Anyone who knows me knows that I have been a fan-fiction writer since seventh grade. The reality is that even before I started getting serious in my writing, I had been creating fanfic a long time before that. They never saw the light of day as they do now, but they were being written. That brings me to today’s topic.
I was lucky (or unlucky if you hate Twilight) to grow up in the Twilight Era where the culture of fan-fiction and fandom had already started to change. See pre-Twilight, fan-fiction was looked down upon by novelists and scholars alike. Authors and Show Writers were taking legal action against fanfic writers, and fan artists. Thus the “please don’t sue me, I’m just here for a good time” era was born. One of the most notable cases of legal action came from Anne Rice and her team of lawyers.
Anne Rice and her team of lawyers actively searched for and threatened to sue fanfic writers for fics that were less than 500 words in length.⁽¹⁾ She doxxed the writers, harassed them online, and in some cases contacted their employers.⁽²⁾ She didn’t and still doesn’t accept fandom. The most recent case was in 2013 when a writer wrote a commentary on a book in 2013. It does appear that Rice has since softened on the subject of fanfiction in recent years.⁽³⁾
Anne Rice also doesn’t tolerate bad reviews and has actively sent her “fans” on rampages to harass the writers of these reviews. Rice her self called the writers of these reviews “Ganster Bullies.”
At this point in time, fan-fiction was kept hidden in the dark depths of the internet. They were accompanied by mountains of disclaimers like “I don’t own ______. I’m just playing with the world and characters. All rights belong to author/show creator/etc” in hopes of not being noticed by any of the authors of the original source materials. And if you were changing the romantic pairings of the original source material you were most at risk, especially if you were putting them in LGBTQ relationships. You constantly feared to get a cease and desist letter.
Over the last ten years or so, fandom and fan-fiction experienced a shift. Authors started to ignore fanfiction and other fanworks. Sites like fanfiction.net no longer required you to put disclaimers on your works. Other websites started to pop up like Archive of Our Own and Wattpad. Authors started commissioning fan-artists.
I like to believe that one of the bigger changing points came from Supernatural and their fandom. With actor Misha Collins (Castiel) joining in on fans ‘shipping’ characters and actively showing his support, members of the fandom became more open about what they do.
Now, when you search for fan-fiction in google tons of results come up. You can find fics for just about every fandom. Fics written by younger writers don’t have disclaimers on them. And for the fic writers who lived in the world where they were mandatory, they still put them at the top of each new work they create. You have writers who actively encourage their readers to come up with their own fan theories and headcanons. You have actors supporting fic writers and fan artists.
You now see fanfiction writers of the past becoming professional writers themselves. Anna Todd is a notable one from Wattpad. You see them in writers' rooms for shows. It’s no longer something to hide, something to fear to talk about with others. It continues to evolve for the better. Sure you have writers who take it too far with Real Person Fan-Fiction, but overall we continue to watch the genre grow.
If there is one good thing whether you think fan-fiction is right or not it would be that it’s encouraging a new generation of writers and creators. Sometimes you need to play with someone else's characters and worlds before you can create your own. I know I did and still do regularly.
Fanfic was created for a reason, yes sometimes it was to change a plot-line or they way a character acts, but for a lot of writers including myself, it was about representation. Representation for LGBTQ people, representations for different races. Representation for the voiceless or unseen. We wanted to be SEEN, so we made ourselves seen in the fictional worlds of others.
I’ve learned more by reading and writing other fanfic works than I did from my high school creative writing course. It’s not always about the perfect structure or grammar, it’s about the creativity and support you receive from people you don’t even know.
Sometimes learning to write isn’t done by reading the worst of the worst writing possible or the best of the best, it’s to read the in-between which can come from professional writers of from fanfic writers. Not all fanfic writers can’t write properly or are filled with grammar and spelling mistakes. One misconception out there is that fanfic is mostly written by teenage girls with no concept of grammar and punctuation, it is entirely untrue. Fanfic writers can be a 15-year-old girl or 90-year-old women or it can be a 15-year old boy or 90-year-old man. Or it could be just a person of any age or gender writing.
Like I said, I started writing fanfic for fanfiction.net in seventh grade, I look back at those works now and cringe at my grammar and punctuation because I’ve gotten better, I’ve honed in on my skills. Is my writing at a professional level now? Hell no, because I’m still learning. That’s what writing is, it’s learning as you go and building on skills you’ve already had or know. Writers aren’t born with the talent to write, they learn it. They read, and read, and read, and then they write, and write, and write. They build habits and then they break them. It’s a career and hobby of constant learning.
You can find fanfiction stories that are over 150 thousand words long and look like they were written by professionals. Or you can find stories that less than three-thousand words long with the grammar and punctuation of a middle school student. Either way, I’m just glad that people are writing.
(1) "TBQ Tumblr response to fanfic copyright discussion". 2018-05-09. Retrieved 2019-09-12.
(2) Croatoan Fanfic - Where has Anne Rice fanfiction gone?, Archived version, Posted some time in 2000, accessed 2019-09-12
(3) Anne Rice On Monsters, Facebook And Fifty Shades Of Grey: Chicagoist, Archived version, interview by Tony Peregrin, retrieved 2019-09-12
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