The most popular internet fanfiction repositories, Archive of Our Own and fanfiction.net, contain over 7.5 million works between the two of them. They can be found in over 30 languages and range in length from a few hundred words to one that has reached over 3.8 million and counting. To put that in context, 3.8 million words is roughly six copies of War and Peace.
All this represents a considerable amount of time and effort, to say nothing of the courage it takes to expose your creation to public opinion. It can even mean risking professional or personal harm. A number of Chinese fanfiction authors were recently arrested for distribution of pornography. In South Korea, posting some types of fanfiction can mean having all internet access revoked. One fanfiction author had her fanfiction used as ammunition against her in a child custody case, as if her hobby somehow rendered her an unfit parent.
Despite the personal risk, authors continue to publish. And yet the mainstream opinion of fanfiction is that it is at best, a frivolous, poorly-written waste of time and at worst, a dirty secret, like a pornography addiction or picking your nose. Mentions of fanfiction in the media generally run from dismissive to scornful.
All this represents a considerable amount of time and effort, to say nothing of the courage it takes to expose your creation to public opinion. It can even mean risking professional or personal harm. A number of Chinese fanfiction authors were recently arrested for distribution of pornography. In South Korea, posting some types of fanfiction can mean having all internet access revoked. One fanfiction author had her fanfiction used as ammunition against her in a child custody case, as if her hobby somehow rendered her an unfit parent.
Despite the personal risk, authors continue to publish. And yet the mainstream opinion of fanfiction is that it is at best, a frivolous, poorly-written waste of time and at worst, a dirty secret, like a pornography addiction or picking your nose. Mentions of fanfiction in the media generally run from dismissive to scornful.
"So as long as there are unfulfilled women who are also geeks, I think there will always be Slash Fic. It’s here to stay, I’m afraid, no matter how awful it may be."
--The Weird, Wild World of Slash Fiction
What, then, is the value of fanfiction? Why are there so many writers and readers? I argue that fanfiction is not a trivial waste of time. It is a tradition with history that, among other things, provides an opportunity for marginalized groups to achieve representation and serve as a refuge for marginalized groups.
Scholars are often willing to acknowledge the value of fanfiction, and studies of feminism and fanfiction have been made. However, much of fan studies is done by people outside the subculture whose lack of familiarity with the terms and habits is blatantly obvious. When it's done by insiders, it's either aimed at a very niche topic, like a certain sub-genre that only appears in fanfic, or else is a defense relying too strongly on emotions and not enough on facts and logic. Additionally, academics and society at large are eager to dismiss the activities of women, particularly young women, as frivolous. I hope to hit some sort of middle ground between passion and rationality.
Scholars are often willing to acknowledge the value of fanfiction, and studies of feminism and fanfiction have been made. However, much of fan studies is done by people outside the subculture whose lack of familiarity with the terms and habits is blatantly obvious. When it's done by insiders, it's either aimed at a very niche topic, like a certain sub-genre that only appears in fanfic, or else is a defense relying too strongly on emotions and not enough on facts and logic. Additionally, academics and society at large are eager to dismiss the activities of women, particularly young women, as frivolous. I hope to hit some sort of middle ground between passion and rationality.
What? Fanfiction Has a History?
Fanfiction, fan-created works of writing based on pre-existing media like games, books, and novels, isn't a recent literary development. Exactly when it came to be is hard to pinpoint, since prior to copyright law, creators constantly borrowed from each other. Shakespeare's histories could be interpreted as early RPF, or real person fanfic. Great epics like the Aeneid are arguably Greek pantheon fanfiction. The Raffles stories, a popular series from the early twentieth century about a gentleman thief and his journalist friend, were heavily inspired by the Sherlock Holmes tales.
