“Truly, 300,000 words is a monumental amount of time and effort, and sadly most of it is wasted as the vast majority of FanFic authors will not go on to write in any professional sense.”

By this rationale, it is a waste of time and effort to join your local pub football team and knock a ball around with your mates every weekend, because you’re never going to be headhunted for the Premier League; a waste of time and effort to experiment with delicious new recipes and feed them to your friends and family, because you’re never going to open a restaurant; a waste of time and effort to flirt with a pretty girl if you know you’re probably never going to see her again; a waste of time and effort to run a marathon if you’re not going to win any prize money; a waste of time and effort to take pictures of your child’s first faltering steps if you’re never planning to become a professional photographer; a waste of time and effort to join a choir or play the guitar on the beach if you’re never going to record a number one album; a waste of time and effort to learn how to thoroughly blow somebody’s mind in bed if you don’t plan to become a sex worker.

The point of such pursuits sir, is that, in and of themselves, THEY GIVE YOU JOY. They enrich your life. If you genuinely find value only in those things which can be leveraged into making money – well, that’s truly tragic.

Fanfic is the 21st century iteration of that oldest of human impulses: a group of friends sitting in the dark, taking turns to retell stories around a fire. Before Pacific Rim coffeeshop AUs, Pride And Prejudice And Zombies or The BBC’s Modern day Sherlock AU, we had Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, The Wide Sargasso Sea, West Side Story, Ivanhoe, basically everything Shakespeare ever wrote, Gawain And The Green Knight, The Aeneid…thousands of years of transformative works in poetry, drama and prose. The narrative tradition of every culture is a palimpsest of myths, legends, fairytales, anecdotes, jokes and daydreams endlessly rewritten, reshaped, rebuilt atop one another. Fanfic. This is what we do, and what we’ve always done. Fanfic communities are united by their love of storytelling, and by their fascination with source texts; instead of passively consuming media, we actively engage with it – questioning, critiquing, disassembling, poking it with a stick, flipping gender or sexual orientation or ethnicity, swapping the setting or the goal. We recognise tropes, archetypes, flaws, virtues. We embrace our quirks and our bullet-proof kinks. We use story as a lens and a window and a mirror. WE HAVE FUN. (A fair number of us also write original stuff, and DO move into getting published – but that is not the point of fanfic, any more than becoming a pro ballet dancer is the point of going out clubbing with your mates on a Friday night. Fanfic is an end in its own right, not the means to an end.)

That aside: colour me curious as to where the devil you found evidence that fanfic is created and consumed by men and women in equal numbers. In 15 years I’ve encountered fewer than half a dozen men (including transmen) writing fanfic; by contrast, I’ve encountered hundreds upon hundreds – if not thousands – of women.

Another pro tip: for all that the geekboys in gaming try to insist gamer culture is some pitiful No Gurls Allowed clubhouse, 47% of gamers are actually female. Girl geeks are definitely a thing.

ANOTHER pro tip: this girls=erotic paranormal fantasy, boys=scifi/fantasy notion? That might reflect the way publishing houses are marketing their books, but it’s got sod all to do with the creation and consumption of fanfic. Women write filthy hardcore porn, cheesy romance, swashbuckling action adventures, thrilling whodunnits and any other genre you might care to think of, and they do it for every kind of text. Police procedurals & hard SF are particularly popular, but pretty much you name it, and my people are out there somewhere writing fanfic about it.

On another note:

“There are no controls as to who can read this material and also no controls as to who can write it; children are learning age-inappropriate terminology from reading each other’s work and the work of older, largely anonymous, authors.”

Oh, Stephen. As soon as kids board the puberty train, they’re going to go looking for porn. Technology facilitates this, sure – but step into a bookshop and you’ll be SHOCKED to discover that children can buy a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey over the counter without anyone leaping forth to protect their sensibilities. A million years ago, when i was a wee thing, we were stuck with the oldskool approach of reading our Mums’ Jackie Collins books, or nicking our older brothers’ skin mags. Kids today have instant access to a plethora of porn videos and images online at myriad free sites. In comparison to the gonzo misogynistic gangbang DP jizzfests available at the touch of a button, or memes like goatse and two girls one cup, I really don’t think kids are going to be psychologically scarred by reading or writing 200k of Thorin/Bilbo tentacleporn, or whatever. (it is notable that when Reading or writing about intimacy, the participants are subjects, not objects; reading is an act of empathy and sympathy, not an act of objectification.)

As to age-inappropriate: prepubescent kids have no interest in sex, and if you’re worrying about them being exposed to confusing and distressing materials, it’s images and videos you should be fretting about them stumbling across, not NC17 Harry Potter slashfic. Sure, teens are reading, writing and posting explicit fanfic; a couple of generations back, Stephen, kids that age were STILL writing explicit fanfic (and original fic); they were just keeping it in their notebooks in their bedrooms where you couldn’t see them, and feeling ashamed and worried that they were sluts and freaks. (Except for the ones who stumbled across fellow fen and set up Kirk/Spock fanzines and Blakes 7 Slash Conventions and the like.) Now they’ve got one another’s backs, and as they grapple with the everyday horror of transforming into women in a world saturated with rape culture, they can explore concepts of desire, and power, and consent, and agency, and gender, all within safe and supportive fanfic communities. This is AWESOME, Stephen.

Speaking as someone who has occasionally delved into fanfiction, this piece is full of the hilarious awkwardness you get when someone has absolutely no idea what they’re talking about (and are terrified that it might involve sex).

