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How fan fiction went mainstream
00:21:13
Fan fiction is showing up everywhere. Today, how it became so popular and why it’s being taken more seriously by mainstream publishers.
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- [00:02]
Rachel Curzias
One of the people that I interviewed for my story was telling me that she read a fanfiction about the bandmates of One Direction, but they're all fruit in a fruit bowl. And she was like, what an absurd and outrageous idea for a story. And then she found herself incredibly shocked by how deeply moving it was, how they were able to convey all of these emotions of loss and meaning into this kind of ridiculous premise.
- [00:32]
Colby IKOWICZ
Does the fruit get eaten?
- [00:34]
Rachel Curzias
I believe different things happen to each of the fruits.
- [00:38]
Colby IKOWICZ
They get sliced up.
- [00:40]
Rachel Curzias
It rots. Yes, exactly. Like, what is life in a fruit bowl? You know, it's kind of a mixed bag.
- [00:45]
Colby IKOWICZ
Yeah. Yeah. That's Rachel Curzias. She writes for the lifestyle section at the Post. Over the past year, she's become a big reader of fan fiction, which is fans making up stories about existing characters or even real people. A lot of it is based on popular books like Harry Potter or on TV shows like Parks and Rec. Other times, stories are a bit more unique, like, say, One Direction. As a fruit bowl, nothing is really off limits. For instance, like, since I was five years old, I've always wanted to know what happened to Baby and Johnny from Dirty Dancing.
- [01:20]
Rachel Curzias
Not having searched for that particular couple, I feel incredibly confident that you would be able to find fanfic about them. And literally, literally anything you can find fanfic about Sesame Street. There are no gatekeepers in fanfiction. So I would be lying to you if I was like, everything is excellently written. But I think that the reputation is that fanfiction is poorly written, which actually just leaves you open to have your mind absolutely blown by some incredible, incredible writing. And because I think the expectations are low, when people blow you away, they really, really blow you away.
- [02:00]
Colby IKOWICZ
From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Colby IKOWICZ. It's Thursday, September 18th. Today we take a look at the world of fanfiction, how it's become so influential, and why the publishing industry is starting to take it more seriously. So I've been really excited to talk to you about this because, like, fanfiction, it's not something that I've been a big reader of, but I know that it's something that people are incredibly into. And so let's start with the very basics. What is fanfiction?
- [02:40]
Rachel Curzias
Fanfiction is basically any story that is based on pre existing characters or shows or books or worlds. And those pre existing characters could be invented by another writer or creator, or it could be real world fan fiction based on athletes, celebrities, politicians, really Anything you could think of, someone has probably felt inspired to write about and these days now publish online.
- [03:06]
Colby IKOWICZ
I will say in advance of this conversation, I did go, like, down a deep dive of Donald Trump fanfiction, and there's a lot of it.
- [03:14]
Rachel Curzias
It is really fascinating to read political fanfiction because it's clearly a way that people are wrestling with current events, with power dynamics, and trying to understand them kind of like, askew. Like, could I understand politics if instead of this political relationship, it's a sexual relationship? Like, especially last year, there was so much political fan fiction about Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
- [03:39]
Colby IKOWICZ
Oh, interesting. Like, traditionally, where are they sharing and reading? Like, where are people finding fan fiction initially?
- [03:47]
Rachel Curzias
People? And when I say initially, I mean in the 1960s and 70s, there were zines, and dedicated fans would write these works and compile them and send them to each other. But that was all very particularly in one show or one fandom. Like, maybe we're both Star Trek fans and we're writing that fanfic. But the big shift that's happened in the past, like, 20 or so years is that now you can find most fandoms on these bigger platforms, where all of them are kind of compiled together as opposed to Balkanized into each fandom. And the biggest one, certainly the one that I use the most, is Archive of Our own, also called AO3, though you can also find it on Wattpad and Tumblr and just in a lot of various places online. But Archive of Our Own was actually created by librarians and has a really strong archivist bent of can we save and preserve all of these works?
- [04:40]
Colby IKOWICZ
That's so interesting. I mean, how people are writing fanfiction and then how many people are, like, engaging and reading it?
