What about fanfiction?

By Lee Kurm

When you hear the word fanfiction, what comes to mind?

I will guess that it is one of these three:

1. What are you talking about? 

2. You have found my guilty pleasure…

3. Badly written short stories by teenage girls full of incompatible characters pining after each other and having sex. 

I will also guess that for most people it is option c. However, I wouldn’t say you are quite right. I believe that you, along with most people, have formed your opinion on fanfiction on stereotypes, and I would gladly help you overcome this prejudice and form a more positive and educated opinion on fanfiction. If there is less stigma and stereotypes surrounding fanfiction, it can also help readers and writers feel less ashamed of enjoying fanfiction. 

So, what is fanfiction?

If you search for the definition of fanfiction on Google, one of the first articles that will pop up, is Wikipedia. Wikipedia defines fan fiction or fanfiction (note: both spellings are correct and used interchangeably, but I prefer the second spelling, so it is what I will be using) as: “fictional writing written in an amateur capacity by fans, unauthorized by, but based on an existing work of fiction”[1]. 

It is important to note that though fanfiction is “unauthorized” it is not illegal, due to writers not making any profit off of their published work. 

Another important note is that fanfiction can be based off of almost anything ranging from books, films and TV series to real (celebrity) life. 

The stigma:

As it is illustrated on the image above, when you search the word fanfiction on Google, the frequently asked questions that show up question the 'normalcy' of fanfiction.

The fact that so many people are asking whether reading or writing fanfiction is OK shows that there is truly a problem with how much stigma there is surrounding fanfiction. People feel ashamed that they like it and feel uncomfortable admitting. That is the thing that doesn’t seem OK. 

Let’s come back to our option c and dismantle it bit by bit. That will give us a pretty good overview of the stigma and stereotypes and why they shouldn’t be as dominant. 

Number one: ‘badly written short stories’

Fanfiction is very easy to publish, with fanfiction sites, such as Wattpad, FanFiction.net, and Archive of Our Own, having no control whatsoever about the quality of the pieces on there. Almost nothing is banned on these sites, but most explicit or violent content require warnings. 

Due to this ease of publishing and, as a reader, having no way of knowing the quality of the fanfic before reading it, fanfiction usually gets a generalized label of low quality. 

In addition, due to fanfiction mostly being a way for amateur writers to explore their writing, most writers don’t have editors or proof-readers. Additionally, due to this same lack of experience from the authors, most fanfiction is pretty short -- but you would be very wrong to think there was no such thing as long fanfiction. 

Number two: ‘teenage girls’

Not much research has been done about the demographics of fanfiction writers or readers, as there is no readily available information on the sites themselves or anywhere else. Almost everything is kept anonymous. However, some interest has been shown on the subject and some statistics can be found. 

A 2010 study, limiting itself to the users of FanFiction.net, found that 78% percent of the writers with their gender/sex marked in their profile identified as women (and 22% as men). That same study found that 80% of users with their age marked in their profile were between 13 and 17 years of age.[2]

A similar study conducted in 2004, but through surveying users of the same site, not only looking at their profiles, came to similar conclusions: 75% of users identified as female  (and only 25% as men). Age-wise, the findings were somewhat different. 33% of responders were below 18, 54% from 18-30, the remaining 13% were older.[3]

Both of these studies, especially the first, seem to support the stereotype that fanfiction writers (and readers) are predominantly teenage girls. Indeed, stereotypes come from somewhere and the research seems to show that this one holds up. Fair enough, I am a teenage girl and I do both read and write fanfiction. What is important though, is that this majority of teenage girls doesn’t make fanfiction bad and also doesn’t mean that it should be shunned, or that readers/writers should feel bad about enjoying it.

Number three: ‘incompatible characters pining after each other and having sex’

Yes, most fanfiction is surrounding ships. Whether you agree with them or not, is up to you, but for a ship to exist and people to be writing about it there must be some base to it. Just because two characters weren’t romantically involved in a book or movie, doesn’t mean members of the audience can't feel like there was chemistry between them, and want to imagine more. This is especially the case for queer stories. Due to the lack of representation in a big part of fiction, queer audiences often imagine queer relationships between characters, when authors just weren’t open enough to, or didn’t feel like they could, have LGBTQIA+ characters or relationships in their work. This doesn’t mean the characters are incompatible. 