Personally, I think fanfic is fantastically beneficial – as Ciarán pointed out, it encourages teenagers to practice writing (and I’m equally confused as to why that’s a bad thing). There’s a very supportive proof-reading culture where writers correct each others’ work which, again, can only improve knowledge of grammar, spelling and syntax. There’s also often a good community aspect where writers critique, build on and react to each others’ work, which can turn into far more sophisticated literary criticism that you’re going to get in the average secondary school. I don’t see how any of this could be bad.

As for the rest of it – 13-year-olds feeling alienated is not something new; it’s called being a teenager. I’m bemused to hear that fantasy, as a genre, is split between “sci-fi fantasy” written by boys and “erotic-paranormal-fantasy” written by girls; this completely ignores epic fantasy (as LOTR is generally classed), sword-and-sorcery (D&D and its ilk), steampunk, urban fantasy and Harry Potter (can’t really think of a sub-genre for that one) and far more. You’re also wrong completely on the gender divide – 78% of those writing on fanfiction.net are female: http://ffnresearch.blogspot.ie/2011/03/fan-fiction-demographics-in-2010-age.html. As for the sexually explicit stuff that you’re trying to protect young people from seeing – that’s the very demographic that’s writing it. In short, you really don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.

Also, you’re a writer – what’s with the unnecessary capitalisation? It’s “fanfiction”, “manga”, “Bollywood heroes”, “erotic paranormal fiction” and so forth. It really detracts from the piece.

This is so wrong on so many levels I don’t know where to start. And I’m not talking about fic, but your article.

I write fic (no one writes it as Fan Fic by the way; it’s fan fiction, fic, fanfic…) . Have done for over a decade. I’m also a published author with seventeen novels currently in print. Are the two connected? You bet. Writing fic gave me to confidence to take the next step and turn pro with my original writing.

But if I hadn’t, if the millions of words I wrote prompted by nothing more than a love of the source materials (TV shows; I don’t write movie or book related fic often) remained my sole literary works, that would’ve been fine.

Writers write because they want to. Have to, even. It’s addictive. I’m not saying getting paid for it now isn’t nice but the sheer joy at telling a story is the same in both cases. My two teenage daughters are both involved in fandom; they vid, they do fan art — and they write fic.

I couldn’t be prouder. They’re intelligent, creative young women and they’re sharing their love of something with the world and expanding their horizons.

And to return to your article, it’s not a 50/50 split of male and female writers. Most fic is written by females in my experience. It’s a female-dominated activity.

Maybe that’s why it’s been ignored for so long (which most of us preferred) and then treated with ignorance and scorn when it went public.

Which brings me to my last point. Your article title is akin to asking ‘What is the internet?’ it’s that behind the times.

I think it’s fascinating how a man who presumably makes much of his living from writing can fail to see how enormously beneficial this culture of written word could be. I don’t believe it’s a good idea to skip formal education in favour of it, but if you write over 300,000 words a year( of whatever genre) you’re doing wonders for your education. To say that hours spent writing are a waste if the author is never published is simply wrong.
Language is key to human intelligence, and practise is practise.That a huge culture based on the glorification of the written word has emerged and is constantly growing is an amazing thing to happen. FanFic is the folklore of the internet age. Humans love to tell stories and hear them being told. Sometimes people tell nice stories, sometimes people tell bad stories, scary ones, raunchy ones. Human nature. No different from the visual media save for one thing, it encourages reading and writing.
Lastly, I’d comment that every fiction is Fanfic to an extent. How many of our heroes on tv and in the cinema have been, say, the character of Hamlet, albeit with a new name and setting? How many have been Jesus or Judas? No story is truly original because every author is influenced by the authors they read. Fan fiction is simply more honest about where they draw their characters and plots and tropes from.

Ah here, why didn’t you just title the piece ‘Think of the Children”? Seriously, there an awful lot worse things that teenagers could be doing other than reading and writing.

I think we are all ignoring the most important aspect of this piece: this man is clearly a Time Traveler. He has come from an alternate version of the 90’s in which Fan Fiction is a Dangerous And Alienating Game and the grammatical rules of Capitalization have been completely rewritten.

The author here had just managed to offend fanfiction writers and readers and gamers in one foul swoop.

Also lacks the knowledge to point out 50 Shades of Grey started out as a Twilight fanfic

This is uncharitable, I know, but the spirit of curiosity moved me to Google Steve’s literary oeuvre.

I was fleetingly impressed to find that his novel and his poetry collections all boasted 5 star ratings on Goodreads; I was less impressed when I saw that this was because he had given them all 5* ratings himself.

Of the two actual readers to rate his work, one openly states that he was personally asked to read and review.

With this in mind it is very difficult not to draw the obvious conclusion from the fact that Steve’s novel has six glowing ANONYMOUS 5* reviews on Amazon, all of which are written in a prose style remarkably like that employed in this article, and no other reviews.

Oh, Steve. You think that writing 300,000 words of fanfic a year is a waste of time and effort if one isn’t angling for professional publication? I get fan mail from strangers EVERY DAY. People have written me heartfelt letters about how my writing has impacted upon their lives in tangible ways. My ideas and my turns of phrase have been read by people all over the world, moving them to tears and laughter and prompting them to make new art, or gush to their friends, or write to me. I don’t have to ghost write my own reviews or rate my own books on Goodreads.

For the record, my own most popular novel has been read by more than 300,000 people. It currently enjoys 4.49 stars on Goodreads, averaged out of 2,745 wholly unsolicited ratings from strangers – many of them, according to the reviews, readers who don’t usually read fanfic.

(Nope, I didn’t post any of my works to Goodreads, or try to pimp them out myself, let alone RATE them – but I was tickled pink when I found that my readers had listed the books there.)

Tell me again what constitutes being a REAL writer, Stephen.

Don’t tell him about the Bronies!

