In The Beginning, There Was Fan Fiction: From The Four Gospels to Fifty Shades

If you were to lock a group of pop culture junkies and TV addicts in a bunker, tell them that the
end of the world had arrived and that they had to preserve culture for posterity by writing books,
what they would produce would be fan fiction (fanfic). This is actually the plot of a piece of
fanfic from the 1950s, in which sci-fi fans survive Armageddon and rebuild civilisation in their
own image. It may seem like a joke, but for many the rise of fanfic is "the end of the world".
Fanfic is seen as the lowest point we've reached in the history of culture – it's crass,
sycophantic, celebrity-obsessed, naive, badly written, derivative, consumerist, unoriginal –
anti-original. From this perspective it's a disaster when a work of fanfic becomes the world's
number one bestseller and kickstarts a global trend.

As we all know, Fifty Shades of Grey, originated as a piece of fanfic based on the Twilight
series. Since it hit 31 million sales in 37 countries worried voices are asking: is this the
beginning of an era in which fanfic overthrows original creation?

It's tempting to get caught up in paradigm-shift apocalypticism, but a closer inspection reveals
that fanfic is not new at all. There have been phases, fads, peaks and controversies throughout its
history and it displays an incredibly diverse range of sub-genres. There's crossover, AU, Hentai,
OoC, Uber, Mary Sue, slash fic, hate fic, anti fic and even wing fic (in which familiar characters
sprout wings and discover their new beauty through acts of mid-air coitus). So where did this
terrifying range of forms begin? And is Fifty Shades really a threat to culture?

It's time to learn some of the jargon that fans use to describe their fic.

Folklore fanfic

If one sees fanfic as "the work of amateurs retelling existing stories", then one would have to
conclude that the number one book in the middle ages – the Bible – was a work of fanfic, as
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were non-professionals retelling the same story about the same
character. However, such a definition of fanfic is skewed historically. There were no fans in the
middle ages, and there were also no authors.

If we see fanfic as "the reworking of another author's characters" then this form really only
appears for the first time in history with the invention of legal authorship in the 18th century
through copyright and intellectual property laws, after the invention of the printing press. After
all, you can't have derivative works or copies if there are no regulations over what constitutes
original works, or separates ownership from theft. Predating this change, with the exception of
educated men of letters and Christian scholars, the populace experienced stories only through the
aural folklore tradition. Such tales were re-tellings and re-makings of the same stories over
generations – this was a manuscript culture in which texts were open to intervention and were not
fixed. Nobody owned them and they were based on stock characters – The rake, the temptress, the
Stephron and the Phyllis (Shepherd & Shepherdess), the priest, the devil, the good Samaritan. In
England The Romance of the Rose was the paradigmatic example of the medieval form: one writer would
begin the story and another would complete it. Even Shakespeare, did not own the stories in his
plays. A patron would commission him to retell a story and he was paid in royalties. All stories
within the medieval period were re-workings of stories about the same characters, but we could not
call them fanfic as copyright law and the printing press had not yet sectioned off the
professional, paid, copyright owner of original texts, from the rest of the populace, creating a
subclass of fans.

Fifty shades of Austen

No sooner had the novel emerged in the 18th century than popular authors such as Daniel Defoe
started protesting that his work was being "kidnapped" and bowdlerised by amateur writers who
reduced the value of his creations with inferior impersonations. Jane Austen was less concerned
with such matters, basing characters like Wickham in Pride and Prejudice upon "The Rake" from the
lore tradition. In the 20th century with developments in cheap printing techniques and
distribution, Austen inspired fanzines. A cult of dedicated literary fans called themselves the
Janeites and the novel Old Friends and New Fancies – an Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane
Austen by Sybil Brinton, published in 1913 was the first published work of Austen fan fiction. This
is an example of continuation fic – the creation of storylines that use the same characters but
elaborate on unresolved threads within the originals to create new episodes. A century later
the Jane Austen Fanfiction Index now catalogues over two hundred thousand works of Austen fanfic,
while Goodreads currently lists 242 published books of fanfic derived from Austen. Titles include
Vanity and Vexation and Dating Mr Darcy. A great number of Austen fanfic stories are pornographic.

