Drivers Behind Fan Works

In a manner of speaking, many of the paintings and literary masterpieces we consider classics are fan works.

Shakespeare is well known for taking the work of other writers and improving upon it when crafting his plays. When you get right down to it, what are Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno but fan fiction written about the Bible? Many of the earlier novelists took inspiration from each other’s work, often borrowing heavily from one another.

Aside from portraits, what are the subjects of most of the famous Renaissance paintings we learned about in school? They either featured Bible scenes or scenes from Greek or Roman mythology.

There are a lot of people today who look down on fan works as a new phenomenon driven by attention seeking, but this is far from true. Yes, it is easier to share and more accessible today than it has been in the past, but fan art and fan fictions have always been a part of human society since we first began sharing stories and ideas.

It’s just we have intellectual property laws today regulating the difference between original works and derivatives in a way we didn’t have until the early to mid 1700s. That makes it much more profitable to discount, vilify, and ridicule fan works as “less than” when compared to “original” works. Yet, even with all of this, fan art and fan fiction and other forms of fan produced content continue to thrive. Why?

What is driving these people to spend precious time creating content they can never profit from by its nature as a fan work? Why do other fans seek out these fan works, for that matter? Shouldn’t they be content with the original works themselves and find themselves satisfied with that alone?

The answers to all of these questions are interconnected. Fan creators create for the same or similar reasons other fans seek out fan created content. Here are a few of the most common reasons fan works exist.

1. Love of the story and/or characters

Have you ever come across a story you love so much, you crave more content from it after the story is finished? Do you find yourself wishing for more canon content for a favorite character? So do fan fiction readers and fan creators.

Even if the canon material is well written, and the story itself is whole and satisfying, fans can still find themselves wishing for more.

This is one major reason so many of today’s creators consider fan works based on their work one of the biggest compliments the fandom can give them. The creation of fan art and fan fiction speaks to the fact those creating and consuming it care about the story enough to spend time making it or seeking it out.

2. Shipping

Let’s start with a quick definition for this one. Shipping is when fans enthusiastically enjoy the relationship between two or more characters. These relationships may be canon or non-canon. While they are most often romantic, they can be platonic, familial, or antagonistic in nature as well.

We have all seen it again and again. A romance between two characters is teased and hinted at all throughout a series, either only becoming canon for an episode or two before falling apart or written out of existence, or becoming canon in the last episode or two. Writers usually do this to avoid relationships becoming “stale” and boring, but many fans want to see these relationships pan out to varying degrees. Others want to see the yearning and feelings behind scenes that played out in canon in a way you cannot get from most television series or movies.

Beyond this, fans of multiple series may believe characters from differing series would work well together. Either they share similar pasts, or they represent archetypes the individual finds work well together. This is often where crossover fan works come into play. 

Over the years, I have seen virtually every horror, sci-fi, and fantasy series crossed over with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Stargate, Doctor Who, DC, Marvel, and Supernatural at some point or another. Then you have niche crossover fandoms that pop up on A03 or Tumblr now and again such as the Superwholock fandom, which combines Doctor Who, Supernatural, and BBC’s Sherlock.

Many of these crossovers involve shipping of one sort or another. I have seen tags for virtually any character being paired romantically with virtually any other character. I have seen multi-fandom crossovers where Buffy Summers, Daniel Jackson, Dean Winchester, Rory Williams, and Captain Jack Harkness form a “frequently dead” club. I’ve seen The Doctor being close friends or the ex of just about every character out there. Harry Potter has had I have no idea how many cousins, siblings, or long-lost uncles/aunts pop up out of the woodwork.

In short, fans love their favorite characters and want to see them interacting with their other favorites. So they often create fan works to see this happen.

3. Discontent with the canon

This reason is similar to the last except it usually has more to do with a specific event or how a particular character or characters’ development is handled. There are a few different common fic types that come from this particular reason for creating fan works: the fix it fic, salt fics, canon divergence, and character redemption fics.

A fix it fic is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Something in canon happened, and the author absolutely hated it. So they write a story where something else happened in place of that event, or it still happened but was “fixed” during the aftermath. Sometimes these continue on to show what could have happened later in the series if this particular event were “fixed.” Sometimes they end once the event is over.

Salt fics tend to spring out of series where characters do bad things and are not subjected to what a fan considers “proper” consequences for those actions. Basically, in these fics, the author creates a comeuppance and/or punishment for these characters to create the sense of closure sometimes missing from canon material.

Character redemption fics come from almost the opposite end of the spectrum. These tend to pop up in fandoms where the canon content refuses to allow characters, most often “bully” archetypes in content marketed toward children or teens, to grow and develop. Some episodes may show these characters having a defining moment where they see the error of their ways. They may even have an episode or two where they show some development toward improving their behavior only for their character to be “reset” to the bully default an episode or two later.

Fans find this kind of character development denial is infuriating. So, fans will often begin producing character redemption fics, or full canon divergence fics, to give characters the development they feel they deserve but are not allowed.

What are canon divergence fics? They often sit somewhere between all of the other types. Be it from an event, series of events, in how certain character arcs are handled, or some combination thereof, the author believes the story went off the rails somewhere. So, they create a story where they see things as being handled better.

So with all of these different reasons coming out of how fans see something as having gone wrong in canon, how can creators see this as a good thing?

You can’t spend time creating and releasing material into the world without realizing no story is perfect. No matter how hard you try to master every facet of writing fiction, some are always going to find issues with this, that, or the other. That’s just a fact. However, if you have those who enjoy and care about the story or characters in your work enough, despite their issues with it, to spend time creating art or stories for it, that’s a win.