The Context of Fanfiction

Fanfiction is content written about any media by a fan of that media. Originally beginning in zines and on old school online forums, fan fiction has only gotten more popular and accessible thanks to the popularity of the internet. Some fanfictions have achieved fame both inside and out of their respective fandoms, and fanficition as a whole has transcended being just the base media and has taken on tropes and styles that make it unique and distinct from other written texts.

The anthropological relevancy of fanfiction is based largely in the fact that fandoms are their own types of groups, and fanfiction serves as one of the many ways that people engage with their fandom groups, and with the group of people who enjoy consuming fanfiction as one of their content of choice within a fandom. Fanfiction stands as a testament to the variations within verbal folklore. Because of this, fanfiction has developed it's own group qualities and lore. It is important to also understand that fandoms as groups, while they may have defining characteristics and unique attributes, are groups with very porous boundaries, allowing different groups to mingle and blend within each other (Sims and Stephens, 2011). These porous boundaries present particularly interesting terms of membership, because one may consider themself a part of a fandom and the fanfiction community as a lurker (someone who chooses to anonymously read fanfiction), an active commentor, or an author (both published and unpublished) (Popova, 2020).