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It's mostly written by and read by women, though men and non-binary people are not excluded, and indeed have written some famous good fics. Also, sometimes when men do write fanfic it is not talked about that way. For example, Lin Manuel Miranda's Hamilton is a Real Person Fic.
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Most mainstream movies and books are not written to cater to women, so there is a lot more that people want to "fix", or blanks filled in in a more pleasing manner, to make the story, characters, and world more palatable. People use their imagination and share better stories.
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Fanzines for Star Trek in the USA in the 1960s and 1970s were mostly run by women. There was a lot of Kirk/Spock shipping. The fanzines got little respect, since they were for non-snobby tv (rather than literary SF) and about things women liked.
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Also, fanfic is one of the few places women, nb, gay, lesbian, bisexual people, can find smut that is not totally male-gazy and gross. And by male-gazy, I mean whatever USA porno producers think men want to see, not the much wider spectrum of tastes in men in general.
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For example, Yuletide is an event around the winter solstice each year where each person who participates makes requests for fics about characters and fandoms they enjoy, and secretly writes fics to fulfill other requests, until the day of the event, when the fics are revealed.
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The Hugo nomination is hilarious and I hope AO3 wins! The Hugos are basically whatever the 2000 fans who are going to the convention decide they like this year, so in a way, a less impressive indicator than the number of users and donors to the AO3 site.
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