#20 The History of Fanfiction

What do ancient Roman poetry, medieval visions of hell, and modern fanfiction websites all have in common?

Mythology as Fanfiction

• Ovid’s Metamorphosis

• Mythology

• Homer’s Iliad

• Storytelling culture as the roots of “fanfiction”

Dante, the middle ages and self insert fanfiction

• The Divine Comedy - Dante’s journey through hell, purgatory and heaven with virgil

• Self insert and RPF 

• Dante put the people he had drama or arguments with in hell

Shakespeare, the invention of modern fandom and the writing of history as fanfiction

• Focus on the histories-  based on tudor propaganda of the wars of the roses and Tudor obsession with Henry V and the English claim over the French

• Witchcraft and Macbeth - effectively fanfiction of James VI & I’s lineage

• Impact of this - Richard III’s hunchback, “Et tu Brute” etc

Print Culture

• Austen fans

• Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes

  • People writing fanfic of the stories after CD killed Sherlock off - the roots of Fix-it-fic

Star Trek and modern fanfic

• Creation of fandom community spaces, zines and slash fiction

  • Queerness in fanfic, Kirk/Spock fics

• X-Files

• Queer practise

• Women dominated spaces

AO3 and the internet

• Foundation of OTW & Archive of our Own

• By people wanting to engage with slash fics and produce their own content

• SuperWhoLock

• Tumblr

• Instagram fics

• Tagging systems 

One Direction and Real Person Fiction

• Wattpad

• “Y/N” fics

Mainstream fics

• Some fics being so removed from the original material that they can be published as original material

  • Harry Styles fics

  • The Love Hypothesis

  • Heated Rivalry (specifically Game Changer being Stucky fanfic)