The hill I will die on: Fan fiction is real literature, whatever the snobs say [View all]

[hunter]

Fan fiction is democracy in its purest, most chaotic form. It’s the people seizing the means of production. Every “what if?” is a tiny revolution. What if the side character got a backstory? What if the finale didn’t end in heartbreak? What if Harry Styles and Zayn Malik kissed just once, for morale?

Of course, many would argue that fan fiction isn’t real literature. It borrows worlds and characters that someone else created. It’s often unedited, published online for free and written by people with no verified experience. To the purists, it lacks originality, polish and commercial value, the hallmarks of what they believe “serious” writing should be.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/03/hill-die-on-fan-fiction-real-literature

I had a sort-of-girlfriend who wrote some Star Trek slash back in the days when fan fiction was distributed as stapled paper copies at conventions and such; often really crappy copies made on battered self-serve machines in the library by people who feared exposing themselves to some bored copy store clerk.

A few years after the internet was opened to all in the Eternal Septemberof 1993 I was poking around looking for other fan fiction and saw my friend's story posted in multiple places, sometimes by people claiming authorship. I confronted a couple of them for my own amusement, telling them I was in the room as my friend was writing the story, but I didn't get any confessions. These days the same sorts of people are probably passing off AI slop as their own.

Such is the internet.