"In Defence of Fanfiction": Symptoms of a Storytelling Species
Is fanfiction simply the internet age’s response to the human instinct of imagination?
Many young people growing up with internet access will have come across fanfiction. However, if you didn't spend your formative years shut away with your eyes glued to screens, fanfictions are usually unauthorised stories written by fans featuring fictional characters from copyrighted works. They're almost always posted online, and due to unrestricted internet access and intense attachments to "comfort characters", I read fanfics almost exclusively through my early teens (shameful, I know).
When I began to discover internet fan fiction, the concept was already around 17 years old. Fanfiction.net (FFN), created in 1998, allowed users to upload their fandom content and archived works on the same topics in one place. It expanded in the early 2000s but with an important caveat: in September 2002, the site removed NC-17-rated works and introduced restrictive publication rules. The restrictions included not allowing own-adventure (or self-insert) works, stories that include real people, and content based on material produced by people who had expressed opposition to fanfiction. It seems reasonable enough: no sex, no celebrities, and no annoying the authors.
However, that collection of attributes is what came to make up most of the fan fiction I was reading in the 2010s, so what changed?
The site Archive Of Our Own (AO3) was launched in 2008, and as of 2024, hosts work in over 62,830 fandoms. Unlike FFN, it allows users to publish any content as long as it's legal, which is a surprisingly broad and controversial guideline based on some of the stories lurking in the archive. Its popularity swelled through the 2010s and has allowed writers to post in whichever language they wish, resulting in a unique archive of fan works worldwide.
The final site of the "golden trio" of popular fanfic archives is Wattpad, although they weren't explicitly created for that purpose. Also created in the 2000s, Wattpad was initially intended for authors to write and publish original fiction. However, it eventually added a fanfiction category alongside its other genres. Some of Wattpad's most notable fanfictions have focused on celebrities, with the recent film series After being a solid example. Originally posted on Wattpad as Harry Styles fanfiction, Anna Todd later submitted her story for traditional publication and eventually succeeded in selling the rights to the film series. This follows a similar pathway to E.L. James’s fanfic-to-blockbuster pathway, as it's well known that Fifty Shades was originally fanfiction of Twilight.
However, amongst avid fanfic readers, Wattpad is not favoured (and that's putting it politely) for various reasons. As the site has increased in popularity, the developers have increased adverts, introduced paid stories, and limited downloads for those without paid subscriptions. Furthermore, it is worth noting that a large part of the Wattpad user demographic is young women and girls. The notes on the quality of the stories can be explained by the understanding that Wattpad can now be seen as an "introduction to writing" for teens rather than a site with the quality or quantity of archives like AO3.
Other social media sites, like Tumblr and Twitter, have also been used to produce fandom content. However, their content focuses more on "fic prompts" than hosting full-length works. Furthermore, the fandom content on social media has been evolving, as shown by the popularity of "Dracotok" on TikTok in 2020. The trend saw video edits of Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter films go viral, alongside an increased interest in "Dramione" fics (a ship which suggests that Draco and Hermione are meant to be together, which I'll admit I disagree with myself).
You can always find extensions of the stories we love somewhere on the internet. However, the history of fanfiction is much deeper than you might imagine.
Most identify the origins of modern fanfiction with the Star Trek fandom in the 1960s. The show inspired fans to produce zines of characters’ imagined adventures and sparked the convention movement that quickly expanded to cover Doctor Who and similar shows. Eventually, the zines associated with these fandoms became dominated by crossover narratives as fans took their tropes from one fandom to the next.
A large part of the discourse surrounding fanfiction focuses on the legality and ethics of allowing fan publications. Whilst copyright laws are relatively straightforward — no profit can or should be made from unauthorised offshoots of official works — the fact that fanfic creators are willing to produce extensive works for no gain other than the passion for writing and sharing their ideas should be seen as a testament to the storytelling instinct within us.
