Is Fanfiction Literature?

The other day, I came across Ariel Bissette's video 'Is Fanfiction Literature?'. You can view her video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtw7CSAxs1A

In her video, she posed a good argument and expressed her opinions on the question which you can see in her video. The comments are also worth the read.

Now, I am going to answer the question.

Personally, I do see Fanfiction as literature. Why you ask? Well, I class fanfiction as literature because if we talk about the basic meaning of the word, regardless of whether it's the same world or the same characters, it is still a written story. A lot of fanfiction writers put a lot of time and creativity in to their work so it would be an insult to say it isn't literature.

I both read and write fanfiction and also I write what a lot of people would say 'true literature' which varies from poetry to short stories. 

There is a big controversy with fanfiction because of the writers taking characters out of the world they were put in and putting them in to situations that the character would not ever be in. An example would be Johnlock. However, there have been fanfics which have ultimately become TV Shows or soon to be films, i.e. BBC Sherlock and Fifty Shades Of Grey. 

I personally don't see why it is a problem for people to put their own spin on characters. Whether they put them in likely situations or not, I still view it as Literature.

Yes, you may be using the same characters but you aren't re writing the story in the way of copying, you are being creative and coming up with your own plots. That to I, is worthy of the title 'Literature'.

Fanfiction deserves as much credit as any short story or novel because the creative process is still the same.

Female Characters in Classic Literature

Literature has changed drastically over the years.

Now, we see a lot of strong and dominant female characters such as Katniss Everdeen. 

Somebody said to me a couple of days ago how they were working on a piece of writing which had a strong female character because of how female characters are often portrayed as submissive, specifically in classic literature.

Take A Scandal In Bohemia for example by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Irene Adler was possibly not your every female of that time but she still was far from being dominant over Sherlock Holmes. She still had that air of submission to a man.

Irene Adler is supposed to be as intelligent as Sherlock therefore posing a challenge for him but the way she is portrayed is still not as dominant as her potential shows.

Other novels with characters similar are Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and quite the majority of classic literature.

Elements of Literature such as this don't bother me as much as they do a lot of other people but I can see why. It can be very frustrating when a female character isn't as developed as they could be because they have to be somewhat inferior to their male counterparts.

I do think it's nice and refreshing to see strong dominant characters but that can't happen in every book because some people just aren't like that at all.

What do you think?