Fanfiction

Fanfiction is literature written solely by fans of a particular work, and is thus both non-canonical to the original work yet also based off the characters and settings of such a work. Though fanfiction is not a product of the Internet, the Internet has proliferated such literature to proportions greater than those it could have achieved in print.

Origin

Precursors to fanfiction can be seen in fiction dating back from Greco-Roman and medieval times to the early 1900s, as storytellers added to, subtracted from, and even parodied famous tales like Sinbad the Sailor, Alice in Wonderland, and Sherlock Holmes, either as a tribute to the original authors, or in the case of oral storytellers, to appeal to their audience or make up forgotten gaps in the story. However, where fanfiction is truly popularized and defined as an expression of fandom and fan interaction was in the science fiction circle of Star Trek, with the first such stories published in Spockanalia, the first Star Trek fanzine. Less than a decade later, the Internet was born, allowing fans to utilize Usenet mailing lists, online searchable fanfiction archives, and, most importantly, FanFiction.net, created in 1998 as a means for fans to upload fiction of any fandom. With the Internet, fanfiction can reach an enormous audience, who can also offer immediate feedback to writers on how to improve their stories. Lastly, with the rise of LiveJournal and blogging, usage of online mailing lists have declined as fanfiction writers have turned to blogs for more immediate feedback and sharing of content.

Categories and Types

• Relationship to canon
• Romantic / Sexual Pairings
  1. Slash (fanfiction equivalent of yaoi)
  2. Heterosexual
  3. Femslash (fanfiction equivalent of yuri)
  4. General (no romantic / sexual plot)
• Genres / Tropes
• Kinks
• Crossovers
• Length
• Ratings
  • On FanFiction.net:
    1. K (everyone)
    2. K+ (nearly everyone)
    3. T (teen)
    4. M (mature)