Shift to the Mainstream
Fanfiction has been essential but hidden part of fan culture for decades. Now it's out in the open, for all to see. Is there still time to save it?
It was April 2020; COVID-19 was causing my world to fall apart, and I was crying over a Bucky Barnes fanfiction. I was sitting on my bed, wrapped in an old, pilled blue and white Doctor Who blanket with my sticker-covered MacBook barely balancing on my shaking lap. I hadn’t moved in the hours since starting the 100,000-word alternate universe Marvel story. In this fan creation, the infamous character was able to escape his 70-year captivity much earlier, and heal from his traumatic experiences as a brain-washed assassin through love and hope for the future.
Seeing a character I adored go through so much was both beautiful and heart-wrenching at the same time. But it had been almost a year since the Marvel Cinematic Universe had given fans any insight into what was happening with the character, and I had missed him and his world. For me, reading fanfiction was like revisiting old friends and familiar spaces. It is a way to keep the book open, to pause a movie in the last scene before the credits, or never watch the last episode of a show.
This distaste for conclusions was something I carried with me throughout my childhood – I can even remember refusing to see the third and final High School Musical movie at age eight because I hated change and didn’t want the iconic 2000s Disney Channel characters to go off to college. While I have become more accepting of finality since then, I have always struggled with change, especially fictional ones. This refusal to let go and inability to move on was why I grasped onto fanfiction so tightly when I came across it in junior high school.
Fanfiction, colloquially known as fanfic, is the act of taking characters and worlds we know from books, television shows, movies, or other forms of media and shaping them with our imagination, creating stories that are often posted on the internet. In 2019, the University of Washington’s Human-Centered Data Science Lab performed a study focusing on fanfiction demographics and participation that showed that 79% of participants are women and 51% are between the ages of 19 and 29.
Early fanfiction can be traced back to the original Sherlock Holmes novels or the 1960s Star Trek fandom zines, but the art form became accessible and well-known in the early 2000s with FanFiction.net, one of the early sharing platforms. In the 2010s, Wattpad grew in popularity, drawing in fans of the hit British boyband One Direction and the Marvel Cinematic Universe equally.
These days, the most popular platform is Archive of Our Own, with 94% of the community surveyed at the University of Washington actively using the website. In this elaborate server, works can be sorted and filtered based on ratings and content, allowing for extensive exploration of genres and themes. These can range from intense tales rated explicit for brutal violence and sexual content to fun, cozy alternate universe stories that take characters from one Intellectual Property and place them in a whole new world.
The first fanfiction I can remember reading was an “Avengers Tower” story, a genre of fanfic that rose in popularity after the success of 2012’s The Avengers. However, instead of the heroic characters fighting aliens on the streets of New York, these stories focused on daily life in their headquarters, like the Mighty Thor trying Pop-Tarts for the first time or Captain America watching Gilmore Girls. It was a little silly but comforting and something unique to the space. Stories like these kept me in the universe I loved long after the credits rolled.
Once hidden from the public and deemed as something reserved for crazed fangirls, these stories grew popular and even garnered notice from professional publishing companies. Infamous works like Anna Todd’s After, a Harry Styles story, and Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis, a Star Wars fanfiction about Kylo Ren and Rey, were revised and published as actual novels. Although this form of publication has happened before, with works like Fifty Shades of Grey having possible roots as a Twilight fanfic, this was a much more evident attachment, with characters' names and likeness identical to the original stories. Just this summer, Harry Styles received the fanfiction treatment again, with a hit film starring Anne Hathaway and undeniable references to Harry Styles and his former group.
In the coming months, yet another infamous fanfiction will be found on the shelves of local bookstores: Manacled by SenLinYu, an enemies-to-lovers theocratic government romance centered around Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter, is being reimagined as a novel called Alchemised. Fanfiction is no longer concealed in hidden tabs on people’s phones or deleted search histories – it’s a vivid, money-making industry dominated by women writers whose talent blossomed under the spotlight. This space, once seen as a shameful subculture, is now mainstream and acceptable. However, the question of whether fanfiction is a proper art form and why it is created remains unanswered.
I met with Isabella ‘Izzy’ Steel over Zoom on a Friday morning. “I’ve read some of your work,” I brought up as we started, her pale, freckled face turning a burning shade of scarlet as she dropped it into her palms. During the COVID-19 lockdown, the Nashville native had mastered an ability she had been practicing since youth – writing fanfiction.
As a young girl, long before the fanfic boom of the 2010s, Steel and her friend were fans of the Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises. With these worlds and their imaginations at their disposal, they wrote their primitive versions of fanfic, creating their own plots and characters within the universes.
“My mom found it and was like, ‘Oh, is this fanfiction or something?’ And I was like, ‘What is fan fiction? I don't know what that is,” she recalled. Steel loved having the ability to expand on characters and worlds that felt incomplete. “It’s about taking Intellectual Properties and making them into something really meaningful and beautiful, but also just because it brings people joy.”