Indeed, much of fanfiction owes its roots to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his consulting detective many scholars cite a group of Sherlock Holmes fans, the Baker Street Irregulars, as the first modern fanfiction writers. The Irregulars wrote stories in addition to Conan Doyle's canonical sixty, creating new adventures for the consulting detective and his chronicler. The Baker Street Irregulars include authors such as Neil Gaiman and Stephen King. Gaiman even openly refers to his Holmesian short story, A Study in Emerald, as fanfiction. Fanfiction as it's known today came about in the 1970s with the birth of the Star Trek fandom. Trekkies were the first to coin the word "slash," a term referring to stories about male/male "ships," or relationships. The word comes from the way relationships were labeled. A story about Kirk and Spock's friendship would be labeled Kirk & Spock. A story where their relationship was romantic in nature was labeled Kirk/Spock. Hence, slash, for the slash between their names. |
Prior to the internet, fics were published and circulated in the form of zines. Access to fanfiction was largely limited to the people who could get to places where these zines were distributed: by and large, fan conventions. Due to the limitations of physical media, copies were limited and circulation was time-consuming and expensive. Getting work published was sometimes almost as difficult as getting an original story published. Zines were often run by highly selective circles of other fans who expected high quality and particular stories. Additionally, because of its sometimes controversial subject matter, fans also needed to know the right people to get onto mailing lists.
The internet leveled the playing field and made access to fanfiction much easier. Getting it published was also no longer a matter of photocopying your work, mailing it off to someone, and praying it got in. It became a quick copy/paste of your work into the submit window of your site of choice.
At first, fanfiction communities were largely isolated by fandom, such as . There were separate sites for Xena fanfiction, for Tenchi Muyo fanfiction, and for X-Files fanfiction. Many of these sites were curated and had high quality standards. There were also Geocities-type pages of one author's work, such as this relatively new page of a very prolific writer.
In 1999, Fanfiction.net was launched, with the intention of being a catchall site for all fic. It quickly became the largest fanfiction repository on the web. In recent years, it has been replaced largely by Archive of Our Own, which permits more types of fics and utilizes an effective tag search that allows readers to find fics within specific sub-genres. Nevertheless, ff.net, as it is fondly known, still boasts over two million registered users.
The internet leveled the playing field and made access to fanfiction much easier. Getting it published was also no longer a matter of photocopying your work, mailing it off to someone, and praying it got in. It became a quick copy/paste of your work into the submit window of your site of choice.
At first, fanfiction communities were largely isolated by fandom, such as . There were separate sites for Xena fanfiction, for Tenchi Muyo fanfiction, and for X-Files fanfiction. Many of these sites were curated and had high quality standards. There were also Geocities-type pages of one author's work, such as this relatively new page of a very prolific writer.
In 1999, Fanfiction.net was launched, with the intention of being a catchall site for all fic. It quickly became the largest fanfiction repository on the web. In recent years, it has been replaced largely by Archive of Our Own, which permits more types of fics and utilizes an effective tag search that allows readers to find fics within specific sub-genres. Nevertheless, ff.net, as it is fondly known, still boasts over two million registered users.
How Harry Potter Changed the (Fanfic) World
Easier access to fanfiction allowed younger fans access. Additionally, fanfiction on the internet and the Harry Potter series both boomed at the same time. An unprecedented number of young people were reading, theorizing about what the next books had in store, and looking for other people who were reading what they were reading. It didn't take long for those young people to discover fanfiction. On September 4, 1999, the first Harry Potter fic was posted to fanfiction.net. Within a year, the site hosted over 1,800. Today, it is home to over 688,000.
The Harry Potter series also drew in a very particular group of young people. The story of an ostracized, loner of a child discovering he is something very special appealed, unsurprisingly, to the loners and the ostracized. Harry discovering his wizarding nature has even been read as a coming-out narrative. Consider how his Aunt Petunia reacts:
The Harry Potter series also drew in a very particular group of young people. The story of an ostracized, loner of a child discovering he is something very special appealed, unsurprisingly, to the loners and the ostracized. Harry discovering his wizarding nature has even been read as a coming-out narrative. Consider how his Aunt Petunia reacts:
"I was the only one to see [your mother] for what she was…a freak!…And then she had you, and I knew you would be the same. Just as strange, just as…abnormal."
It's highly reminiscent of a young queer kid's worst fears. But when Harry Potter comes out, he is whisked away to a world where he's famous, even a hero. It's easy to wish yourself into his shoes. Millions of kids did, and more than a few of them were desperate to.
The Sad State of Representation
It's a sad but readily apparent fact that representation of groups that are not heterosexual, cisgender, able, white men is appalling. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's 2013 Where We Are on TV found that, in all major network television programming, 97% of characters were heterosexual and 98% were cisgender. Disabled people fared even worse. Only eight of 796 characters were disabled.
