In Defence of Fanfiction and Why You Should Love It
“Did you know that Dante's Inferno is just self-insert Bible fanfiction?”
This is a very divisive thing to say in a library, believe it or not (people tend to get very defensive). But the fanfiction I submit to all you who do not dabble is worth serious consideration.
It is commonplace for muggles generally at an initial glance to turn their noses up at the concept of fanfiction. At worst it gives hateful people in fandoms avenues to perform illegal acts of copyright. Ripping of hard-working artists with their low brow smutty fetishist homoerotic drivel and at best it's wish fulfilment for the pubescent teenage girl.
And while yes, you’re not wrong; I would submit that you are missing the entire point.
Firstly, you need to change what you think of when you think of fanfiction.
Shakespeare's Othello is fanfiction of an Italian story “The Moorish Captain” a racist tale about the dangers of interracial marriage. Where Desdemona's husband had previously just been ‘The Moor’, Shakespeare fleshed them out and gave them the name Othello. Joyce's Ulysses is simply The Odyssey set in Dublin. The Aeneid is also Odyssey fanfiction mixed with the Iliad.
Dubbing these “great works of literature” fanfiction doesn’t make them any more meaningful or good.
Nowadays, the explosion of fanfiction in the age of the internet is impossible to escape. What was once considered a niche corner of the internet reserved only for those dedicated stans who frequented certain message boards is now an iconic thriving online ecosystem with thousands of stories, some of which are published everywhere, but perhaps most notably AO3, Wattpad and fanfiction.net to name a few.
Bronwen Thomas, lecturer of English and New Media at Bournemouth University, defines fanfiction as
“Stories produced by fans based on plot lines and characters from either a single source text or else a ‘canon’ of work'. Fanfiction most frequently utilizes the canon’s characters but will often also contain elements of the original story’s plot and setting."
The rule generally is if it exists someone has written fanfiction about it. There is author fanfiction where F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemmingway open an Airbnb together. Chess pieces and checkers are assigned sentience and go to war. The Mona Lisa climbs out of her frame in the Louvre and dances with Venus de Milo. (They line dance because Venus de Milo doesn’t have arms but loves dancing). There’s Donald Trump/Vladimir Putin fanfiction, which is usually very pornographic but, in my opinion, a seminal work of satire given how both of these men are very publicly against anything LGBTQ+.
Fanfiction is art without the expectation of profit. Fanfiction in the words of Amy Harmon reminds us that
"Fanfiction is an act of the people, the community, the transformative nature of the human spirit, and is an act of resistance against capitalist notions of worth".
People who are writing their 500 chapter 10,000-word one shot, Happily-Ever-After, epics are not doing it with the expectation that a major publisher will see their work and publish it. They are doing it because it’s what they love. Every word they write asserts their passion for this thing that brings them joy. It is true reading for pleasure as Harmon reminds us
“Storytelling is a social action, fanfiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk” (Harmon, 97).
The popularity and reach of fanfiction is also purely meritorious. If enough people like your work, it's shared amongst communities, and as a result your ‘kudos’ or likes go up. Certain fanfiction authors become prolific and famous in their respective fan communities. The result of this is an explosion of experimental and weird and wacky literature, which can be incredibly liberating for writers and readers alike. Whereas, in mainstream publishing there can be a great deal of pressure to write the ‘right way’, which is usually the white way.
Fanfiction also does not suffer from the same diversity problem that your typical publishing company does. In fact, the presence of queerness, people of colour, women, and people with disabilities within fanfiction cannot be understated. People hungry to see themselves in the stories that they loved simply wrote themselves into it.
While today more stories featuring representation and more specifically positive representation for those typically under catered to in the cis, het, and white publishing industry is happening. Just because some queer, POC stories get published by some diverse authors does not suddenly undo years of systemic and institutional racism.
Fanfiction reminds us that the great stories are meant to be consumed by us, the masses. That we need not be afraid for literature to move out of the hands of institutions and into the hands of folk fandom practitioners.
References
https://www.bustle.com/articles/159041-11-classics-that-are-secretly-fanfiction
Fanfiction as critical commentary which is a seminal article by Henery Jenkins
http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2006/09/fan_fiction_as_critical_commen.html
Harmon, Amy. “In TV's Dull Summer Days, Plots Take Wing on the Net.” The New York Times, 18 Aug. 1997, http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/18/business/in-tv-s-dullsummer-days-plots-take-wing-on-the-net.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm. Accessed 1st October 2022.
Thomas, Bronwen. “What Is Fanfiction and Why Are People Saying Such Nice Things About It?” Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies, vol. 3, 2011, pp. 1–24. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/storyworlds.3.2011.0001.