The strange case of Sherlock & Mary Sue

In the 1920s, fans of Conan Doyle started Sherlock Holmes societies in London and New York, at
which they debated issues such as the question of whether Holmes's addiction to cocaine was
beneficial to his perception or a sign of moral weakness. They also produced the Baker Street
Journal, a hybrid zine, halfway between scholarly research and pure fandom and at gatherings read
their own versions of stories they'd written themselves. The most notable works are examples of
self-insert fic – in which the writer meets their hero. Examples include: My First Meeting with
Sherlock Holmes by Ellery Queen and Sherlock Holmes in the White House by Roosevelt. Roosevelt in
this case was not the then President, so this was also real person fic – in which a fan writes
about politicians, sports celebrities, musicians, film stars etc, as if they are known to them –
with self-insert.

When the self-insert character is the author thinly disguised this is called Mary Sue fic. Mary
Sues are usually flawless characters who outshine the famous characters they are placed beside. In
1973, one Paula Smith wrote an infamous fanzine short story: A Trekkies Tale in which the Starship
Enterprise was visited by someone called Paula – a stunning woman who all the crew fell for. By the
late 1980s there had been a glut of Mary Sues fictionally beaming themselves up on to the Starship
Enterprise, and true fans started to view the sub-genre plots as insidious. Interestingly, by
outshining the heroes Mary Sues reveal a lurking contempt on behalf of their fan writers towards
the original characters.

The Enchanted Duplicator

From the 1930s to 50s fanfic existed almost exclusively within the sci-fi communities, in clubs
such as the Futurians (1937–1945). A fascinating bunch, obsessed with communism and latterly
fascism). Many fans from such groups, such as, Isaac Asimov, went on to become published authors,
blurring the distinction between amateur fan and professional writer. In 1952, the world's first
book of fanfic about fans appeared. The Enchanted Duplicator by Walt Willis and Bob Shaw was a
metafiction based on Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, but which described a world populated with
sci-fi fans. It chronicles the adventures of hero Jophan in "the land of Mundane". All of the
characters in the book are renamed versions of real fans from the London SF circle of the 50s and
the book was created entirely for their pleasure. The Enchanted Duplicator of the title is a
mimeograph – a precursor to the photocopier and the chosen distribution medium of the fan. The book
concludes with Jophan's discovery of "The Magic Mimeograph" which "… will produce the Perfect
Fanzine … and now the song of the trumpets filled the air, ringing across Trufandom to the far
mountains". This is fanfic squared and a way of life called "fandom".

Slash and K/S

With the growth of television in the 50s fanfic spread globally. Sci-fi fanfic then morphed and its
subtexts became dominant. Slash fic is sub-genre in which buddies from classic TV become gay
lovers. The first slash fic novel to be published was The Ring of Soshern, a 105-pager by Jennifer
Guttridge (1968). In it Spock and Kirk find themselves stranded on a remote, deserted planet. Spock
goes into the state of "Pon Far": the violent "on heat" fever that comes to Vulcans, during which
they must "have sex or die". To save Spock's life Kirk allows Spock to penetrate him, the two then
fall in love and "spend all their remaining days on the planet exploiting both the planet and each
other's bodies".

The violent-sounding "slash" is so called because of the "/" separating the names of the two
characters involved in homoerotic love or pornographic sex, for example Holmes/Watson, Spock/McCoy,
Harry Potter/Ron, Starsky/Hutch, Jesus/Judas. Over the decades slash has also come to stand for
porn of any kind, including "Het". Other subgenres in slash include femslash in which formerly het
characters have lesbian experiences (Buffy is popular). HP femslash is Harry Potter lesbian porn;
real person slash is where the writer makes love to a famous person; and, disturbingly, Chanslash
is a Japanese sub-genre which involves coitus with famous characters who are underage. These two
merge in Justin Bieber fanfic. On one site alone there are 16,040 stories available as ebooks by
8,028 authors, which feature the child star at different ages and to degrees of eroticism. The
story 1st by Cassie Chassey is a Self-insert Mary Sue Het Slash romance which includes "emotional
abuse, sexual abuse and sexual assault".