Women aren't doing well either. Since the 1980s, the Bechdel Test has been the go-to metric for women's representation in film. It's a simple, three-step test.
1. Does the movie have at least two women in it? 2. …who talk to each other? 3. …about something other than a man? |
Bechdeltest.com faithfully tracks movies' passing status. The visuals are more effective than words. As is apparent, even when a film passes the test, the women depicted are often objectified, marginalized, or otherwise rendered second-class to male characters.
Mainstream media that includes marginalized groups is often still written for the privileged class and thus aligns with stereotypes. The gay men are flamboyant and effeminate, the lesbians are tough butch types, and the bisexual women are all feminine and rebellious.
Lesbian characters, whether they are regular cast members or minor characters featured in a few episodes, tend to be
portrayed as lacking sexuality (i.e., they are rarely represented in intimate relationships or situations), personal rights (i.e., they are treated as undesirable
and avoided by other characters), and are often afraid of being publicly exposed based on their sexuality.
--"We All Have Feelings for Our Girlfriends:" Progressive (?) Representations of Lesbian Lives on The L Word.
Even media targeted towards marginalized groups doesn't always hit the spot. Young adult romantic literature is reluctant to go into the sexuality that many youth are looking for, and movies about LGBTQ youth are often focused more on the fact that the characters are queer than on the characters' lives. Brokeback Mountain, for instance, was poorly-received among slash fans for being "horribly painful" and for focusing too much on how dreadfully sad these poor men's lives were. It's the Bury Your Gays trope over and over, which is beautifully tragic the first few times you come across it. By the fiftieth, it's just dull.
A small body of drama for young people has emerged that includes gay and lesbian characters characterized by a discourse of “troubled gay youth,” which limits representation to those who are victimized because of their sexuality. This negative discourse perpetuates the notion that “being gay” puts youth at risk for a plethora of problems by suggesting that lesbian, gay, or queer youth will likely become either victims of self-hatred or victims of social hatred.
--Young, Troubled, and Queer: Gay and Lesbian Representation in Theatre for Young Audiences
And the almost-queer "will they or won't they" pattern that gives fans the space to extrapolate relationships is wearing thin. Critics have termed this habit "queerbaiting." While this unresolved tension may have been enough once, modern queers are demanding more. They want confirmation, not implication. Characters like Dumbledore, whose gayness was more of a DVD extra than an important part of his life, are not enough.
Where, then, are youth, disabled people, women, and LGBTQ people going to find characters like them? The answer seems to be that they're not. They're going to carve them out themselves. They're going to take what they're given, pan out the sediment, and see themselves in what's left. They're going to make their own representation.
Where, then, are youth, disabled people, women, and LGBTQ people going to find characters like them? The answer seems to be that they're not. They're going to carve them out themselves. They're going to take what they're given, pan out the sediment, and see themselves in what's left. They're going to make their own representation.
Fanfiction as a Platform for Representation
Fanfiction authors have a unique ability to take shows full of straight, cis, able-bodied men and come out with gay, disabled, trans people. As a participant in the Sherlock Holmes fan, I can, off the top of my head and without doing any research, list fics in which Sherlock Holmes is autistic, bipolar, blind, deaf, a cis woman, a trans man, and genderqueer. I do not have fingers to count the number of fics in which he is gay. What television show boasts that kind of diversity?
A survey conducted by the Organization for Transformative Works, the group behind the Archive of Our Own, found that the majority of fanfiction participants are queer women. Only 38% of respondents labeled themselves as heterosexual. 80% were women and 4% were men. 6% were genderqueer, making AO3 probably one of the only places anywhere where genderqueer people outnumber cis men.
As for the works themselves, about half of the works on AO3 feature male/male or male/female relationships. With that in mind, scroll up, take a second look at the statistics on gay representation in network television, and compare. I'll wait.
Is it any wonder people flock to fanfiction? It's doing right now what people have been craving for years. In "Slashing the Romance Narrative," Kustritz describes fanfiction as becoming necessary when the socially approved texts are flawed. Fanfic writers come in and rearrange the furniture, so to speak, until the house looks more like home.
