I confess that I struggle over how to talk about fan fiction in the company of other writers. The stigma is sufficiently intense, and the borderlands between fan and pro can seem so well-patrolled that admitting to the hobby feels taboo. Even leaving aside the arguments about intellectual property, or the fact that many pros are quietly (or not so quietly) fannish themselves, there is real resistance the idea that someone who can write original stories might choose to spend some time playing in someone else’s sandbox except to use it as training wheels.

In spite of pros like Cory Doctorow and Elizabeth Bear stepping out in favor of fanwork, conventional wisdom says a lot of uncomplimentary things about fan writing. So when I’m face-to-face with other writers, (particularly writers I don’t know well), I’m reluctant to bring it up in much the same way that I’m reluctant to stick my foot in a bear trap. It just seems like trouble.

That’s a shame, because fan fiction is such a fascinating thing. In the right company I’m actually quite eager to discuss fan writing. I even traveled to Minneapolis in July to attend a multi-fandom writer’s conference where I sat in on a couple of panels. It is quite a thing to be in a hotel with a few hundred people so invested in the community, craft, and theory aspects of fanwork that they will travel hundreds of miles to spend a weekend chatting about cultural coding in visual media, issues surrounding the fetishization of gay men’s bodies, and how to construct a solid fight scene.

So when the topic does come up with outsiders, I usually find myself looking to offer a short working definition of what fan fiction actually is, mostly to counter the usual stereotypes about dodgy pornography about people on television. With use my definition went from short to shorter, until finally I settled on two words that sum it up perfectly:

It’s folklore.

Or, rather, it’s part of an overall system of folklore within fan culture. Folklore, strictly speaking, is comprised of practices, histories, symbols, and beliefs in addition to storytelling. It’s a thing that arises naturally within cultures and subcultures, and based on my observations as a participant in fannish subcultures, the fundamentals are there.

Anyone who’s wandered the event hotels at Dragon*Con, checked out a Comic Con, or even just attended a big watch party can attest that fan culture is distinctive. While fan culture on the whole is far from monolithic, individuals who participate in fandom typically have certain traits in common with regard to how they consume media and relate to the world around them. Ten people from ten different fandoms in an elevator might have different particular interests, but how they indulge their interests will likely be familiar to one another because fandoms tend to engage material in similar ways.

Just as two expatriates who meet by chance have commonalities in spite of their individual personalities and habits, two Doctor Who fans who cross paths in a train station in enormous multi-colored scarves share a language and a culture that the others around them do not. Things which might be meaningless or neutral to outsiders – a Jelly Baby, for example – carry connotations that members of a fandom subculture understand and respond to.

This shared lexicon and way of thinking allows fans to communicate ideas quickly and effectively with others within their folk group. This is quite handy for the aforementioned pair of Whovians if they’re bored stiff and have an hour to kill in that hypothetical train station. They have something to talk about. Which leads me to my first point.

When human beings are able to communicate, they tend to tell stories. It is a fundamental part of the way we think. Human beings string events into narratives and ascribe meaning in order to understand things more clearly and give them context. We react to the world by telling each other about it, either by recounting things directly or with the aid of fiction. When someone tells us a story that affects us, we react by repeating that story to others, or by telling new stories about that story.

This is an ancient thing, and history is littered with examples. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae launched a trend in Arthurian romance that spanned a century and never died out entirely. Many of Shakespeare’s plays were takes on familiar stories of his time, and were so effective we’re still rewriting them. More recently, Michael Cunningham’s The Hours is both a paean to the influence of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and a work derived from it. Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies pushes the envelope yet further by inserting new work into a familiar text.

Homage and satire, reboots and re-imaginings, mash-ups and alternate history all make use of other material and rely on other narratives to work. In a similar way, fan fiction relies on a fandom’s core texts to be effective. Even the least canonical piece of fan fiction, taking place in the most alternate of universes, and containing an ensemble cast of original characters is still a reaction to the original canon source material.

While a solid piece of fan fiction might still read well without a working knowledge of the original canon, its strength may still be in the way it reflects that original text. Further, the actual intended effect may be metatextual; fan writers often like to play with genre or do unexpected things to amuse, to showcase a pleasing contrast, or to draw novel comparisons. Lacking adequate insider knowledge puts a mainstream reader at a disadvantage and may lead to misunderstandings about the content of a text.

