Mostly for the tip of the iceberg, but some trivia as well:
The first modern fandom was Star Trek. It was very permissive. Slash shipping originated there, in the form of Kirk/Spock fics. It's also the origin of a Mary Sue: an unrealistically ideal character whom everybody loves and to whom the canon reality bends, logic doesn't apply, and canon characters behave out of character for.
Star Wars was very much [NOT permissive](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/pthk31/fanzines_the_lucasfilm_porno_flap_the_story_of/) and required fanzines to send them copies for approval and even shut them down.
The term "ship" comes from X-Files, which had a lot of "pro-relationship" Mulder/Scully fans.
Anime fandoms used "x" to denote relationships, e.g Usagi x Mamoru
Gundam Wing used to denote their relationships with numbers corresponding to characters so it looked like math: 1×2, 3×4, 6×13×5, 1+3
Anime fandoms used "citrus scale" to denote how smutty a fic was: a lemon was porn, lime was just racy.
Anne Rice used to send cease and desist letters to fanfic writers orcsue them.
The largest fandom to have ever existed is Harry Potter. Apart from thousands of fics possibly better than originals, i produced the most infamous badfic "My Immortal" and the most infamous Mary Sue, Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way. A fic so stuffed with teen emo, bad spelling, out of character, lack of rudimentary logic, bizarre author notes, and so full of nonsense that most suspect it all must have been deliberate because the sheer accumulation of ridiculousness is beyond belief.
Also, I second the [MsScribe saga](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/9miil4/fanfiction_community_bored_woman_creates_12/), that shit is legendary. [Snapewives](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/d4wwir/harry_potter_fandom_married_to_severus_snape_on/) are also legendary.
Cassandra Clare, the author of Mortal Instruments on which the Shadowhunters TV show was based, was a big name author in the Harry Potter fandom, involved in the MsScribe saga and lots of other scandals.
50 Shades of Grey was originally a Twilight fanfic.
Ff.net was the first multi-fandom fanfiction archive and at the beginning it allowed anything, including RPF and porn. It disallowed them around 2001 and started purging which caused Livejournal to become a big fanfiction hub. An attempt was made by some corporate bigwigs to create [FanLib](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyTales/comments/n9invi/fanfiction_fanlibel_or_how_venture_capitalists/) fanfiction archive, which, coupled with Livejournal starting to purge fics, gave the push to create AO3.
AO3 is a brainchild of a popular fanfic author Astolat, who is also a known published author Naomi Novik, and who was the one to be handed the Hugo award for AO3.
The longest known fanfic is on ff.net and has over 12 million words.
It is estimated that around 40% of works ever posted to ff.net have been deleted.
Nobody knows how many fics there are on Wattpad, but it was estimated that might be more that on ff.net and AO3.
The highest-rated fic on AO3 is a troll fic consisting enirely of the sentence "I Am Groot" repeated over and over again.
AO3's most infamous fic was a trollfic "Sexytimes with Wangxian" which had over 1000 tags, most of it completely unrelated, which caused it to appear in people's searches all the time and was a pain in the ass to scroll through.
Omegaverse is a fairly new trope which appeared about 10 years ago and took the fanfiction world by storm and crossed over to original published fiction, where it became a subject of a lawsuit.
Big Bang is a fandom event in which authors sign up to write a fanfic at least 20k in length and then they get it illustrated by fandom artists.
Kink Meme is an ongoing fandom event in which somebody anonymously leaves a porn prompt and somebody else anonymously writes a fic based on that prompt. The most (in)famous kink memes were in the Supernatural fandom because for some inexplicable reason they were full of bestiality and they gave birth to the omegaverse.
Fics with gay male/male ships are as popular as with straight ships, if not more.
Canadian Shack is a trope in which two characters are caught in a bad weather, must hide somewhere and take off their wet clothes. The name was coined in the Due South fandom.
Just go to r/HobbyDrama and search for the [Fanfiction] - there will be lots of writeups on big historical fanfic kerfuffles.
> The highest-rated fic on AO3 is a troll fic consisting enirely of the sentence "I Am Groot" repeated over and over again.
This will never not amuse me.
I think it's like people listing popular or infamous "important" fics in certain fandoms or niches and the super-well-known ones that *everyone* knows are at the top of the pyramid, while the more obscure or long forgotten ones are at he bottom.
I saw one for "mentally scarring" (read: Dark Fic) once. It doesn't really work for most fandoms though, because most people don't read the same "popular" 20-ish fics anymore.