A survey conducted by the Organization for Transformative Works, the group behind the Archive of Our Own, found that the majority of fanfiction participants are queer women. Only 38% of respondents labeled themselves as heterosexual. 80% were women and 4% were men. 6% were genderqueer, making AO3 probably one of the only places anywhere where genderqueer people outnumber cis men.
As for the works themselves, about half of the works on AO3 feature male/male or male/female relationships. With that in mind, scroll up, take a second look at the statistics on gay representation in network television, and compare. I'll wait.
Is it any wonder people flock to fanfiction? It's doing right now what people have been craving for years. In "Slashing the Romance Narrative," Kustritz describes fanfiction as becoming necessary when the socially approved texts are flawed. Fanfic writers come in and rearrange the furniture, so to speak, until the house looks more like home.
- Fandom wasn’t the first place I found stories about people like me, but it was the first place where people like me regularly starred as main characters, romantic leads, heroes, villains, leaders and warriors. Best of all, there were no arbitrary limits on the roles queer people were allowed to play. Any character I loved could be reimagined as queer, because fandom on the whole understood—as mainstream media did and does not—that there were no character types that were innately straight. Fandom continues to be a relative, if imperfect, mecca of queer representation, and proof that queer-focused media has a loyal audience.
--Please Do Not Bait the Queers
As well as a place to amplify representation, fanfiction can also be a platform from which fans can critique the problems with the little representation that does exist. Hui Min Annabeth Leow, in her piece "Subverting the Canon in Feminist Fanfiction," mentions an author who calls this "affirmational" fandom versus "transformational" fandom.
In "affirmational" fandom, the source material is restated, the author's purpose divined to the community's satisfaction, rules established on how the characters are and how the universe works, and cosplay etc. occur…"Transformational" fandom, on the other hand, is all about laying hands upon the source and twisting it to the fans' own purposes.
--Subverting the Canon in Feminist Fan Fiction
An affirmational fic might simply play in the world provided. A transformational fic may question the source material, point out or correct inconsistencies. The show Sherlock, itself essentially a modern AU (alternate universe) of the original show, had to deal with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's chronic continuity problems. For instance, John Watson's war injury was sometimes in his leg, elsewhere in his shoulder. The 2009 show gave him a shoulder injury and a psychosomatic limp.
A more truly fandom example of transformational fic can be found in obsession_inc's Iron Man fic "Concession." The author has characters from the film indirectly and sometimes directly discuss the way women in the film are relegated to support roles and their contributions overshadowed by those of rich, white men. It's unfortunate that mainstream representation is as abominable as it is, but it's somewhat reassuring to know that people are finding stopgaps.
A more truly fandom example of transformational fic can be found in obsession_inc's Iron Man fic "Concession." The author has characters from the film indirectly and sometimes directly discuss the way women in the film are relegated to support roles and their contributions overshadowed by those of rich, white men. It's unfortunate that mainstream representation is as abominable as it is, but it's somewhat reassuring to know that people are finding stopgaps.
Fandom as a Community
While fanfiction itself fulfills the craving for representation, the community around it gives participants a sense of community. Fic readers often come together on platforms like Livejournal and Tumblr to discuss and socialize. There are panels and workshops on fanfiction at fan conventions where readers can meet their favorite authors and writers can swap tips and advice. Within these larger communities, marginalized peoples are forming their own mini-groups.
The Sherlock fandom has become a bit of a rallying point for people on the autism spectrum. Autism tends to get the shaft from media. When it's portrayed, it's generally as a joke, like Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, or in childlike savants like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Some autistic fans turn to shows where they find characters who seem like them, such as Bones and Sherlock. In coming to the online communities around those shows, they find more people like them. This is especially advantageous for them, since autism often makes it difficult to find and make friends in everyday life. Online communities like fandoms give them an opportunity to do something they may not be able to do anywhere else.
Similarly, isolated queer folk do not always have a local community to turn to. Even those who do have a community find that fandom gives them access to a larger and more diverse one.
The Sherlock fandom has become a bit of a rallying point for people on the autism spectrum. Autism tends to get the shaft from media. When it's portrayed, it's generally as a joke, like Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, or in childlike savants like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Some autistic fans turn to shows where they find characters who seem like them, such as Bones and Sherlock. In coming to the online communities around those shows, they find more people like them. This is especially advantageous for them, since autism often makes it difficult to find and make friends in everyday life. Online communities like fandoms give them an opportunity to do something they may not be able to do anywhere else.
