As of today, fan-fiction is one of the most infamous and important parts of fandom culture. If you didn’t already know, fan-fiction is fiction about a certain piece of media written by fans for fans.
Joanna Smith of Medium defines fan-fiction as “when somebody takes a character, universe, or story from a different scenario to create their own story.” People use fan-fiction to explore many things, such as “What If…” scenarios where something different happened from the canon timeline and how that affects the story, or completely alternate universes where the characters are living completely different lives compared to the original source material.
Current-day fans have a plethora of different options when it comes to fan-fiction and fan-fiction websites. Arguably the most popular site to read fan-fiction is Archive Of Our Own, abbreviated as AO3. AO3 houses over 14 million pieces, and has become a staple in almost every fandom for the number one place to go when seeking fan-fiction. AO3 was created in 2012, but there are many different fan-fiction websites that pre-date AO3.
The most well known of these predecessors is FanFiction.net, a site that was created in 1998 by a man named Xi Ling. FanFiction.net was the most populated site until it was completely purged of all NC-17 content in 2002, and all general “adult content” in 2012. It was then that AO3 was created, a place that censors very little, which is likely why the website still remains the most popular fan-fiction site after 13 years.
Despite the censorship of adult content, fans still found ways to share their more mature creations with one another. One of the popular ways to get around censorship was the Citrus Scale, a scale using citrus fruits to indicate the piece’s level of mature content. This scale was popular in the early-to-mid 2000s, but surged in popularity during the late 2010s when Tumblr banned all adult content in 2018.
Another old fandom tradition that is not seen nearly as much today is the “I don’t own these characters or this story, I’m just having fun” warning at the beginning of almost every fan-fic. These warnings have not been seen frequently since before the pandemic, which coincidentally coaligns with the death-date of the individual who caused these precautions to be taken in the first place.
In 2000, the author of Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice, stated that she “[did] not allow fan-fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.”
Over the following few years, Rice would have her lawyers send cease and desist letters to people who wrote Interview with the Vampire fan-fiction, eventually resulting in all Interview with the Vampire fan-fiction being taken off of any fan-fiction websites for fear of being sued by Rice. In her later years, Rice expressed a less harsh opinion of fan-fiction, saying, “I got upset about 20 years ago because I thought it would block me…However, it’s been very easy to avoid reading any, so live and let live.”
Despite this softened opinion on fan-fiction, Rice’s wrath would continue to be felt in fandom spaces until her eventual death in 2021. After her death, Interview with the Vampire took to re-uploading fan-fiction that had been written as early as the 1990s.
All in all, fandom has had many ups and downs over the course of its history on the internet. Ultimately, I believe that the online space has had a positive impact on fandom, and I don’t believe fan-fiction will be going away anytime soon.
Fandom Fun Fact II: The first example of the term “fan-fiction” being used as we know it today was by Star Trek fans in 1975!
If you have any questions or suggestions for things I should talk about, or want to share your own fandom-related stories, feel free to email me at [email protected] with any inquiries you may have!