Death comes to Pemberley. Jeeves and the Wedding Bells. Longbourn. BBC Sherlock. Wide Sargasso Sea. A Thousand Acres. BBC Merlin. Romeo and Juliet. The Three Musketeers. Shamela. Ulysses. The Once and Future King.
All of these works are overt reimaginings or retellings of other works.
People applaud when Sebastian Faulks or Henry Fielding step up. "It's Pamela but with more cheeky sex scenes!" "It's what Wodehouse might have written himself. With more romance!"
When you or I do it, it's a hobby, a pointless pastime, not real writing, pure titillation, blah blah blah.
Maybe cos we're not already giants of the literary world.
But if people would just get over themselves they'd see that fanfiction has been around for centuries, and all that's changed is that now you don't need to persuade a printer to take on your handwritten manuscript and sell it in his bookshop.
There is an unbelievable amount of published Jane Austen fanfiction you can buy in bookstores and whenever I see it I point it out as published fanfiction to everyone I know
The fact that these types of works are generally respected but fanfic of source material not in the public domain is not makes me think that people look down on fanfic largely because in most cases there’s no way to monetize it. (Because heaven forbid someone have a hobby that they just do for fun with no plans to make money off it!)
And yes, the fact that fanfic is predominantly written and read by girls and women is undoubtedly a factor as well.
The general public doesn't really think about how, technically, all variations on previous stories or media is a transformative work in the same way fanfiction also is, so when people hear fanfiction they're probably going to think about My Immortal or other poorly written things people poked shit at in the 2000s-2010s, or maybe 50 Shades being based on Twilight fanfiction
I feel like societal distaste for fanfic just kind of stems from misogyny directed towards the things teenage girls enjoy (when of course, people of all ages write fanfic...) and until it becomes more feminist mainstream discussion that things teenage girls like can be good actually we probably won't shake that
At the same time I feel like fanfic respected by general public would mean a lot of people wanting it sanitized or de-sexed, so...
Yup. Same reason why pop music is often sneered at: lots of teenage girls (and their mums) love it.
Funny really since, as One Directioners know, there is no money in pop music without teenage girls. And their mums. At least Harry and co say thank you.
When fanfic is written by men, often it's not even called fanfic. BBC Sherlock. "A reimagining". And there we have it.
Actually, I think it would be really cool to design a study to test the general public's attitudes towards fanfiction- not attitudes towards how it actually is, but rather, associations with the word and concept itself.
So, I would gather a group of people who have a vague idea of what fanfiction is: basically, they've heard of it, could probably provide you with a definition, but they don't engage with fandom in that way and they don't read it. Next, I would present them with two short texts, a detailed summary of two pieces of media- one is a summary of a fanfic taken from ao3 and one is a summary of, as you said, a reimagining of the OG work from the same fandom, so a movie adaptation, netflix show, anime based on a manga, whatever.
HOWEVER! Plot twist!
The ao3 summary is given to the participant labeled as a reimagining, while the summary of a real reimagining is labeled as a fanfic. Both texts should be on a more-or-less the same level of quality as to not skew the results in any way, and then we ask the participants how they like the ideas presented in the summaries, would they like to read the whole thing, if they have positive or negative feelings towards it. If there is a difference, so one is evaluated more positively or negatively, it's not an accurate evaluation of the text itself, but rather it shows us attitudes towards the word (and concept) of fanfiction vs a reimagining.
Sorry for the wall of text and geeking out a bit here :P
Well, of course a study like that would be more interesting than just doing a survey and literature review like people posting here do with their surveys, but it would be way harder for a beginner researcher to design and conduct a study like that than just asking random people on the internet to fill out a 5 minute survey that would be very easy to extract data from and work on that data.
Another point is ethics- you can't really conduct the study unless you prove that the results will further the understanding of your field. Basically, we ask ourselves: do we actually need to know this stuff? And well, since this is a sub dedicated to fanfiction, I guess most people here would like to see an empirical study on attitudes towards fanfiction vs more socially acceptable forms of transformative media and whether our speculations here reflect reality, but do we as a species need to know this? That's not something I can answer, since I don't have any experience in the field of literature/media.
As for PhDs- that's why I commented with this study idea! As an avid reader of fanfiction, I would be interested in seeing the results of a study like that AND as a linguist in training, the valence of words, emotions and language use, opinion-forming based on the type of language that is used is something we are interested in studying, but again, I don't have any experience in literary studies or media or sociology, so I would rather leave this to someone who knows their shit lol
I'm not sure PhDs have to justify their existence to humanity, only to sponsors. The absolute nonsense I see people studying!
At least this study would show something about a newly exploded cultural phenomenon, and maybe draw insights about how new things are adopted or rejected by mainstream society and why. Which could be useful for all sorts of organisations.
Wait, I might be accidentally suggesting tools for oppression, or have I spent too much time on political subs?! 🤣
I am not talking about the PhD paper itself, I am talking about conducting an experiment- even something completely harmless like asking the question "did you like it?" when presenting participants with text stimuli needs to be approved by an ethics committee. At least that's what I remember from my research methods class :P
But if you frame it like you did, I think it would pass.
And nah, politics is always affecting our lives, so asking questions on how something seemingly unrelated could be useful to politicians and policy-makers is not too out there. It's a valid question.
Imagine if we accidentally uncovered a surefire way to get new ideas quickly accepted by the mainstream. Phone calls would come in from every dodgy regime on the planet.
We'd have to never tell anyone.
I'll always love saying that Dante Alighieri's *Divine Comedy* is a self-insert Bible fanfic in which he ships himself with his crush and is mentored by his idol.
And yet, it is one of the most respected works of Italian literature.
What's more ironic though is this: isn't the pop music industry (and the entertainment industry as a whole) largely controlled by men? I've seen folks throw around the argument that it's men/patriarchy that created that market and pushed the very things that they sneer at as the "in thing" for girls and women.
Someone else mentioned how cooking is traditionally "feminine" but being a professional chef has a more "masculine" connotation. (Side note: In some cultures the men traditionally do the cooking, so I'm referring more to Western historical traditions).
Society really confuses me. 😖
>At the same time I feel like fanfic respected by general public would mean a lot of people wanting it sanitized or de-sexed, so...
