We’re back to inflating the value of fanfiction as Real Literature ™ (or rather, claiming everything else is fan fiction so you can’t say anything “bad” or critical about fan fiction at any point) and I just… want to shout. 

No seriously, I saw someone on Tumblr say that Dante’s Divine Comedy, The Odyssey, and The Epic of Gilgamesh were all fan fiction. 

They are not. 

They are not even remotely fan fiction. 

In part because fan fiction cannot exist without the community of fans, without fandom. Something that didn’t exist at any of those three points of literature. But it’s also the fact that that is a gross misunderstanding of what the Divine Comedy exists to do and doesn’t understand that myth retellings/transcriptions aren’t fan fiction. 

Ovid laying down a definitive (to him) takes on mythology in Metamorphoses, Shakespeare’s dramatic histories, the Bible… not actually fan fiction. They can be counted as transformative due to the liberties they take with oral myths and histories. I believe that’s why they get lumped in with fan fiction or viewed as proto fic but… They’re not.

And in the same vein? Lore Olympus isn’t Greek mythology fan fiction. It’s an adaptation that reinterprets established myths. The Divine Comedy is a narrative poem with a heavy religious and political influence that makes the work a primary source for some of our understanding of the dynamics and beliefs of the time. Wide Sargasso Sea isn’t Jane Eyre fan fiction. It’s a prequel that attempts to confront and peel back the realities of race, place, and misogyny in the original book. Spaceballz and the Scary Movie franchise aren’t fanworks of Star Wars and Scream, respectively. They’re parodies poking fun at established IP that made bank. 

I get that words no longer mean things in fandom, but fan fiction isn’t literature and it simply doesn’t have the same cultural value as fan fiction. This is not even a judgment call, but a fact. It’s a fact that the majority of people in fandom can write better than the Marquis de Sade… but his (use) value lies in his works’ transgressive nature and what they say about humanity (as seen through his shit-smeared lens).

Sure, we could hem and haw about the classism around what gets classified as literature or talk about “women’s work” being devalued. However, if you want to do that to justify your interest in fan fiction… We’re going to have to get analytical about that whole thing as a norm because…

Which women’s work is de/valued the most in fandom spaces? Which women get the brunt of publishing contracts to turn their fic into professional novels? Which women are punished for speaking about issues with the culture or the content?

Hm.

And something that remains a core difference between fan fiction and literature for me at least?

If I talk about race in Wide Sargasso Sea, few people (if any) will accuse me of being a puritan harming poor dead Jean Rhys for pointing out potential rough spots. (Someone will because everyone sucks, but it’s not expected.)

But if I talk about race and how East Asian media fandoms just love to slap a bitch in a clearly European-themed regency AU without regard for the concurrent eras in the sourcelands… I will be accused of being a hater and/or of committing fandom hate crimes against some fanfiction author I’m not even talking about. 

Sources

Fic-as-Lit – Stitch’s Media Mix (Very old, honestly needs an upgrade but like… 60% for sure is probably still solid as I feel like I wrote it while getting my literature MA.)

Wide Sargasso Sea – Wikipedia (I just want people to read this book. I read it in grad school when one of my cohort was doing her thesis on it and it was so fascinating.)

Fan Fiction vs. Tie-In Fiction: A Framework – Shaun Duke 

The Use Value of D.A.F. de Sade (I am as obsessed with this as I am with The Story of the Eye and a piece used in literary theory, this is… really solid, I think.)