How Fanfiction is Beneficial to Society

Hey everyone! It’s been a while! I had to take a break to deal with health issues and to focus on school, but this blog means a lot to me, and I really want to get it off of its tiny little feets. Anyway, I don’t see a need to stall any longer so let’s get on with the blog!

History of Fanfiction

Okay, I totally understand that I’m making an outrageous claim here, but bear with me! Fanfiction has been around since just about forever. The first fanzine dates back to the 1960’s, and the FanFiction.Net website first launched back in 1998, but fiction made by fans has been around way before that. RPF (real person fiction) is fanfiction’s—slightly more legal yet triple more controversial—older cousin. RPF has been dated back to 1623 with Shakespeare’s first Folio. For the sake of simplicity, I will use fanfiction as the umbrella term that encompasses RPF. Fanfiction is well incorporated into our modern-day society. While nearly everyone knows that Fifty Shades of Grey is a fanfiction, some other notable works include Wicked, Clueless, and She’s the Man. The latter two are, in fact, fanfiction. An ‘adaption’ of a someone else’s work in this sense is still a fanfiction; it’s an AU (alternate universe) fanfic.

History lesson aside, we all know what fanfiction is and how long it’s been around, but what’s kept it thriving for all these years despite political and ethical backlash? Why does fanfiction have such a strong and growing community? If I told you it’s because it’s beneficial to society, would you believe me?

Meet New People

My first premise is a no-brainer. Sharing fanfiction helps improve interpersonal skills. Fandoms are little social groups. People can connect with other people because they share a common interest. This opens up opportunities for people to socialize, especially for those who feel like they are an outcast in their local social scene. Posting a fanfiction is a great way to become involved in a fandom and meet new people. Or, alternatively, reading and commenting on someone else’s fanfiction can also strike up a new connection. I know I definitely made long term friends through fanfiction. Creating friends allows for collaboration to occur between fans. Sharing ideas with another person builds teamworking skills.

Make a Name For Yourself

Piggybacking off of that, I would like to introduce my next point: fanfiction is a wonderful—if not the best—creative outlet of our time. I make this steep claim because fanfiction uses characters that everyone in the community knows about and are interested in. Fanfiction is more likely to be read by others because people are more likely to read something if they are already interested in the characters. Fanfiction is more likely to be seen by others as compared to original works of fiction because people search for things that they are familiar with and love. People who are active in a fandom—any fandom—search for works that have to do with their fandom. Therefore, by writing fanfiction, an amateur author would generate a larger audience than if they were to write an original work of fiction on the internet.

Improve Your Mental Health

And this wouldn’t be a blog post by Kelsey if we didn’t talk about mental health. That’s right, I’m going to convince you that writing fanfiction is beneficial to mental health. When people are feeling intense emotions, they often seek out a way to cope. A popular coping skill is called “projection”. Projection is the act of attributing feelings onto someone else. It could be argued that projection could be performed among original characters and doesn’t have to be exclusively through fanfiction, but original works of fiction require character and world development. It’s much easier to project feelings onto a character that the author already has a connection with. And, with fanfiction generating a larger audience (as stated in the previous paragraph) the author is more likely to find emotional support from other members of the community.

Creating a Better World

From improving interpersonal skills, to providing a creative outlet, to benefiting mental health, I do believe that the growth of fanfiction should be seen as a good thing. Not only are people finding a social circle they can thrive in, they have a way to share their artistic talent as well as a way to cope with their hardships while receiving support from the community. Fanfiction has a positive impact on those participate in it. It grants people friends, recognition, and support that they may not have otherwise. And I think we can all agree that anything that generates these things are beneficial to society.

At the end of the day, fanfiction is just as harmless as any other work of fiction. However, these benefits that come with fanfiction are not as easy to find in original works of fiction. To say that fanfiction is more important than original fiction just wouldn’t make any sense—we need a world to deviate from after all—but the rapidly growing fanfiction subculture is beneficial to society.