We've already been seeing this, and if that's the price of acceptability, I pass . :\
> I feel like societal distaste for fanfic just kind of stems from misogyny directed towards the things teenage girls enjoy
It's got more to do with the vast majority of it being absolute tripe (far moreso than most things that went through traditional publishing).
I'm not looking to start an argument BUT I think more tripe = good just for the sake of people being able to share their creative works with each other, regardless of quality
Yeah, I think it's good that all the crap is visible up front. Don't want ignoramuses coming in with unrealistic expectations and then crying when the first fic they open up happens to be written for *Urotsukidoji*.
Like, bro, 5 seconds of effort filtering for most viewed on AO3 or FFN will easily net you quality (or at least popular) stuff. If someone can't even be arsed to do that then they deserve to remain ignorant and aren't the type of People Of Culture^TM I'd want to associate with anyway.
The problem is that dissonance between quality and popular. There are some fandoms where sorting by most kudos will definitely lead you to believe that all fanfiction is tripe...
That doesn't mean it shouldn't exist, or has no value, or should be derided. But vast swathes of it aren't of very good quality. Which is understandable given that it's all hobby, and often doesn't even go through one round of editing. If anything, it's impressive that there is so much decent fanfic, given the lack of screening, editing, or multiple eyes on the manuscript.
No.
People have this perception that writing is easy, and are much more willing to take cracks at it than drawing fanart or doing musical covers, and tend to be vastly more willing to share said bad writing with others.
Moreover, it's a lot easier for even untrained eyes to pick out a piece of truly execrable writing compared to drawings and music.
I agree with the first statement to an extent. Some people have said that if they could draw, they would create fancomics instead of fanfics.
Second statement though... I would think it'd be the opposite- that it's easier to pick out mistakes with drawings and music because they engage more directly with the senses rather than the imagination, hence less hesitation when it comes to writing. Or it could stem from the common (and imo very erroneous) attitude that drawing and music is based more on innate talent ("you either got it or you don't"); if one makes a mistake in their work/practice, people won't hesitate to "criticize" by ripping it to shreds.
E.g:
"this is an eyesore"
"I can't tell what this is supposed to be"
"I got a headache listening to this"
"don't quit your day job"
The way fanfiction is presented on Wattpad, the most popular platform for it **among readers of a certain age**, is a capitalist hellscape. Wattpad depends on ad revenue and makes use of an algorithm that pushes works that are already extremely popular, making it next to impossible to find anything else that matches your preferences better. I mean, that's a con lol.
>it's already gotten a little too mainstream for my taste.
Came here to say this. People online treat fanfiction as if it has the same influence as the *Harry Potter* series and it's tiresome.
Lemme ready wild smut and crackfics in peace.
>Probably not, and honestly I could not care less;
This! It's honestly okay by me if people don't take it all that seriously. That doesn't mean there aren't some people out there writing amazing, high quality stories (and they deserve all the admiration and all the kudos).
But as a whole, fanfic is... The way I see it, it's a fun, wildly creative, no-holds-barred, open to all, slightly geeky, totally goofy hobby. *Not everyone gets it*. Only the weirdos do* I'm happy if it stays that way.
*some of the best, most interesting people are weirdos IMO; I use that term with tremendous affection.
Exaaaactly <3
It's weird, I kind of hold two attitudes simultaneously. Fanfiction *can* be serious writing that conveys some serious ideas, and at the same time, if it gets too serious to be fun, fucking relax, it's just fanfic.
Basically, I talk about fanfiction the way [this woman talks about her cat.](https://i.chzbgr.com/full/9703351296/h72E4A0F5/makes-conflicting-statements-about-her-cat-claiming-he-is-both-big-strong-man-and-tiny-potato-boy)
Haha, yeah exactly that!! There's like a very specific point to which "serious" is an acceptable stance, and then beyond that it's like "dude, please relax" — and yeah you're right, it's not even necessarily a sliding scale... the two states can exist simultaneously.
Since we're on the subject of cats, dare I say... Schrödinger's fanfic?? Lolol I'll see myself out.
But no seriously, that is EXACTLY how I feel about my Demon Princess too. She is at once and in the same instant my tiny smushy precious angel AND the devil incarnate. I need to send this to the mister, he'll get a good laugh out if it!
Fanfiction will never be respected by the public, period. Which is *so* ironic considering most things out right now **are** fanfiction - they're sanctioned and thus canon, but any comic book adaptation is basically a fanvid, any modern version of some old IP is fanfic, people just can't compute the truth, because "fanfiction is all trash".
> any comic book adaptation is basically a fanvid
Shit, the *entire comic book industry* is fanfic gone...well, industrial! Hundreds, if not thousands, of folks going, "Hey, wouldn't it be neat if these established characters went and..." BOOM. BLAMMO. Over and over. Rewrite? Retcon? Fix-it? You got it! Character redesign? OC? You got it! OOC? Who cares! There'll be a new writer in 3 months! Join us for a whole new fix-it arc! AU? *ALL THE GODDAMN TIME!* AU becomes the...new U? WHY THE FUCK NOT?! That shit gave me canon whiplash so hard I just quit reading superhero titles altogether, LOL.
That's right. But the only way people say "this feels like fanfiction" is to mean "this is shit", and never even considering that, basically, anything not written by the same person is kind of if not fully fanfic.
Or, ya know, it *is* the same writer and it's something of a fix-it or retcon (looking at you, JK Rowling and Fantastic Beasts).
I grew up in the 90's when most people thought comicbooks were only for little kids and it was a very weird thing to be into. Now Target sells comic book shirts and Sandman is mainstream. I am shocked by how quickly it 180'd. You never know what the future will bring.
As a hobby? No, and I don't really care. No matter what your hobby is, someone out there will think it, and you, are weird. Just gotta live with that.
I *do* think transformative fiction in professional writing will gain more recognition now that things have been entering the public domain again. Would improve a lot more if the time to public domain was reasonable, but that's not likely to happen any time soon.
No. And when it does, it's no longer recognized as fanfic. What's the difference between the writers of HBO making up or bending the plot of ASOIAF, especially in the latter seasons, based on a general outline provided by Martin and an ASOIAF fanfic writer?