Is there anything funnier than a stodgy middle-aged person finding a subculture he’s not familiar with and banging out a column based on ten minutes’ poking around a few old LiveJournal communities? It couldn’t be more obvious that the writer of this column knows exactly _nothing_ about fan culture.

To start with, fanfic is hardly a new trend. People have been writing derivative works of other stories since Ancient Greece, and fanfiction in the ‘modern’ definition has been around since at least the late 1960s, since Star Trek gave birth to many of the things we now consider standard about fandom in general.

Second, it’s not just something for young people. There are girls in their early teens who are just starting to write, and there are writers who have been writing fanfic for longer than I’ve been alive. I just wrote a 12000 word short story for a fanfic challenge being run by a woman who’s in her mid fifties and recently became a grandmother. And I specify “girls” there, not “people”, because for the most part, the fanfiction community belongs to women. In the dozens of fandoms I’ve been active in, I’ve read fanfic by hundreds of different authors, and I know of only two of them who were men. There may have been a few more scattered here and there, but they are by far a minority, so this idea that the genres are somehow split down gender lines is frankly insulting to me.

This writer saw something he hadn’t encountered before and didn’t make any kind of effort to understand it, just wrote a condescending, fear-mongering, and wildly inaccurate article. Research, research, _research_, man! They should have drilled that into your head back in your _high school_ English classes, and you didn’t even do enough to figure out that “fanfic” is not a proper noun, and doesn’t need to be capitalized in every sentence.

Apart from the moralising tone I love how this actually reads like something from the mid-90s. I was expecting him to mention ‘lemon’ like. God love you Stephen never look at the explicit works tag on Ao3 it’d turn your hair white.

I wonder where the author got the idea that fanfic is somehow a young peoples’ game. At nearly 60, I’m by no means the oldest person I know in the fic writing community. Fanfic writers may start out in their adolescent years (yes, even in MY adolescent years: Monkees fanfic, anyone?), but we don’t magically stop loving it at 21. Readers AND writers of fic come in all ages. And guess what? We come in all sizes, shapes, genders, ethnicities, languages, physical abilities and walks of life, too.

Did you really have to take a big dump all over one of the world’s more innocuous and beneficial pastimes? Sure there is a dark side but as Alan said above, there are capable technical solutions (which should be in place on kids’ computers anyway).

The serious learning accomplished during fiction writing should not be underestimated like this, and the community of writers is a valuable means of friendship.

I wrote and published “real” novels (and continue to do so) before getting into fanfic, which still gets creative juices to flow while giving me a fun and light break from meeting my publisher’s high literary expectations! In fact, writing a chapter of fanfic is a great way to get unstuck for other projects.

In the parlance of fandom, I advise you: Lurk moar.

I think the only “fact” you got right is the one concerning the prolific word count of a few writers. You are epically wrong about the gender split: we are overwhelmingly female. Perhaps in a few fandoms there is a more equal gender distribution, but on the whole, ficcers are girls and women. You’d know that if you had actually talked to any of us.

We’re “making traditional publishers and writers very nervous,” are we? Doubtful, given how many traditional publishers are looking at fic writers and readers as the next gravy train. Have you even heard of Kindle Worlds?

And since you’ve clearly never been part of a fic community, or even observed one for more than five minutes, you have no idea how we function. Fanficcers often provide support for each other, for things ranging from “bad day at school” to “how to escape this abusive relationship before he kills me.” This is not unusual for a hobbyist community, in my experience. What’s unusual is for people from outside that community to pronounce from on high that the hobby is scary and isolating and must certainly be detrimental to participants’ social skills and job prospects.

Ah I used to write some fairly shite fanfiction years ago! Cringe reading it now, but sure got me writing and the imagination flowing, so like to think it was good for me at the time!

(I’m aware I’ve just confessed I was a giant geek back in the day but ah well!)

This article is grossly misguided and completely wrong on many counts. First of all, the history of fanfiction is much older than you seem to think. Even if we are willing to limit it to media fandom (people have been writing fanfiction of Sherlock Holmes stories since they were originally published and there is a history of book discussion groups in the 18th century that shared alternate endings for stories among themselves and with favourite authors just to get us started), fanfiction was shared among fans for shows like The Man From U.N.C.L.E. And Star Trek in the 1960s and fanfiction was online almost as soon as the World Wide Web was introduced in universities. Additionally, scholars have been actively studying this form of fan work since 1992 at least so there are literally decades of scholarly research on the topic you could have drawn from for this article in addition to the fairly well-documented fan material. All of the research suggests that the majority of fanfiction writers are female–pretty much regardless the genre–not equally divided. While the numbers of men are increasing, this is one area where women definitely outnumber men. If you seriously want to inform the world about fanfiction, you should consider being better informed yourself.
Fanfiction is known more publicly now partly due to the popularity of some works that began as fanfiction or authors who started as fanfiction writers (or continue to write fanfiction). While there are issues with the way some businesses are attempting to capitalise on his form of fan labour, it is now acceptable to publish some types of fanfiction legally. This is not a brand new experience. The way it is happening and the interest from official sources is different but that doesn’t make it a bad thing. Writing for an anthology or writing an official tie-in novel (like the Expanded Universe of Star Wars –which is not the only multigenerational fandom and I would have to say that Doctor Who or The Lord of the Rings could give it a run for it’s money in terms of size given they are much older– or novels set in the world of Supernatural, a fandom you completely neglect though it is one of the largest in terms of fanfiction output), utilizes a lot of the same skills as fanfiction writing with none of the criticism inherent in most fan involvement. By this I mean both the criticism of fans and their work for many of the reasons you cite here, but also the actual criticism in which fans engage regularly. Fanfiction, among other fan activities, is not just an act of creation it is also a way to examine the source material. By rewriting elements or placing characters in new situations with new stresses, fans are questioning how those characters and situations were created in the first place.
The biggest problem I have with this article though is that you suggest that the practice of reading and writing fanfiction is bad for people, children in particular. This is simply not true. Multiple studies have been done that suggest fanfiction is a useful tool in teaching writing skills to children and also in helping them to learn how to criticize a text. There are many programs available to help teachers learn how to integrate this type of fan work into the classroom because it has been seen to give positive results.
If you would like to know more about fanfiction and feel Wikipedia is not a useful source (most of the misconceptions you state here could have been fixed with a quick search), I would point you in the direction of such scholars as Henry Jenkins, Matt Hills, Lynn Zubernis and Katherine Larsen, Paul Booth, Aaron Schwabach, Rebecca Tushnet, Lev Grossman, Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse, Anne Jamison, and Joan Marie Verba has written a history of Star Trek fandom that would also be quite useful. If you want to learn more from the perspective of a fanfiction author feel free to check out actual fanfiction websites or fanlore wikis. You might find yourself enjoying what you find.

