What is fanfic?

[melannen]

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.)

Comments

[melannen]

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...

[flo_nelja]

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.

[melannen]

"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.

[flo_nelja]

(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)

[melannen]

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.

[flo_nelja]

Hmm, yeah, I understand it, but unlike you I'm not willing to include original stories written as a hobby (not that I'm right! It's very subjective!)

And now I'm wondering if I would include pre-Internet people writing Greekmythology-inspired poetry as fanfic writers, hmmm...

[minoanmiss]

(This continues to be much more fun than the TPS reports)

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 really love Original [Fan]Fic in exchanges, etc, because while it may not be based in a specific canon it usually plays with tropes, concepts, etc. For instance I'm thinking of a pair of original fics, once I wrote and one I received, both about superheroes and supervillains. Both stories played with the tropes of superheroics/villainy and were written in a fanfic context which assumed audience knowledge of these tropes. Either could have been expanded into a novel and submitted for publication, and if so, they would leave the fanfic context to become professional works.

[melannen]

I think there's definitely a really strong argument that origfic written for fandom exchanges is (or at least can be) fanfic! But does it apply as strongly to the fantasy epic that Ralph from high school was writing in his notebook during class?

[minoanmiss]

I can't come up with any answer that doesn't involve asking Ralph :)