- [04:46]
Rachel Curzias
A website like Archive Our Own has tens of millions of unique visitors every month, which I think is pretty tremendous. I think when you go by, like, hits or clicks, it's a little difficult because, you know, if you're reading a chapter, it might be the same person again. But it's tough for me to say how many people are writing fan fiction. Some of the people that I interviewed said that before the Internet, they were just kind of inspired after reading, say, Sweet Valley High or whatever, of just, I wanna write a story about this. And it's almost this, like, intrinsic urge that we have when we hear stories, we want to contribute to them or be a part of them. And I spoke with one person who told me that the whole idea of fanfiction kind of harkens back to, like, ancient Troubadours, where it was, they would come to every town and they would have these certain characters, these archetypes that everyone knew, and those are who they would tell stories about, because that's who everyone was interested in. And it's kind of the same thing of, like, these characters that are kind of in the ether. What can we do with them? How can we make them special? And that's why I think you see on fan fiction, and honestly, traditional publishing, a lot of takes that involve Greek mythology or biblical tropes or all of these different, different things that have kind of been in the creative ooze for a long time.
- [06:06]
Colby IKOWICZ
Well, I was gonna say that, like, if the definition of fan fiction is something that's kind of based on or inspired by something else, then, like, almost everything we consume is kind of fan fiction, right? I mean, how do you. Like, what's the distinguishing.
- [06:21]
Rachel Curzias
So that is such a good question, because I think that that's something that people who are really involved in fan fiction are wrestling with. If you ascribe to this kind of big tent philosophy, then you're right. Basically, everything is fanfic, right? Like, most of Shakespeare's stuff, for sure, like Romeo and Juliet is fanfic of Pyramus and Thisbe, and then all of his historical plays are basically real person fiction, right? I mean, east of Eden is definitely Bible fanfic, and by that measure, so is Paradise Lost. I mean, I could go on and on. I mean, most of the recent Pulitzer Prize winners for fiction are technically fanfic, right? Like, think about Percival Everett's James, which is a new version of Huckleberry Finn told from a different perspective. Now, I think that that is the big tent, right? Fan fiction is everything and everywhere. But if everything is fan fiction, then, like, what is the point of a definition, right? And so the more that I was talking to people who really, like, wrestle with these questions on a daily basis, what they were telling me is there is something very unique about the things that are created in the gift economy, right? Because so much of fanfic is based on copywritten work. You can't sell it, right? So you're just doing it for the fun of it, and you're doing it to connect with other people and with the stories. And so there's a version of fan fiction where it is things happening kind of like outside of the marketplace.
- [07:47]
Colby IKOWICZ
So when you say gift economy, you mean, like, people are just putting this stuff out there for people to read for free, right?
- [07:51]
Rachel Curzias
Exactly. Because you can't sell it. That would be, you know, that would be breaking the law. If you were trying to make money on your own Harry Potter story. Like, you might get sued.
- [08:00]
Colby IKOWICZ
Yeah. And so almost certainly.
- [08:02]
Rachel Curzias
But the fact that all of this is being written without hopes of making money on it means that people have the ability to be way more creative. Right. And if I'm not worried about how the audience is going to respond or what advertisers will do, I can really play around both in terms of like, form, in terms of subject. And you know, if I am running, say an ABC procedural, I have a lot of shareholders who I have to engage with before I can decide to do a pairing. If I'm just someone who watches the show and I imagine two people being together, I can just write it. I can just make it happen. And so I think that that's why we're starting to see, and have been seeing now for some years, a lot of practices that started in fanfiction now bubbling into the traditional publishing world. Because a lot of the most successful things that we've seen begin in fanfiction are now kind of entering the traditional marketplace.
- [09:00]
Colby IKOWICZ
I definitely we're going to talk more about that for sure. But I am wondering, like, for this story that you wrote about fanfic, you actually interviewed like several fanfic writers. What did they tell you about why they love writing it?
- [09:13]
Rachel Curzias
A big part of it is the community that you are writing things for, people who share your kind of niche or particular interests, and that it kind of becomes a writing seminar. There's a big part of fan fiction where you have what are called beta readers. You have people read your stories before you publish them, kind of to a broader audience and those people are kind of giving you tips. So especially if we're talking about teens, for example, being a very famous demographic of fanfic writers and readers, there's a lot of talk out there about how like teens don't like writing. Teens aren't interested. It's like, well, a lot of them are certainly very interested in writing about things that they're already interested in. And guess what? It's making them better. I also spoke to the writing duo who go by the pen name Christina Lauren. Their names are Lauren Billings and Christina Hobbs. They actually met writing Twilight fanfic and now they're best selling authors together. And one thing that Christina told me that was so lovely was she compared the fanfiction community to going to a concert. I just remember it's the same feeling you get when you're in a concert where you're just surrounded by people who.
- [10:24]
Colby IKOWICZ
Are sort of, like, as breathlessly happy.
- [10:27]
Rachel Curzias
About something as you are, that, like, share joy.
- [10:31]
Colby IKOWICZ
And that's what it is. The fact that, like, people love a.
