From vampire stories to "Fifty Shades": The industry changing pop culture
It started with the Midrash, passed through the plays of William Shakespeare, and today it is an unprecedented cultural and economic phenomenon. Fan literature, or fanfiction, is redefining the power relations between authors and readers, sparking debate in the literary community. From the AO3 empire to multi-million dollar deals in Hollywood, we explore the phenomenon that dictates the next bestseller.
Harry Potter is dead, and the Order of the Phoenix, which led the fight against Voldemort, has been defeated by the Death Eaters. Voldemort rules Britain and enacts a law under which the surviving women of the Order of the Phoenix serve as slaves for the top government officials. Hermione Granger, one of the Order's most brilliant minds, is handed over to Draco Malfoy, who has become Voldemort's right-hand man. The dynamic between them is tough and full of psychological tension, but later, as secrets from the past are revealed, the bond between the two becomes strong, complex — and yes, loving.
This dark plot, as you might guess, was not written by J.K. Rowling. It is the plot of the work "Manacled" by an author using the pen name SenLinYu.
"Manacled" was written as fanfiction: a genre in which amateur writers take characters or worlds from existing works and create new and original stories for them. This work captured the hearts of millions of readers around the world to such an extent that the author wrote an entire book on the subject, titled "Alchemised," which became one of the greatest successes of recent years. The book, in which the names of the characters and the world of magic were changed to avoid copyright infringement, was published in September 2025, jumped straight to the number one spot on the "New York Times" bestseller list, and received a multi-million dollar deal for a film adaptation. And this is just one example of many fanfiction works that have taken the world by storm.
Shakespearean roots
"Fanfiction has always existed," says writer and literary scholar Dror Mishani. "The Midrash is a type of fanfiction that took existing stories from the Bible and expanded them. For example, the story of Adam and Eve. The Sages (Chazal) said that before God created Eve, He allowed Adam to check with all the animals to see if there was a suitable partner for him. He did not find one, and then God created the woman for him. This is not in the biblical story. That is, it is an expansion of the canon.
Since then, there have been other works that continued to expand the story of Adam and Eve. "Paradise Lost," Milton's 17th-century epic, rewrites the biblical story from the beginning. There is a whole relationship between Adam and Eve as a married couple in the Garden of Eden, a description of how the snake was sent by the devil and the army of angels to tempt Eve out of jealousy of Adam and the place God gave him, and much more."
Originality, it turns out, was a very fluid concept in Western drama as well. Prof. Avi Oz, a theater researcher and translator, reminds us that even William Shakespeare relied entirely on the stories of others. "Shakespeare 'stole' most of his works from other people. All of them, in fact, except for three works for which we have not yet found the source," says Oz.
"In all the other plays, we know exactly what the 'source' is, which itself was usually not very original. Even the family names in 'Romeo and Juliet' he did not invent; Dante mentions the historical Montague and Capulet families, who were rival families in the 'Divine Comedy.' About 30 years before Shakespeare wrote 'Romeo and Juliet,' the poet Arthur Brooke wrote a poem called 'The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet.' Shakespeare takes most of the characters, the plot, and the sequence of events from him. Shakespeare's genius is not in inventing a story from nothing, but precisely in his ability to shape characters and reshape the plot."
Today, in retrospect, do we understand this choice?
"Who thought then about sitting down and inventing a story? There was no such thing. Only at the beginning of the 19th century did the originality of the creator become a criterion for a work. This is an innovation of the Romantic era, the concept of which is that we dive into our soul and extract something that comes directly from our individuality. Before that, it would not occur to anyone not to take an existing story."
Shakespeare is an example of an esteemed creator who relied on the materials of others, but in literary history, there are moments when the general public took power into their own hands. The public shock caused by the literary "death" of Sherlock Holmes in 1893 led London residents to wear black mourning ribbons on their top hats, and not only that — out of an unwillingness to accept the injustice, fans of the detective began to write and distribute amateur stories in which Holmes did not die.
"It was a correction of the 'injustice' that the writer committed, and this is a central reason for writing fanfiction — to change things that you didn't like in the original story," says Dror Mishani. "But this is not the only correction. One of the interesting aspects of fanfiction about Holmes over the years is the exploration of the romantic relationship between Holmes and Watson. Arthur Conan Doyle could not write an open homoerotic relationship in the Victorian era, but it is something that is present in the stories, a bit silenced or suppressed."