A lot of fanfics, especially those centering ships (or canon relationships) do involve sex. It is a very common misconception that all fanfiction is simply written porn, but this isn't true. Of course, there are fanfics that are exactly that, but not all. Some involve no sex at all, and some have very little of it. The sex is often also not graphic at all. So yes, there are fanfics that center sex, but those are read by people who want to read about sex. It is certainly not all fanfiction. 

Additionally, it is very important to understand that even though most fanfiction is about relationships, not all are. There is also a good amount of fanfiction where there is no romance (or sex) at all, or where it plays a very secondary role. 

Doesn’t all of this look an awful lot like actual books?

Expanding universes & developing writing skills: 

Fanfiction, by definition, is about expanding a fictional universe. It is a very good way for young writers to practice their writing and also get feedback on it by publishing it. It helps to have a base for your writing, in the form of an existing universe (or universes), so you can concentrate on specific parts you are interested in exploring. 

Expanding a universe can take many forms: 

• writing about ships, whether canonical or not

• writing different character PoV’s

• centering on minor/side characters and developing their arcs

• rewriting character arcs, for them to please you more, make more sense, or give characters a moral realignment

• exploring alternate universes

• mixing your favorite works of fiction, to have your favorite characters interact

• expanding the original timeline, through sequels or prequels

• inserting yourself (or a character based on you) or your reader into your favorite universe

• creating original characters

All of these can be great practice if you want to, in the future write your own full story, take a break from your main writing projects by developing something simpler, or just spend more time with your favorite fandoms or characters, even after the original work is finished. 

The last also applies strongly to fanfiction readers: sometimes you finish a book/movie/series and you just crave for more content, more time with the characters, fanfiction can be a great resource then!

Seeking representation:

Let me explain this one with an example. 

Harry Potter is a massive franchise, the original spanning over 7 books and 8 movies, with three additional prequel movies, and one sequel play. In all of that, there is exactly one gay character, who is only gay because the author said so after all the books were published. It is only outwardly referenced in the third of the prequel movies, a series that has just been cancelled. For such a successful series with millions of fans, how does that seem enough? 

In the United Kingdom, around 3% of the population identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. That is about 1.5 million people, in the UK alone[4], who are not truly represented in this huge franchise, which has such cultural significance in the UK. For people, especially youth growing up reading Harry Potter, this can feel very isolating. 

Furthermore, with J.K. Rowling’s very public transphobic views, many queer readers feel torn as to what to feel about their childhood favourite series. 

That is where fanfiction comes in. There is abundant queer fanfiction in the Harry Potter fanbase with the most common (but not only!) ships being Remus Lupin and Sirius Black (Wolfstar), Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter (Drarry), and Ginny Weasley and Luna Lovegood (Linny). 

On Archive of Our Own, by searching Wolfstar, you will be welcomed with 11,914 works. Many fans, especially those who identify as LGBTQIA+ themselves, have fully accepted these two men as a couple, no matter that they were never more than friends in the books and movies. 

Although the numbers are growing nowadays, there is still little LGBTQIA+ representation in literature and media, so queer people create representation for themselves. 

The case is similar with other underrepresented minorities. Many fanfics exist in many different fandoms, focusing on (original) disabled, neuro-atypical, and/or non-white characters. 

Representation matters, and if it doesn’t exist, people will create it for themselves. 

True works of literature & new fanbases:

The whole Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R Tolkien is 576,459 words long.[5]

One of the world’s longest fanfictions ever published, based on this world-famous series, At the Edge of Lasg’len by AnnEllspethRaven and SonaBeanSidhe is currently 6,086,796 words long, and is still not completed. 

This epic-length story has on Archive of Our Own, 114,091 hits (times accessed).[6]

If this is not a “real book” for you or something you believe is only an inexperienced teenager’s attempt at writing, filled with graphic sex scenes, I can assure you, you will have a hoard of fans, ready to prove you wrong. 

