Background
What is fanfiction?
Fanfiction is the practice of fans of a particular fictional work, such as a tv series or a book, creating new stories based on an already established set of characters and fictional world. Fanfiction can be seen throughout history with popular examples such as the Aeneid, Dante’s Inferno, and A Wide Sargasso Sea. These examples act as some of the earliest examples of one author basing their work off of another's already established work. Although the practice of writing fanfiction began long ago with some of these works that we consider to be classics, it now has a steady presence online with thousands of new stories being uploaded per day. Sites like Wattpad, fanfiction.net, and Archive of Our Own (AO3) allow fanfiction authors to publish their work easily and anonymously. Previously, fanfiction wasn’t as easily published as works were incorporated into zines and printed. The creation of an online space for fanfiction has encouraged the practice to expand even more. Allowing authors to publish their work at the click of a button and behind an anonymous identity has created a flourishing community for fanfiction authors and readers alike that only continues to grow. Today fanfiction can be seen not only online but also in popular published books and movies. Notable modern examples include Fifty Shades of Grey, The Love Hypothesis, and After.
Archive of Our Own
Archive of Our Own was created by the Organization of Transformative Works (OTW) in 2009 to host transformative works and make them as accessible as possible. It is the belief of OTW that fanfiction works are transformative and should be recognized as legal and legitimate creative activity (What We Believe). Currently AO3 has over 10 million works in about 54 thousand different fandoms with around 5 million registered users (Archive of Our Own). AO3 has become a popular site for fans to create and receive material as it represents the idea that everything there is made by fans for fans. This idea in combination with the many different fandoms represented on the site has led to a diverse population of users. In 2013 a census survey was performed to collect the demographics of 10 thousand users. It revealed that the majority of users are between 16 and 29 years old, female, white, and heterosexual or bisexual (Centrumlumina). Just over half of those participating in the census reported that they identify as belonging to a gender, sexual, or romantic minority (Centrumlumina). AO3 also reveals that its most popular tags include: Alternate Universe, Sexual Content, Angst, Fluff, and Relationshp(s) (Archive of Our Own). These tags and demographics give us a small glance at who is using AO3 and what fanfiction authors are writing about. For this project AO3 was used as my data source for a statistical analysis in the A Court of Thorns and Roses fandom since it is the most active site for fanfiction written for my fandom with about 60 new fics being written per week and over 7000 total already published.
What is Canon?
Canon is the material that is accepted as officially part of the original story or the source material that fans are referring to (Romano). If something is canonical or true to canon it means that it could happen in the actual source text. This applies to characters as well as plot lines within fanfiction.