How Fanfiction is Keeping Literature Alive

By: Annabel Adams, Senior Writer Edited by: Marissa Wrubleski

Bustling communities live in corners of the Internet, grinding out free literary works for the public to enjoy. These works, known as fanfictions (or “fanfics”) are usually posted on sites like Archive of Our Own (ao3), Wattpad or Tumblr, and can sometimes be the length of print novels. Fanfics are usually about fictional characters, with authors spinning the characters’ stories into ones that entertain and resonate with fans. These stories can become famous in fandoms, and have even been made into feature films like After (2019) or Fifty Shades of Grey (2015).

As of 2020, ao3 hosts over 6 million stories in over 36,700 fandoms. Similarly, Wattpad is home  to 90 million readers and writers.

Fanfics are more important than ever with President Trump and his administration’s censorship affecting print literature with book bans. In states like Texas, there are more than 600 books that have been banned from high school students. Many of these books contain topics of queerness, racism, and misogyny.

On March 17, the “Stop the Sexualization of Children” Act was voted out of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. This bill would allow federal institutions to withhold funding from public schools if they do not ban “sexually oriented material,” which includes media discussing “transgenderism.” The representative who introduced this bill, Mary Miller, also voted against the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022.

In an interview with AMNY, a spokesperson for the Brooklyn Public Library named Frizi Bodenheimer discussed how banning books from children and teenagers could stunt their empathy development and self-discovery journeys,

“What message does [book banning] send to a young person who’s just figuring themselves out about who they are?” she said. 

When teenagers and young adults are restricted from exploring their identities (or simply stories they enjoy) via print literature, it’s important to protect the safe spaces of the internet they can turn to.

Fanfic websites provide endless amounts of free literature for readers to enjoy and comment on. Readers can also build community with each other, and bond over a shared interest. They also allow for a very easy self-publishing process.

In an interview with Vogue, novelist Alexandra Romanoff discussed how consuming fanfiction helped her develop her fictitious voice as a writer,

“By the time I got to college, I figured I wasn’t cut out for fiction,” she said. “But then fan fiction came back into my life in my mid-20s…My first story was short…But instead of the static brooding and aimless wandering I usually described, these scenes had direction to them. Dialogue, desire, humor. Life.”

While fanfiction helped Romanoff develop as a writer, it provides other writers with book and movie deals. SenLinYu’s novel Alchemised began as a Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger fanfiction, and has now been picked up for a seven-figure movie deal by Legendary Entertainment. While it started as a fanfic, it grew into its own stories outside of its ties with the Harry Potter universe. With each generation discovering fanfiction, a new pool of up-and-coming writers develops, learning from each other’s stories.

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