Can part of Main.Fanfic be moved to an Analysis page?

Fan Fiction is a form of Alternate or Expanded Universe created by the fans of a work, rather than the work's original creator. Fan Fiction, or "Fanfics" as they are often called, are written for any number of reasons, such as:

• to continue a story that ended prematurely (see Continuation);
• to redo a story the way the author thinks it should have gone (see Fix Fic);
• to see what would happen if certain characters are placed in unusual situations (see Alternate Universe Fic),
• to see what happens when the characters of one franchise encounter the characters of another franchise (see Crossover);
• to imagine oneself in the fictional universe (see Self-Insert Fic);
• to get the characters to have sex with, date, marry, have children with, or have crushes on, each other or the author (see Shipping)

Due to the inexperience of many fanfic writers, fan fiction has gained a reputation for being a source of horrible, horrible writing. However there are fanfics out there that are INCREDIBLY good. Sometimes being just as good as, if not better than, the original work.

Fan fiction is often the place where Epileptic Trees are planted and cultivated. Expect many, many, many more fics to star the Ensemble Dark Horse than The Hero.

Saying "It was a fanfic episode," though, is not usually a compliment.

Although fanfic exploded along with the Internet, it existed well before the Net did. Such luminaries as John Stuart Mill contributed unauthorized, original stories set in a fictional universe. Before medieval French troubadours were shipping Lancelot and Guinevere, the ancient Greeks were writing plays about relationships between characters in The Iliad. In Plato's Symposium one character complains that a play by Aeschylus got the characterization of Achilles and Patroclus wrong. Namely, that it got the Lover and Beloved dynamic backwards.

Not all fanfic is written, though that's the most common form. It can be in any format that can tell a story. In Japan, manga doujinshi (amateur "comic books") are a common vehicle; and with the increasing ease of their production on personal computers, fan videos (ranging from anime series, to Star Wars) have also appeared.

The distinction between fanfic and original fiction, as we know it today, is largely created by modern copyright law; much of classical writing is actually "fanfiction" based on older sources. The major distinction between fanfic and a story inspired by another story is that the story a fanfic is based on has one or more "official" versions, usually owned by a company, a creator, or both. Thus, things like The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a piece of biblical apocrypha featuring Angry!Uber!Baby Jesus, or variations on Arthurian legend where there is no Holy Grail and Lancelot's affair with Guinevere never happens, would not "count" by this definition.

Currently, the largest source of fanfiction on the Net (and probably anywhere else) is the aptly named FanFiction.Net, which as of 2013, offers approximately nine million stories across all but a select few canons (which were banned due to creator request) and an automated system for posting. A newer site called Archive of Our Own is starting to nip at FanFiction.Net's heels, though, with over 1.7 million stories and less restrictions on what can and cannot be posted. And to top it all off, in mid-2013, Amazon.com joined in the act with its Kindle Worlds program, which allows for the publication and sale (!) of fan fiction from specific 'verses.

See also Memetic Mutation and Shipping. For fanfic-specific tropes, see Fanfic Tropes.

This page is for fanfiction. Other types of fan work belong on the subpages of Fan Work (Fan Film, Fan Vid, Filk Song, and so on). We're working on moving the misplaced works— help Fan Films, Fan Vids, and others get to their correct index!

Special note for authors of fanfics: The fact that you wrote the fic gives you no say in whether or not we have a write up on it, unless you create the page for it yourself. Furthermore, you do not have more say on the contents of the page than any other author. You quite expressly do not have the right to have our page taken down because you wish to disown your work or because you don't like the tropes we have found in it. The page here is ours. The fic is yours. Those are different things.

Note that since this is intended to be an index of fics with pages, a Red Link will be frowned on and given a very brief (week or two) grace period before being removed by your fellow tropers. Start the page for the fic if you think it should be in this index.