Therefore, we should look further into literary history as we consider what it means to consider humans a storytelling species. Throughout our history, we have constructed narratives. From myths and folklore to modern legal codes and monographs, we have functioned as a species on a foundation of narrative. Throughout history, many great works have taken inspiration from the materials available to their authors, making the current fanfiction-to-traditional-publishing pipeline we see today more common.
For example, it is now well-recognised that Shakespeare's plays aren’t strictly “original” — the plots and characters were drawn from various other works Shakespeare came across. Sometimes, he used the plots from older stories, such as the basis of Hamlet. But others, such as Othello or Measure For Measure, were drawn from contemporary European writers. However, the “sources” of Shakespeare seemed to have been known during his lifetime but did undermine people’s opinions of him. Through later centuries, efforts were made to compile the sources used by Shakespeare so readers could compare his plays to the original material. Doesn’t it seem funny to think that we could read Twilight alongside Fifty Shades of Grey to compare the aspects that overlap? That's what we’ve been doing with Shakespeare since the 18th Century.
If you wanted to discuss fanfiction as retellings, there's some light-hearted suggestion that Dante’s Divine Comedy could be read as Biblical fanfiction. This logic could be applied to East of Eden by John Steinbeck, Paradise Lost by John Milton, or The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman. Arthurian legends have also proved popular with “official” authors. For example, T.H. White’s The Once And Future King retells Morte D’Arthur from the 1480s, and Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court also takes on Malory’s medieval themes. Laura Bates recently joined Wright and Twain with the Arthurian retelling Sisters of Sword and Shadow.
However, scholars have noted that equating literary retellings with fanfiction can undermine the critical purpose of retellings. As a lover of fanfiction and retelling, I would argue against this, as it suggests that writing is only worth something if it serves a greater purpose. This means that all retellings, even the incredibly bad ones, are better than even the most intricately constructed fanworks. Surely this doesn’t seem right?
Now, don’t get me wrong, there are some excellent retellings. For example, Jane Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea follows the doomed first wife of Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre, offering an alternative explanation for her attic imprisonment. On the fanfiction side, however, the impact of fanwork like Manacled by senlinyu on AO3 (please see content warnings), which combines the Handmaid’s Tale with Harry Potter. senlinyu’s work emotionally engages readers and explores a very real threat to women in conflict— involuntary surrogacy — and thoroughly explores a world where the boy who lived has died, and the Wizarding War was lost. Much like Wide Sargasso Sea adds details to Mrs Rochester’s madness; Manacled can be seen to add to the Potter world through its exploration of the possible outcomes of a lost war.
There are, of course, fanworks that should never have been published. There are fanfictions that are entirely one-shots of smut scenes that add nothing to the original work, and there are others that are just … odd. However, anyone who has spent any time in the trenches of Kindle Unlimited will know that there are some abysmal retellings (not calling anyone out right now, but if you want to sexualise Peter Pan … I’m creeped out). And so the separation shouldn’t be made purely on merit.
Personally, I disagree that there should be any distinction at all. There are plenty of traditionally published books out there that are pointless compared to some of the fanwork available — which isn’t to trash traditional authors entirely but to suggest that there is no inferior discipline. I’d like to suggest that fanfiction as a writing style is dominated by young women and that an aversion to legitimising the quality of some of these works could be a result of underlying misogyny.
However, in a broader sense, I don't consider a distinction necessary because fanfiction, like any form of writing, displays the passion for storytelling held by human cultures. Our desire to tell stories, over and over again in many different formats, has been carried with us throughout our history. From myth and folktales to the works of Shakespeare and today, our desire to retell has been ingrained within us.
I would suggest, in fact, that fanfiction has been the internet age’s project in the human phenomena of storytelling. The format is different, and the laws are a little complex. But the evidence from fanfiction that we love our stories even when profit is impossible displays a deeper human need that is being displayed in new ways.
And as Libba Bray said, “There is no greater power on this earth than story.” — no matter what form it takes.
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