Holmes still receives adaptations and "expansions" of his story. What makes him such an attractive character for fanfiction?
"Two things cause a character to become one that is returned to again and again. The first is that these are characters that touch on deep universal questions. Holmes touches on the breaking point between rationality and madness, between modernity as progress toward a better future for humanity — and the anxiety that progress will actually expose some dark, violent, and insane element in humanity.
Dror Mishani: "The Midrash is a type of fanfiction. For example, the story of Adam and Eve. The Sages said that before God created Eve, He allowed Adam to check with all the animals to see if there was a suitable partner for him. He did not find one, and then God created the woman for him."
These questions make this character relevant all the time. These are the same questions we ask ourselves now, say, in the context of artificial intelligence. The second factor is that there must be many gaps around the character, many more things we don't know than things we do know about him. We know nothing about Holmes's childhood, and more than that — even the things we do know about him are from the subjective point of view of Watson, who is both his friend and his admirer, and it may be that he sees him in too rosy a light."
The secret of the charm
The modern incarnation of fan literature, characterized by a female, queer, and underground tone, was born in the 60s in the American "Star Trek" community. The revolution was led by women who sought to give familiar characters emotional depth and correct their exclusion from male creativity. Therefore, they wrote alternative adventures for Captain Kirk and Spock, including romantic relationships between them. These stories were secretly distributed in "fanzines" — independent magazines passed from hand to hand at conventions, while the general public saw all this as a strange and embarrassing hobby.
Avi Oz: "Shakespeare 'stole' most of his works from other people. All of them, in fact, except for three works for which we have not yet found the source. Even the family names in 'Romeo and Juliet' he did not invent. Dante mentions the historical Montague and Capulet families, who were rival families in the 'Divine Comedy.'"
Everything changed in the late 90s, when the internet entered the picture and shuffled the cards. Isolated communities gave way to network empires like FanFiction.net and blog platforms like LiveJournal.
"I was 12 when the internet came into homes," says Navet Tahnai, a fantasy book critic. "There was an esoteric series on Nickelodeon at the time called 'Space Cases' about a group of students who find themselves stuck in space. It was canceled after two seasons, and the plot lines remained open. I searched for information about the series on the internet, and there I encountered the word 'fanfiction' for the first time. I clicked on it, and suddenly I realized that people were writing new content about the series I love. It was a feeling of religious ecstasy, I approached the dinner table blinded. It can be compared to the feeling of falling in love."
Why? What is the magic?
"Suddenly this work awakened an emotional need that I didn't even know I had, and I needed more of it. 'Space Cases' is a series about a group of teenagers who don't fit in and have to suddenly figure out how to be a ship's crew, it awakened in me some need for independence, and fanfiction allowed me to continue exploring that."
"My Little Sunshine" is a fanfiction that fans call "Dramione" (dealing with the pairing of Draco and Hermione from "Harry Potter"). It has already received hundreds of thousands of views on AO3, the leading site for fan literature today. The plot follows Hermione, a witch doctor, who saves Draco Malfoy's baby son and discovers that he is a vulnerable and devoted single father trying to protect his son. The meeting leads, how could it not, to a romantic relationship.
"I was 12 when I started writing fanfiction," says 36-year-old Trillian Skinner, a fanfic writer, in a phone conversation from her home in Pittsburgh, USA. "I watched all the 'Lord of the Rings' movies and said to myself, 'Well, what happens next?' Out of that curiosity, I just started writing."
Skinner, a mother of five, did not plan to become a network success when she wrote the story in 2023. "The idea came out of nowhere, and I wrote the first 20,000 words on my mobile phone in two or three days while sitting next to my little daughter as she tried to fall asleep," she recalls. "The story kept running through my head, and I wanted to listen to it while I cleaned the house, so I uploaded it to AO3, because there is an app that allows you to listen to texts from there. I didn't expect anyone to read it, but then people started reading and leaving comments, and I realized I had to finish it."
What is the magic of fanfiction for you?
"For me, fanfiction is fixing a story that I feel is missing something. I am a big fan of 'Avatar: The Last Airbender,' and throughout the animated series you see beautiful moments between the heroes Katara and Zuko, and in the end, they paired her with Aang. I felt like we were robbed! In the 'Avatar' fan community, they get their happy ending. Another huge advantage of fanfiction compared to traditional publishing is the detailed system of tags and content warnings that exists on AO3. Thanks to it, I know everything at a very high resolution — which characters and themes are in the story, and if it contains content that I am not comfortable reading. In mainstream literature, you have no idea what you are actually getting into."