The 7 Harry Potter books add up to 1,084,170 words long. [7]

MsKingBean89’s queer Marauders-era fanfiction lasting from 1971 - 1995 All the Young Dudes is 526,969 words long with 9,980,237 hits on Archive of Our Own. 

While this fanfic is ‘only’ half the length of the series it is based on, it is almost the length of Leo Tolstoy’s classic War and Peace (561,304 words[9]). 

In the last year, I have read All the Young Dudes twice. Am I embarrassed of that fact? Yes. Should I be? No, not really. It is masterfully written, and develops Hogwarts, the Wizarding World and the First Wizarding War. Not to even mention the amazing characters, rendered so much more powerful and true in MsKingBean89’s work, than in J.K. Rowling’s original. 

All the Young Dudes has been translated, by fans, into over 20 different languages and over 200 fanfics based on this one have been uploaded onto Archive of Our Own. 

The whole fanfiction has also been completely re-written from Sirius Black’s perspective by Rollercoasterwords, and it is even longer, standing at 628,178 words long. [10]

I have also read it in the last year.

There is a community on Reddit for All the Young Dudes, fan-made merch that can be bought off Etsy, hand-crafted printed versions, a myriad of fanart, and more. 

The Marauders, who are the favorites of many Harry Potter fans, have gotten so much more deep and developed in MsKingBean’s work, making them even more loved by hundreds of thousands of people. The amount of comfort people can get from these characters and the community created by this fanfiction, surpasses even, in many cases, that of the original Harry Potter fandom. As good as is J.K. Rowling’s work in Harry Potter and as important as it is to acknowledge her work’s importance for All the Young Dudes (literally being the reason it can exist), it must also be understood that All the Young Dudes can feel much more welcoming, accepting, and safe, especially for queer youth. 

All the Young Dudes has truly created a fanbase almost as strong as the series’ it was based on and it is a piece of literature absolutely comparable to Harry Potter itself (and in my opinion, superior).

Keep in mind that none of these authors are making any profit whatsoever from their work.

Published fanfiction:

A step even forward from the epic-length and fanbase creating of the works in the previous section, is published fanfiction. 

Cassandra Clare’s bestselling series, which was also turned into a movie, The Mortal Instruments was originally a Harry Potter fanfiction. The author first published on FanFiction.net a work called The Draco Trilogy, for which she had issues relating to plagiarism claims to other popular works of fiction. She also wrote a fanfic called Mortal Instruments, detailing Ron and Ginny Weasley’s relationship. Though the series The Mortal Instruments is an original work and not fanfiction, in it Clare borrowed many elements from her previously written fanfics, and therefore from the Harry Potter series. This has lead to some controversy online, especially in the fanfiction community, and fans of both series.[11] 

The very controversial, yet very famous book and movie trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey was also originally fanfiction. It was published on FanFiction.net in 2009, named Master of the Universe as a Twilight fanfic, where Edward Cullen is the CEO of a multi-million earning company, who meets Bella Swan on a work interview. Due to the resetting of this fanfiction in a non-magical universe, there are very few noticeable similarities between Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight, and what there is can be made pass by both being romance novels, but in reality the similarities run deeper. After the fanfic was rewritten and commercialized, great monetary gain was brought to the author, just as in Cassandra Clare’s case.[12]

So, fanfiction?

These last examples of published fanfiction help us understand that there will be issues when fanfiction is published as true books. This is because you cannot truly write an original book when it’s first version is based on another work. However, this does not mean that fanfiction as a standalone “genre” isn’t good. 

As we’ve established, fanfiction can be great practice for young writers, but also produce absolute masterpieces of literature. It can bring representation to minority communities and create tight-nit (online) communities and safe spaces for creative and personal exploration. It can expand universes to lengths that the original authors may never even have imagined.

Reading fanfiction, especially All the Young Dudes, has been an amazing opportunity for me, just like it has for so many other people. It has made me fall in love even more with one of my favourite series and enlarged it, encouraged me to write more of my own stories, and even helped meet people and form friendships that I never would have otherwise.