“So what’s wrong with all of this, I hear you say”

No you didn’t. Literally no one has said that. No one but you assumes anything is wrong with this.

Young man, where are you getting your data? From personal knowledge, your facts are wrong. In the words of XKCD, CITATION NEEDED.

This is…kind of hilarious, really. You clearly didn’t do much more than cursory research into the communities and history that fanfiction is built from. There are essays on it by people that actually know what they’re talking about that already compiled the information, so it’s not like you’d have to do it all yourself.

Fanfiction started in fanzines before the internet, mainly for Star Trek, where a lot of the fanfiction lingo comes from(a lot of other fanfiction lingo comes from Japan where fan comics are pretty big). So, really, this stuff…isn’t new. As in, this stuff was around for decades. Started by women. Still remains mostly women, except in specific fandoms.

To say fanfiction can impede social growth is the kind of stuff I heard in the early days of the internet. A lot of people are more social on the internet than person-to-person because they have the whole world to find people with the same interests and viewpoints that they have. Likely stress in said 13-year-old elicited a need for escapism, and that took the form of fanfiction. If it wasn’t fanfiction, they would probably escape into something else like a book, video game, or movies. Again, this isn’t new or shocking.

As far as writing goes…currently, some of my favorite professional writers developed from writing fanfiction in their early writing years. It’s part of the developmental process for some people, like the kid that draws Bugs Bunny in class that later moves on to original stuff. Some kids never get out of drawing characters that already exist, some do. Some fall out of it.

Finally, so address the erotica aspect. Ever wonder WHY there’s so much erotica on the side of female writers? Perhaps it has something to do with the majority of other sexualized media being very much from the male gaze. Even lesbian porn is for male consumption most of the time. Teenage boys looking at porn mags as an outlet for sex is often a given and girls are…what? Supposed to wait for marriage or something, I guess.

Really, next time interview more than one teen, and not only teens. I have friends in their mid-twenties that are second-generation fanfiction writers. Also, perhaps consider what makes a fanfiction different from an adaption of something(like Sherlock or Alice in Wonderland or Shakespeare or Count of Monte Cristo). Is it budget? Who’s writing it? Being published? What’s being written about? The audience? Certainly something to consider.

Fandom is fascinating in that it’s an active dialogue with our pop culture…and this piece hardly does it justice.

As the parent of a teenager whose favourite past time is reading fanfic i have often had concerns about the content of what she is reading which I dealt with by checking our internet history, however her interest in this genre has made me try to get her to reconsider whether the route she is planning to take at third level is the right one. She is very bright and is excellent at school and wants to study science, and while I am aware that science will probably offer her more opportunities, I believe she would be happier and more fulfilled study literature. Fanfic has helped her to find like minded friends and as she gets older I worry less and less about the content of what she is reading and more about the choices she faces in planning her future

You are a complete idiot.

Regarding kids ending up accessing age-inappropriate material, the majority of sites on the web are not classified by age.
That is why you need good parental control software on your devices and/or wifi router.
Good software will look for specfic terms and phrases and block pages and downloads on that basis as well as using whitelists, blacklists and classifications such as PG, 15s etc.

Old Man Discovers The Internet

You know I have never heard a professional writer encourage aspiring writers to NOT WRITE. Also, engaging in an activity that brings you happiness is not a waste of time, no matter whether or not you intend to go pro. That’s basically saying that anyone that likes cooking, sports, weightlifting, martial arts, paintball, painting, drawing, sewing, or any hobby or activity in existence is wasting their time unless they are intending to go pro. Also, what makes you think that nobody that writes fic will ever be published? Clearly you never did you research as evidence by the fact that you have one testimonial from an unnamed and questionable source, use improper terminology, and completely missed the fact that the overwhelming majority of fic writers identify has female.

Oh my gods, 1996 called, and it wants its RPG panic back.

Haven’t we heard enough yet about how the fantasy genre “causes” alienation in kids rather than giving already-alienated kids a means of making social connections with others who’re suffering similar feelings of isolation? Fanfic isn’t the cause of isolation. What an irrational, buffoonish thing to say. By its very nature it’s a means of reaching out to others.

It’s only a “recent” phenomenon on the internet because the internet itself is a recent phenomenon. Fanfic as we know it today – the sort you’re making some attempt to discuss here – predates the internet. That’s an extremely basic fact that you should have caught while conducting research for this ridiculous essay.