Similarly, isolated queer folk do not always have a local community to turn to. Even those who do have a community find that fandom gives them access to a larger and more diverse one.
On LJ [Livejournal] and in fandom, I've really found a home that integrates the variously queer or non-mainstream aspects of my personality in a way I never have in real life. For my friend J., fandom was the only way she could express her queerness and she had to keep that completely hidden from her family. But through fandom she met people who helped her become comfortable with that aspect of herself and then she met someone she was attracted to; It was during heady nights and days of complete immersion in cowriting a very, very smutty story that both our relationships really crossed over from the theoretical to the actual, the queerness of the writing and fannish interaction becoming manifest in our outside lives.
--"Yearning Void and Infinite Potential:" Online Slash Fandom as Queer Female Space
Kustritz discusses the interaction between fanfiction writers and the eventual formation of metatext, often called "meta" in the fanfiction community. Metatext is, in a nutshell, writing about writing. Meta within a fanfiction community often functions as a sort of community peer-editing process, such as this piece about epithets, or this one about misogyny in fanfiction. The practice of metawriting not only holds fanfiction authors accountable to one another, but also cultivates a community of mutual respect. Meta writers take fanfiction seriously, or at least seriously enough. Creating a space in which fic writers can discuss their craft pulls them into a dialogue and brings them from writing, a solo act, to editing, which is by its nature social.
The majority of fan interaction and meta at present happens on social networks like Tumblr and Livejournal, where every post becomes a conversation. It's not uncommon for an author to get a question about their work, respond intelligently, and then proceed to have post after post of discussion branching off of it. These online interactions offer unique opportunities that cannot be replicated outside of the close yet wide-ranging community fanfiction creates. I've seen fanfiction bring two ostensibly heterosexual women together as friends, only to come out of it engaged. I've seen authors meet agents at fan conventions and get published. I have myself made professional connections through fanfiction-related opportunities that I never would have gotten access to otherwise. Thanks to the fanfiction community, I have had stories I wrote for fun in my spare time translated into six different languages. I can't imagine being able to reach that many people this easily any other way.
The majority of fan interaction and meta at present happens on social networks like Tumblr and Livejournal, where every post becomes a conversation. It's not uncommon for an author to get a question about their work, respond intelligently, and then proceed to have post after post of discussion branching off of it. These online interactions offer unique opportunities that cannot be replicated outside of the close yet wide-ranging community fanfiction creates. I've seen fanfiction bring two ostensibly heterosexual women together as friends, only to come out of it engaged. I've seen authors meet agents at fan conventions and get published. I have myself made professional connections through fanfiction-related opportunities that I never would have gotten access to otherwise. Thanks to the fanfiction community, I have had stories I wrote for fun in my spare time translated into six different languages. I can't imagine being able to reach that many people this easily any other way.
Fanfiction's March Towards the Mainstream
There's been a recent run of fanfiction authors doing a search-and-replace of their fics to swap the names out and getting them professionally published. Most famous is E.L. James's "Fifty Shades of Grey," which began its life as a Twilight fanfiction called "Master of the Universe." Even more recently, a One Direction fanfiction author was signed onto a six-figure, three-book deal.
But fanfiction writers have been reaching success for a long time. Back in the heyday of the Xena fandom, the fanfiction writers saw one of their own become a real writer on the show. She was able to steer the heavily-implied relationship between Xena and Gabrielle into much more obvious territory, such as the gifting of literal Sapphic poetry.
But fanfiction writers have been reaching success for a long time. Back in the heyday of the Xena fandom, the fanfiction writers saw one of their own become a real writer on the show. She was able to steer the heavily-implied relationship between Xena and Gabrielle into much more obvious territory, such as the gifting of literal Sapphic poetry.
The ripple effects of fanfiction's march towards the mainstream are still in action. But the fanfiction world has shifted before, and it survived. The rest of the world will always drop it somewhere, and fanfiction will always be there to pick it up.
The slash space, to me, is remarkable in its fecundity. It is space that is never filled, potential that never runs out. No matter how many stories, how many writers, there's always more space. Slash as space, space as both yearning void and infinite potential.
--"Yearning Void and Infinite Potential:" Online Slash Fandom as Queer Female Space