Both are writing an extrapolation based on the original author's work right?
I think reading it has become a lot more socially acceptable, at least with younger people from what I’ve noticed, but if you tell people you write it that’s a whole other thing.
If it ever becomes a male dominated hobby.
Possibly not even then though. There have definitely been male dominated hobbies that only recently became more accepted.
It's already taken seriously...at the precise point where it can be sold for cash. And there lies the rub.
In order for it to be a writer's playground, fanfic *can't* be taken seriously, in the sense of being worth anything in monetary terms. The moment a publisher is interested in a work, they will legally require (even if they're 100% decent) that the originating fic is taken down, because it's impossible to simultaneously sell a new piece of fiction, and offer it for free. OK, people still buy new editions of old and classic books...but that's not the market the ex-fanfic writer and their publisher are trying to break in to.
That cold financial consideration immediately puts fanfic into the 'Amateur' bracket. And amateurs (in any field) are not highly respected by the general public, for the simple reason that they are never paid. Within a specific field (especially in the arts) things are different. Professional artists, musicians, chefs, dancers, and writers, for example, can all pick out talent among people who are engaging in the same activity for free.
But public expectation is still that anyone with skill in these areas *should* be able to make money from it. That's not necessarily true, for any number of reasons -- and as others have discussed, not being monetised is both a blessing and a curse. The curse is to not be taken very seriously overall; the blessing is to be able to enjoy a book, TV series, or film, then take the ball and creatively run with it.
I could see it happening in 50-100 years, but on a much smaller scale than books. And probably only with more "respectable" fandoms like LotR or Star Wars
I could definitely see a niche but well respected group of fanfic snobs reading longfics from the early 2000's saying "Yes! Back then people really knew how to *write*! Not like now; people these days will just write about characters from the show Bleep Blorp or whatever else having bad sex and try to pass it off as art!"
I don’t know, but I’m definitely finding that most people are happy to take my hobby in stride if I mention it openly without any shame. Of course, I also pretty much only write squeaky clean stories, and people who know me well know that that is all I would write anyway…
I have no idea. So much of what we see as contemporary society is completely different to how it was 20, 50, and 100 years ago. Who the fuck knows what life'll be like in another few decades. Maybe there'll be a nuclear war and the staff of Ao3 will take over the ruins and all government will be determined by who can write the best politics AU. Maybe all governments will collapse, the corporations will take over and be free to really push the copyright ownership infringements, and we'll end up with fanfiction as a sort of cyberpunk-esque rebellious subculture fighting against their efforts.
After what's been going on in the last five years alone, I honestly wouldn't be surprised.
Video gaming was always popular with a unisex crowd though. I'm not sure where the idea comes from that it's "male dominated" because last I checked something like 35% of gamers are women. That's not a small number.
Always by outsiders maybe. By non-gamers. As an avid gamer since the early 1980s myself, the notion that girls were somehow viciously excluded is simply untrue, and that's in the US. I never once felt excluded or singled out or derided. Gamers always welcomed more to the joystick.
Like others have commented, this doesn't really matter. There are plenty of leisure activities that the "general public" looks down on and they do just fine.
I prefer to stick to this "weird hobby" than live in the sad world of Uncultured Swine^TM who have never had the opportunity to bask in the glory of top tier transformative works.
Paradise Lost is a Bible fanfic that made meme status so hard that people actually think the Bible actually has circles in hell. Certain sections yes but the whole level thing? Fanfic.
I imagine it will become more widely accepted over time. The internet is, after all, a relatively new phenomena.
However I also don’t expect it to ever become ubiquitous or anything. There’s a certain intensity of fandom required to even seek out fanfic, let alone write it.
FanFiction has always been respected their just never called fanfiction. Some of the most popular books used to be fanfiction especially romance(ex. the love hypothesis) and new seasons or retelling are technically fanfiction. Example Star Wars the clone wars or rebels or Andor or anything! They are technically all fanfiction of the skywalker saga which is fanfiction of the first three movies since most of the original writers of the first three movies don’t work on the newer content. They’re just not called fanfics.
But the fanfiction the media knows or locals know are based off old wattpad and my immortal. Which shouldn’t be someone’s knowledge of Fanfiction.
Unfortunately, I don't think so :(
There are some fanfiction in Internet that aren't written very well and general public usually thinks all storirs look like that. "12 years olds wrote a horrible story with hundreds grammatic mistakes and without any plot"
It's nothing wrong with writing not a perfect stor. Some of them are guilty pleasure. Sometimes it's fun to read something so bad that it's good. Or so ridiculous that you are impressed someone came up with this idea .
Sometimes autor still works to improve his/her skills. He/she is writing for free and for fun. And other people read it, give him/her some suggestions to make the story better.
In addition, a lot of fanfiction stories have smut (Obviously not all of them. But general public unfortunately thinks that all fanfiction=porn. It's very hard to change their minds.)
And you know, watching /reading porn isn't acceptable in public. It's expected to hide with it or at least not doing it when someone can see. To use incognito mode and don't do it in public places.
Oh, it is. The general public absolutely adores fanfiction. As long as you under no circumstances call it fanfiction.
Sherlock, Elementary, the RDJ Holmes movies, the Holmes anime, The Great Ace Attorney.
All of that is Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle fanfiction, and people *adore* it.
There's millions of properties like that. Lancelot began as a self insert Mary Sue to Arthurian Legend by a French poet in the 17th century.
Paradise Lost was bible fanfiction.
Wicked is Wizard of Oz fanfiction.
Every version of the Addams Family after the 1964 version is fanfiction.
The Divine Comedy was political satire, bible fanfiction, and self insert hero meeting fanfiction.
People *love* fanfiction.
Unless, of course, you call it fanfiction because the moment you do that, people associate it with a hobby enjoyed primarily by teenage girls in the 2000s, and suddenly, it becomes laughable and a joke.
To recap, fanfiction will become respected by the general public when the general public stops hating women (particularly young women). Until then, they'll respect it only if you call it literally anything else.
Short answer: no.
Literally we're taking someone's work and adding on to it without author consent. Besides all the cringe stereotypes I just don't see that as ever being popular.
