The oddest artifact ever

I recently published a blog post about an artifact called Fanfiction.net. I defined fanfiction, and alluded to the fact that fanfiction is written about many different TV shows, movies, etc. For my final essay, I would like to delve deeper into the world of fanfiction, into an individual community, namely that built around the CW series Supernatural. The reason I feel this would be an appropriate artifact is that each community is not merely a placeholder for fics (the common shorthand term for a piece of fiction), but it also has its own rules. These rules dictate the most common structures to be found in the stories, or in other words, the shared interests of the fans. What most intrigues me, though, is that the rules that govern these fanfiction communities are exceedingly different from the standards that are deemed appropriate in reality. For example, a very popular theme that runs throughout the different fanfiction categories is slash, either male/male or female/female relationships (clarification: slash is not the theme referred to as inappropriate; that comes next). This concept maintains its popularity in the Supernatural genre, despite the very glaring fact that the two main characters are brothers. For some reason, a relationship that would elicit pure horror in real life is condoned and encouraged (although, admittedly, not by all the members of the fandom, or fanfiction community). My interest in this artifact lies in the discovery of why normal rules are not only set aside, but smashed into pieces, the pieces burned to ashes, and then the ashes thrown out of the window for good measure. I would like to examine the slash community in depth and discover, in a nonjudgmental way, why some of the fans of Supernatural condone incest in their stories.
For the analysis of this artifact I will use fantasy-theme criticism. Symbolic convergence theory could not be better suited to the description of a fandom: the two assumptions of this theory, according to Sonja Foss, are that “communication creates reality” and “individuals’ meanings for symbols can converge to create a shared reality or community consciousness.” The show Supernatural is based on two brothers hunting ghosts and other evil creatures; that in itself is already a created reality. The fans of the show take it a step further, creating an alternate reality, or, to use a common phrase, alternate universe (AU). This alternate universe is the community consciousness.