FANFIC: FICTION BY FANS, FOR FANS

Fans write and read because they care and love.Fanfiction may be messy and even obsessive, but it's deeply personal and, therefore, human.

- RICARDO T. PAMINTUAN

When I first heard about AO3, I thought it was some kind of Star Wars droid. After Googling it, I learned that it stands for Archive of Our Own, a fanfiction site created in 2008.

It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue like Wattpad, which launched two years earlier for kids to post vampire romances and K-Pop love triangles.

A few years back, upon the recommendation of my publisher, I uploaded Kelly Drake and the Tears of the Dragons, my first young adult fantasy novel, to Wattpad. I had convinced myself that it's an original story, but I can't deny that there's as much Tolkien there (in the landscapes and poetry) as Rowling (in the relationships presented), and probably a subconscious homage to every adventure I've dreamed of since my solitary days in our school library.

Am I writing fanfiction or fanfic? Not exactly. But also...kinda? Will I upload again? Highly likely. I'm a glutton for punishment that way.

Let's get one thing straight: While the term may sound Gen Z, fanfiction isn't new. If you read enough, you'll realize it's not that uncommon.

During the heyday of Ancient Rome, Virgil's grand epic, the Aeneid, gave Aeneas, one of Homer's characters in the Greek epic poem Iliad, a whole origin story, complete with gods, war, and a manipulative ex.

Then there's Shakespeare. Among other plays, the Bard lifted Romeo and Juliet almost wholesale from The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, a 1562 poem by Arthur Brooke; Othello was taken from Cinthio's Un Capitano Moro, an Italian tale published in 1565; and Macbeth was inspired by Holinshed's Chronicles, where the historical King Macbeth was actually a relatively stable ruler.

The same goes for the Arthurian legends. From T.H. White's The Once and Future King (itself based on Sir Thomas Malory's 1485 work Le Morte d'Arthur) to