After many, many years of being shoved into a bucket and labeled trash, fan-written fiction has finally gotten its due acknowledgement thanks to Archive Of Our Own (also known as AO3) receiving the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Related Work.
I want to say I knew it would win all along, but I actually didn't even know it had been nominated until after they announced the winners. That is not to say AO3 didn't deserve the win. It did. And not just because it's a massive repository of emotional connections people form with other people's stories. No, it deserves to be acknowledged as that and much, much more. AO3 is a platform from which many aspiring writers can safely and securely launch their careers. Despite my personal feelings about Fifty Shades of Gray, it's widely held that it began as Twilight fan fiction, and its popularity propelled E.L. James into a legitimized writing career. I'm not going to debate the merits of her works, nor will I discuss my opinions about their quality. That isn't what this is about. Its about how after more than a decade AO3 is finally being legitimized by the writing community.
Thousands of fans over the years have taken to AO3 to write out stories about their favorite characters from all forms of media. These fans--these writers--have become so absorbed in their love for someone else's work that they can't stand to see the story end. Or they can't accept the path it took and so make it take a different one. Parallel universes. Time travel. Magic and mayhem. AO3 has given a voice to all these things and more, all written by dedicated fans and budding writers alike. Some of them are absolutely fantastic, written so well they seem as though they were tales left out of the main story by the author. Some are drastically bad, written by people who really need an editor. Or at least, a spell-checker. I admit, fan fiction is one of my guilty pleasures. I thoroughly enjoy the well-written stories as well as the train wrecks, because they show a passion for the characters that at the minimum equals my own.
Some authors scoff at fan fiction, treating it like an insult that fans could possibly think to inject themselves and their ideas into a body of work. As an author myself, I find I can't think of it that way. Every story, poem, photo manipulation or piece of fan art shows a true appreciation for these stories that so deeply and completely impact the lives of the people following them. There's a saying: "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." This, I believe, is true of fan fiction. It's the height of conceit to think nothing could possibly make a story better; any editor will tell you there's always room to grow and improve, no matter how long you've been writing. Devaluing the efforts of "ordinary people" simply because you arrogantly think the story you've written belongs to only you? Again, there's that conceit.
Once a story is written, a novel published, a movie premiered or a song played it isn't the sole property of the author any more. It becomes a part of the life of every single person who sees, hears, or reads it. It impacts every single one of those people in different ways. Maybe it will inspire. Maybe it will depress. Maybe it will show possibilities a reader never thought possible. Or maybe it will give a traumatized child a way to escape reality long enough to be able to cope with it. In trying to keep such complete control over their stories authors do themselves and their fans an injustice.
By winning a Hugo Award, something long held as restricted to "legitimate" writing, AO3 has stepped onto a global stage in a way it never could have before. It has become a beacon for those budding writers who want to express their passion but perhaps don't feel quite good enough. It's given writers a chance to get started on their careers without having to paper their walls in rejection letters from publishers. And it's given people like me an excuse to read more fan fiction. From here, things can only go forward.
I can't wait to see what AO3 does next.