9 Things You Didn't Know About Fanfiction

Surprisingly, fanfictions are quite popular all around the world and have been enjoyed by young people to adults for a long time. It's even been academically studied. While some may be poorly written, some are fantastic and professional.

Fanfiction is a fictional work based on existing texts or people and written by fans without permission from the original creator. Authors make their own stories by borrowing characters, concepts or real people. 

Here are popular purposes of fanfiction:

• Writing alternative stories to how they think the original content should have gone
• Continuing a storyline
• Reimagining different romances or putting a character in a relationship with the reader
• Inserting oneself into the fictional story
• Exploring the characters in different universes or situations (e.g. highschool)
• Combining multiple content/universes together (crossovers)

You can find fanfiction in so many places online now and one of the most popular sites years ago is Fanfiction Net, which is not dead but less active depending on the various fandoms. 

Is fanfiction bad?

Reading or writing fanfiction is not bad and is not a sin - it's as creative and thought out as normal fictional works. It's okay to read and write fanfiction as it shows the imaginative ways to explore and reinterpret original texts. 

Furthermore, fanfiction is so addictive as fans can keep being involved in their favourite fandoms, even when the original work is finished. Readers and writers are given a chance to see interesting takes on what they love, especially if what they want wasn't in the existing content. Indeed, Harry Potter is the fandom that has the most fanfiction.

Next, with research about Star Trek fanfiction, there came many things I discovered and found interesting. However, the paper was written in 1988 so many things may have changed. Other current facts will keep you up-to-date. Surely, this will definitely surprise you and get your attention with facts you need to know about fanfiction, whether you love reading or writing them or want to know about them.

9 Interesting Facts About Fanfictions You Didn't Know:

1. It's estimated that nearly all fanfictions are written by females

Interestingly, as revealed by Camille Bacon-Smith (1986), roughly 'more than 90% of all fan writers are female' (Jenkins 1988, p.90). Of course, this may have changed over the decades but there is research on the way males and females read and interpret texts that support this. 

Firstly, David Bleich (1986) found that men concentrated logically on the author's intent and a narrative's structure and organisation, retelling a story in a simple plot way through its factual information. On the other hand, women focused on discovering the depth of the characters and the world, telling the story like an experience with an atmosphere. 

Women were seen to enjoy playing around with character relationships and interpreting concepts outside the original works. 

Secondly, men participating in fandoms were more interested in combat worlds such as interactive games and authority roles like organisation planning. But when men do write, they often contribute to nonfiction essays such as speculating and analysing the technology or logical aspects of the created universe instead of fictional romance that women may prefer.

Finally, in shows such as Star Trek, they centre around males and are made for males. Women had the need to do justice to the poorly written females on the sidelines by creating stories around them that show their competence and success, bringing satisfaction to the fans. Then again, times have changed that more works made by and for females are popular globally.

2. Fanfictions have historically been around for a long time orally and through mail letters

While fanfiction may seem to have appeared on websites such as Fanfiction Net and AO3 and gotten popular through them, they have culturally existed for a long time since the nineteenth century. 

From a historical time of feminine oral culture where women gossiped about soap operas, it transitioned into a written form. Women in the nineteenth century used letters and diaries that were shared or written collectively to talk about feelings and ideas about family, religion, gender roles, sexuality, professional desires and more. This was also how they kept in contact.

Fan writing continued this collective tradition and function firstly through the mail and word of mouth but now with reference to a created work where they could relate their personal, female problems.

3. Fanfictions are morally questionable and sometimes unwanted by producers

As I have written fanfiction before and have read it often, I never thought it was anything bad. However, people have critiqued it by saying that they are using copyrighted material. Along with others, I believe that it should be fine if it's for fans entertainment and they aren't making a huge profit from it. (Works made from fanfiction tell another story.) 

Michel de Certeau called it "poaching", making a metaphor of people using other people's land to enjoy it for themselves. Some producers used to see fanfiction as competition and spoiling the original content so they try to control them, such as Lucasfilm threatening those who would publish fanfiction that went against Star Wars' values. 

Despite this, fans usually have an ethical moral when writing these works as they do it because they love the original creation. They try to write the characters similar to the existing persona, research to stay faithful to the universe and sometimes follow the storyline. Mostly, fans agree that if a character is written so out character, they don't associate it with their moral standards. 

4. There are fanzines: published and sold magazines

As someone who thought fanfictions were just written online for fun, I never realised that there were fanzines (fan magazines). Since fan writing has a partially institutional status, fanzines are usually photocopied, commercially printed and bound, and sent through mail or sold at fan conventions. Some are so popular that they may reach international fans and some are accepted as canon (part of the original universe story) within the fandom.

Specifically, there are mainly two categories of fanzines: 'letterzines', which are newsletters for articles about the program or letters from fans, and 'fictionzines', which publish novels, poems and short stories based on the existing work's ideas. 

5. Some fanfictions have become original novels and movies

This fact may be known but it's still quite amazing what fanfictions have achieved when it used to be frowned upon and some people still worry that it's bad. Huge authors like Stephen King have said that they've written fanfiction on works such as Sherlock Holmes and Dracula.