Fanfic in a more general sense is one of the oldest forms of literature. Surely you’ve at least heard of The Aeneid, AKA fanfic of the Iliad and Odyssey. There is AU (Alternate Universe) slashfic based on Pretty Woman, a movie based on the movie My Fair Lady, which is a move based on the musical by the same same, which is based on Pygmalion, which is a play based on the story of Pygmalion and Galatea in Ovid’s Metamorphosis, which is an ancient Latin epic poem based on Roman beliefs (what we now call myths), which were based on ancient Greek stories.

And yet somehow, even though “Walk On By” exists, people still read ancient Greek myths.

Finally, I must categorically disagree with your supposition that “it will be an interesting journey to see where we end up when the author of a story featuring Captain Kirk has never seen Star Trek”, because that was called the Abrams reboots and they were goddamn terrible.

You speak about kids being passionate about something in a negative way. Any 13-year-old can get caught up in something (sports, music, video games, writing of ANY sort, dance, etc) they’re into and give it preference to things they don’t like (such as school and chores). That’s not abnormal in any way. Talk to more 13-year-olds and I’m sure they’ll tell you of what they do instead of schoolwork. Also, with or without being involved in a hobby, 13-year-olds are subject to being bullied. That’s the age where it starts, unfortunately. They’ll be teased and made fun of for anything their peers can use against them (and I really do mean anything). When you’re being teased, it’s easier to want to hide in a fantasy world where no one can hurt you. It’s the responsibility of the 13-year-old and their respective guardians to make sure they’re able to balance their school work and their hobby. If it had been up to me when I was 13, I would have sat in a park and daydreamed all day.

These kids are honing their writing skills and are using their imagination and even if they aren’t doing it in a way that you like, the subculture of fanfiction as a whole shouldn’t be put down. I haven’t heard of the subculture making people “nervous” as your title claims, but if it is then it’s simply a matter of people being scared of what they don’t understand. It’s a sad road to find yourself down, it’s a shame that you’re on that road yourself. I don’t like bloggers who express their opinions in a way that alienates a group of people doing nothing wrong and causing no stirs whatsoever, but you don’t see me condemning people like you because I find you annoying. Good luck with the closed-mindedness!

(For the record, I am not a part of the FanFic subculture and don’t entirely understand the appeal myself, but if it makes people happy then I’m all for it. It’s more productive than playing Candy Crush all day and can be fun, along with meeting people and making new friends. Fan Fiction writers aren’t hurting anyone, leave them be).

I think that 13 year-old fanfic writer was the only “research” this guy did at all.

Wow. Speaking as a long-time writer of fanfic, the dismissive tone of this article is downright offensive. It’s pretty clear the author knows nothing about fanfic, nor about the subcultures that produce it. Fanfic is a great way for people to improve their writing skills. It is an exercise in imagination. It is a means for people — especially young people — to safely explore feelings and ideas surrounding sexuality, death, growing up, and identity. Fanfic writers are not isolated; they are connecting with their readers and with other writers. Above all, writing fanfic is a hobby which brings joy to me and to my readers. How is that sad or a waste of time, just because it doesn’t bring in a paycheck?

If only you had written fanfiction as a kid. The extra experience might have helped you with your comma abuse problem. I don’t know what your editor’s excuse is, though. Head trauma, maybe?

Yo, I dunno, I wrote 100k of fairly well-thought out fanfic that was a coming-out story with a happy ending — something us queer people don’t get very often in so-called mainstream media, as our narratives are invariably tragic — and I’ve had people contact me privately to tell me that my story gave them hope for their future, and that they think they might not kill themselves now. To me? That’s far more fulfilling than writing a novel that may never see the light of day. That’s the thing about fanfic. You don’t have to depend on a publisher to have an audience, and you can still impact people’s lives in the same way.

Also I can’t get over how terribly-researched this is. As a former journalist myself: please consider a change in career. This one is clearly not doing it for you.

First of all, the gaming culture is not largely dominated by boys, it’s around half and half.
‘Those of us of a certain generation will remember loving Star Wars’ I am a seventeen year old girl who is a bigger fan of Star Wars than my 40 something mother.
‘Truly, 300,000 words is a monumental amount of time and effort, and sadly most of it is wasted.’
Ok, believe me it is not wasted. People spend this much time because this is their idea or fun and relaxing. Also the amount of time that it was taken to write this amount would obviously be a good few hours? So is people reading or playing sports or dancing as wasteful as this? I’m sure that thousands of people who play football or dance ballet don’t continue it on as a career.
So shame on you, this article so very unreliable and very false and if youre going to make another article on this topic please do with so with actual research.

I’ve met so many people and made several friends by writing fanfiction. I’ve grown much more confidant in my writing and have seen a marked improvement just over the last few months. I have original works I’ve been thinking about for years and now feel confident enough in my ability to write and share them with others.

It’s the only thing that has kept me sane with the upheavals I’ve gone through with work.

I fail to see how any of that is a bad thing.

“Truly, 300,000 words is a monumental amount of time and effort, and sadly most of it is wasted as the vast majority of FanFic authors will not go on to write in any professional sense.”

So…if I like reading books, I’m also wasting my time if I’m never going to be an editor? Am I wasting my time learning a foreign language if I’m never gonna be a translator?

Because as we all know, something’s worth can ONLY be measured in money. God forbid that we take things like enjoyment, fun and creative energy into account.

Idiot.

I started out writing fanfiction when I was in my early teens and I can genuinely say that I would not have graduated highschool at all were it not for the support of the friends (almost all of which I’m friends with fifteen years later) that I met through writing and sharing fanfiction. I’m now a published scifi – short fiction – writer working on my first full-length novel and the confidence that I’ve found to write professionally came from the support of my avid readers and friends. Not only that, but the research I have to do on a daily basis to write better fanfiction – because I primarily write historically-based fiction – has made me an all-around more intelligent person. I chose my major at university – anthropology – because fanfiction gave me a passion for comparative mythology, religion, and cultures.