Of all the pairings in the world, why are Draco and Hermione such a popular pairing in fanfiction?
"The 'enemies to lovers' theme is a theme especially loved by everyone, and they both fit it perfectly. Beyond that, I was always unhappy that Ron and Hermione ended up together in the canon, because I didn't feel that Ron really suited her. In addition, in the 'Harry Potter' movies, Lucius Malfoy is a very rigid father, and this created deep empathy among viewers for Draco, which allows us to build such successful redemption stories for him in fanfiction."
The "Harry Potter" universe is second only to the Marvel universe in the number of works written about it on AO3.
"This is because J.K. Rowling wrote a world with many loose ends and parts that don't make sense logically. This world is literally like a big open sandbox: we have all the toys, everything is set up for us, and all we have to do is build a sandcastle."
Looking down
In 2007, the fanfiction community was outraged after the blog platform LiveJournal deleted thousands of accounts and communities dealing with bold or LGBT content in the middle of the night to please conservative advertisers. The event, dubbed "Strikethrough," made it clear to fans how fragile their creative space was. In response, writer Naomi Novik called on fans to stop being "tenants" at commercial companies and to establish an independent platform. In 2009, the site "Archive of Our Own," or AO3 for short, went live, based on three ironclad principles: zero censorship, legal protection against copyright lawsuits, and a non-profit model based on volunteers and donations.
Today, AO3 hosts more than 17 million works in about 80,000 different fandoms (fan communities). Most of the site's users are women, alongside a particularly prominent presence of LGBT creators and readers, who receive representation there far higher than their share of the population.
Trillian Skinner: "I am a fan of 'Avatar: The Last Airbender.' Throughout the series, you see beautiful moments between Katara and Zuko, and in the end, they paired her with Aang. I felt like we were robbed! In the fan community, you can read their happy ending."
Prof. Francesca Coppa is an academic researcher in the field of fan literature studies and one of the founders of AO3. In a Zoom call from her home in Pennsylvania, USA, she explains: "Until recently, the big money of the entertainment industry was invested in male media, such as Marvel movies, 'Star Wars,' and epic science fiction, while romance was considered a field of 'small money.' When I was a child and watched 'The Empire Strikes Back,' I would fast-forward the tape to skip Yoda because he bored me; all I wanted to see were the romance scenes between Han Solo and Princess Leia. Fanfiction is the place where women take these great stories that we all love — like 'Star Wars,' 'Star Trek,' 'Harry Potter,' or even the boy bands we know — and recreate them in the aesthetics of the things that women actually read. They ask: 'What if these things were romance novels?', and rewrite the stories in ways that give them much more pleasure, because society and mainstream media did not give them these stories."
The official stamp of AO3's cultural achievement was given in 2019, when the site won the prestigious Hugo Award, considered the "Oscar" of the science fiction and fantasy world. This was the first time that the conservative literary establishment gave official recognition to a fanfiction platform.
One of the main arguments directed against the site is that the absolute lack of censorship allows for the normalization of toxic, violent, or morally problematic content without sufficient protection for young readers.
"I support freedom of speech and anti-censorship 100%," Coppa says firmly. "People understand that someone who reads thrillers doesn't want to murder, and you have to be stupid to think that reading about a rape fantasy means a desire to be raped — it's just a literary way to confront fears. As a feminist, I am not willing to have others decide for me. Therefore, on AO3, there are tags and content warnings that allow the reader to filter out toxic or violent content. In literature, there is a place for toxic relationships, like Heathcliff and Cathy in 'Wuthering Heights,' and an adult reader should decide for themselves if they are into it. The site is intended for ages 13 and up, for people with the ability to choose, and I stand behind that completely."
"The transition of fanfics to the mainstream is a cultural process that has been intensifying for a long time," says Marina Berlin, a writer and cultural critic. "The thing is, there is also a backlash to this progress."
For example?
"A writer from abroad who wrote fanfics moved on to writing original literature. The more mainstream side of her readership dug into old fanfics she had written, and suddenly people started to be shocked: 'There are problematic power dynamics in the story,' etc. It really created noise around her identity as a writer. When you disconnect fanfiction from its context, it is very easy to turn it into a weapon against you. The feeling is that your past in fanfiction can only be a weakness, never a strength."