For example, the most popular one might be Fifty Shades of Grey, which was originally a fanfiction of Twilight. The Fifty Shades trilogy was written by E.L. James but as a fanfiction, it was first called Master of the Universe and published on Fanfiction.net in August 2009 under the pen name "Snowqueens Icedragon".

James commercially published Fifty Shades of Grey by an independent Australian publisher, Writer's Coffee Shop, once the novels were extended and edited by taking away Twilight references (an act also called "filing off the serial numbers"). Now, James is the most commercially successful fanfiction writer and was the highest-paid author in the world in 2013.

Another example is After, a novel and film series by Anna Todd. However, After was originally a fanfiction on Wattpad about Harry Styles from One Direction and it was written under the username imaginator1D. When it was commercially published by Simon and Schuster, Todd reworked it to remove fanfiction traces, such as changing Harry's name to Hardin. 

Ultimately, these works and movies show how fanfiction got more and more noticed as legitimate literature. 

6. There's fanfiction on basically anything 

While there's fanfiction based on fictional creations such as movies, books, TV shows and anime, there's interestingly fanfiction about real people such as celebrities, singers and actors. But, I sometimes think that those about actual people can be uncomfortable for those people, especially if the created story depicts them badly or doing things they would never do. 

Some fandoms have more fanfiction than others but it depends on what it is and the fanfiction website. Certainly, if you look for it, you're sure to find fanfiction on basically anything and if there isn't, you can always write one and there will be.

7. Fanfiction can turn original content into many different and even strange stories

Next, fanfiction creations are unlimited to the imagination, which is probably known, just like the previous point, but it still surprises me with how creative and weird some can get.

Fan writers can also create stories in many different ways, scenarios and universes. Some may describe a different plot in the same world as the one it's based on or it may turn it into different settings such as a high school world, a common theme in fanfiction which I've done and was popular. 

Fans may also change the characters into interesting ways like the common mafia theme, or turning them into different ages (like children) or cats - though I find the last one a bit strange, it seems to be popular. 

8. Romance in fanfiction is also creatively unlimited and sometimes weird

Additionally, romance is seen often as the main focus of fanfiction where fans may imagine new couples or write about couples from the existing work but centre on their love life, possibly in the future beyond the original work. Fans can even write a relationship between many people.

Making new couples can include crazy, wild couples that wouldn't ever happen in the original. Some of the most surprising ones from Harry Potter I've heard of are Argus Filch and Dobby, and Dobby with the Sorting Hat. 

9. Fanfiction has language abbreviations you need to know

In the fanfiction community, there are terms and abbreviations that I used to wonder what they meant and these will be helpful to know for understanding fanfiction. 

Here is the main fanfiction terminology you need to know:

• AU - Alternative Universe

The one you'll see the most is probably AU, which means the characters are set in a world different to their original one. For example, a high school au involves a normal high school universe where characters like Naruto would be ordinary without powers.

• OOC - Out Of Character

This is when the character behaves differently to as they would in the original content. 

• OC - Own Character

An OC is a character that the author has made up and is not part of the existing work.

This is something popular that I also like to read and write as it's like I can imagine myself as that character put into the world.

• Crossover

Two or more different universe/existing works come together. This can be characters being put into a different fandom universe or multiple worlds colliding. 

• Oneshot

The fictional story is quite short, similar to one chapter's length instead of a normal, long fanfiction. There are sometimes fanfictions made of many oneshots.

• Canon

The official and original storyline from the source material that the fanfiction is based on.

• Fluff

This is light, cheerful and sweet fanfiction that is typically shorter and not as plot-heavy nor does it have hugely explicit romance action (only slight romance).

• Angst

A dark fanfiction theme with characters often suffering in sadness or depression.

This is something I see a lot but have never read though it may be interesting if you want an emotional drama.

• A/A - Action/Adventure

The work is plot-driven with fighting action and battles.

• M/F

Romance between a male and a female.

• F/F

Similarly, this means romance between two females.

• M/M

As you can guess, this refers to romance between two males.

• M

M in fanfiction means that it is not suitable for children. It's suited to mature readers over 16 due to adult content, violence, drugs, or strong language.

• SS

SS in fanfiction means Short Story.

• Y/N - Your Name

Y/N in fanfiction means the reader's name as a replacement of their name and is used in fanfictions where it inserts the reader into the story.

Is fanfiction okay?

In summary, fanfiction, whether you realise it or not, has been around for a long time and has been written by successful authors or made into original novels and movies. Due to the creative potential, I believe that reading and writing fanfiction is okay, especially if you put in the effort you would with normal fiction and it's written just as well. 

However, there are weird, badly written and questionable works out there so you should be careful when searching for fanfiction. Most importantly, I don't suggest it for young kids or young teenagers as it's easy to stumble upon strange content that may not be appropriate (they would have warnings though). 

Of course, I've written popular fanfiction and read many and they can be really interesting and great to read when you're missing the original content.