There is a dark sexual undercurrent to the majority of fanfic, as if on a subconscious level the
fan actually resents the control that their idol or idealised character has over their life.
Through the act of writing fanfic, and subjecting characters to compulsive or vengeful love, sex,
S&M or rape, the fan then regains control.

James Potter and the prisoner of copyright

While fanfic multiplied exponentially with the invention of the internet, authors were split over
what to do about it. Anne Rice, author of Interview with the Vampire vigorously defended her
copyright, claiming that fanfic, in particular AU fic diluted the integrity of her characters and
stories. In a letter to her fans she stated: "I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are
copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. It is
absolutely essential that you respect my wishes." Fanfic authors then claimed that Rice had
attacked them by email and even threatened their businesses. She also demanded that FanFic.net
remove all fanfic stories. Since then authors such as Andre Norton, Mercedes Lackey and David Weber
have also come to adopt a zero-tolerance stance.

Contrary to this Douglas Adams claimed that fanfic expanded his understanding of the parallel
universes he'd created in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and that they increased his sales.
JK Rowling also encourages fanfic. In 2003 she said she was "flattered people wanted to write their
own stories" based on her characters. She did however stipulate one condition – that they did not
try to make money from their creations. Her stance was tested when fan/author George Lippert
decided to commercially release a book of Continuation fic which was Extending the Canon. James
Potter and the Hall of Elders' Crossing was based on a fictional son of Harry. Rowling threatened
legal action for infringement, but after much adverse press from fans she relented and allowed the
publication to go ahead.

Fans now use disclaimers such as: "JK Rowling owns all recognisable characters/settings/spells/etc
in this fanfiction." And Rowling permits all fanfic under the proviso that it does not contain
racism or pornography. This an entirely futile request as slash HP (Harry Potter) has become one of
the internet's most popular fanfic forms. In it Rowling's characters are made to have sex with each
other in almost infinite variations: Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione, Snape/Narcissa. Arthur/Molly,
Molly/Hermione, Hermione/Fred&George, Draco/Pansy. These have also been "crossed-over" with
characters from other films and books, some of which are paedophilic in nature. Such quantities of
posts are nearly impossible to track and monitor. Fan fiction.net has 603,410 HP fic stories.

Rowling's launch of Pottermore online is set only to increase fan participation and produce even
greater quantities of fanfic, including slash. There is even fanfic about Pottermore.

Crossing over and mashing up

The most postmodern and aesthetically bankrupt of all fanfic, is when two well-known franchises
from the same genre are "crossed over". So you get BattleStar Gallactica, crossed with Star Trek,
which results in the story: Star Trek: Way of the Battlestar – author Carson Napier.

One of the problems with this sub-genre is that narratives and character motivations have to be
warped to fit convoluted, meaningless mergings. This is taken to absurd lengths with YouTube
"films" like Battlestar Galactica Vs Star Wars Vs Star Trek Vs Babylon 5. Crossover has now become
mainstream through such projects as Aliens Vs Predator which exists as cartoons, computer games,
movies, a TV series and a series of novels. Crossover also jumps genres so Edward from Twilight
ends up in Hogwarts, Bella ends up in ER and the characters of The X-Files clash with those of
Breaking Dawn.

While much credit has been given to mashup author Seth Grahame-Smith for "unleashing a whole new
genre", with mashup, the truth is that the mashup technique behind Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,
was developed decades before within fanfic. The aesthetic innovation that elevates mashup fic above
Crossover fic is the deliberate clash of incompatible genres in a way which is deconstructive or at
least humorous, as in Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

Much mashup fanfic however simply creates an incomprehensible mess. See A Very Potter Sitcom,
season 2! In which Dumbledore appears in Legally Blonde the Musical and the Triwizard mashup in
which fans vote for fight stories to be written between characters such as Godzilla, Gandalf, Darth
Vader and Spongebob Squarepants. This also results in meaningless second gen multiples like Darth
Vader & Spongebob VS Edward & Harry Potter. Fanfic sites also post narratives of impossible
meetings (usually sexual) between improbable characters – Captain Jean-Luc Picard has sex with
Elrond from Lord of the Rings. Indiana Jones has sex with Voldemort – this is mashup slash. As no
new plot or characters are being created, then all that can happen is the multiplication of
crossover interactions and partners, and an attendant increase in sexual imagery and violence.
There are literally millions of fanfic stories in which sex and humiliation (fuelled no doubt by
fan boredom) are the only possible outcome of such contrived and meaningless confrontations.

