Based on the original fan base, fanfiction is not only the author's "return of love" to the character but also a process of satisfying the desire to create through fan interaction. A fan creator from the Department of Literature at King's College London said: "One of the pleasures of writing is that you can meet all kinds of wonderful people."
Note: Fan works refer to non-commercial, non-profit works created by individuals or groups that are not published on commercial platforms. They are re-created with characters or other materials from specific literary, anime, manga, movie, and game works, and the plots are mostly unrelated to the original works.
When asked whether writing fan fiction would take up too much study time, many fan fiction writers, who are also young college students, said that they used to write in class and later would choose to record their ideas into outlines and then expand them into articles. In the face of the reality of low popularity and few fans, the authors still maintain their passion for creation, not driven by any interests but simply by the sentiment, "I want to write" — and this is exactly the voice of every fan creator.
The "Third World" After the Second World
Online literature is about creating a second world where people can satisfy many of their own desires and imaginations, which is the key point of online literature's appeal. The second world also has rules, which seem to be made by the author but, in fact, require a sense of substitution for the audience to enter. Thus, the author must refer to the logic of the first world when creating the second world.
Fan works represent the third world, based on the Internet and operating according to the rules of the second world. "Fan" creators re-create based on original works (or real people, historical prototypes, comics, or anime) and sometimes use certain elements of the original work to produce derivatives, resulting in secondary creations such as humanities, fan art, fan videos, cosplay, manga adaptations, etc. Fan creation adheres to the rules of the original work while incorporating originality. Generally speaking, as long as the basic personality of the character remains unchanged, the rest can be interpreted according to the author's intention. In other words, how the creator interprets, imagines, and develops the original character becomes the essence of fan works.
The vast majority of fan fiction centers on "CP" (coupling). It emphasizes not the fixed couples in the original work but the process of fans pairing and creating (coupling) the characters in the original work.
However, just as online literary works must be constructed according to the logic of the real world, this third world of free creation must still follow the original work. If the fan author gives the characters too much freedom, it may destroy the rules of the original world and deviate from the original settings, reducing "titles" and "appearances" to the only connections between the fan work and the original work, ultimately resulting in "OOC" (out of character, inconsistent with the original personality).
Exploring Self-Identity and Social Dynamics Through Fan Fiction
Self-identity, also known as self-identification, is a concept proposed by American scholar Eric Erickson. In general, self-identity can be understood as an individual's self-evaluation and self-positioning. Everyone tries to find or maintain their own special existence deep in their hearts, thereby forming the concept of personality, self, and subject. Out of love for the original work and their own desire to create, fan authors use their work as a carrier of self-expression, through which they can form a sense of self-identity.
In essence, loving the original characters (or real people, historical prototypes, anime characters, or manga protagonists) is a process of "empathy." People see their own missing qualities in these characters and also see their ideal selves. By reading and creating fan fiction, readers can constantly imagine and even practice the good qualities of the characters, thereby highlighting the virtues of the original characters in the right places.
According to Roland Barthes' "Theory of Writable Text," fan fiction is an open game with various possibilities. Every reader and author can produce their own meaning from the text and experience the fun of "role-playing" that co-authoring provides. The "writability" of fan fiction enables individuals to continuously interpret their own evolving lives through creation, enriching and enhancing the self-concept of participants, especially creators, and thereby subtly completing self-identification and subject establishment.
On another level, most participants in fan fiction are women, and the characters in fan fiction works are predominantly men, creating a new type of gaze relationship. A professor in the literature Department at Sun Yat-sen University, once pointed out that in most literary and artistic works of the past, women were viewed as objects by men because men held the right to speak in the real world. In the fan circle, women account for the vast majority, which determines that they are present from beginning to end, establishing and standardizing the communication rules of this imaginary world.
However, in reality, most creators do not break free from the existing logic of life but attempt to cater to societal impressions of both sexes.
In communication with ten fan creators, eight women said they prefer to view men as bystanders or experiencers, considering their fan works as stages to record the actions of characters rather than arranging the characters in a "God-like" manner.
Thus, even when creation is based on personal life experiences, those experiences are inevitably concealed under the logic of the real world. Although the positions of "watching" and "being watched" are reversed, the power relationship remains unchanged. Similarly, the fan group, composed primarily of individuals aged 15-25, observes the world of adult characters from a youthful perspective, which essentially serves as their window into society and life.
Balancing Passion, Feedback, and Artistic Freedom
Often, the desire to create and the desire to give back to the role coexist. "I was born to like drawing," said an artist on X. "Later, I fell in love with the works of the second dimension, including manga and anime. Seeing them come alive little by little under my pen gave me a special sense of accomplishment."
Fan works act as a "springboard" primarily because they are Internet-based. Fan culture originated from ACG works (Animation, Comic, and Game), which originated in Japan. Fans browse original works online and disseminate fan information via the Internet to find more enthusiasts. The openness of the Internet makes it both a dissemination platform and a production space for fan works.
Through repeated deconstruction and understanding of original works, combined with continuous interaction between authors and readers, fan works receive feedback from the original works' fans. The popularity of a work becomes the main indicator of its quality. Platforms now publicly display the popularity of works, motivating authors to improve and gain more positive feedback.
Although this feedback reflects the author's skill to some extent, it also has limitations.
First, fans' judgment criteria often include "whether it is OOC." If the author focuses too much on personal ideas and ignores the original work's background, even outstanding creations may not be recognized. Moreover, when creating fan works, authors are inevitably restricted by the original subject matter, often prioritizing the depiction of character personalities and "cuteness" over the article's or artwork's quality.
Additionally, there is an aesthetic trend of "short, fast, and impactful" fan creations. Visually engaging pictures and videos, and fast-paced, plot-heavy articles, particularly in manga adaptations or anime-inspired works, are audience favorites. This trend pushes some authors to cater to fans' tastes, leading to homogenization in fan writing. Consequently, while exploring diverse themes, authors may struggle to innovate.
In short, while fan creation is influenced by audience preferences and societal realities, it remains an autonomous and spontaneous creative activity. "I want to write" is its core, distinguishing fan fiction from other online literature. This freedom preserves creative enthusiasm and avoids the rigidity of conventional online literature.
Most fans view fan writing as an escape from daily life, providing happiness, entertainment, and relaxation among like-minded enthusiasts.
AI is Transforming Fan Fiction and Otome Games
With AI's rapid development, AI writing has become a hot topic. How can AI showcase creativity in literature, and can its novels rival human authors? These questions are increasingly discussed.
AI creation, also called robot writing, analyzes and processes input to generate coherent articles. Advanced AI writing now plays a significant role in assisting fan fiction writers.
For example, an ACGN enthusiast described role-playing with Satoru Gojo (from Jujutsu Kaisen) on TipsyChat. The AI role-playing model generates vivid chapters and, over time, can produce high-quality works.
AI novel writing relies on deep learning and natural language processing, crafting logical and creative storylines. While AI offers new opportunities, it must respect originality, reflect human emotions, and adhere to ethical norms for healthy development.
From the perspective of content supply, AI chat products have overturned the content production path of previous otome games, which was almost entirely dominated by professional teams. For AI products like TipsyChat, all intelligent agents are created spontaneously by users, similar to a UGC+AIGC platform, where content is produced by the hands of users and large models, and users then interact with the content to complete content consumption. The content production costs in previous otome games have been transformed into AI interaction costs.
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