In a vain attempt to shame myself into limiting my phone usage, I recently took another look at my screen time. On Monday, I spent around 7 hours and 45 minutes on my phone, of which 5 hours were spent on the Chrome app. This may seem surprising, especially since I do all my school work on my laptop, but there’s one thing Chrome has that my other apps don’t: fanfiction. I spend a large amount of my time online looking at fan content, and fanfiction is by far my favorite. As disgraceful as this may be to admit as a student of English, I haven’t finished a published book in months. At the same time, I can work my way through fanfiction twice the length in a day. So, allow me to take you through a brief overview of my favorite way to spend my day consuming content.
What is fanfiction?
Fanfiction is a type of fan-created content wherein established material is taken as inspiration for a piece of fictive writing, closely resembling the source in characters and/or setting. This source material can be anything from another written work, to a game, or even (controversially) public figures such as celebrities and content creators.
Fanfiction can be about anything: popular ‘categories’ include Alternative Universe (AU) fanfiction, where the setting is reimagined (e.g. Medieval AUs which are set in Medieval England, or Coffee Shop AUs which take a more slice-of-life approach) or the author explores what could have happened if the source material diverged at any given point (e.g. Everybody Lives AU wherein, as the name implies, significant characters do not die); another popular ‘category’ is ship fanfiction, where authors write about romantic pairings that do not actually exist within the source material.
Fanfiction by the most commonly accepted present-day definition originated in a Star Trek fanzine. Fanzines are physical collections of fan projects, which would have to be printed and manually distributed to fans via post or at conventions. Today, fanfiction is most commonly found publicly available on the internet.
Where is fanfiction uploaded?
There is no set place where fanfiction should be uploaded, and public preferences shift over time. Currently, one of the largest fanfiction websites is archiveofourown.org, colloquially known as AO3. While it is possible to upload fully original works to AO3, its main purpose is to host fanworks, predominantly fanfiction. Currently, AO3 hosts over 13 million works, divided over more than 67 thousand fandoms (according to the home page).
A fan-created, fan-run, nonprofit, noncommercial archive for transformative fanworks, like fanfiction, fanart, fan videos, and podfic.
About AO3
One of the features that sets AO3 apart from other platforms is its extensive tagging and filtering system. Aside from more general things such as character, fandom, and relationship, AO3 allows users to add their own unique tags as well. This makes it easy for those going through the archive to find very specific works, or to avoid certain works. This is also a point in AO3’s favor if you consider the role it can play in fanfiction research. Every year a work gets uploaded by user centreoftheselights showcasing the most popular character pairings on AO3 that year, and there is a TikTok account that posts monthly charts sharing currently active fandoms (see the account’s “AO3 MONTHLY STATS” playlist). Academic research benefits from AO3’s system as well. I used AO3 for my Bachelor Thesis as the filtering system made it easy to find case studies that fit the criteria of my research.
As its name implies, AO3 is an archive. It does not function as (most) social media apps in the way that there is an algorithm pushing content to its users. This means works can only be found if you manually look for them; there is no feed of suggested works the site thinks you may enjoy. While it is possible to sort by ‘kudos’ (= likes), AO3 etiquette dictates that you leave kudos on every mildly enjoyable work. This is done as a way to show appreciation to the authors, as the people writing fanfiction do so in their free time.
The most accurate way I have found to sort by reader enjoyment is to do so by bookmarks, which is about the same as favoriting or saving. This is still not foolproof, as bookmarks are used in different ways by different users. A study conducted by Mikael Gyhagen establishes three common categories under which tagged AO3 bookmarks fall: “Annotation” (works saved with tags to remind the user of factual information about the works such as that it’s still in progress or over 50k words), “Curation” (where a user saves a work under a category such as “faves” to keep track of favorite works or “best [character name] fics” to curate a list of specific recommendations) and “Communication” ( include commentary on the work and the reader’s experience).
Who writes fanfiction?