Alternative Twilight universes

Since the 90s AU has dominated. AU fic (alternative universe) features stories which are based on
"what-ifs", which deviate from the original novels or films. So there's "What if Darcy was blind"
or "What if (in Twilight) Bella is engaged, to Jasper, not Edward". The stories must deviate from
the canon but still remain familiar. There are currently over a hundred self-published Twilight AU
novels, while fanfiction.net has 130,137 predominantly AU narratives which include: Edward and
Bella meeting in kindergarten; Edward as a teacher, Bella as a student (with motorbike action);
Jacob and Edward as gay lovers; Bella and Alice in love; Edward is an Angel; Bella is the vampire
and Edward is the human; Bella is a millionaire and Edward is a professional thief; Edward is a
tattoo artist; Bella is on the Titanic; Bella is going to commit suicide when sexy teacher Cullen
saves the day; Bella owns a Pizza place called Pizza and Porn; Edward and Bella set in the 1800s (a
rape fantasy). On this site 66,606 of the stories are rated M, for 18+. As one leading fanfic site
claims, "the majority of Twilight fanfic is porn". Many of these stories will sound spookily
familiar. In one: His Personal Assistant (2009), "Bella Swan, personal assistant to handsome, rich,
successful Edward Cullen, decides to make oblivious boss fall in love with her"; in another (2009)
"Edward is a millionaire obsessed with Isobella Swan". One, The Submissive by Tara Me Sue, is
described as "37 chapters of juicy graphic detail", "Think Story of O meets Twilight minus the
vampire stuff". This story, which can be found on fanfiction.net, like the others above, predates
the publication of Fifty Shades by two years and was not written by EL James.

50,000 shades of lore

Fifty Shades series grew out of a multi-part series of Twilight fanfic called Master of the
Universe. It placed the Bella and Edward love affair in an alternative universe, in contemporary
Seattle and changed their names: Bella = Anastasia, Edward = Christian Grey.

Although the author then tried to erase evidence of its fanfic origins, it's clear that rather than
being some lightning bolt new genre called "Mommy porn", Fifty Shades is actually a very generic
work of Twilight fanfic from amongst tens of thousands already created. It is, in fact, a piece of
"AU het slash Twilight fic", and as we've seen, in all slash fic, sex and sexual violence are the
predictable components of the genre.

We should not consider EL James an author in the conventional sense for the same reasons that we
wouldn't call someone from before the invention of copyright an author. Rather, her books are like
medieval lore – in a sense she doesn't own the content. This content was circulating in 60,000
variations among the fanfic of other Twilight fans for years before she even created the books.
Like a gambling machine with a limited number of options for recombination, the story was going to
eventually be spat out as a win for somebody. This isn't an example of plagiarism but a return to
an earlier notion of collective creation. Fifty Shades is a book with 60,000 authors.

The only innovation is not in the story itself but in the delivery system that launched it – Amazon
KDP. Without Kindle the book(s) would never have escaped the gravitational pull of fanfic sites and
would not have been able to earn their author any money. KDP, has become the Enchanted Duplicator
that has monetised fanfic and propelled it into the market. The historic difference, the point we
have just crossed, is that now, through the mechanism of epub, fanfic is heading towards becoming
the cultural dominant. The much-hyped "next Fifty Shades", Gabriel's Inferno, also started life as
Twilight fanfic, and the fact that Penguin hunted it down from fanfic sites and paid a
"seven-figure" sum, marks the transition where the market turns upside down, and mainstream content
is created by fans.