Why?
"People still look down on fanfiction. They will always say, 'This is not real literature, certainly not art that wins awards, just embarrassing stories by women on the internet.'"
But rewriting existing materials is a known practice.
"True, and here the gender double standard comes in. Take, for example, the series 'Black Sails,' which is a prequel to the book 'Treasure Island.' It received a lot of awards and praise from wall to wall. There is no essential difference between it and fanfiction on the web, except for one: a man wrote it. There will always be prejudices claiming that 'if it's based on something existing, it's copying,' but no one will say that in Hollywood about a sequel or an adaptation. This 'copying' is the heart of the industry, it just depends on who is allowed to do it."
The irony is that for many writers, that alleged copying is exactly the incubator that allowed them to mature and become full-fledged writers. Ayelet Eden is one such writer who wrote fanfics for years. Her first book, "Only One Night," her original story, was recently published by Pink Publishing.
"Fanfiction has the advantage that you don't have to build a world, and you can play in someone else's sandbox," she says. "It's a good writing exercise for someone who starts writing at a young age and wants to practice all kinds of dynamics and situations. The existing world makes writing much less scary."
The world belongs to the young
The watershed moment that completely changed the balance of power between the mainstream and fan literature belongs to Erika Leonard, who in 2009 published an erotic fanfic based on the vampire novel "Twilight" under the pen name E.L. James. The story became a huge network hit, and an independent Australian publishing house owned by fans from the community offered her to erase every trace of the "Twilight" world, turn the vampire Edward into the billionaire Christian Grey, and publish the work as a book. Thus were born "Fifty Shades of Grey," and the rest is history. The book was quickly acquired by publishing giants and sold more than 150 million copies. The success changed the rules of the game: instead of waiting for manuscripts to come to them, many literary editors use the site to locate interesting literary voices that will become the next hot thing.
"The transition of fanfiction to the mainstream has intensified greatly in recent years, especially in young adult and romance literature," says Talia Marcus, editor of translated literature at Keter Publishing. "Only recently, we were offered a book from a fandom called 'Wolfstar,' which focuses on the characters of Sirius Black and Remus Lupin from 'Harry Potter' and their relationship. But it doesn't come only from established brands, recently I received a fanfiction book based on the series 'Arrow.' Agents are taking fanfiction seriously these days and are rushing to grab it, because there is a demand for it."
Another prominent example is the writer Ali Hazelwood and her book "The Love Hypothesis" (2021). The book was born as a successful fanfic on AO3, based on the characters of Rey and Kylo Ren from "Star Wars." A literary agent who scanned the site in search of treasures identified the success, and the characters were copied from space to the world of academia: Kylo Ren became Dr. Adam Carlsen, a brilliant and terrifying professor at Stanford, and Rey became Olive Smith, an optimistic biology PhD student. Upon its release, the BookTok community made the book viral and jumped it to the top of the "New York Times" bestseller list.
"The success of fanfiction in the publishing market today is also related to BookTok," says Marcus. "The books that come out of fan literature are often aimed at a young audience, and in BookTok there is a young, dedicated, and vocal audience that influences the publishing market much more directly than it influenced before. The BookTok audience literally directs the market and tells it what it wants, and it is very open to fanfiction-based books."
Francesca Coppa: "The big money of the entertainment industry was invested in male media, such as Marvel movies and 'Star Wars,' while romance was considered a field of 'small money.' Fanfiction is the place where women take the stories and recreate them."
But not everyone is celebrating. The space in which the genre operates relies legally on the doctrine of "Fair Use" — a protection that allows the use of a protected work without permission or payment, as long as the use changes the original work and is done without profit. Since classic fanfiction is written as a free amateur activity that does not compete with the market for original books, it enjoys stable protection. And yet, alongside the publishing embrace, there are creators who see this as a loophole for exploitation. The writer Anne Rice ("Interview with the Vampire") waged a war for years against fanfiction about her characters and demanded that sites remove any such work. George R.R. Martin ("A Song of Ice and Fire") declared that writing about a living writer's characters is, in his view, creative laziness at best, and a violation of his rights at worst.
