History Main / FanworkOnlyFans

Compare PraisingShowsYouDontWatch for when people praise a work without having seen it, and JustHereForGodzilla for when fans engage in a work because it features specific stuff (such as characters) they like. Contrast FanonDiscontinuity for when they are/were fans of the work but ignore it past the point they don't like. See also FanartAtFirstSight, where {{fan art}} of a work or a new character within that setting is produced and circulated long before they officially debut; the two tropes can overlap if the artist does not engage with the work in any capacity beyond fan art following its release.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', and in turn prior and subsequent ''Franchise/MyLittlePony'' series, had many fans first exposed and brought into it by the vast amount of fan-produced ''Friendship Is Magic'' media. Thus many ''My Little Pony'' fans don't or never cared for the official material finding the fan works, offering more mature and serious content, more to their liking.

* Most people who are familiar with the ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaCDiGames CD-i games]] know them from YouTubePoop videos and other lighthearted forms of mockery. Very few fans have actually ''played'' any of them, though this is mostly because they were originally released for [[Platform/PhilipsCDi an unpopular system]] that few owned and sees little in terms of emulation efforts, meaning one has to go out of their way to play them. Of course, it doesn't help that even if one were willing to play them on original hardware, it would be expensive to do so, and [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes the odds of a rerelease are quite low]].

* There is a significant community of those who write and/or consume ''Literature/{{Worm}}'' fanfiction without having read the actual story, particularly on [[Website/SpaceBattlesDotCom Spacebattles]], [[Website/SufficientVelocityDotCom Sufficient Velocity]], and [[Website/QuestionableQuestingDotCom Questionable Questing]]. Often this is because they were drawn into the story through a crossover, but also because the fandom just happens to dominate the creative writing sections of those boards. Interesting, some of these fans claim to actually dislike the original story and/or [[Creator/{{Wildbow}} its author]], essentially cherrypicking stories based on the aspects of the original that they do enjoy. In some cases this is also a case of ArchivePanic, as ''Worm'' by itself totals about ''1.68 million words''. These fan groups also break down into subsets; there's a significant group that has only read the first eight arcs of that story and only know the rest through the wiki and fanfics, preferring the early street-level action to the increasingly monumental stakes of the remaining 22 arcs. There's also a group that have read all of ''Worm'' but refuses to read any of sequel ''Literature/{{Ward}}'', for [[BrokenBase various reasons]] (among them ''Ward'' is another ''2.2 million words'' of writing) despite occasionally pulling concepts and setting details that originated there into their fics.