Stranger than Fan Fiction- History

     Fan fiction is widely derided on the internet; many consider it to just be women pairing off their favorite characters with very little editing and spell checking. In many cases, this assumption is correct. A prime example of this is "My Immortal," a self-insert Harry Potter fanfic that is the both the most well known fan fiction, and is also one of the most widely hated. But that is just the mere surface of this internet phenomenon. There is so much more to see.

     First, a brief history: Fan fiction is as old as stories. No, seriously. Though Fan Fiction is a new term, it has been around significantly longer. What do I mean? Well... There is a chains of books, written by different authors, that are all written as fan works of another.
     The chain begins with Homer's The Iliad (adapted into the movie Troy, for those ignorant of the book). It tells us about the war between Greece and Troy, the politics involved in it (both on earth and on Olympus), and the people involved in the war. It is the source of tropes like "Achilleus in his tent" (The spelling of Achilleus is varied. Some use a K, some don't... I use the version found in my copy of the book), and is one of the great epic poems of the past.
      Which is probably why Rome wanted a story about how they descended from Troy as propaganda. They commissioned Virgil to write The Aeneid, the story of Aeneas, one of the few survivors of the Trojan Horse attack, who would later found Rome. The Aeneid is written in much of the same style as the Iliad and Homer's other works, which makes sense since they wanted it to be like an extension on them. There is one notable detour in Aeneas's quest: he journeys through the underworld. There is quite a bit of explanation on the innerworkings of the underworld; such as the Elysium Fields (not the movie), the pit of Tartarus, and the river Styx. Though the Aeneid pretty much forgets the whole thing occurred, it is important for the next book in the line...
     Dante's Inferno is probably much more widely known than the other two, and it is the third piece of this chain. You see, Dante was a fan of Virgil's the Aeneid; so much in fact, that Dante made Virgil his guide through Hell. Why? Because Dante's Inferno is a self-insert fanfic, where he gets to meet his idol, along with philosophers like Socrates and Plato, and punishes people he doesn't like, like the pope. With that, there is also a whole lot of Continuity porn, such as Hektor being higher up in Hell than Achilleus, Dido being in Hell for lusting for Aeneas, Charon being the ferryman for souls (and even mentioning the other people who've crossed into the underworld and caused trouble), and Limbo being a word for word equal to the Elysium Fields. Dante's Inferno is true blue Fan Fiction. Different perspective on the whole thing now eh?

     Fan Fiction as a term mostly came about because of movies and other big productions, along with copyrights. Before copyrights, anyone could simply write a sequel to someone else's work, and it'd just be called a story. After copyrights put the kibosh on that, there became a rift between the creators of a piece, and the consumers.  Consumers trying extend the story for others became illegal (along with just flat out stealing the book to make money, but we're not focusing on that), thus there was a problem: consumers had to accept what was given to them, with zero control over the outcome.

     ...Then came the fanzines. This was a new (legally unstable) method of outputting fan fiction to people. The fan fiction featured was much shorter; they tended to be short stories, unless a magazine was okay with printed them chapter by chapter. They were of decidedly lesser quality than previous ventures (then again, a lot of things pale in comparison to the Iliad), but still, they were generally good. However, they were prone to being taken down by companies for violating copyright, as is prone to happen when one profits off someone else's work.

     Fan fiction was in a rut, until the internet. With he internet, came a massive surge of Fan Fiction. In 1998, fanfiction.net went live, and 3 years later, it had 100,000 stories cataloged. The quality of each piece did not matter, because there were more available if you didn't like one! The best part of all, since it is free, it falls under fair use, making it safe from copyright infringement! (Unless some other circumstance occurs, but that's generally true.)

That brings us to the present... Fan Fiction is everywhere. It is nearly unavoidable. But, there is a lot going on with it... Return here tomorrow for the next installment of Stranger than Fan Fiction.