Fifty Shades of Gray. After. Gabriel’s Inferno. Notorious titles that have reached ears and left impressions well beyond the fanfiction community. They all point towards a single story: fanfiction is a subpar, angsty pornographic imitation of “real” books, “real” ideas, and real people. Fanfiction writers are never mistaken as legitimate authors and any engagement with fanfiction is ridiculed. In fact, members of the fanfiction community are compelled to hide behind aliases and “quirky” usernames. Fanfiction is a publicly unspoken genre that thrives in the shadows of the internet.
But what is fanfiction exactly? And surely there must be more than a one-dimensional account of it?
Fanfiction has an extensive history prior to the creation of fanfiction designated online forums and websites. In art and literature, pieces that emulate another artist, work, or period are labeled pastiches. Pastiches are professional endeavors; they pay homages to original inspirations. Some literary notables that are pastiches are The Aeneid, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Paradise Lost, The Lord of the Flies, and Inferno. Can they also be considered fanfiction? Technically, yes. The sole distinction between pastiche and fanfiction is the level of professionalism granted to them; fanfiction is an amateur venture and pastiche is a highly respected one. However, they can be perceived as one and the same– fanfiction just has bad publicity.
Some of the stereotypes associated with fanfiction are justifiable. The writers are mostly angsty 13 year old girls or middle-aged white women. And the stories can get freakishly bizarre and kafkaesque. Exhibit A– 59 year old E.L. James published the Fifty Shades trilogy (a Twilight fanfiction centered on sexual and domestic abuse). Or consider My Immortal–a Harry Potter fanfiction starring gothic, sex addicts and a love triangle involving Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter. My Immortal is infamous for, supposedly, being the worst fanfiction to ever be written (reader discretion advised). However, these extremes barely scratch the surface.
AU (alternate universe): alternate universe fanfiction writers depart from the fictional or actual universe that their fan work is based on. They explore the possibilities of pivotal changes made to characters’ history, motivations, and environment. For example, a Naruto AU fanfiction writer can imagine a highschool setting for all the characters instead of a village in Japan.
Crossover: crossover fanfiction combines multiple fandoms and/or universes into a single story. For instance, Sherlock Holmes and the Ravenclaw Codex intertwines two England worlds set in Victorian Hogwarts. Sherlock Holmes is recruited to investigate the disappearance of a magical artifact at Hogwarts. Crossovers are a delight to those who obsess over many fandoms. Fluff: fluffs are lighthearted and happy reads intended to produce warmth. Fluffs contain gentle scenarios.
Oneshot: Oneshots are short works– they are not multi-chaptered. Oneshots are equally easy to read as they are to write: quick and painless. They usually never exceed 2,000 words. Solving the Clues (a Harry Potter fanfiction) is a riveting one shot with Kingsley Shacklebolt as the hero. Kingsley Shacklebolt discovers a security leak while doing his crossword puzzle on the Daily Prophet.
Smut/lemon: Smuts or lemons have explicit sexual content. Those who eventually stumble upon them (it’s inevitable really) are either enraptured or dismayed. Smuts and lemons are written porn– equivalent to Playboy or porn websites. Young adults are often the authors, but ignorant adolescents are always the prey.
OOC (out of character): fanfiction writers sometimes revise a character’s personality completely. There is fanfiction with Slytherin Hermione and vengeful Gandalf; these characters have undergone a 180 switch.
Fanfiction is ubiquitous among a few popular websites: Archive of Our Own, Fanfiction.net, Quotev, Wattpad, and Tumblr. Archive of Our Own (or AO3) and Fanfiction.net are exclusively reserved for fan work. AO3’s progressive manifesto states: “we believe that fanworks are transformative and that transformative works are legitimate.” Quotev and Wattpad permit any creative writing enterprise. Individuals on Quotev and Wattpad can literally open up their imagination to anything; yet, romance and sex consistently happen to be the pinnacle of everyone’s fantasy.
The sex crazed rage established on creative writing forums have recently infiltrated the publication industry via BookTok. BookTok is a subcommunity on TikTok featuring book/literature reviews. However, BookTok sensations are not authored by Ernest Hemingway or Toni Morrison. No. The ones in vogue, the big hits, are It Ends With Us, Book Lovers, A Court of Thorn and Roses, and The Spanish Love Deception. And the authors are all white women over the age of 30 (there is absolutely nothing wrong with them being women or white, it is just slightly unsettling). The books are heavily sexual, scandalous, and found in the hands of teenage girls at the dining table.
Repercussions of exposure to sexual content solely affected avid fanfiction readers. With BookTok persuading everyone to become a “bookworm”, many are in danger. Young readers who esteem relationships in fanfiction and romance books and get exposed to sexual jargon will have a warped perception of reality. The consequences of sex in books– with no plot objectives– are severe. It is (rightly) the reason that both fanfiction and romance books are disparaged.
But fanfiction does not always have to be sloppy and inappropriate. Ingenious fanworks are not a rarity.
Here are some fanfiction that are worth the read (list curated by a former avid fanfiction
reader/writer):
Life Sentence, No Cellmate, and Ceasefire by HollyComb (A Kylo Ren fic)
Housebroken by MissHoneyWell (Hunger Games fic)
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudowsky
The Life and Times by Jewels5 (Harry Potter fic)