MythFic Metadata: Exploring Gendered Violence in Fanfiction about Greek Mythology

This short paper uses MythFic Metadata, a collection of metadata for a corpus of fanfiction about ancient Greek mythology, to explore the relation between types of romantic relationships (gay, straight, or other) and violent interactions in fanfiction. We ask: "In fanfiction about Greek mythology, are heterosexual relationships more frequently violent than others?" We analyze how often user-generated tags for relationship-types co-occur with tags describing violence. We find that most violence occurs in heterosexual relationships.

The metadata exploration reported in this short paper is a first step in the project "Achoring and Innovating Classical Motifs in Fanfiction." The paper also reflects on the relevance of metadata analysis for the project's larger goal: to analyze how and why Antiquity is represented and transformed in contemporary online fanfiction.