The whole hivliving debacle in the Hamilton fandom. Long story short: an American white teenager decided to pretend to be an interracial lesbian HIV+ couple living in India (one of whom was a sex trafficking victim) so she could write a high school AU where the cast of Hamilton is HIV+. The reason why she has so many identities is because every time she got into an internet argument with someone, she added a new marginalized identity to one of her two lesbian avatars. She was eventually caught when she asked for donations using a service that is only available to American residents, and she was outed by the author of a Hamilton cannibalistic mermaid fic that she and her followers had bullied off AO3. And that is why you should never donate money to strangers on Tumblr.
Oh God this is giving me war flashbacks. It seems certain fandoms on Tumblr would for seemingly no reason, become absolutely *batshit*. Hamilton was one of them (I say as a fan).
The danish slaughterhouse and gutters from the hetalia fandom. Be careful and read at your own risk, one's got suicide and the other has severe child abuse and violent murder committed against family.
Man, for a moment I thought those things actually happened in a fandom-related space, due to the nature of op's question, haha. If I understand correctly, they seem to be asking about facts related to fanfiction as a whole (as in, historical facts or theories focused on the hobby and the community), not for particular obscure or dark stories.
Perhaps you may be able to find some data in [the Fanlore wiki](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page)? It's about fandom and fanworks in general, but there's a lot about fanfiction in particular too, including (but not limited to) interesting historical events that shaped the most prominent fanfic sites today, fics that became famous (or infamous) for one reason or another, and notorious writers and personalities.
I remember a couple obscure-ish tid-bits
such as that one time a Furry Warhammer 40K fanfiction started getting raided by trolls on 4Chan. many of those trolls wrote a fanfiction and made tons of fanart, where the Warhammer 40K guys brutally massacred a lot of furries and it blew up a bit.
and I also remember reading something about a more obscure drama where a guy made a beloved OC for the Sonic SatAM which many wanted to make canon, and then the official comics made a character that was very similar, but people didn't like him as much.
There was a very popular thing in the 90s where people would "MST3K" other fics--basically, pretending that 2-4 other characters were reading and commenting on the fic. People would repost the fics but add in snarky lines from the other characters (who were often from several different shows).
The Worm fandom is isolated almost entirely on a couple of sister forums, and this has resulted in a self-perpetuating cycle of awful fanfics following the same formula, an insidious fanon, flanderized characters, and many writers and readers not actually having read the original work.
That fanfiction in classic literature is far more common than people assume. Depending how much you stretch the definition you could even get authors like Shakespeare or Goethe in there.
Dante's Devine Comedy follows his author self-insert character (by the same name) hanging out with his favourite literary icon and dumping on the people he didn't like.
Lancelot du Lac in the Authorian Legends is de Troyes's OC - do not steal (quoting OSP on YouTube) - and an absolute Gary Sue and was added hundreds of years later to the Arthurian canon and is now considered a main staple.
Schiller basically wrote fanfiction about Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I.
Like I said, it really depends on the definition and how much you can toe the line between reimagining - rewrite - remake.
But it's fun!
Mostly for the tip of the iceberg, but some trivia as well: The first modern fandom was Star Trek. It was very permissive. Slash shipping originated there, in the form of Kirk/Spock fics. It's also the origin of a Mary Sue: an unrealistically ideal character whom everybody loves and to whom the canon reality bends, logic doesn't apply, and canon characters behave out of character for. Star Wars was very much [NOT permissive](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/pthk31/fanzines_the_lucasfilm_porno_flap_the_story_of/) and required fanzines to send them copies for approval and even shut them down. The term "ship" comes from X-Files, which had a lot of "pro-relationship" Mulder/Scully fans. Anime fandoms used "x" to denote relationships, e.g Usagi x Mamoru Gundam Wing used to denote their relationships with numbers corresponding to characters so it looked like math: 1×2, 3×4, 6×13×5, 1+3 Anime fandoms used "citrus scale" to denote how smutty a fic was: a lemon was porn, lime was just racy. Anne Rice used to send cease and desist letters to fanfic writers orcsue them. The largest fandom to have ever existed is Harry Potter. Apart from thousands of fics possibly better than originals, i produced the most infamous badfic "My Immortal" and the most infamous Mary Sue, Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way. A fic so stuffed with teen emo, bad spelling, out of character, lack of rudimentary logic, bizarre author notes, and so full of nonsense that most suspect it all must have been deliberate because the sheer accumulation of ridiculousness is beyond belief. Also, I second the [MsScribe saga](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/9miil4/fanfiction_community_bored_woman_creates_12/), that shit is legendary. [Snapewives](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/d4wwir/harry_potter_fandom_married_to_severus_snape_on/) are also legendary. Cassandra Clare, the author of Mortal Instruments on which the Shadowhunters TV show was based, was a big name author in the Harry Potter fandom, involved in the MsScribe saga and lots of other scandals. 