According to Karen Shackleford, PhD, who studies media psychology, the joy that stems from fan content creation is driven by nostalgia, the bittersweet mixture of love and sadness. “It’s that feeling of nostalgia that makes you feel safe, happy, and comforted like going home would, but we can't go home because the home has changed. People have aged. Things have changed. We've changed, but we can go back to the same movie or book,” she explained to me. There is also the idea that fans need to stay in the world they love and share it with others: “Fans are actually very social, and they get a lot of gratification from sharing with other fans.”
As Steel entered her teenage years, fanfiction writing continued to be a social outlet, with her following stories focusing on Iron Man, debuting shortly after the success of the 2008 movie. She dabbled in other fandoms, like The Daevabad Trilogy, which also inspired her screen name, Daevastanner, but eventually found her home writing adaptations of Sarah J. Maas’s bestselling romance-fantasy series A Court of Thorns and Roses.
Her most famous works are multi-chapter stories about Azriel and Gwyneth Berdara, two characters in the series who fans are allured by. Steel had been intrigued by their dynamic when she read the series and felt like their undefined relationship was something she could explore in her work. “There's something about certain characters that scratch my brain in this way that makes me want to dive into it,” she told me, “I don't have this impulse to do this with every single character in any series, but there was something about the way those arcs were so clearly unfinished.”
Azriel and Gwyneth’s tragic backstories, which involved sexual assault, childhood abuse, and struggles with mental health, also gave her the platform to talk about PTSD and Alzheimer’s, two issues near her heart. In the seventh chapter of one of her stories, the writer starts with an author’s note: “When I write Azriel’s relationship with his mother, it’s strongly based on a personal relationship of mine with a family member who struggled with a form of PTSD due to her Alzheimer's.” The paragraph continues with a message about what readers should take away from this: how people with mental health just need compassion and understanding, and the good days you have with them are worth more than the bad ones.
In the spring of 2021, Steel started writing “A Court of Smoke and Shadow” on Archive of Our Own and completed it later that year, accumulating over 50,000 words and 41,000 reads. While some of this success came naturally through readers searching the site for works that matched their interests, most came from social media, where she had started advertising her work.
“I devised this sort of strategy by posting teasers for the next chapter on TikTok and then cross-posting them to Tumblr and then Instagram. That drove people from the videos to my platform and then back, creating a nice little circle,” she said. This social media idea built a brand for Steel, which is relatively new to the fanfiction world. People’s real names and faces became intertwined with their works, allowing for more connection and fame.
“I remember a recurring fear as a teenager was having Archive open on the Safari app and someone going through my phone,” I shared with the writer, grimacing. She chuckled and agreed, sharing how hiding her reading and writing was common practice until a few years ago. “I wrote fanfiction on apps on my phone into adulthood, and my husband was like, ‘What are you doing?’ I was like, nothing. Don't worry about it. And then one day, he eventually found it, and he was like, ‘I didn't know you wrote fanfiction, that's so cool,’” she recalled, “He very much nurtured that nerdiness.”
It also helped that Steel saw the rise of the success of fanfiction writers, as well as the public acceptance of published fanfiction like After and The Love Hypothesis. This feeling of affirmation is one of the reasons she supports the idea of publishing fanfiction as independent work: “Fanfic has been used as a derogatory term for a while, but I think people started to realize that there is excellent fan fiction; Lord of the Rings has so much influence in George R.R. Martin's stuff. Agatha Christie wrote Poirot, a gentleman detective who is a sweet version of Sherlock Holmes. So I feel like fanfiction has existed in publishing for so long; it's just not something we recognize that often.”
These so-called “undisclosed fanfictions” have always been a part of the book world, with books like Julia by Sandra Newman being George Orwell’s 1984 fanfic disguised as a retelling or Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys being Jane Eyre fanfic but advertised as an unofficial prequel. Even when books aren’t strictly fanfictions, authors are often inspired by books they’ve read or stories they’ve heard. This is especially prevalent with religions and mythologies, like in The Palace of Illusions, a best-selling selling by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni that gives a different perspective to the Mahabharata, a Hindu epic or The Song of Achilles, a novel by Madeline Miller that retells the Trojan War from the perspective of Patroclus. If these works were labeled publicly as fanfiction, it might allow more people to accept the genre as proper writing and give people the confidence to admit that they partake in it, not just young women online.
When asked why she thinks women have often ruled the fanfiction space, Steel admits that it is something she talks about a lot with her husband. “I think that a lot of the time, women are much more comfortable being openly emotional. There's a stigma around men being emotional, and that gets put into fan fiction and fan art, and people connect with the art that is openly emotional and vulnerable. My most popular fanfics are ones that are angsty and sad,” she shared.