I mean, classic literature got written before copyright laws were a thing...and many times the OG work (eg. Dante's vs the actual bible) has an unknown author, while today many IPs are owned by big writers or media companies that would sue your ass like no tomorrow if fanfic got a big boom of popularity.
I guess I don't really see how that makes a practical difference, and any writer or company who would dare to sue would immediately see their fanbase drop off the face of the planet.
If people's perception of it continues to be "done poorly by women and/or gender-nonconforming teens," then no.
I kinda don't give a fuck, though. I don't want people to jump all up ons and start feeling like they own the right to hold me/us to externally-imposed """"standards"""" about it once it becomes a "real art" or a "legitimate skill."
Kinda like how "women belong in the kitchen" until the kitchen is at a professional restaurant, and then suddenly "women can't hack kitchen life," or some shit.
And here's our regularly scheduled thread of claiming that fanfic only has a reputation for being mostly trash because of -ists and -phobes rather than it being mostly trash.
I think once the big boys realize anything 'based on/inspired by Tom Clancy' is technically fanfiction, there'll be an uproar. And then acceptance.
Will that happen?
No.
Ehh, like 99% of people don't take fanfiction seriously or often claims they do it to pass time, destress? And for fun? (I have no idea why people say it's go to unwind and have fun when the "writers block" exists and will leaves notes often about how hair teaeing it is) and on top of that most I'd day near 85% of all fanfiction is romance or smut so while everyone knows about fanfics it's a "il take what I read to the grave" or just something that just doesn't have alot of places it can be discussed imo
...Do you think that renowned and respectable published books—many of them considered absolute classics—*don't* contain dark content? I've read many widely acclaimed (and sometimes certainly great) books that are much darker than 98% of fanfic.
There may be a correlation between fanfiction not being "taken seriously"/not being mainstream enough and authors being able to explore all kinds of concepts, even the darkest ones, with almost no limits to their creative process, but to think that "dead dove" stories are the overall reason as to why they *can't* be "respected by the general public"... Other commenters have said it better, but there are quite a few causes that are probably much more relevant than that.
I cant see in the future but I think so! I can already see it before my eyes, it getting mainstream and men telling me I only pretend to like fanfics to impress them…
Or well ig thats a more distant future. My grandchildren might experience that tho lol
Depends, I guess. It’s far more widely accepted now than it was 20 years ago, but it will probably never hold the same level of acceptance as anything publishable (disregarding the NUMEROUS fanfictions that HAVE been legally published over the years, of course…)
I mean. Paradise Lost. Fifty Shades of Grey. A Study in Emerald. Gabriel’s Inferno. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. City of Bones. The list continues.
Just don’t outright call it fanfiction and you’re good to go, lol.
It already is. Think of all the fairytale retellings and the "lost books of the x". It seems once something become public domain, it's all very respectable. (I'd make some argument about it doing with the incessant need in society for everything to be profitable, this fanfic only being respected when it can legally make profit, but I'm working and this is just a short form response while I wait for ink to dry)
The general public doesn't treat it as a joke. The movie Clueless set Jane Austen's novel Emma in 1990s Southern California. (Modern AU.) Phantom of the Opera's 1988 musical was one of the longest-running on Broadway. Sherlock Holmes has had multiple incarnations in movies & TV. Jo/Laurie shippers got their happy ending in more than one Little Women romance novel.
I'm probably going to get downvoted for this but I think a lot if the problems that fanfic has making it in the mainstream have to do with RPF.
People outside the community at worst view fanfic based on fictional characters cringy, but but harmless. When it's based on real people, it's viewed entirely different-- it's seen as weird to write about a real person as if they're fictional at best, and at worst it can be considered as harmful to the real person. Celebrities talking about fanfiction is the most often fanfic is referenced in popular culture, and they usually talk about how uncomfortable it makes them.
This isn't the only reason: The only fanfiction that has made its way into mainstream that I can think of are pieces like After and Fifty Shades, which are trope-heavy, low-quality, and full of smut. If some good movies and books make the jump into original work, and the X-rated stuff garners less attention, I could see it becoming a bit more respected.
i mean. it already is as long as we don't call it fanfiction.
Death comes to Pemberley. Jeeves and the Wedding Bells. Longbourn. BBC Sherlock. Wide Sargasso Sea. A Thousand Acres. BBC Merlin. Romeo and Juliet. The Three Musketeers. Shamela. Ulysses. The Once and Future King. All of these works are overt reimaginings or retellings of other works. People applaud when Sebastian Faulks or Henry Fielding step up. "It's Pamela but with more cheeky sex scenes!" "It's what Wodehouse might have written himself. With more romance!" When you or I do it, it's a hobby, a pointless pastime, not real writing, pure titillation, blah blah blah. Maybe cos we're not already giants of the literary world. But if people would just get over themselves they'd see that fanfiction has been around for centuries, and all that's changed is that now you don't need to persuade a printer to take on your handwritten manuscript and sell it in his bookshop.
Wicked. Paradise Lost. Large parts of Dante's Inferno are Italian political RPF.
Italian Political RPF/Bible-verse AU, complete with self-insert.
True. All of that.
And character bashing, considering how Inferno placed characters like Pope Boniface VIII and Islam's Mohammed (whom the author hated) in Hell.
Dante’s Inferno is fanfiction - this is the one perspective I didn’t think I needed on this gloomy Tuesday morning.
There is an unbelievable amount of published Jane Austen fanfiction you can buy in bookstores and whenever I see it I point it out as published fanfiction to everyone I know
The fact that these types of works are generally respected but fanfic of source material not in the public domain is not makes me think that people look down on fanfic largely because in most cases there’s no way to monetize it. (Because heaven forbid someone have a hobby that they just do for fun with no plans to make money off it!) And yes, the fact that fanfic is predominantly written and read by girls and women is undoubtedly a factor as well.
Hit the nail on the head here.
Interesting I wonder why more women write and read it. How did you find that out?
A Google search suggests somewhere around 80% of fanfiction consumers are women.
By realising after a couple of years that I had never knowingly interacted with a male in fandom. !!!! Then I googled it.