And even if fanfiction wasn’t a warm-up or a stepping stone for me to publishing original fiction, I’d still write fanfiction because it’s fun. Considering the things that kids could be doing these days, I’d say that staying at home reading and writing is a hobby that should be encouraged, not condemned. I shudder to imagine the trouble I would have found myself in if I didn’t have something to occupy my mind in my teens.

The first rule of the internet tends to be “don’t read the comments”, but I proudly read the comments of this piece because I knew that you’d have writers and readers coming out of the woodwork to inform you how poorly researched and downright incorrect your article is. This isn’t a bunch of defensive people getting bent out of shape about someone insulting their pastime, these are people who know what they’re talking about better than you could hope for in years of research, because we have lived this intimately, and passionately, every day of our lives for years upon years. It would do you well to read each and every one of these comments and re-evaluate not only your initial conception of fanfiction but also where you’re getting your information from.

I’m sure if you bothered to look at all, you’d also find a heck of a lot of people who could say that fanfiction, and fandom, saved their lives. I’m one of those people. And I can’t think of anything more noble than something that brings people joy and gives them something to get up for. I feel sorry for you if you disagree.

Unbelievably ill-informed, biased and vapid. I am surprised this person could make a living as a journalist.
A 6 grader doing a class presentation can do better research than this—–the study of fandom is not at all a new subject, many relevant papers has been published. One previous comment alone offered more than a dozen scholars who have done great works on this topic. Even if one does not want to read studies on fan-culture before writing about it, (god forbid if you do any serious reading), there are still valuable resources online that could at least give one an idea about the community. There is absolutely no excuse for someone to come up with this piece, except maybe for generating controversy and getting public attention. This, of all reasons, is why I am part of fandom: one cannot simply consume mainstream media. It is inevitably full of BS.
So Downes, shame on you, your brother, your ancestor and your cow.
Also, your Amazon book reviews look very suspicions.

This article is so hilariously off-base I don’t even know where to start.

It’s extremely obvious you garnered what little twit you could from Wikipedia, and then grossly assumed the rest. Speaking as someone who has been reading and writing fanfic since her early teens (and btw, is now an adult, and married and all those other lovely markers of personhood you assume we cannot achieve- oh and I’m *still* writing fanfic) your division of subject matter along gender lines is grossly inaccurate and actually rather offensive, as it harkens back to 19th century ideals of “what women like” (perhaps you have heard of noted fanfic writers such as Mary Shelley, or Diane Duane, I’m just throwing those names out there should you care to peruse their work – you may have heard of The Modern Prometheus or Harbinger)

Teenagers (and adults) are looking at media that is often dictated to them and are turning it into a living, breathing thing. Exploring the dismissed corners. Building worlds that far too often I have seen exceed the source material in marvellous ways the original creators have failed to do. They are using their brains, they are writing, sharing, learning, *creating*…..and you see this as cause for alarm and derision.

I find that incredibly more concerning than the idea of a budding author who wants to find out what happens if Voldemort had won the final battle.

To quote from my favourite HP fic in parseltongue: “SSSSsssS SSsshsss SsSSs”
I think it says it all.

Every so often, about once a year maybe, an article appears on the internet that is immediately and utterly pwned by the comment section.

This is that article.

Well done, ladies.

“One 13-year-old FanFic author I spoke to, in person, described himself as alienated at school; he was ignoring school work, shunning friends and all to produce vast amounts of FanFic for a particular site.”

Chances are he learned a lot more writing that than the rubbish they’d have been teaching at school anyway.

Oh boy, girls only write fantasy-based fic and are predominantly teenagers? I feel a decade sloughing off me like unused skin and the science fiction based fic I’ve written just disappearing from underneath my fingertips. And writing 300,000 words a year is useless just because writers don’t go on to write professionally? Having an achievement like that, having your work out there and read, isn’t worth it? Dude, I’d like to see you write 300.000 words in a year and then consider it worthless. Writing fanfiction has allowed me to connect with people who enjoy the same things I do, maybe have more experience with some things, and gain confidence in my own writing. Writing fanfic has given me the chance to write my own original stories. And it’s not a decade old. There is fanfic from Star Trek: TOS dating back to when it first aired. And that’s just what I’ve heard about. I’m fairly certain there are older fandoms that have had fanfics written about them. For example, Sherlock Holmes and Les Mis. I think you might have wanted to do some research on this before writing this article. In-depth research not just typing random words into google and taking the titles of the pages that show up on the first page.

Son you do not know what the HELL you are talking about.

Oh… wow. This is so very, very much like a cloistered virgin trying to describe sex that the second-hand embarrassment is nearly overwhelming. Honestly, did this man do more than talk to maybe two or three people who had read a few fics or articles about fanfiction? The level of ignorance shown here is appalling.

I’ve been writing fics since pre-internet days; my first one was published in an amateur Dr. Who ficblog (print copies only; you had to order them or buy them at SF cons) in about 1985 or so. I honestly have no idea how many hundreds of thousands of words I’ve written to date, but I have two novels being worked on at present and every hope of becoming a published author.

Writing ficcage has built my confidence, taught me to grow in my writing, given me strength during bad times by reminding me that I can *do* this, I’m *good* at it– I wonder some days what kind of person I’d be now if I hadn’t started writing. Friendships have been born over sharing my fics; there are people I know now and have known for over a decade, all because we met online and shared what we were working on for critiquing, for company, for the pure pleasure of discussing the stories we loved. Any fanfic writer out there knows the inner glow of writing something that rings right, and the utter thrill of posting what you’ve written where friends and strangers can read it.