Beyond that, as we have seen with other fanfic, Fifty Shades has launched a spate of
impersonations, pastiches, parodies, homages and rip-offs. Like the Enchanted Duplicator, this is
fanfic based on fanfic. Currently on Amazon there are 641 quickly made ebooks tagged under "Fifty
Shades". They fall into the hate fic, insert fic, crossover fic and continuation fic categories and
include: Fifty Shades of Earl Grey, Fifty Shades of Garbage, Fifty Shades of Bacon Flavoured Vagina
Spray, Fifty Shades of Grey and Zombies, Fifty Shades of Pink, of Green, of Gay, of Alice in
Wonderland, of Twilight. Finally with Fifty Shades being developed by Universal Pictures the
phenomenon comes full circle. If any of the stars of Twilight the Movie appear in Fifty Shades the
Movie, then the serpent will have devoured its tail.

So what happens to culture when fanfic becomes the dominant economic model in publishing and the
leader in cultural values – is that even possible? Surely derivative works have to be derived from
something "original". With Fifty Shades this ceases to be the case, and, as we have seen, fanfic
offers many tools for recycling (AU, crossover, mashup, self-insert, Mary Sue, the 12 varieties of
slash etc) which takes the recombination of texts into the exponential. It is possible that with
the enchanted duplication systems of fan-based epub, we might have arrived at a point in history
where we've accumulated enough cultural material from the past for fans to remix indefinitely, and
as they can now sell this content to each other this becomes a boom industry where none existed
before. However, the point where fans become the creators, and a derivative work becomes the new
original is also the point at which the culture industries stop needing to create anything new.
Fanfic begets fanfic, which then in turn becomes mainstream which then begets further fanfic and so
on. When we reach that point our future will not be fifty, but fifty thousand, shades of grey.

junkie

                závislák

to preserve

                zachovat, udržovat

posterity

                příští generace

crass

                bezohledný, nehorázný

sycophantic

                podlézavý

to kickstart

                nakopnout, nastartovat

to overthrow

                svrhnout

tempting

                lákavý

to reveal

                odhalit

fads

                pobláznění (módní)

jargon

                žargon

skewed

                pokroucený

populace

                obyvatelstvo, populace

intervention

                zásah

stock characters

                archetypy

medieval

                středověký

to commission sb

                zadat (zakázkou) co komu

royalties

                autorský honorář

to section off

                oddělit (od čeho)

subclass

                podtřída

bowdlerised

                proškrtaný, zcenzurovaný

inferior

                podřadný, hroší

impersonation

                ztělesnění

concerned

                mající starost o...

lore

                tradice, folklór

fanzines

                časopis fanklubu

to elaborate

                rozvést, rozvinout

self-insert

                sebe-vložení

flawless

                bezchybní

to outshine

                zastínit

glut

                nadbytek

to beam up


insidious

                zákeřný

lurking contempt

                skryté opovržení

to blur

                zastřít

to chronicle

                zachytit, vylíčit

mimeograph

                rozmnožovací stroj

precursor

                předzvěst

remote

                odlehlý

to merge

                spojit, sloučit

undercurrent

                skrytá tendence, podtón

subconscious

                podvědomý

to resent

                cítit odpor (ke čemu)

compulsive

                nutkavý

to regain

                znovu získat, nabýt

vigorously

                energicky, s vervou

to dilute

                rozdrobit

stance

                postoj

to stipulate

                vyhradit si

infringement

                zasahování

adverse

                nepříznivý

to relent

                ustoupit

disclaimer

                distancovaní se, vyloučení odpovědnosti

futile

                zbytečný bezvýsledný

launch

                spustit

warped

                pokřivený

convoluted

                spletitý, komplikovaný

to unleash

                uvolnit, rozpoutat

incomprehensible

                nesrozumitelný

contrived

                nepřirozený, vyumělkovaný

spookily

                děsivě

predictable

                předvídatelný

to spit out

                vyplivnout

notion

                dojem

to monetise

                zpeněžit

to propel sth

                hnát, pohánět

spate

                záplava

pastiche

                napodobenina

rip-off

                ubohá kopie

to devour

                sežrat

to cease

                přestat

to beget

                plodit