Yes, some fanfiction is overly sexy and/or badly written, but that doesn’t mean all fanfiction should be branded as such. And even if it is sexy, some people will still enjoy it. Plus, the “bad writers” will improve -- this is why they are writing fanfiction. 

We should no longer live in a society where fanfiction readers and writers feel ashamed. 

From this day forward I will not be ashamed that I love fanfiction. 

Sources: 

[1] Anonymous Wikipedia Editors, ‘Fan fiction’, Wikipedia [website], 18/02/2023, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction>, accessed 27/03/2023.

[2] Anonymous, ‘Fan Fiction Statistics – FFN Research’, Blogspot [website], 18/02/2011, <http://ffnresearch.blogspot.com/2011/03/fan-fiction-demographics-in-2010-age.html>, accessed 27/03/2023.

[3] Blot, W. L., ‘The Hidden Authors: A Study and Survey of Fan Fiction Writers’, Honours Project, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2004, pp. 31-32, <https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268731405.pdf>, accessed 27/03/2023. 

[4] Barton, C., ‘2021 census: What do we know about the LGBT+ population?’, House of Commons Library [website], 16/01/2023, <https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/2021-census-what-do-we-know-about-the-lgbt-population/>, accessed 27/03/2023.

[5] Calkins, T., ‘Word Counts of the Most Popular Books in the World’, Foster Grant [website], 03/08/2017, <https://blog.fostergrant.co.uk/2017/08/03/word-counts-popular-books-world/>, accessed 28/03/2023. 

[6] AnnEllspethRaven & SonaBeanSidhe, At the Edge of Lasg’len, Archive of Our Own, 2016, <https://archiveofourown.org/>, accessed 28/03/2023. 

[7] Calkins, T., ‘Word Counts of the Most Popular Books in the World’, Foster Grant [website], 03/08/2017, <https://blog.fostergrant.co.uk/2017/08/03/word-counts-popular-books-world/>, accessed 28/03/2023.

[8] MsKingBean89, All the Young Dudes, Archive of Our Own, 2017 (2018), <https://archiveofourown.org/>, accessed 28/03/2023. 

[9] Calkins, T., ‘Word Counts of the Most Popular Books in the World’, Foster Grant [website], 03/08/2017, <https://blog.fostergrant.co.uk/2017/08/03/word-counts-popular-books-world/>, accessed 28/03/2023.

[10] Rollercoasterwords, All the Young Dudes – Sirius’s Perspective, Archive of Our Own, 2021 (2022), <https://archiveofourown.org/>, accessed 28/03/2023. 

[11] Bartyzel, M., ‘Girls on Film: The confounding problems of fan fiction’, The Week [website], 09/01/2015, https://theweek.com/articles/460833/girls-film-confounding-problems-fan-fiction#:~:text=The%20disappointing%20new%20film%20The,That's%20not%20a%20good%20thing.&text=The%20Mortal%20Instruments%3A%20City%20of%20Bones%20is%20upon%20us%20%E2%80%94%20a,130%20minutes%20of%20teenage%20angst>, accessed 28/03/2023. 

[12] Cuccinello, H. C., ‘Fifty Shades Of Green: How Fanfiction Went From Dirty Little Secret To Money Machine’, Forbes [website], 10/02/2017, <https://www.forbes.com/sites/hayleycuccinello/2017/02/10/fifty-shades-of-green-how-fanfiction-went-from-dirty-little-secret-to-money-machine/?sh=215cd8d7264c>, accessed 28/03/2023. 

Images:

Anonymous, The importance of children’s representation in literature and media [image], n.d., in Humanium, 22/03/2022, <https://www.humanium.org/en/the-importance-of-childrens-representation-in-literature-and-media/>, 29/03/2023. 

anna 🥍, — “all the young dudes” quotes & characters as “six of crows” quotes & characters [photo], 2021, in Twitter, 21/02/2021, https://twitter.com/JEREJ3AN/status/1451223358083944455/photo/1, 19/12/2022. 

Nielsen, C., The Mortal Instruments [image], 2007/2014, …….