Of course, this idea – that women are better at portraying their emotions – isn’t new. Gender and emotional expression have often been researched, with studies like the one done at George Mason University’s psychology department showing that young girls develop language skills earlier. They are, therefore, more likely to be encouraged to discuss emotions, while young boys are not. But, we know in real life this isn’t exactly true – men have been able to capture emotion and passion through many forms of writing and art, even when those expressions were societally frowned upon.
Anna Zwolinski, who I sat down with over zoom a few weeks later thinks similarly to Steel, mentioning that women may have an easier time digging into these characters: “I’d say that women are a little bit more comfortable, just in the way the world is, with connecting with characters more openly and really showing that they understand those intense emotions.”
Zwolinski knows all about delving into deep emotional characters – her most famous work ‘Dealing With Our Demons’ is an 822,321-word, 177-chapter deep dive into the complex and traumatized characters of the Six of Crows universe, a duology written by Leigh Bardugo. The stories Zwolinski, who is known by her eager fans as Ravenyenn19, focuses on are the ones of Inej Ghafa, a young woman who was sex trafficked as a child and is continuously fighting for her freedom, and Kaz Brekker, a troubled man with a physical disability, PTSD, and haphephobia, an extreme aversion to skin contact. Through her work, these characters can build an understanding of their own traumas and see the light at the end of the tunnel.
“If you combine all of the things they've been through together, the fact that they still came out on the other side is incredible, and seeing them heal is one of the biggest things that I wanted to write,” she told me as her painted fingertips waved over her keyboard, “It’s seeing that you can get through it, even if it's step by step by step. I think that's really important to put out there.”
Although Zwolinski started writing when she was very young, creating stories for her family to read about cats, she didn’t discover fanfiction's power until much later. Her first fic was for The Vampire Diaries, a CW show based on a hit book series, and was shared amongst friends. This built her confidence, allowing her to eventually post her first Six of Crows adaptation in 2020. “I think that it took a long time for me to realize how much it could connect people,” she admitted with a slight crimson, matching her matte lipstick, tinting her full, ivory cheeks.
This connection is one of the reasons she is unsure if publishing fanfiction as independent novels is the right path for the community to take. “There's the part of me that really thinks that fan fiction needs to stay separate because it's free stories for everybody. It's a free platform for writers to publish their work, for people to read without having to try,” she mentioned. She also worries about copyright infringement boundaries. The writer has had personal experience with people trying to profit off her work, with some fans taking ‘Dealing With Our Demons,’ binding copies and selling them for profit. While she was able to have these copies taken down, it still caused an understandable amount of stress. “That's one of the things that fan fiction blowing up can happen,” she exasperated as she brushed her classic light brown victory curls out of her eyes.
As our conversation continued, Zwolinski told me some of her favorite aspects from her extensive story – parts about the couple learning to communicate and show affection. She also shared that while she dreams of being a conventionally published author one day, she never plans to adapt this work.
“I don't feel like my fanfiction could be adapted into another life even if I tried to. It's so very much Six of Crows,” the young woman said, “I think sometimes writers stretch it a little bit, and then it's not quite covered up that it was a fanfiction when it gets turned into a show or a movie or something.”
“I actually read The Love Hypothesis; I bought it from Barnes and Noble and did not realize it was fanfiction until I looked at the front cover and thought, ‘Wow, this guy really looks like Adam Driver,’” I confided in her, which carried us both into a fit of laughter. Zwolinski finished with a tight smile: “I really don't want to see the publishing industry become the type of situation where they just kind of start allowing authors to write these mainstream stories and then very thinly veil that they took from these other big franchises,” she said, “because even though they are big franchises, it's not fair to whoever created the original work to just be like, ‘it's totally not yours,’ but it definitely is.”
The fear of stealing work or being too close to the source material has been a concern for fanfiction writers for decades, linking back to the distaste legacy author Anne Rice had for the craft. In the late 1990s, the Interview With the Vampire writer made it clear that she owned her characters, found any recreations offensive, and even started taking legal action against fic creators. This started a trend of including disclaimers at the beginning of fanfictions, stating that these works were non-profit and all characters and ideas belonged to the original author.
It did little to appease Rice or the many other authors who followed the trend of sending lawyers after the fanfiction community.
These days, as long as works remain on public sites with no profitability, writers are in the clear from lawsuits. But as fanfiction continues to be published, the lines have begun to blur. Pieces like Manacled, or Alchemised as it is now named, take Intellectual Properties, such as Harry Potter and The Handmaid’s Tale, and convert them into their own image.