- [10:33]
Rachel Curzias
Thing so much they want to read. You know, Harry Styles as an apple. I have friends whose, like, frontal lobes were forged in the flames of fanfic. Like, since they were teenagers, they have been in this world. And that's not me. I literally got into it, like, a year ago. And I think that's why I can really see now, like, oh, there's so much fan fiction everywhere, and I'm just noticing it. And I live so much of my life not seeing it. But with those friends, I feel like my relationship with them is so strengthened because we talk about fanfiction all the time.
- [11:11]
Colby IKOWICZ
After the break, how fan fiction leapt from online fringes into the mainstream. We'll be right back. You know, this idea that fanfic, you know, people don't think of it as, like, good writing or serious writing, that, you know, it's just, like, super fans. But you said that it's starting to seep into kind of the main publishing world. What does that mean? How is it crossing over?
- [11:43]
Rachel Curzias
Some of the writers that I spoke to told me that it used to be seen as almost like a black mark on you if you were a fanfic writer, and now trying to go traditional, that it was, like, weird or something like that. That is definitely no longer the case.
- [11:57]
Colby IKOWICZ
Okay.
- [11:57]
Rachel Curzias
Basically, you see agents seeing popular fics and soliciting those authors to say, like, ooh, do you think that we could turn this into a traditionally published book? Or do you have any pitches? Cause I love writing. You also see, I think based on the popularity of fanfic, the way that books are marketed is so especially genre books, it's based on tropes. Like, they'll be like, oh, one. Only one bed. She fell first, he fell harder. Like, all of these various things, like, Archive of Her Own didn't invent the one bed trope, but it certainly popularized being able to search for it. And so now people know that they can kind of, like, search for these things, and they want to search for them in traditionally published works as well. Another thing that I learned when I spoke with writers was that they feel like the first person. Present tense writing is something that was popularized through fanfiction. This sense of, like, deep urgency in telling a story and has since seeped into traditional publishing and I would say even more broadly, like, a very popular thing to do in fanfic. Is queer pairings that didn't exist in the canon work and these sometimes angsty, sometimes really joyful stories about these pairings. And just overall, I would say in traditional publishing you're seeing a lot more queer romances.
- [13:15]
Colby IKOWICZ
Like, what I'm gathering is that a lot of the fanfic has to do with romantic relationships, what happened next? Or relationships that didn't exist in the original work. And you want to know what would happen to them. So, like, is the content PG or is it often sex Forward.
- [13:31]
Rachel Curzias
There is a lot of. Of explicit works on Archive of Our Own and in fanfiction, more general, I would say that there's so much wrestling with desire and sometimes that is pg. Like there are absolutely some fan fictions that you could read to your 7 year old and a lot of them have ratings. Like they'll say explicit or mature or teens and up or what have you, but I would definitely read them first before you start reading them for a seven year old. And a lot of fan fiction has a reputation of only being smut. And there are absolutely so many fanfics that are just about characters getting it on in like, very particular and sometimes shocking ways. But I think that doesn't entirely encompass what fan fiction is.
- [14:17]
Colby IKOWICZ
Interesting. So what do you think has changed that has made it kind of more mainstream?
- [14:25]
Rachel Curzias
I think part of it is that traditional publishing is like looking for ways to be profitable. And now you can literally see how many people are reading these fan fictions and it's millions of people. Another thing is that a lot of people who now comprise the literary world, like editors and agents, grew up reading fan fiction. And so they don't view it askance in the same way where maybe previous generations did. They view it as, yeah, this shaped me, and these are legit writers also. I just think that you see a growing awareness that you can start writing anywhere, right? Like, you don't need to have a particular pedigree. Like people can go on TikTok and go viral with a certain story and suddenly they have a book deal. So why not fan fiction writers?
- [15:10]
Colby IKOWICZ
I mean, one of the most famous examples of that, of course, is the 50 shades of grey.
- [15:15]
Rachel Curzias
100%. And yeah, famously 50 shades of grey was Twilight fan fiction.
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Colby IKOWICZ
Right.
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Rachel Curzias
And I think that that really opened people's eyes even to the idea that, oh, but they have different names and there's no vampires.
- [15:28]
Colby IKOWICZ
And I always wondered about that.
- [15:30]
Rachel Curzias
Actually.
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Colby IKOWICZ
Can you explain that? Because in the original version of the fanfic, was it Edward and Jacob and Bella? Was that her name.
- [15:37]
Rachel Curzias
I have to be totally honest with you. This is a major fanfiction blind spot for me. I have not read Twilight. I have not read Fifty Shades of Grey. But my understanding is that it was always what's called, like, an au, an alternate universe. I see. And this is quite popular, right? Like, there are a lot of times where you'll find characters, but maybe instead of meeting at work, they met in a coffee shop. Maybe one of them is actually a rock star and the other is their bodyguard or things like that. You see characters kind of transposed into totally different worlds.