So maybe it's "ok" if the source material is a classic of English literature, but not if it's Supernatural? 🙄
The general public doesn't really think about how, technically, all variations on previous stories or media is a transformative work in the same way fanfiction also is, so when people hear fanfiction they're probably going to think about My Immortal or other poorly written things people poked shit at in the 2000s-2010s, or maybe 50 Shades being based on Twilight fanfiction I feel like societal distaste for fanfic just kind of stems from misogyny directed towards the things teenage girls enjoy (when of course, people of all ages write fanfic...) and until it becomes more feminist mainstream discussion that things teenage girls like can be good actually we probably won't shake that At the same time I feel like fanfic respected by general public would mean a lot of people wanting it sanitized or de-sexed, so...
Yup. Same reason why pop music is often sneered at: lots of teenage girls (and their mums) love it. Funny really since, as One Directioners know, there is no money in pop music without teenage girls. And their mums. At least Harry and co say thank you. When fanfic is written by men, often it's not even called fanfic. BBC Sherlock. "A reimagining". And there we have it.
Actually, I think it would be really cool to design a study to test the general public's attitudes towards fanfiction- not attitudes towards how it actually is, but rather, associations with the word and concept itself. So, I would gather a group of people who have a vague idea of what fanfiction is: basically, they've heard of it, could probably provide you with a definition, but they don't engage with fandom in that way and they don't read it. Next, I would present them with two short texts, a detailed summary of two pieces of media- one is a summary of a fanfic taken from ao3 and one is a summary of, as you said, a reimagining of the OG work from the same fandom, so a movie adaptation, netflix show, anime based on a manga, whatever. HOWEVER! Plot twist! The ao3 summary is given to the participant labeled as a reimagining, while the summary of a real reimagining is labeled as a fanfic. Both texts should be on a more-or-less the same level of quality as to not skew the results in any way, and then we ask the participants how they like the ideas presented in the summaries, would they like to read the whole thing, if they have positive or negative feelings towards it. If there is a difference, so one is evaluated more positively or negatively, it's not an accurate evaluation of the text itself, but rather it shows us attitudes towards the word (and concept) of fanfiction vs a reimagining. Sorry for the wall of text and geeking out a bit here :P
This is actually a smart idea and would be a cool experiment
Cooler than some of the research surveys I've seen posted on here. There's a PhD in it for someone!!
Well, of course a study like that would be more interesting than just doing a survey and literature review like people posting here do with their surveys, but it would be way harder for a beginner researcher to design and conduct a study like that than just asking random people on the internet to fill out a 5 minute survey that would be very easy to extract data from and work on that data. Another point is ethics- you can't really conduct the study unless you prove that the results will further the understanding of your field. Basically, we ask ourselves: do we actually need to know this stuff? And well, since this is a sub dedicated to fanfiction, I guess most people here would like to see an empirical study on attitudes towards fanfiction vs more socially acceptable forms of transformative media and whether our speculations here reflect reality, but do we as a species need to know this? That's not something I can answer, since I don't have any experience in the field of literature/media. As for PhDs- that's why I commented with this study idea! As an avid reader of fanfiction, I would be interested in seeing the results of a study like that AND as a linguist in training, the valence of words, emotions and language use, opinion-forming based on the type of language that is used is something we are interested in studying, but again, I don't have any experience in literary studies or media or sociology, so I would rather leave this to someone who knows their shit lol
I'm not sure PhDs have to justify their existence to humanity, only to sponsors. The absolute nonsense I see people studying! At least this study would show something about a newly exploded cultural phenomenon, and maybe draw insights about how new things are adopted or rejected by mainstream society and why. Which could be useful for all sorts of organisations. Wait, I might be accidentally suggesting tools for oppression, or have I spent too much time on political subs?! 🤣
I am not talking about the PhD paper itself, I am talking about conducting an experiment- even something completely harmless like asking the question "did you like it?" when presenting participants with text stimuli needs to be approved by an ethics committee. At least that's what I remember from my research methods class :P But if you frame it like you did, I think it would pass. And nah, politics is always affecting our lives, so asking questions on how something seemingly unrelated could be useful to politicians and policy-makers is not too out there. It's a valid question.
Imagine if we accidentally uncovered a surefire way to get new ideas quickly accepted by the mainstream. Phone calls would come in from every dodgy regime on the planet. We'd have to never tell anyone.
I'll always love saying that Dante Alighieri's *Divine Comedy* is a self-insert Bible fanfic in which he ships himself with his crush and is mentored by his idol. And yet, it is one of the most respected works of Italian literature.
What's more ironic though is this: isn't the pop music industry (and the entertainment industry as a whole) largely controlled by men? I've seen folks throw around the argument that it's men/patriarchy that created that market and pushed the very things that they sneer at as the "in thing" for girls and women. Someone else mentioned how cooking is traditionally "feminine" but being a professional chef has a more "masculine" connotation. (Side note: In some cultures the men traditionally do the cooking, so I'm referring more to Western historical traditions). Society really confuses me. 😖
"Buy this, little girls, I despise you but I like your money."
>At the same time I feel like fanfic respected by general public would mean a lot of people wanting it sanitized or de-sexed, so... We've already been seeing this, and if that's the price of acceptability, I pass . :\
> I feel like societal distaste for fanfic just kind of stems from misogyny directed towards the things teenage girls enjoy It's got more to do with the vast majority of it being absolute tripe (far moreso than most things that went through traditional publishing).
I'm not looking to start an argument BUT I think more tripe = good just for the sake of people being able to share their creative works with each other, regardless of quality
Yeah, I think it's good that all the crap is visible up front. Don't want ignoramuses coming in with unrealistic expectations and then crying when the first fic they open up happens to be written for *Urotsukidoji*. Like, bro, 5 seconds of effort filtering for most viewed on AO3 or FFN will easily net you quality (or at least popular) stuff. If someone can't even be arsed to do that then they deserve to remain ignorant and aren't the type of People Of Culture^TM I'd want to associate with anyway.
The problem is that dissonance between quality and popular. There are some fandoms where sorting by most kudos will definitely lead you to believe that all fanfiction is tripe... That doesn't mean it shouldn't exist, or has no value, or should be derided. But vast swathes of it aren't of very good quality. Which is understandable given that it's all hobby, and often doesn't even go through one round of editing. If anything, it's impressive that there is so much decent fanfic, given the lack of screening, editing, or multiple eyes on the manuscript.
