fictional_fans | What is fanfic?

It seems like I've seen people trying to define fanfic way more than I expected in the last couple weeks, so I put the question to you folks: How do you define "fanfiction"?

I am going to set some constraints on what must be included in your definition, though, because a lot of the working definitions I see people use silently exclude things that are definitely fanfic.

It must include RPF. Not necessarily all fiction about real people, but while I've seen lots of people arguing about the ethics of LotRPS or Taskmaster RPF, I've never seen anyone claim it's not fanfic. So you can't exclude the RPF that's definitely part of the fanfic community.
It must include public domain fandoms. Les Miserables fanfic is still fanfic, Dracula fanfic is still fanfic, P&P fanfic is still fanfic, Sherlock Holmes fanfic is fanfic even if it's only about the first few stories.
It must include fanfic that isn't publicly shared. We could argue about pure drawerfic I guess, but stuff only ever shared with a few friends can still be fanfic, or you're excluding my generation's hundreds of millions of words of preteen fic written in school notebooks and only shared around the lunch table.
(Relatedly, it can't require the existence of the internet, or participation in a larger fanfic "community" - see all that lunch table fic.)
It must include fanfic that is only available for money. It doesn't have to include all work done for money, but zines that cost money (even if it's a little over the price of shipping and printing, as a treat), patreon fic, and commissions are still often fanfic whether you personally like it or not.
It must include stuff done with the rights owner's/creator's explicit approval. Young Wizards fic isn't suddenly not fic just because Diane Duane likes it and got some of her copyrights back.
It's got to include stuff that isn't shippy (and definitely isn't porn). That's a minority of all fic ever written. It also can't say anything about quality (obviously) or the presence or absence of redeeming social importance.
It must include fanfic that doesn't use any canon characters, or you're invalidating a generation of Pern fans with their carefully separate original weyrs. It must include fanfic that doesn't use any canon settings or plot points, because setting-swap AUs exists (so do atg pwps.)
It can't rely on legal definitions because there are no laws that unambiguously define fanfic (also stuff doesn't suddenly stop being fanfic if you cross a national border.)

Somewhat more questionable but I think yes:

Stuff that doesn't include canon characters OR plot OR settings. This does often get the "you might as well be writing original fic!" comments but it seems like your sequel to your massive AU epic about what your OCs were doing is probably still fic.
Stuff written for a fandom of one. There's lots of fic on AO3 where nobody else has ever made fanwork for the canon and I think it's still fanfic.
Audio-first podfic. Surely this is still fanfic right?

So come up with a definition that includes all of that. (What else you include or exclude is I guess up to you. Or arguments in the comments.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Not an answer, just something that piqued my curiosity, hope that's okay?

Given that the definition must include both 'fanfic that is only available for money' and 'stuff done with the rights owner's expicit approval', I'm wondering where that puts tie-in novelisations and the like? By the definition given, it seems those unquestioningly do count as fanfic... but I'm wondering if the addition of official logos, branding, copyright, etc affect whether or not those things are considered fanfic, even when they're officially labelled non-canonical?

(Again, I'm not offering any opinions myself, I'm genuinely just curious and interested in others' thoughts, as I know tie-ins are often seen as a grey area.)

Well, you don't have to include *all* of both of those? For example you could certainly include "fanfic for money" is fanfic and so is "fanfic with the rightholder's approval" but not specifically "fiction the rightsholder is paying you to write". (Although there are edge cases even there. *glares balefully at MZB* )

But yeah, tie-ins have always been a controversial question when it comes to what is fanfic and what isn't. Some people will argue they're definitely fanfiction, and some people will argue they aren't.

(By my original half-serious definition above, tie-ins are fanfic if the writer wrote them as fanfic, and they're also fanfic if the writer stridently argues they aren't fanfic they're real literature, but they might not be fanfic if the writer just shrugs and says they really don't care about the question they just needed the money.)

Tie-ins are definitely a messy category, and whether or not I'd define them as fanfic seems to be mostly contextual - when I've discussed tie-in novels, it's generally been in the context of *contrasting* them with fanfic. Which becomes meaningless if they ARE fanfic, but it seems to me that there are ways that they *aren't* like fanfic in the same fandoms, even when written by the same people.

For example, I've read official SGA tie-ins by Martha Wells, and I've read novel-length SGA fanfic she wrote under her fandom pseud, and they were very different animals. (The fanfic was much better!) The clunky exposition to introduce the characters (which I'm assuming was a publisher requirement) and the fact that the plot couldn't really change anything about the characters or their situation because it was supposed to fit somewhere into show canon were both prominent factors - not that fans don't write canon-compliant fic too, but at novel length you generally do expect *something* to have significantly changed, at least in the character relationships, and as I understand it tie-ins are expected to keep the status quo intact. Her unofficial fanfic, otoh, wrecked the status quo completely and then extensively explored the consequences. No reset buttons!

Anyway, I don't know if I have a coherent point here, but maybe my position is something like this: in a broad "what is fanfic" discussion, official tie-ins clearly fit under the umbrella, but in actual conversation they're sufficiently different in context and audience that I don't mean tie-ins when I say "fanfic".

I tend to feel the same about tie-ins, even those written by fans under a pro-writing name, because in many ways they do create canon (even if those books/comics get contradicted in other sources of canon, e.g., the tv shows or movies). I'm thinking specifically of certain recent Star Wars novels, which fill in some of Leia's backstory, for example, or are meant to be read in conjunction with the films. I think for me, the official seal of approval (even if it's later removed, a la the pre-Disney Star Wars EU), overrides the classification of tie-ins as fanfic, especially if things in the tie-ins "become" canon (e.g., Thrawn being recanonized by Rebels). Like, can a thing be both fanfic and canon? Doesn't the latter preclude the former?

On the other hand, when I'm feeling salty about superhero comics, I feel like everything after the very first few issues of various DC or (eventually) Marvel is fanfic, and I think some comics creators treat them that way in practice even if they would deny that's what's happening.

::points upwards::

In most instances, tie-in novels just don't scratch the same itch, because fans want to go much further with the characters or the world than authorized stories are allowed to go. And the reader can tell.

Maybe it's because I grew up with Star Trek TOS tie-ins, but I very much do see them as fanfic because I don't see a meaningful contrast. *g* (Those things were wild sometimes!)

I agree about the SGA tie-ins, although the main thing there is that they just. Weren't very good. And of course there are definitely fannish venues that are nearly as restrictive.

But most of the early Star Wars tie-ins made all sorts of massive status quo changes and had very few limits on what could be written (no gay stuff or porn, mostly). The early Star Trek ones notoriously often *were* fanfic that the editors just bought, no continuity concerns, with variable amounts of editing, and they didn't do a very good job keeping out the gay stuff, if they tried. The Doctor Who tie-ins basically went wherever they wanted and are their own thing now, and the IDW comics for Buffy and Transformers were so good (and transformative) they're basically a lot of folks' main canon.

I'd argue that official tie-ins are not fanfic because they are written to order in a way much more stringent than, say, a commission. Actual fanfic can do anything the author wants. Granted, a work might need to stay in certain boundaries for a fest (say word limit) or topic (has to be primarily about a particular pairing). But when someone other than the author gets to approve or not approve the very public existence of a work, that doesn't sound like fanfic to me.

What is fanfic?

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