For Gina Kim, the lines remain decently firm – she writes her fanfiction with one side of her brain, and her upcoming debut fantasy novel with the other. Similarly to Manacled, Kim shapes her fanfiction around Dramione, a fan-created coupling of Harry Potter’s Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy. This proposed relationship is a heated debate topic in the fandom; many consider it sacrilegious, and at some points, cruel given their history. Still, she has seen it as a way to explore these characters at their core and the traits they share: “I always love to see how authors essentially strip a familiar character of their canon qualities and reshape and explore what life would’ve been like had those characters grew up in different environments or morals.”
She also shared that writing fanfiction for her fans showed her that she can invoke emotions: “My main goal with the story I had written was to make at least one person cry; that was all I wanted. To see that I was able to do that, you know, it really made me sit there and think, ‘Wow, I can actually do this.’”
Kim has been active in the fandom world for years, and is yet another fanfiction writer that has utilized the rising popularity of the medium to gain a following online. Her Instagram and TikTok, which are a mix of videos advertising her latest fic, reviewing books, and talking about writing, have amassed thousands of followers and have landed her brand deals and invitations to special events like the 2024 New York Comic Con. Although she is currently taking some time away from her Harry Potter alternate universe story to focus on her novel, she still regards the narrative she built as one of the most important things she’s ever done.
“For a while in my life, I felt lost and like I didn’t know what I was meant to do with my life. But every time I create something, whatever it might be, it just feels right,” Kim mentioned.
One of the panels at this year’s New York Comic Con, which was hosted by Tamara Fuentes, the entertainment editor at Cosmopolitan, discussed the impact that women have had on fandom culture, fan art, and fanfiction, as well as its eventual shift to mainstream media. It was important to Kim that she clarified that while she loves that women have built a space within the fandom community with fanfiction, as the panel suggested, she has never wanted it to be exclusionary. “I have actually seen a rather large increase of men reading fanfiction. I can’t say whether or not this is new, or perhaps they just feel more comfortable and welcome in the community to openly share that they are also a part of the fandom, but regardless, I love it,” she said.
“What about the shame of it all,” I asked, “is it because we see fanfiction as feminine?”
“I think, in many instances, that statement carries a lot of truth. But when it comes to fanfiction, it didn’t matter if you were male or female. If you read it before it was cool or acceptable, you received judgment,” she expressed, “Honestly, I feel like it was more acceptable for women to read and create fanfiction a lot earlier than it was for men. Which is why it makes me really happy to see more men talking about fanfiction, seeing it published, and joining the community.”
Kim’s attraction to fanfiction and fandom stems from the community aspect. “One thing that I absolutely love about the fanfiction community is how it brings so many people from various parts of the world and walks of life together,” said the midwesterner, “Regardless of people’s differences, they get to come together to celebrate and nerd out about this one thing that they all love. I know that for me, and so many others, the love we have for the fandoms is often rooted in this feeling of safety.”
I realized then that this is what had always drawn me to fanfiction. This idea of bonding over things we love with others and not feeling alone in hard times is what being in a community is all about. It is why I reached for Archive of Our Own amid the COVID-19 pandemic or in the wake of the 2024 election. It allowed me to temporarily disconnect from reality and immerse myself in a fictional world I knew very well. It was like crawling into bed at the end of a long day at work or climbing into a warm car to escape the bitter cold.
For creators like Izzy Steel, fanfiction is a social activity, a way to bond with her spouse and friends and build an online social network. It also provided her a space to cope with grief about her family. Anna Zwolinski utilizes fanfiction as a therapeutic form of creativeness, as a way to explore characters she loves and take apart their stories in her own narrative. Gina Kim has used the fanfiction community to build her writing skills, advocating for herself as a creator and even getting a publishing deal.
With the fanfiction world changing so rapidly, as the privacy of anonymous screen names dissolves and the act of creating fanfic becomes a part of the mainstream zeitgeist, the fear of this community aspect disappearing is prominent. Writing fanfiction used to be a thankless job, but now it comes with thousands of fans, a social media presence, and, occasionally, a book deal. Many fans worry that the escalation of the space could damage its integrity and make that connection with the fans less genuine.
Another troubling change that threatens fanfiction's future is the recent use of artificial intelligence to create content. Over the past two years, AI stories have been popping up all over Archive of Our Own. Without writers like Steel, Zwolinski, or Kim, these stories would just be words on the internet, not a thriving community. “AI doesn't have emotions. It can't understand the point of that one tragic scene in chapter 49,” one Reddit user wrote on a fanfiction thread, “It can't understand why the audience is so happy to get their hearts broken. It cannot understand why the characters act the way they do because it cannot understand emotions!” Whether this is a symptom or a result of the rising popularity of fanfiction is unknown, but the fear of losing what makes this subculture so unique is real.
Despite this, fanfiction writers are still persevering and creating – forging bonds between fans like me, providing a therapeutic release for those struggling, and building amazing stories within worlds we adore. “I think what we're all trying to do,” Zwolinski said, “is to make it more manageable to understand life in one way or another.”
See you between the pages
-Nicolette C