As mentioned earlier, fanfiction authors write in their free time. This is because it is illegal to profit off of fanfiction based on a work that does not fall under the public domain. While some works gain enough attention to make the jump to published novels (after revisions to scrub away all inspirations), this is not the case for the overwhelming majority. This means that fanfiction writing is usually a passion project. Authors write fanfiction because they’re passionate about the source material, or the message they’re trying to send with the help of these established characters and/or settings.
Many fanfiction authors choose to remain anonymous, which is in line with the behavior of participants of fan culture on a larger scale. This does however make it difficult to create a profile for ‘the fanfiction author’. Anyone with access to a web browser can write fanfiction, which means it is a space that is open to anyone to express themselves. Some people want stricter rules regarding what can and cannot be posted, but I think part of the appeal is that there is something for every niche, and space for every author, no matter their background.
The digitalization of fan fiction has diversified and democratized fan fiction–centered communities, making them more accessible to all fans despite their ages, financial means, ethnicities, nationalities, locations, linguistic knowledge, sexualities, and genders.
Hellekson and Busse (2006) quoted by Jennifer Duggan.
Is there a purpose?
While the main purpose of fanfiction is entertainment, an examination of fanfiction often brings insights into the wants and needs of fans of popular media. Take LGBT pairings in fanfiction as an example. The appearance of these works is in direct correlation to fan’s desire to see more diverse relationships depicted in source material. Going a step further, male/male character fanfiction can be a way for female authors to explore a relationship dynamic without the underlying presence of gender roles and stereotypes, or is a direct result of bad writing when it comes to women in media. Outside of LGBT contexts, representation can be added in terms of race and ethnicity, chronic illnesses, abusive situations, etc. Fanfiction allows us to glimpse into the mind of the author – to see what matters are relevant to them.
Fanfiction also helps alleviate the feeling of dissatisfaction fans may feel regarding aspects of the source material. Instead of publicly complaining about it, fanfiction allows fans to write and read what they want to see, after all, it is impossible for the source material to cater to everyone.
Nice post! I’m really curious what your Bachelor thesis is about now, how did you use A03 as a source?
I researched three ways in which marginalized communities who are underrepresented in popular media represent themselves in fanfiction using their favorite characters, using DC comics (about Robin) as the popular media, and AO3 to gather the fanfiction!
The main research questions were how the portrayal of the characters in the source material and fanfiction differs/is the same, and what these things reveal about how the fanfiction author interacts with media.
Regarding the “purpose” of fanfiction, and what you mention to be controversial, is when these works of fiction are about actual human beings. While fanfiction does allow authors and specific audiences to gain entertainment and joy out of it, there is a whole other group that feels the exact opposite.
This reminds me of the dynamic between some content creators. Alejandro Saab (CyYu) and Amanda Lee (AmaLee/Monarch) are often shipped together because of their sibling-like dynamic and the fact that they are friends. However, what a lot of fan-content creators don’t respect however is that CyYu is a married to Hayden Daviau (SyllaAria), the latter of which publicly voicing their frustration about the fancontent being produced of their husband.
While one could argue that this is a case of “Influencers being influencers,” and that “this is an inevitable consequence of being in Hollywood”, we cannot ignore the actual harm that is being done.
Yeah, real people fanfiction could probably be a blog post of its own. Staying on the topic of content creators, I always get really uncomfortable when I see people ask them what their boundaries are regarding fanfiction. I think in this case, if you have to ask just don’t do it. The first boundary seems to always be “don’t ship me with my friends” which probably says enough.
I imagine it’s a difficult position for content creators to be in as well: they can’t be too rude or they risk offending their audience which isn’t too good for their public perception. Some people need to realise celebrities don’t owe us anything.
I think fanfiction and its culture are very interesting phenomena. As a fan who also spends a lot of time reading (and creating) homoerotic works, I believe that this group can be analyzed from a variety of perspectives altogether. For example, does it actually help the LGBT community, or does it reinforce stereotypes? The majority of the audience is female (I don’t have a source for this, just from the composition of my network), so is this another female gaze and projection? Or does it prove Roland Bach’s ‘the author is dead’? But anyway, I greatly respect AO3 and this community because it brings us together due to our common love, haha.