And this bozo thinks that it’s, what, a waste of time and effort?

Well, to continue my ‘virgin’ analogy….. You can pull a muscle during sex, and if you’re not trying for a baby I suppose that nothing solid comes of it. But procreation’s not the only reason to make love, and if a few muscles complain afterwards? Gee, I don’t see that stopping anybody any time soon. So maybe you should try it, Mister Downes; you might be surprised at just how much you enjoy yourself.

“as young readers stop reading, watching and learning from mainstream mediums and begin to solely enjoy and mimic FanFic.”

Heaven forbid people doing something outside the mainstream, not relying on the capitalistic populist traditional mass media!

This article is click-bait trash, a representative of the traditional publishing machine very worried about the future of their job.

I am not one to usually comment on such things, but for some reason I feel compelled to on this article. I am deeply hurt and upset by the misgivings of the statements made in this article. I am not only a Female, but a Married woman, Home maker, Dancer, Singer, Actor, Writer, Photographer and Cosplayer. I love anything and everything that has to do with cultures, history, religion and life in general. I have been this way since I was a child. I have manged to hold down jobs and without a college education, by choice. I am neither dumb or ignorant. I am an above average, intelligent human being. I have been on all sides of the spectrum. From being bullied to a role model. I am advocate against many thing and ignorance is one of them.

I have volunteered for many non profits. I am an avid theatre goer, who also loves rock concerts and operas. I watch ballets and Nascar racing. I play video games and bored games. There isn’t much I do not enjoy in this world. I love taking it all in. And one thing I am grateful for and love most is writing fanfiction, but even before I got into it a year ago. I was telling stories before I could read, since the day learned to talk. I have been writing stories since I learned how to write. I was in creative writing in high school. I have always had a vivid imagination. I watch loads of movies. I am constantly reading books. From classics to dirty romance. Everything I read and see in this world influences the way I write. To say that fanfiction is not a safe road is very seriously wrong. Most of these kids and adults, that write, learn more from writing than they did in school. For instance.

When I write I am always about the details. I do loads of research to make my fics, original or fan based , as authentic as possible. I look up everything from medicines in certain time periods to historical events. That takes time and dedication. You develop a larger vocabulary, you learn about science and history. Which is more than most kids get in public schools around the world. They learn to communicate and for us older folks we get to stimulate our brains, which helps keep our brains young and functioning. I would never tell someone not to express themselves in anything they are passionate about.

Also I am a poet. I write about myself in my poetry. I express trauma and fears. It is a release that bleeds into my fanfiction. There is nothing wrong with fanfiction. What is wrong is misinforming the world based on poor research. I am not going to put you down. That is not my nature. I am about educating people who are ignorant or know nothing in which they speak of. I would urge you to take a better look at the world you have trampled on and reexamine the statements you have made in this article. I think it would be wise if you stepped into our world for a year and got to know us fanfiction writers, rather than make statements that seem a bit fictional themselves.

I have one question. Are you afraid of fanfiction writers? I ask, because that is how you came off in this article. With that I think I have said enough. My point is made. Don’t judge someone, unless you have walked where they have trod.

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

-Robert Frost

Perhaps Sir. You should take the road less traveled and see where it takes you. You might broaden your horizon.

Oh for God’s sake, stop this! Have any of you read this sad little troglodyte’s plays or his poetry? He’s a casualty of growing up in the wrong postcode during the eighties, a shock poet. Anyone in danger if taking his literary opinion seriously would be well served by first watching Rick Mayall’s stirring rendition of Hey! Pig! in the Young Ones.
He thrives on opposition, this kind of vitriol is just what he wants. Your comments and quotes might even end up coming out of the mouth of one of his characters in a future publication. In a language I’m sure we can all agree on, if you strike him down he’ll return more obnoxious than you could possibly imagine.
Oh, and one of the Anazon reviews for Cosmogonic Marbles was mine. I resent the csry idea that my style of prose is identical to his.

Soembody tell this guy about RP! I want to watch his head explode!

If a dictionary existed with entries such as ‘doesn’t bother to read wikipedia, let alone do actual research’,
‘spoke to one teenager who surprisingly feels like most teenagers do at that age, draws conclusions from that’,
‘pulled gender statistics out of alternate universe/his own ass’, ‘thinks teenagers are innocent souls who have no idea how sex works unless someone tells them on the internet’ and ‘considers himself an authority on what counts as wasting time/talent while completely ignoring the fact fanworks are popular mainly due to their nature of not being mainstream/profitable enough for publishing’, there would be quite a few pictures of Stephen Downes in there.

Does it make you uncomfortable and nervous that people are creating something that doesn’t cater to your own needs? Good!

Wow. Did you do any research for this at all?

Wow. This is ACTUALLY the worst, most pathetic “story” on fanfiction – focusing strangely on how young people using their minds, creativity, and writing skills to express themselves and their ideas, explore their sexuality, or practice their craft is “detrimental.” Apparently it’s a bad thing to write and practice writing – especially whilst preparing for college, where you’ll undoubtedly be called upon to do exactly that. Heaven forbid.

And the fact that fanfic allows youth to explore their sexuality in a safe, sterile environment should be on the top of every parents’ “thank you fanfic!” list. For God’s sake, when i was a kid, I absolutely sneaked my mum’s harlequin romances so I could read the sex scenes. They were generally on page 230 or thereabouts and I got really good at finding them in no time flat. (I also had a favourite.)

Oh, and if you have a hobby that you practice and are great at, but you don’t intend to pursue on a professional level, apparently this WRITER thinks that’s a waste of time.

And finally, “mediums?” MEDIUMS?!?! I’M SORRY BRO, IT’S MEDIA. Unless you’re talking about people who see dead people, it just ain’t mediums.

