What is Fanfiction?
My bizarre example of childhood make-believe foregrounds a key theme in this project: it is within our nature to make up stories. Many of us have wondered about if a favorite story of ours had a different ending, many more have tried to predict how a story will end before finishing it. There are online forums dedicated to interpreting children’s shows. Our stories are very important to us. Fanfiction, today, demonstrates just how important our stories are.
Fanfiction is not a new invention. Artists have been taking inspiration from prior literature since literature began. Fanfiction as we see it today, however, is a newer phenomenon. It has gained popular attention from academics and has become a part of our reality. The famous erotic novel, Fifty Shades of Grey, started out as Twilight fanfiction. Not everyone agrees on when modern day fanfiction began; however, many academics trace it back to the 60s in response to the rise in popularity of science fiction (Hellekson and Busse, 3-6)
But what is Fanfiction? The answer is more complex than meets the eye. The term in academia, just as it is in entertainment, is incredibly flexible. Fanfiction, as an art form, can be viewed in several different ways.
To begin this journey, I propose a working classification system.
To be classified as fanfiction a work must be:
1. A story derived in some way from already existing content.
2. Created by someone who identifies as a “fan” and perceives their own work as a fan work.
3. Be written for a community of other fans.
It is worth noting that the third point is flexible. While the community aspect of fanfiction is important, the definition of community is intentionally vague. In my previous example, my friend and I still engaged in fan production even though the “community” was just the two of us. Throughout this project, there are many terms and phrases that may be unfamiliar. This is due to the communal aspect of fanfiction. Communities create their own language for describing their practices. I will define unfamiliar terms as best I can through the notes function of Scalar. While I have provided a set of parameters as a means to classify if a work can be considered fanfiction, explaining precisely what is fanfiction is deceptively difficult. The three sections below work within this classification system to demonstrate the many different ways to define the genre and their shortcomings. They each highlight one point of my classification system, showing why all three are necessary.
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