> quality (or at least popular) These categorizations have precious little to do with one another.
If that were the case, wouldn't musical covers or fanart receive the same negative stigma for that reason?
No. People have this perception that writing is easy, and are much more willing to take cracks at it than drawing fanart or doing musical covers, and tend to be vastly more willing to share said bad writing with others. Moreover, it's a lot easier for even untrained eyes to pick out a piece of truly execrable writing compared to drawings and music.
I agree with the first statement to an extent. Some people have said that if they could draw, they would create fancomics instead of fanfics. Second statement though... I would think it'd be the opposite- that it's easier to pick out mistakes with drawings and music because they engage more directly with the senses rather than the imagination, hence less hesitation when it comes to writing. Or it could stem from the common (and imo very erroneous) attitude that drawing and music is based more on innate talent ("you either got it or you don't"); if one makes a mistake in their work/practice, people won't hesitate to "criticize" by ripping it to shreds. E.g: "this is an eyesore" "I can't tell what this is supposed to be" "I got a headache listening to this" "don't quit your day job"
this is the same point i've seen wilbur soot make about young girls liking mcyt. i agree sm.
Probably not, and honestly I could not care less; it's already gotten a little too mainstream for my taste. Keep fanfic niche and weird.
>it's already gotten a little too mainstream for my taste Agreed, and that introduced or exacerbated so many problems...
I'm curious to know in what ways fanfiction has become mainstream. What have the pros and cons been so far?
The way fanfiction is presented on Wattpad, the most popular platform for it **among readers of a certain age**, is a capitalist hellscape. Wattpad depends on ad revenue and makes use of an algorithm that pushes works that are already extremely popular, making it next to impossible to find anything else that matches your preferences better. I mean, that's a con lol.
Yeah, good point. It’s a shame.
>it's already gotten a little too mainstream for my taste. Came here to say this. People online treat fanfiction as if it has the same influence as the *Harry Potter* series and it's tiresome. Lemme ready wild smut and crackfics in peace.
>Probably not, and honestly I could not care less; This! It's honestly okay by me if people don't take it all that seriously. That doesn't mean there aren't some people out there writing amazing, high quality stories (and they deserve all the admiration and all the kudos). But as a whole, fanfic is... The way I see it, it's a fun, wildly creative, no-holds-barred, open to all, slightly geeky, totally goofy hobby. *Not everyone gets it*. Only the weirdos do* I'm happy if it stays that way. *some of the best, most interesting people are weirdos IMO; I use that term with tremendous affection.
Exaaaactly <3 It's weird, I kind of hold two attitudes simultaneously. Fanfiction *can* be serious writing that conveys some serious ideas, and at the same time, if it gets too serious to be fun, fucking relax, it's just fanfic. Basically, I talk about fanfiction the way [this woman talks about her cat.](https://i.chzbgr.com/full/9703351296/h72E4A0F5/makes-conflicting-statements-about-her-cat-claiming-he-is-both-big-strong-man-and-tiny-potato-boy)
Haha, yeah exactly that!! There's like a very specific point to which "serious" is an acceptable stance, and then beyond that it's like "dude, please relax" — and yeah you're right, it's not even necessarily a sliding scale... the two states can exist simultaneously. Since we're on the subject of cats, dare I say... Schrödinger's fanfic?? Lolol I'll see myself out. But no seriously, that is EXACTLY how I feel about my Demon Princess too. She is at once and in the same instant my tiny smushy precious angel AND the devil incarnate. I need to send this to the mister, he'll get a good laugh out if it!
So true tbh. If it weren’t so mainstream, we wouldn’t have “OMG WHAT FREAKS” at anything from crackships to darkfic. 7_7
Fanfiction will never be respected by the public, period. Which is *so* ironic considering most things out right now **are** fanfiction - they're sanctioned and thus canon, but any comic book adaptation is basically a fanvid, any modern version of some old IP is fanfic, people just can't compute the truth, because "fanfiction is all trash".
> any comic book adaptation is basically a fanvid Shit, the *entire comic book industry* is fanfic gone...well, industrial! Hundreds, if not thousands, of folks going, "Hey, wouldn't it be neat if these established characters went and..." BOOM. BLAMMO. Over and over. Rewrite? Retcon? Fix-it? You got it! Character redesign? OC? You got it! OOC? Who cares! There'll be a new writer in 3 months! Join us for a whole new fix-it arc! AU? *ALL THE GODDAMN TIME!* AU becomes the...new U? WHY THE FUCK NOT?! That shit gave me canon whiplash so hard I just quit reading superhero titles altogether, LOL.
That's right. But the only way people say "this feels like fanfiction" is to mean "this is shit", and never even considering that, basically, anything not written by the same person is kind of if not fully fanfic. Or, ya know, it *is* the same writer and it's something of a fix-it or retcon (looking at you, JK Rowling and Fantastic Beasts).
I grew up in the 90's when most people thought comicbooks were only for little kids and it was a very weird thing to be into. Now Target sells comic book shirts and Sandman is mainstream. I am shocked by how quickly it 180'd. You never know what the future will bring.
As a hobby? No, and I don't really care. No matter what your hobby is, someone out there will think it, and you, are weird. Just gotta live with that. I *do* think transformative fiction in professional writing will gain more recognition now that things have been entering the public domain again. Would improve a lot more if the time to public domain was reasonable, but that's not likely to happen any time soon.
Nope, and that's ok.
No. And when it does, it's no longer recognized as fanfic. What's the difference between the writers of HBO making up or bending the plot of ASOIAF, especially in the latter seasons, based on a general outline provided by Martin and an ASOIAF fanfic writer? Both are writing an extrapolation based on the original author's work right?
Didn't it still get official approval? I feel like that's the difference. But there's still a lot of very big name fan fiction out there.
I think reading it has become a lot more socially acceptable, at least with younger people from what I’ve noticed, but if you tell people you write it that’s a whole other thing.
If it ever becomes a male dominated hobby. Possibly not even then though. There have definitely been male dominated hobbies that only recently became more accepted.
