Fan fiction

Fan fiction is a type of creative activity characterised by its relation of the creator to the subject of the creation. The creators, "fans", work with pre-existing creative works produced by someone else.

The paradigmatic example is a popular media work with a large fanbase (such as "Star Trek", "The X-Files", or "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"). Some fans write (or, increasingly, create animated films, music videos, or other types of work) their own, original works that use the basic setting and/or characters of the work.

Fan fiction and copyright

Modern copyright law in most countries significantly regulates the production of so-called "derivative works", which are new works based on original works. The copyright holders of the original work have the exclusive legal right to authorize new derivative works or copies of the original work. The copyright holders are very often corporations, in the case of popular media works, or employers in the case of works created "for hire". Original authors and creators are often the copyright-holders of "literary properties". Copyright law regulates the reproduction of "expression", and it is an open question in most countries to what extent fictional universes and fictional characters are copyrighted or copyrightable.

Because copyright law regulates the specific legal right to reproduce, distribute, and make derivative works from existing works, fan fiction is typically an unauthorized or even underground activity; and it is in most cases a non-monetary activity. While generally non-monetary, the level of accessibility of fan fiction largely depends on the attitude of the original copyright holder. Some copyright holders regard fan fiction as flattery; others maintain a neutral attitude and look the other way; others selectively police fan fiction based on their own criteria; and still others rigorously enforce their copyrights to the fullest, and try to stop the production and distribution of fan fiction. Because fan fiction may be produced privately, its production can never be entirely quelled; however, public distribution can be significantly hampered by copyright holders.

Some fan fiction does not run into any copyright issues whatsoever: fan fiction derived from sources that have gone out of copyright, that have never entered into modern copyright law to begin with (because they were placed into the public domain by their creators, for instance), or that are produced with the authorisation of the copyright owners (through express permission or through Creative Commons licenses, for example). Examples of this are common, ranging from the use of mythic sources in literature, to the endless adaptions of Shakespeare, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, to Star Wars and Star Trek tie-in novels. So-called fictional franchises or shared worlds are also a type of fan fiction, insofar as it is a person writing in a fictional universe created by someone else. To the extent these are professionally produced and commercially published, it might be considered "professional fan fiction". (Example: Marion Zimmer Bradley's edited anthology, Free Amazons of Darkover.)

Further reading

• Legal Fictions: Copyright, Fan Fiction, and a New Common Law, by Rebecca Tushnet

Fan fiction and political economy of cultural production

From the perspective of lawmakers and market economics, the bulk of fan fiction exists in the margins of cultural production, because it does not enter the market. The economic illegitimacy and cultural marginality of fan fiction keep fanficcers vulnerable, enabling the continued domination of the market by the people who control and legislate the ownership of cultural production, particularly widely-distributed, marketable popular cultural production (such as television and cinema, or the comic book industry).

Because men majoritarily control the market economics, fan fiction becomes an alternative, sometimes central area of cultural production for women. The production of a short story or novel, for instance, although it is labour-intensive, requires fewer and more accessible means than the production of a television show, or even of a fan-made movie, and can be carried out alone by isolated individuals. Women also create fannish communities, in which it is possible to exchange services such as beta-reading or mutual recommendations, criticism and appreciation, when they come into contact with each other as fans. Such services are not paid, because the end products will not earn money, and because this fandom may have little economic power, but they nonetheless enter into a form of remuneration in the exchange of cultural products.

Men also produce fan fiction, but because their relationship to the market is different from women's, under the patriarchal mode of production, their fannish endeavours do not share exactly the same characteristics. There is significant overlap between women's fannish networks and men's, but sexism necessarily colours the interactions between individuals and/or groups from each class.

See also

• Fan
• Mary Sue
• Slash
• Copyright
• Parodies and retellings (covers "derivative works", intertextual works, etc.)