To illustrate, I was born in 1980. However, many of my friends and partners tend to be older. While my personal recollection of the 1980s is a bit dim and imperfect, I have the benefit of knowing people who bolster it with their own memories and opinions. My own tastes also run eclectic (and sometimes archaic), which helps as well. So I remember nuclear fears, shoulder pads, greed-is-good business, and when New York City was supposed to be scary. I also have a reasonable familiarity with the costumed hero genre, and am familiar with the clichés of the form.

As a result, I appreciate Alan Moore’s Watchmen more than I might have otherwise. When I read the graphic novel, I enjoyed the way Moore used various comic book conventions (particularly the end notes) to massive effect. Watching the film, I could pick out Henry Kissinger and Lee Iacocca, and I could smile knowingly when Adrian Veidt rubbed elbows with David Bowie at Studio 54. Watchmen‘s narrative is compelling by itself, but I possess the requisite cultural knowledge to appreciate the meta text, and to understand the work as commentary and as a what-if as well as a cracking good read.

My ability to “get” Watchmen is not, however, nearly as well-honed as that of a friend of mine who is a few years older and grew up in New York City, while her partner (four years my junior), needed some of the details explained to her. Someone born just prior to or after the fall of the Berlin Wall might not understand the Cold War at all. Somewhere out there is a whole generation that misses the significance of being five minutes to midnight (which, according to the University of Chicago, we presently are). Someone of that generation could well find Watchmen absurd because the real-world events Moore references are alien to them.

No surprise, then, that someone who isn’t fandom-savvy, or lacks knowledge of and investment in the original text, or who is unmoved by the distinctive features and clichés of the form might find fanwork off-putting. They’re judging it out of context and according to the wrong rubric instead of according to the standards of the community it occurs in. It’s like complaining that oranges aren’t mangoes. They may be fruits that are more or less the same color on the inside, but beyond that it’s a bit silly.

That isn’t code for “fandom sets the bar low.” Fans are, on the whole, more likely to notice inconsistencies, errors, and lazy writing because of their enthusiasm about the texts they’re invested in. What is true (and may lead to an overall low perception of fan fiction for outsiders) is that fanwork lacks the same sort of gate-keeping that traditional publishing benefits from. Anyone can try their hand at a spot of fan fiction and post it, and a good idea or compelling characterization can be enough that readers will excuse a less skilled writer.

Even so, it tends to be the better writers – those who tell good stories, are innovative, and have a solid grasp of construction (and a good editor) – who tend to develop a following within the community. Outsiders lack the local knowledge to find writers whose work appeals to them, and are therefore more likely to encounter things that actively turn them off, both in terms of content, overall quality, and similarity to the source material.

While fanwork is above all a recreational pursuit, it’s also a form of communal dialogue and analysis. Like mainstream writers, many fans start stories because of a “what if?” moment. Others use fan fiction to explore interests or traumas with others. Some writers employ pastiche to tell stories that only work in different contexts. Contentious decisions made in living canon by source creators can inspire a great deal of writing, from work that makes canon events more palatable by adding details which justify them, to stories that undo canon or deny it altogether.

And yes, infamously enough, fans traffic in sex, though with three years of fanwork under my belt (ahem), I think mainstream critique overstates the extent and nature of it because that makes for a better story. Still, even if fans do indulge in prurient interests now and again, who said metatextual analysis couldn’t be enjoyable? Or that a whole subculture transgressing mainstream taboos about desire and the written word isn’t a significant phenomenon on its own?

Fan fiction is a significant social and recreational outlet, as well as a mode of textual analysis. It is community literature that relies on insider knowledge, and written according to community standards which may differ substantially from the mainstream. However, within the context of the fandom subculture fan fiction serves as a legitimate form of conversation and a venue for bonding within fandom. The manner in which fanwork arises within the subculture has historical and modern precedents, while and fan writers employ many of the same techniques (e.g. satire, pastiche) employed by mainstream writers, fan fiction is a unique written form that differs from original fiction in both form and function.

In short, folklore.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a stack of extremely raunchy metatextual analysis to attend to.

About the Author

C.A. Young lives and writes in Columbia, Missouri. His work has appeared in electronic and print publications, including issue 12 of Crossed Genres and Coscom Entertainment’s anthology Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes: Zany Zombie Poetry for the Undead Head. You can find him online at www.dimlightarchive.com.