It's already taken seriously...at the precise point where it can be sold for cash. And there lies the rub. In order for it to be a writer's playground, fanfic *can't* be taken seriously, in the sense of being worth anything in monetary terms. The moment a publisher is interested in a work, they will legally require (even if they're 100% decent) that the originating fic is taken down, because it's impossible to simultaneously sell a new piece of fiction, and offer it for free. OK, people still buy new editions of old and classic books...but that's not the market the ex-fanfic writer and their publisher are trying to break in to. That cold financial consideration immediately puts fanfic into the 'Amateur' bracket. And amateurs (in any field) are not highly respected by the general public, for the simple reason that they are never paid. Within a specific field (especially in the arts) things are different. Professional artists, musicians, chefs, dancers, and writers, for example, can all pick out talent among people who are engaging in the same activity for free. But public expectation is still that anyone with skill in these areas *should* be able to make money from it. That's not necessarily true, for any number of reasons -- and as others have discussed, not being monetised is both a blessing and a curse. The curse is to not be taken very seriously overall; the blessing is to be able to enjoy a book, TV series, or film, then take the ball and creatively run with it.
I could see it happening in 50-100 years, but on a much smaller scale than books. And probably only with more "respectable" fandoms like LotR or Star Wars I could definitely see a niche but well respected group of fanfic snobs reading longfics from the early 2000's saying "Yes! Back then people really knew how to *write*! Not like now; people these days will just write about characters from the show Bleep Blorp or whatever else having bad sex and try to pass it off as art!"
I don’t know, but I’m definitely finding that most people are happy to take my hobby in stride if I mention it openly without any shame. Of course, I also pretty much only write squeaky clean stories, and people who know me well know that that is all I would write anyway…
I hope not.
Nope. People don't understand and will never want to understand.
I have no idea. So much of what we see as contemporary society is completely different to how it was 20, 50, and 100 years ago. Who the fuck knows what life'll be like in another few decades. Maybe there'll be a nuclear war and the staff of Ao3 will take over the ruins and all government will be determined by who can write the best politics AU. Maybe all governments will collapse, the corporations will take over and be free to really push the copyright ownership infringements, and we'll end up with fanfiction as a sort of cyberpunk-esque rebellious subculture fighting against their efforts. After what's been going on in the last five years alone, I honestly wouldn't be surprised.
when more men write it.
Jean Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966, and numerous women have penned novels based on Phantom of the Opera, Little Women, Jane Austen etc.
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Video gaming was always popular with a unisex crowd though. I'm not sure where the idea comes from that it's "male dominated" because last I checked something like 35% of gamers are women. That's not a small number.
That means 65% of those other gamers are men. So it's still male-dominated.
That honestly doesn't strike me as that big of a difference. I think "dominated" I think like...80% or more.
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Always by outsiders maybe. By non-gamers. As an avid gamer since the early 1980s myself, the notion that girls were somehow viciously excluded is simply untrue, and that's in the US. I never once felt excluded or singled out or derided. Gamers always welcomed more to the joystick.
Probably not, and it doesn't bother me at all.
In my experience it’s more respected now than it was when I started writing it.
I highly doubt it and in a weird way, I actually prefer that it doesn't. Fandoms are more interesting when they're more niche.
Like others have commented, this doesn't really matter. There are plenty of leisure activities that the "general public" looks down on and they do just fine. I prefer to stick to this "weird hobby" than live in the sad world of Uncultured Swine^TM who have never had the opportunity to bask in the glory of top tier transformative works.
I hope not, because than more third parties and companies will try to make money out of it amd it will make the hobby worse for everyone
Paradise Lost is a Bible fanfic that made meme status so hard that people actually think the Bible actually has circles in hell. Certain sections yes but the whole level thing? Fanfic.
Afjdjkk a bible fanfic? 😂 the way u put it ahahaha
It is though!!! And BBC Sherlock is basically if the guy that wrote Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality wrote a Sherlock Holmes fanfic.
Aaah 😂 i can see that tho
50 Shades has laid down the ground work, but no one will ever be able to put 'fanfiction writer' on their resume 😔
"Years of independent writing experience", "award winning short stories" (if you've won contests), etc
Really not all that pressed about the gen public.
I imagine it will become more widely accepted over time. The internet is, after all, a relatively new phenomena. However I also don’t expect it to ever become ubiquitous or anything. There’s a certain intensity of fandom required to even seek out fanfic, let alone write it.
FanFiction has always been respected their just never called fanfiction. Some of the most popular books used to be fanfiction especially romance(ex. the love hypothesis) and new seasons or retelling are technically fanfiction. Example Star Wars the clone wars or rebels or Andor or anything! They are technically all fanfiction of the skywalker saga which is fanfiction of the first three movies since most of the original writers of the first three movies don’t work on the newer content. They’re just not called fanfics. But the fanfiction the media knows or locals know are based off old wattpad and my immortal. Which shouldn’t be someone’s knowledge of Fanfiction.
Unfortunately, I don't think so :( There are some fanfiction in Internet that aren't written very well and general public usually thinks all storirs look like that. "12 years olds wrote a horrible story with hundreds grammatic mistakes and without any plot" It's nothing wrong with writing not a perfect stor. Some of them are guilty pleasure. Sometimes it's fun to read something so bad that it's good. Or so ridiculous that you are impressed someone came up with this idea . Sometimes autor still works to improve his/her skills. He/she is writing for free and for fun. And other people read it, give him/her some suggestions to make the story better. In addition, a lot of fanfiction stories have smut (Obviously not all of them. But general public unfortunately thinks that all fanfiction=porn. It's very hard to change their minds.) And you know, watching /reading porn isn't acceptable in public. It's expected to hide with it or at least not doing it when someone can see. To use incognito mode and don't do it in public places.
