fictional_fans | What is fanfic?

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.)

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I will admit that my working definition lately is either:

* I know it when I see it

or a two-part definition of:

* It's fanfic if the creator says it's fanfic
* It's fanfic if somebody is protesting way too hard that it couldn't possibly be fanfic

...but I realize those definitions aren't really useful in some contexts.

An intriguing assignment!

I do like the term "transformative work" because it is so broad yet meaningful. For example, consider, "Stuff that doesn't include canon characters OR plot OR settings" I wrote a LOTR fanfic like this, at least in part. It was a brief biography of one of the Ruffians who infested the Shire; I had him come from one of the Name-on-the-map places that got no detail in canon, so I made that setting up, I made him up, I made up his evil adventures before and during his time in the Shire. I do still absolutely consider it a LOTR fanfic, in that I wrote it to explore a couple of unexplored bits of Middle-Earth. It's a transformative work.

With what you've said so far, it sounds like the working definition of fanfic is "a work that uses at least one recognizable element from a work by another author/creator." Possibly even "a work that uses at least one recognizable element, whose removal would severely impact the story, from a work by another creator."

Edited 2022-10-11 15:04 (UTC)

Fanfiction is fiction based on a work of art (in its broadest meaning) or the public persona of a (well-known) human being that is not designated an official part of the original universe (sequel/prequel/etc) by the rights-holder or creator of the work of art, and meant to be read (or listened to) in context of the original work of art or public persona.

"Work of art" here would be broad enough to incompass ephemeral media like the Folgers incest commercials. The sequels/prequels/etc are there to eliminate Star Wars tie-ins and the like, which I suppose could be considered fanfic, but generally isn't. "Read in context of the original" is to cut out reaction works – say, someone read The Cold Equations and wrote a refutation/reaction to it – but I'm not terribly attached to the wording.

My definition is "a work that is created only thinking of a potential public that knows the original work" but I know it's not universal. Some people love to read fic without knowing the fandom, and some people write for them.

It doesn't include remakes (movie adaptations, most greek myth retellings etc). It does include some works written in a franchise, but not all of them. Not most of them I'd say.

I like the Transformative Works definition as a working idea for (transformative) fandom, but it definitely includes some things that aren't fanfic (most trivially, fanart!). And even divorced from the legal definitions that involve copyright, it's always sat kind of uncomfortably with RPF to me? According to Fanlore the OTW once had a definition that explicitly included RPF, but I can't find it now, and the bit quoted on Fanlore to include RPF from that cite seems like it's so broad that it would make basically all fiction fanfiction. (Which is ok with me though!)

You could put RPF under transformative works comfortably by defining a life as a work of art though, which I do really like just on a poetic level!

I like that, but it does put at minimum pretty much all science fiction and fantasy under fanfic. And it also doesn't include RPF unless you say a life is a work by a creator, in which case nearly all fiction ever is fanfic.

(That's not necessarily wrong though, the original definition of fanfic back before Star Trek was something like "fiction created as a hobby by a fan" and included a ton of original sff.)

Hmm, "official part of the original universe" doesn't do a great job excluding Star Wars tie-ins, since whether they are officially part of the original universe tends to vary wildly (and change from day to day.)

(I'm fine including all Star Wars tie-ins, including the sequel trilogy, as fanfic but I know a lot of people aren't.) (I'm fine including the first Star Wars movie as fanfic, actually, given how heavily it pulls on Kurosawa movies, but that's a very broad umbrella at that point.)

Not sure what you mean by "read in context of the original". Why would a refutation of The Cold Equations not be meant to be read in context of the original?

Yeah, that is alluringly simple and I want to like it, but it wouldn't include a fair amount of fanfic I've written with the assumption that people who don't know canon might read it.

It would also exclude 90% of Teen Wolf fic written by people who did not know the original work themselves...

I consider fanfiction a work of fiction created by fans of a particular work. Including fanfiction based on works of fanfiction.

an example of a work based off the fanfic Written by the Victors

I like that, although it does sort of follow that once you have become a fan of a particular work you can no longer write anything other than fanfiction. (Possibly true!)

It also requires you to include a real person's life as a "particular wor"k, for RPF.

Edited 2022-10-11 15:39 (UTC)

Oh, why specifically Teen Wolf, was the canon hard to find? I remember that it as the case for Gundam Wing before it got a release.

I think it's this case it can be argued to be fanfic, not for the original work, but for the preexisting body of fic. It doesn't break the definition as much as people writing specifically thinking about people who don't know the fandom.

(this is so much more interesting than what I should be working on)

I figured with RPF we were playing with/'transforming' people's public personas, not the real private selves that we fans wouldn't get to see. They created these personas, so that's their artistic contribution.

I'm okay with basically everything being considered fanfic if that idea is being used to destigmatize the idea and otherwise normalize the idea that everyone does it (some of us just get paid to do it instead). The history of publishing and stories suggests that people were borrowing from each other all the time, and that law is really where you have to make an effort to make your borrowing distinct enough that someone might believe that Arsène Lupin's rival, Herlock Sholmes, is a different character than the consulting detective at 221B Baker Street currently starring in a different serial by another author. That science fiction and fantasy borrow more heavily and obviously from each other is a feature of the genre, and while it might make the authors bristle at their work being considered fanfic, it often is, especially if you count reaction works and takes in the fanfic category. So, if the word "fanfic" didn't have so many negative connotations, I think more creators of the genre would embrace it as a descriptor, rather than trying to hide behind "pastiche," "reaction," "commentary," and the like.

