It was a gloomy day in the fanfiction world for Sophie, who had writer’s block and could not come up with an idea on what to write her new story on. She sat in front of her laptop, frustrated at the fact that her writer’s block had been going on for the past 4 days now. As she began to look at the items around her room, she was suddenly struck with the idea that she could make a fanfiction about her favorite band members living in a Wuthering Heights alternate universe, and began excitedly planning out the characters and conflicts within the story.

This is  a common basic visual for a person writing fanfiction as a passionate hobby.

Now, according to Dictionary.com, fanfiction is:

“Fiction written by fans of a TV series, movie, etc., using existing characters and situations to create new plots.”

In case a more detailed definition is needed, here’s a good one provided by Urban Dictionary:

A piece of fiction within a fandom utilizing characters and situations from a pre-existing work including (but not limited to) books, television programs, films, and comic strips. Typically separated into het, slash, and general genres. Often used to play out AU scenarios and/or various romantic pairings not found in the original work.  Heavily archived online.

The majority of the population is familiar with the fact that E.L. James’ worldwide-selling book Fifty Shades of Grey was originally a Twilight fanfiction that eventually got published and got it’s own movie later.

After by Wattpad user Anna Todd is another piece to add to the list of published fanfiction.

So why is fanfiction so popular?

Mizzwilde, a Tumblr community user, explained, “There is a freedom of expression and liberty to write with no restrictions, unlike when writing under a publishing company, there are regulations you have to comply to and it’s much more restricting.”

She also stated that it’s not just limited to TV shows and movies, but that there are many more categories with people to write about. The category for fanfiction about musicians is so large that it has been categorized individually according to the name of the artist.

For published works, the author has to avoid copyright infringement when coming up for the names of their characters in their story. For example, authors are not allowed to use celebrity names due to copyright.

Among the most popular sites for fanfiction are Wattpad, Archive of Our Own, and fanfiction.net.

The fanfiction is divided up via gender into three sections, based on the relationships between the characters. Typically, it is separated into het (heterosexual relationships), slash (homosexual relationships), and other general based genres.

This past summer, Archive of Our Own posted their annual AO3 Ship Stats. The list shows the 100 most popular relationship tags on the website.

Among the top five, are Castiel and Dean Winchester from Supernatural in first place with 43,209 works registered in the system.

In second and third place,  Sherlock Holmes and John Watson from the UK series Sherlock with 30,374 works, and Derek Hale and Stiles Stilinski from Teen Wolf with 34,999 works.

And in fourth and fifth place are One Direction’s Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson with 21,658 works, and Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester from Supernatural with 14,677 works.

As said earlier, Wattpad user Anna Todd got her Harry Styles fanfiction published, but there has been quite a controversy about it.

Many disliked the novel due to the romanticizing of violent relationships within the book. Much like Meyer and James, Todd’s book has gotten a movie deal along with a two million dollar publishing deal to promote her book.

Todd is quite proud of her work and has proceeded to publish the rest of her books in her After series, but many Wattpad users disliked the idea of a fan fiction being published, since the purpose of fanfiction is for personal entertainment of the fans, not the general public.

The power of fanfiction is taking over the literature world. Although published books are still very popular, fanfiction is becoming more favorable among online readers and may begin to replace published works in the near future.