- [16:10]
Colby IKOWICZ
Interesting. So then from there, like, these fanfic authors that you spoke to, are they excited by the fact or optimistic that there is a way for them to then move into, like, a profitable form of writing?
- [16:26]
Rachel Curzias
It totally depends on the person. I think some people probably feel like anyone who gets a traditional contract is, like, selling out. I think some people are pretty jazzed about the idea of making money off of their pastime. I think it also depends on how we talk about fanfiction. Right. Like, for some people, fanfiction is a stepping stone to. To traditional publishing. For others, it's an end in itself, and it is pleasurable for its own purpose, and there's no need to then get a book deal or something like that.
- [16:59]
Colby IKOWICZ
You know, with the growing interest in fan fiction, like, where do you think it goes from here? Like, is it just gonna keep getting bigger?
- [17:06]
Rachel Curzias
I feel like it's already pretty big. I think also I would be remiss not to talk about, like, I think fanfiction is, like, somewhat pure, but, like, fandoms more broadly can be really toxic and messed up. And so I'm generally inspired by. When I look at fan fiction and you can comment or what have you, the comments are pretty tame, that there is this understanding that this is somebody who gave you a gift. Right. Like, they didn't have to write this. They wrote it in the hopes that you would enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it, basically keep your mouth shut and move on. But I think that as you find more people getting interested in it, maybe fewer people have that understanding of try to be nice here.
- [17:46]
Colby IKOWICZ
Yeah.
- [17:47]
Rachel Curzias
That being said, I also think that the kind of what are the most popular will always change and kind of ebb and flow a little bit. And so I'm just kind of curious to see what happens with that. And I don't really even have any guesses because I'm always just shocked by what people write about in a good way. Like, to me, one of the. My favorite feelings in the world is being surprised. And I'm always surprised when I look at fan fiction.
- [18:13]
Colby IKOWICZ
Yeah. It's interesting what you said about it being pure and this opportunity for people to kind of express themselves and, and be creative. And I was sitting here thinking, like, I wonder how AI is going to impact that. Have any of the authors you've spoken to, are they worried about that?
- [18:29]
Rachel Curzias
I have absolutely seen controversies online about people who used AI to publish fanfic. And in a lot of ways that flies in the face of everything fanfic is, which is you're doing the effort because the doing is pleasurable.
- [18:47]
Colby IKOWICZ
Yeah.
- [18:48]
Rachel Curzias
But I also think some people just like want that dopamine rush of publishing something and then hopefully people respond to it and what have you. So I've definitely seen those controversies. I'm sure, like basically everything else we will see kind of what AI does or can do. I have also seen a lot of people putting their stories on. On private mode in the hopes that kind of like those AI crawlers that train themselves on websites won't be able to train themselves on the fixed set. People write. So it is absolutely a presence in the fanfiction community and people are figuring out kind of how to combat it or wrestle with it or figure out is there an appropriate use for it. And I think probably different people come down in different places on that. To your question of the quote unquote purity of fanfiction, I think that for me, as somebody who is literally a professional writer and like writes because I like it, but also cause like I have to, it was really delightful for me to get into fanfiction and remember, like a lot of people write just cause it's fun as hell. That really inspired me and just made me feel really grateful. Every time I sit down like at the keyboard, I think about how there are people who sit at the keyboard just in the hopes that like maybe they'll make someone else giggle or maybe they'll make someone else cry and like just doing it for the love of the game is so beautiful to me.
- [20:13]
Colby IKOWICZ
I love that. Thank you so much for coming on and talking to me about this.
- [20:16]
Rachel Curzias
Yeah.
- [20:17]
Colby IKOWICZ
Can't think of a better way to end the conversation. So thank you. Rachel Curzias is a lifestyle reporter for the Post. That's it for Post Reports. Thanks for listening. Today's episode was produced by Sabi Robinson. It was edited by Peter Bresnan and mixed by Sam Baer. Special thanks to book's editor, John Williams. I'm Cole BJKOWICZ we'll be back tomorrow with more stories from the Washington Post. You know, I used to have a fantasy that they would. That I would play their child in, like, a Dirty Dancing sequel. So maybe I will write that.
- [21:02]
Rachel Curzias
I think maybe you should. A story about their love told from the perspective of their child. Sounds incredible, and I would absolutely read it.
- [21:09]
Colby IKOWICZ
Okay, well, I'll send you my first draft.
- [21:11]
Rachel Curzias
I'm looking forward to it.