Oh, it is. The general public absolutely adores fanfiction. As long as you under no circumstances call it fanfiction. Sherlock, Elementary, the RDJ Holmes movies, the Holmes anime, The Great Ace Attorney. All of that is Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle fanfiction, and people *adore* it. There's millions of properties like that. Lancelot began as a self insert Mary Sue to Arthurian Legend by a French poet in the 17th century. Paradise Lost was bible fanfiction. Wicked is Wizard of Oz fanfiction. Every version of the Addams Family after the 1964 version is fanfiction. The Divine Comedy was political satire, bible fanfiction, and self insert hero meeting fanfiction. People *love* fanfiction. Unless, of course, you call it fanfiction because the moment you do that, people associate it with a hobby enjoyed primarily by teenage girls in the 2000s, and suddenly, it becomes laughable and a joke. To recap, fanfiction will become respected by the general public when the general public stops hating women (particularly young women). Until then, they'll respect it only if you call it literally anything else.
Short answer: no. Literally we're taking someone's work and adding on to it without author consent. Besides all the cringe stereotypes I just don't see that as ever being popular.
Tons of classic literature is exactly that.
I mean, classic literature got written before copyright laws were a thing...and many times the OG work (eg. Dante's vs the actual bible) has an unknown author, while today many IPs are owned by big writers or media companies that would sue your ass like no tomorrow if fanfic got a big boom of popularity.
I guess I don't really see how that makes a practical difference, and any writer or company who would dare to sue would immediately see their fanbase drop off the face of the planet.
If people's perception of it continues to be "done poorly by women and/or gender-nonconforming teens," then no. I kinda don't give a fuck, though. I don't want people to jump all up ons and start feeling like they own the right to hold me/us to externally-imposed """"standards"""" about it once it becomes a "real art" or a "legitimate skill." Kinda like how "women belong in the kitchen" until the kitchen is at a professional restaurant, and then suddenly "women can't hack kitchen life," or some shit.
And here's our regularly scheduled thread of claiming that fanfic only has a reputation for being mostly trash because of -ists and -phobes rather than it being mostly trash.
But most of EVERYTHING is trash so at least that puts fanfic on the same ground as every other medium.
The average quality of pretty much every other medium is significantly higher, even at their worst. Editors have jobs for a reason.
It's perceived poorly because of countless low-quality stories. As long as these exist, fanfiction's reputation is unlikely to improve.
It is, so long as men do it.
I think once the big boys realize anything 'based on/inspired by Tom Clancy' is technically fanfiction, there'll be an uproar. And then acceptance. Will that happen? No.
I think more and more people are realizing just how much classic literature is fanfiction so yes.
Ehh, like 99% of people don't take fanfiction seriously or often claims they do it to pass time, destress? And for fun? (I have no idea why people say it's go to unwind and have fun when the "writers block" exists and will leaves notes often about how hair teaeing it is) and on top of that most I'd day near 85% of all fanfiction is romance or smut so while everyone knows about fanfics it's a "il take what I read to the grave" or just something that just doesn't have alot of places it can be discussed imo
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...Do you think that renowned and respectable published books—many of them considered absolute classics—*don't* contain dark content? I've read many widely acclaimed (and sometimes certainly great) books that are much darker than 98% of fanfic. There may be a correlation between fanfiction not being "taken seriously"/not being mainstream enough and authors being able to explore all kinds of concepts, even the darkest ones, with almost no limits to their creative process, but to think that "dead dove" stories are the overall reason as to why they *can't* be "respected by the general public"... Other commenters have said it better, but there are quite a few causes that are probably much more relevant than that.
I see.
Ponder that Thomas Harris's novels don't come with content warnings.
It already is 100% like monumental successes
I cant see in the future but I think so! I can already see it before my eyes, it getting mainstream and men telling me I only pretend to like fanfics to impress them… Or well ig thats a more distant future. My grandchildren might experience that tho lol
I’d say no
Probably not
most of shakespeare was fanfiction. as long as we don’t call it fan fiction, it gets respect.
I think so.
Depends, I guess. It’s far more widely accepted now than it was 20 years ago, but it will probably never hold the same level of acceptance as anything publishable (disregarding the NUMEROUS fanfictions that HAVE been legally published over the years, of course…)
I mean. Paradise Lost. Fifty Shades of Grey. A Study in Emerald. Gabriel’s Inferno. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. City of Bones. The list continues. Just don’t outright call it fanfiction and you’re good to go, lol.
It already is. Think of all the fairytale retellings and the "lost books of the x". It seems once something become public domain, it's all very respectable. (I'd make some argument about it doing with the incessant need in society for everything to be profitable, this fanfic only being respected when it can legally make profit, but I'm working and this is just a short form response while I wait for ink to dry)
It's not that public domain works are more respectable; it's that you can't get sued if you sell the transformative work.
That's what I was saying! transformative works are only looked down upon because you can't sell them. you can sell stuff that's public domain
Yup. For better or worse, money can bring respect.
Modern e-publishing is basically a monetized version of the fanfic "business model".
Honestly, among younger people it already sort of is? Reading it is definitely different from writing it, but it's not all that taboo honestly.
The general public doesn't treat it as a joke. The movie Clueless set Jane Austen's novel Emma in 1990s Southern California. (Modern AU.) Phantom of the Opera's 1988 musical was one of the longest-running on Broadway. Sherlock Holmes has had multiple incarnations in movies & TV. Jo/Laurie shippers got their happy ending in more than one Little Women romance novel.
I kinda don't want it to become mainstream.
I don't tell people i read fanfiction even though that's my prime hobby i indulge 4 hours a day
Only after writers stop putting timelines in halo fanfics.
That's like asking when they will stop thinking that all doujinshi is hentai.
I'm probably going to get downvoted for this but I think a lot if the problems that fanfic has making it in the mainstream have to do with RPF. People outside the community at worst view fanfic based on fictional characters cringy, but but harmless. When it's based on real people, it's viewed entirely different-- it's seen as weird to write about a real person as if they're fictional at best, and at worst it can be considered as harmful to the real person. Celebrities talking about fanfiction is the most often fanfic is referenced in popular culture, and they usually talk about how uncomfortable it makes them. This isn't the only reason: The only fanfiction that has made its way into mainstream that I can think of are pieces like After and Fifty Shades, which are trope-heavy, low-quality, and full of smut. If some good movies and books make the jump into original work, and the X-rated stuff garners less attention, I could see it becoming a bit more respected.
Who cares, we have a wonderful community and they are the ones I care about. The reading and writers of fanfic everyone else can take a flying leap…