This is good fanfiction https://archiveofourown.org/works/7862041

Interesting legal grey area actually. The most likely answer (if anyone tried to push it) would be that you can only be sued for fanfiction if you are writing fanfiction of a book/novel series and making something similar in tone/style/etc. If your fanfiction could lead people to believe it was published by the original author and as a result have an effect on their sales numbers, then that would be legally dangerous.

However, things are kind of tricky because, statistically speaking, there seems to be evidence that a thriving fanfiction community benefits the product. Harry Potter, for example, can be shown not only to have not been harmed by the size of its fanfiction community during th erun of the books/films, but actively benefitted. The result is that, provided you are publishing a fanfic as part of a fanfiction community (ff.net, fimfiction, hentaifoundry, archiveofourown) it may be entirely impossible to lose the case.

Of course, it's worth remembering that you can be sued for anything, if someone with enough lawyer feels like it.

Well, clearly it's a compound word made by two words. Fan + Fiction - while that seems like 'DUH CAPTAIN OBVIOUS', I think it does well to encapsulate the culture that surrounds fanfiction - particularly the 'fan' part of it.

Beyond simple pandering to fan nostalgia, it is a celebration of the culture of a given 'fandom' encapsulated in what a fan does with the established setting and culture. It is meant to be an attempt to recapture the magic created by the original work. Good fanfiction is not just a good story, but it captures the spirit of the original characters and setting (with some creative licensing allowed obviously, depending on what exactly the author wants) while sticking them in an entirely new plotline.

Or maybe I'm just being hyper-verbose and it's literally just fiction made by fans for fans. FIIK.

Interesting thoughts, and this is the kind of analysis I was really hoping to hear.

"It is meant to be an attempt to recapture the magic created by the original work."

How would you define this? For example, I do not consider MOST of my erotica fanfiction, even though it is fiction for fans, but I consider my Attack on Titan story to be, even though I'm not a fan of the series. I made an attempt to try to copy a fan presentation of a character, but interestingly I found that capturing the fan vision of the character meant abandoning much of the canonical portrayal.

That said, it is certainly a celebration of the fandom's culture, I copied the way they see the character. On top of that, I'm rather intrigued by the use of the word 'celebration' there, since that captured an aspect of my own definition I was struggling with.

"Or maybe I'm just being hyper-verbose and it's literally just fiction made by fans for fans. FIIK."

This is I think a key piece of fanfiction, but this is kind of challenging to me as well. I think of things like the Eugenics Wars novels, and those are certainly novels by fans of Star Trek aimed at fans of Star Trek, but they don't 'feel' like fanfiction.

If I'm going to define fanfiction, I think I'm going to say that I think it has to have a few defining traits.

1) Target Audience: A fanfiction is by definition aimed at those already familiar with a given work.

2) Non-contradictory: A fanfiction does not contradict the original work. I want to be clear on this that it does not mean that the fanfiction agrees in all ways WITH the original work. Rather that a fanfiction considers its own portrayals secondary to those in the original. I can write a fanfic that says that Khan from Wrath of Khan is the Cain of the Bible, but I can't expect that will effect your understanding or discussion of the rest of the work and, in presentation and style, my story will reflect that.

3) Communal: A fanfiction is a much more direct form of literature than a published work. Fanfiction and its authors are clearly oriented towards the community of fans rather than a general audience. Again looking to "Eugenics Wars," that book could be read by anyone familiar with Trek, but a fanfic places itself with a communal context, relies on certain cues or ideas within that community, is at times interrupted by its creator to address their readers, etc. You can read Eugenics Wars or watch a new James Bond and not miss much, but you CAN'T read a fanfic from a show you don't know and pick up on all the stuff.

Thanks for helping me solidify my views :)

Well, in Psychology, there is an idea called 'prototype'.

When I say bird, what do you imagine? Take a moment.

Now, I want you to compare that to say an ostrich or a peaccock or a turkey. Those are all birds, but certainly if I was vague about the word 'bird' without any context, you would probably not imagine turkeys, ducks, peacocks, or the like.

By the same vein, there may be some deviations, and there will be few definitions that are both specific enough to capture the essence of "fanfiction" and vague enough to allow for all permutations. Your stuff is 'technically' fanfiction, but it's not necessarily by a fan - commissions in of themselves make this odd, and certainly if you have to use a lot of creative license to make things fit, it can stretch the definition a little. Still, technically, you're using established IPs for your own fiction purposes, which is the bare minimum for fanfiction.

I like your specific definition of 'non-contradictory' - though I would imagine some fanfiction authors think they know better than the creators, it is all considered secondary to the main work. That allows for things like edgy Pokemon fics and furry Pokemon.

For authors, I think #3 is important to consider in conjunction with #1 - you generally don't have to explain every little detail of what a Pikachu looks like in pikachu fanfiction.

The idea of a prototype is a really useful one that does help clarify things, but I would also invoke a bit of linguistics, albeit I don't know the name of a concept. That is, that a word is determined by its usage, and thus while a definition can be devised, it comes from the usage. While it's fun to have the debate, the linguist's answer to "Is a hot dog a sandwich" is just "Do people call it a sandwich?" If they do, it is, and if they don't, it's not.

So while I think the derivative nature (using established IPs for my own purposes, as you say) is relevant here, I also think that there's so much derivative work that I think would not be called fanfiction is important to consider. I might not thinjk of a peacock or an ostrich when I think of a bird, but I do think if you pointed out a peacock to me, and asked "What type of bird is that" I wouldn't have found it odd for you to have said in the same way I would if you said, say, "My favorite fanfic is 'Anno Dracula,'" even though it is a crossover story featuring a ton of characters from other IPs.