19) of writers who use alphabetic composition to encourage communication between writers and their peer reviewers.  Discar received many unsolicited reviews from peers and could decide which suggestions were worth taking into consideration.  Reviewers could also feel like their needs were being met as more chapters were added and revisions were made.  This collaboration defines writing as a dialogical process between writer and audience, further establishing the importance of fan-fiction literacy practices within the community.