Also, I’d like to say, I ate 700% more crap junk food whilst table top gaming than I do while writing fanfic, which he just HAPPENS to make sound like a healthier creative outlet. C’mon, my fellow. Creativity is creativity. But maybe he’s bitter that nobody’s writing fanfic for his stories.)

Wrong on so many levels that it’s almost quaint. The author of this article is staunchly attempting to assign gender binaries and does not take into consideration the very simple fact that human beings are not programed constructs. Perhaps it makes him feel more secure to assign roles according to genital makeup in the only way he can psychologically get away with it (in his own mind), but it’s woefully misinformed. He has a set list of rules in his mind that have been long outdated, and I can only feel pity for anyone that buys into this garbage.

Oops, I have AO3 up in my browser and a FF.net app up on my phone. Excessive? Maybe. Do I care? Nope. I’ve completed 2 novels (unplublished…for now) and close to 100 short stories of *original fiction* because I got into fanfiction when I was younger. Kthanks.

What a load of absolute bull. There’s not a single actual fact in this sad little attempt to criticize something the author obviously doesn’t have the first clue about. Not to mention, I ost 13 year old fic writers I’ve known could write circles around him, and the ones who couldn’t will be able to by the time they’re 16 or 17. I’ve been reading and writing fanfic for going on fifteen years now, and encouraged my, now almost adult, daughters to get involved in online fandom as well. What could possibly be anything but good about people, whether teens or adults, getting involved in a supportive community focused on encouraging and sharing creativity? It’s something that’s been central to human experience for millenia–telling each other stories around the campfire at the end of the day. I’m nothing but happy that there is a large and vibrant community that refuses to let ‘professionals’ lay sole claim to storytelling, while relegating the rest of us to being passive consumers of whatever they try to shove down our throats. It’s nothing but amusing to watch the annual crop of pearl-clutching middle aged men ‘discover’ this supposedly ‘new’ and apparently threatening hobby of women and girls, whose time would no doubt be better spent making sammiches for the menfolk while they sit around strategizing for fantasy football. What a pathetic load of tripe.

http://stephaniefay.hubpages.com/hub/In-Defense-of-Fan-Fiction

that’s what i have to say about it.

Wow, here’s someone who has no idea what they’re talking about. I’m not surprised.

I came here for the lulz, and now I want to get back into reading fanfiction again. *sigh* I wish I was a better writer so I could write all the stuff floating around in my head about my favourite TV shows and books and stuff. :)

When I was younger I had one common problem with every book I read, every movie or television show I saw and every game I played – and that was the fact that they all had to end eventually.
Now a few years ago I discovered fanfiction and having this guy saying all this bullcrap about it is having him practically pissing upon the fact that finally my problem about my favorite stories having to end is virtually gone. I can finally read about what happens after the final chapter, I can read what happens should one single plot line change, I can read about my favorite charachters in completely different settings etc etc.
How is that a bad thing? How is finally being able to continue following mychildhood idols something that should be frowned upon?
And for another matter, thanks to fanfiction I have actually begun writing myself – not only fics at that, but I recently begun my own original work this past new year, something which I at this point plan to be at the very least a trilogy, if not more than that. And every time I feel hung up writing this particular piece I happily turn back to my roots and either read or write a fanfic of choice.
It also feels rather insulting to read that reading and writing fanfic is something that should be considered a waste of time, especially if you aren’t planning to become a professional writer. I certainly hadn’t planned on anything of the sort when I first started out – but now thanks to sites such as fanfiction.net, archiveofourown and Livejournal I am actually thinking about becoming just that. And doing so writing my works in English, which should be considered a feat knowing I am in fact Swedish, and I will do so knowing that a great deal of the things I’ve learned of the language comes from the works of fanfics – both reading and writing them.
Please do more research should you ever write another article. Reading your current one was a tragic waste of time had it not been for the comments fallowing it.

Did you consider actually researching the topic before you wrote this article?

When I was younger I had one common problem when it came to every book I read, every movie or television show I watched and every game I played. It was the fact that they all had to end.
Now, a few years ago I discovered a wonderful thing called fanfic and having this guy writing such crap about it is like having him practically pissing upon the fact that I finally have the chance to know what happens after the usual ‘happily ever after’. Finally I can read what others think would happen to my favorite characters, I can read what would happen to the story if a single plotline would be changed in the story, I get to read about characters in new settings, I get to read about new interesting relationships etc etc.
How can that possibly be a bad thing? How can it ever be a bad thing to finally have an answer to some of the major questions of my childhood?
For another thing it is insulting how you say that fanfic is a waste of time to write should you not think about becoming a proffessional writer later on. When I first began reading and writing fics I only did so to live out all the fantasies I had as a child – and to improve my knowledge of the English language (happy Swedish girl here, learned more English by reading and writing fics than I ever did in any classroom, should be saying something considering I only had straight A’s on the subject throughout my school life).
Now however in the past six months or so I began thinking about writing my own original work, which I did in January and whenever I feel stuck writing it nowadays I make sure to go back to my roots and either read or write a fic of my choice. It always loosens me up enough to continue my work.
So please stop writing such nonsense about fanfic. Do some actual research next time, ask more than one 13-year-old and only public actual facts, not something you found on wikipedia. Reading this would have been a complete waste of time had it not been for the comments fallowing it.

Mr. Stephen Downes,

“Is there anything funnier than a stodgy middle-aged person finding a subculture he’s not familiar with”

I think this is my winner of insult of the month …the rest of you are just phoning it in …better luck next time guys … good job I didn’t write about RP, apprently my head would have exploded …nasty (smile, life’s too short for hating)