For decades, fans of iconic media franchises have been asking themselves questions about the tales they love: What if Captain America struck up a romance with Bucky Barnes instead of Peggy Carter? What if Holmes and Watson became more than just investigative partners? What if two characters, going against all official narratives, professed their undying love for each other?
That’s the mechanism behind romantic fanfiction, a collaborative, now largely-online genre in which authors expand already-written stories and imagine steamy new scenarios within their universes. In recent years, many fanfiction stories have grown into beloved novels of their own, such as E.L. James’ “Twilight”-inspired “Fifty Shades of Grey,” and Ali Hazelwood’s bestseller “The Love Hypothesis,” which is being adapted into a feature film and originated as a viral “Star Wars” fanfic on Archive of Our Own (AO3), the world’s largest and most popular fanfiction website.
“We’re all kind of working in a pool together, trading ideas, bouncing off each other,” said Elizabeth Minkel, a writer and editor who focuses on books, digital communities, and fan culture. “[We’re] creating something called ‘fanon,’ which is the fan version of the canon of the official work.”
Minkel described the work of fanfic scholar and University of Utah English professor Anne Jamison as key in her understanding of stories as a “community,” where people could escape to argue and engage with the text.
“The possibility of people reading something all at the same time and responding to it at the same time, the tradition of telling and sharing stories collectively based on the stories that we already know and love — that’s the really old thing,” Jamison said. “I argue that copyright [came] in and changed it, and made us think that we own stories individually and write stories individually. That was a newer idea.”
Jamison says the value of fanfiction comes from its low-stakes publication process: Authors can experiment by blending genres like romance with science fiction, fantasy and mystery, all while discovering their talent and even themselves. This was the case for author Dylan Morrison, who got his start writing “Harry Potter” and Marvel stories on AO3 before publishing several queer romance novels.
“Because I’ve been doing it for such a long time, I’ve written fanfiction believing myself to be a straight cis woman, a bi-cis woman,” Morrison said. “I’ve gone through a number of iterations now. I know myself and am writing as a trans man with this huge body of work over many, many years that sort of shows me going through that process.”
While Morrison acknowledged the irony of some of his past work, especially given “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling’s widely-publicized transphobic views, he said fanfiction continues to give fans a deeper, more empathetic perspective on the source material. Jamison agreed, stating that while fanfic continues to grow and become a profitable industry, most authors write for the “inherent value” it offers them.
“As [fanfic] becomes more and more and more global, I just think more and more people will be writing and reading for the joy of it, and for the value of it and for the meaning that it brings to their life,” Jamison said.
Guests
- Anne Jamison, English professor at the University of Utah, fanfiction expert and scholar, author of “Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World.”
- Elizabeth Minkel, writer, editor and fanfiction expert, co-host of the “Fansplaining” podcast, co-curator of “The Rec Center”
- Dylan Morrison, author of “Fall Into You,” “Recipe For Trouble” and the upcoming “Second Helpings.”