"It is not okay to take a work protected by copyright and use it for profit," says Francesca Coppa. "J.K. Rowling, for example, has the exclusive right to profit from the 'Harry Potter' universe. But fanfiction, in its non-profit form, is essentially close to literary criticism — I read the book, I had ideas, and I wrote them down to share them with you as part of a live conversation. In addition, fanfiction does not hurt the bottom line of the creators' profits. On the contrary, it keeps the audience engaged and makes the rights holders very rich. The fans who write fanfiction about Marvel kept everyone excited, built theories, and that is what made people run to see the next movie.
In contrast, there is almost no fanfiction about James Cameron's box-office hit 'Avatar.' There is a joke online that the lack of fanfiction testifies to its fundamental failure — although it made money, it did not capture people's imagination and did not give birth to a live discourse."
Non-commercialism is a value in fanfiction. How do you feel about creators who choose to commercialize their writing and leave the community for the free market?
"Non-commercialism is our most fundamental and deep principle, because the community is based on a 'gift culture.' The idea is that you write a work and give it for free, and in return you receive love, feedback, and support that are not business-related. To protect this, on AO3 we simply do not allow commercial activity. This is a space of free writing and free reading. I don't like the amount of people who are coming to AO3 now and thinking of it as a venture for making money.
When it comes to creators who go out and publish books on the market, I am very happy for them. The problem and the anger arise when the transition becomes exploitative, and the most famous example of this is 'Fifty Shades of Grey.' In fanfiction, we do editing and critical reading for each other and dedicate hours of work for free out of the gift culture, while in the professional world these are expensive editing services that you pay money for. This author received all the editing and support for free, and then deleted the work from the network, took this joint work, and went to sell it alone on the market. It just looks bad. What makes the transition fair is when the writers leave their fanfiction on the site for the benefit of the fans who supported them."
The Israeli connection
Undoubtedly, fanfiction in the world is in the midst of a period of flourishing, but in Israel, the situation is a bit more complex. Although there are Israelis who write fanfiction in English on international sites, it is harder to find fanfiction writers in Hebrew, and even fewer who rely on original literature.
"On AO3, there is a project where people ask for stories, writers respond to them, and everyone does a kind of 'Secret Santa' game of fanfics," says Ella Gordon-Chen, co-manager of the Facebook group "Books?" which operates the annual fanfiction story project "Novy God." "I thought it would be nice to do such a thing in Hebrew as well, it gained momentum, and today dozens of stories are written every year. It also sparked a discussion in the group about what a fanfic is, how to write."
According to Gordon-Chen, within the framework of the project, one can find a wide range of stories. "'On the Nazgul's Paws' by Ilay Chayut-Man takes place in the world of 'The Lord of the Rings' but is written in the style of S.Y. Agnon. Another story, by Rotem Bruchin, is written about Hermione, who uses Remus Lupin to deal with the loss she experienced because of the war against Voldemort."
Writing fanfiction in Hebrew is not taken for granted.
"In the project, I discovered, to my surprise, that there are quite a few readers and writers of fanfics in Hebrew. From the fanfics, they started writing original stories as well, some of them are nominated for the Geffen Award now."
"Fanfiction for original literature is first and foremost a matter of numbers," says Maayan Rogel, a writer and editor of the thriller series at Shtayim Publishing. "Fanfiction writers are active consumers of the content. Naturally, we are talking about a very small percentage of all readers. An original book in the country that does relatively well sells a few thousand copies before it flies off the shelves. This means that only a small number of people will be involved enough to write fanfiction. Also, fanfiction is non-professional and unpolished literature that does not create original and innovative worlds. Therefore, the percentage of readers is also small, and in a puddle like ours, it turns out to be very little. In the end, fanfiction is based on a culture of fan communities, and with small numbers, it works less."
There are also cultural reasons.
"Definitely. Fanfiction stems from a world that is fantastic, but literature in Israel is mostly realistic, and there is nothing here that invites playing with it. In general, fanfiction necessarily sits on genre literature: on fantasy, on science fiction, on romantasy. These areas are only recently starting to gain momentum in the country. Precisely from this, a little more fanfiction is starting to appear here."
Where, for example?
"Around genre writers like Keren Landsman, Rotem Bruchin, or Yehudit Kagan, small fandoms have been created over time. It is not easy at all to reach this, but these writers publish short stories within the 'Science Fiction and Fantasy Association,' and they are careful about a continuous, consistent, and based connection with their community. From these fandoms, fanfictions about the books come out."