I also think that definition includes RPF, but that's because I think most of the entities that are in RPF are based on a person's public persona, as it were, or the picture a creator makes of them based on their outward actions. (Or from reading a biography of the person, which itself is telling a story and crafting characters, even if the worldbuilding in this case is supposed to be fact-checkable.) RPF is unique in that instead of the character being created by one person (or a small group of people), RPF characters are much more communally created, to the point where the community may insist on using an RPF character long after the person the character was based on has changed sufficiently that the RPF characterization no longer makes sense.

It could probably be worded better, but every tie-in has been officially part of (a) Star Wars (universe), even those published intentionally as non-canon. And that, idk, official seal of "approval" is a big difference between actual fanfic and various tie-ins, no matter how "ficcy" they might seem.

Lol, yeah, I realized that just after I hit post. Basically to me, fanfic that refutes/criticizes the original and non-fanfic that does the same do it in different ways and with different toolkits. So a non-fanfic refutation of The Cold Equations would not use the same characters, while someone who was writing a fanfic refutation of Star Wars's treatment of women might write a Shmi Lives AU, say. If I describe it as criticizing from the outside vs criticizing from the inside, does that make any sense?

although it does sort of follow that once you have become a fan of a particular work you can no longer write anything other than

Sorry, no. That's a little like stating a mystery writer can never write a romance novel, or sci-fi or their biography.

The reality is that many writers started out as fanfic writers and moved on to original creative works. Unless I've misunderstood your comment?

It also requires you to include a real person's life as a "particular workz", for RPF

Oh hell, yes.

Perhaps not their entire life, but have you seen how fanatic some sports fans are over 'their'fave players? I'm not a huge fan of RPF, but I get it.

I was just going by your definition! "A work of fiction created by fans of a particular work."

It doesn't narrow down *which* particular works created by fans of a particular work, so it could mean all works they create.

"Why Teen Wolf?" is a plaintive question many people have asked. I don't think it was particularly hard to find? I think the fanon just diverged from the canon very, very fast to the point that most of the people reading the fic weren't the kind of people who were interested in the canon? It's certainly not the only fandom that's ever done that but it's one of the largest recent ones.

The 'work' being the existing body of fic would cover that though, and I think there is some kind of useful definition somewhere in "Fanfiction includes all work created in the conversation with previous works of fanfiction". But it doesn't allow for the fic written in notebooks by 12-year-olds in the 90s.

(This is also a definition that requires you to come up with some kind of defined "work" an RPF author is working from, which is also difficult to do.)

A definition that relies on what audience the author was thinking of requires that the author be thinking of the audience at all, and there are a lot of people who would say part of the experience of writing fanfic for them is being able to write for an audience of just themself.

(This is also a definition that requires you to come up with some kind of defined "work" an RPF author is working from, which is also difficult to do.)
Yes! I have an exchange comm that doesn't take RPF just to avoid the flames about hat is canon and hat is not (and it includes historical RPF, biographers often have wildly different takes)

To me if it's just yourself you have actually a total control over your audience! So it's fanfic if you're writing to pleasantly go back to the universe, and not fanfic, if you feel like it inspired you to do your own thing (even if it looks like fanfic from the outside)

Edited 2022-10-11 16:24 (UTC)

I do like the idea of something about coming from the inside vs the outside, but I'm not sure how I would word that into a definition. Hmm.

Requiring an official seal of "approval" does automatically throw everything into fanfic where an official seal of approval isn't an option - that makes Shakespeare fanfic and Chaucer fanfic and the Les Miserables musical fanfic, and any fiction about historical people whose estates aren't actively managing their image fanfic. Which maybe it is - I generally include it there.

It does seem kind of weird to me to say that Shakespeare is fanfic but Splinter of the Mind's Eye isn't, though.

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.)

That sort of makes sense to me, yes. Although I am not sure about "inspired you to do your own thing", there are plenty of people doing their own thing as fanfic?

As I'm reading these comments I'm sort of starting to converge to some kind of definition like "fanfic is fiction created by fans as part of their hobby". It would exclude people trying to make a living from their Harry Potter slash but I'm kind of ok with that. But it would also include a lot of people writing original stuff as a fandom hobby, which I'm also ok with, but they may not be. I think that comes back around to your 'audience' factor though - if it's a hobby, the audience is sort of, I'm not going to say secondary? But you're willing to reduce the possible audience in ways non-hobbyists can't afford to.

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.)

True, but I don't think creating a public image of yourself is unique to RPF - everybody does that to some extent. Is autobiography fanfiction, since the author is writing based on the images they perceived of other people in their lives? Is Les Miserables fanfiction because Bahorel is based on Hugo's friend Petrus Borel?

(Maybe! I'm open to an argument that all fiction is fanfiction.)

I'm not going to come up with a definition, but I will ramble about definitions and what I think they are good for. I don't think drawing hard and fast boundaries around genres is useful, that way lies nitpicking and gatekeeping. (See for example various conversations about what is Science Fiction featuring definitions constructed exclude most things not written by cishet white men)

Which isn't to say that I don't think we should define genres! Two ways of looking at genres that I have found helpful and lead to interesting conversations are 1) genre as works in conversation and 2) genre as setting reader expectations.

Both of these seem to have potential to offer us insight into fanfic. Fics are very much in conversation with each other both within and across fandoms. Think of the many many cross-fandom tropes, and also about how characterization and fanon develops across fics in the same fandom. Looking at works as in conversation is useful for understanding them in context and for seeing change over time.

I think fic is also doing interesting things in how it sets reader expectations. Obviously fic at least on AO3 provides a lot more metadata to set expectations, but there are also unspoken conventions. It would be interesting to how expectations get set across genres.

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