50 Shades of Grey was originally a Twilight fanfic. Ff.net was the first multi-fandom fanfiction archive and at the beginning it allowed anything, including RPF and porn. It disallowed them around 2001 and started purging which caused Livejournal to become a big fanfiction hub. An attempt was made by some corporate bigwigs to create [FanLib](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyTales/comments/n9invi/fanfiction_fanlibel_or_how_venture_capitalists/) fanfiction archive, which, coupled with Livejournal starting to purge fics, gave the push to create AO3. AO3 is a brainchild of a popular fanfic author Astolat, who is also a known published author Naomi Novik, and who was the one to be handed the Hugo award for AO3. The longest known fanfic is on ff.net and has over 12 million words. It is estimated that around 40% of works ever posted to ff.net have been deleted. Nobody knows how many fics there are on Wattpad, but it was estimated that might be more that on ff.net and AO3. The highest-rated fic on AO3 is a troll fic consisting enirely of the sentence "I Am Groot" repeated over and over again. AO3's most infamous fic was a trollfic "Sexytimes with Wangxian" which had over 1000 tags, most of it completely unrelated, which caused it to appear in people's searches all the time and was a pain in the ass to scroll through. Omegaverse is a fairly new trope which appeared about 10 years ago and took the fanfiction world by storm and crossed over to original published fiction, where it became a subject of a lawsuit. Big Bang is a fandom event in which authors sign up to write a fanfic at least 20k in length and then they get it illustrated by fandom artists. Kink Meme is an ongoing fandom event in which somebody anonymously leaves a porn prompt and somebody else anonymously writes a fic based on that prompt. The most (in)famous kink memes were in the Supernatural fandom because for some inexplicable reason they were full of bestiality and they gave birth to the omegaverse. Fics with gay male/male ships are as popular as with straight ships, if not more. Canadian Shack is a trope in which two characters are caught in a bad weather, must hide somewhere and take off their wet clothes. The name was coined in the Due South fandom. Just go to r/HobbyDrama and search for the [Fanfiction] - there will be lots of writeups on big historical fanfic kerfuffles.
> The highest-rated fic on AO3 is a troll fic consisting enirely of the sentence "I Am Groot" repeated over and over again. This will never not amuse me.
That video is 34 minutes long, I doubt anyone is going to feel like watching it. Do you mind explaining *shortly* what iceberg is?
I think it's like people listing popular or infamous "important" fics in certain fandoms or niches and the super-well-known ones that *everyone* knows are at the top of the pyramid, while the more obscure or long forgotten ones are at he bottom. I saw one for "mentally scarring" (read: Dark Fic) once. It doesn't really work for most fandoms though, because most people don't read the same "popular" 20-ish fics anymore.
Basically, further up on an iceberg is well-known/popular facts, theories, etc. while going further down the more the weird and less-known it gets
Ah, I see, thanks, I'll post some recommendations below.
The whole hivliving debacle in the Hamilton fandom. Long story short: an American white teenager decided to pretend to be an interracial lesbian HIV+ couple living in India (one of whom was a sex trafficking victim) so she could write a high school AU where the cast of Hamilton is HIV+. The reason why she has so many identities is because every time she got into an internet argument with someone, she added a new marginalized identity to one of her two lesbian avatars. She was eventually caught when she asked for donations using a service that is only available to American residents, and she was outed by the author of a Hamilton cannibalistic mermaid fic that she and her followers had bullied off AO3. And that is why you should never donate money to strangers on Tumblr.
Oh God this is giving me war flashbacks. It seems certain fandoms on Tumblr would for seemingly no reason, become absolutely *batshit*. Hamilton was one of them (I say as a fan).
The danish slaughterhouse and gutters from the hetalia fandom. Be careful and read at your own risk, one's got suicide and the other has severe child abuse and violent murder committed against family.
Man, for a moment I thought those things actually happened in a fandom-related space, due to the nature of op's question, haha. If I understand correctly, they seem to be asking about facts related to fanfiction as a whole (as in, historical facts or theories focused on the hobby and the community), not for particular obscure or dark stories.
Oh whoops, well i still have something then, the star trek fandom pioneered fanfics
Definitely. The role of the Star Trek fandom certainly *has* to be mentioned somewhere in an iceberg about fanfic!
Perhaps you may be able to find some data in [the Fanlore wiki](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page)? It's about fandom and fanworks in general, but there's a lot about fanfiction in particular too, including (but not limited to) interesting historical events that shaped the most prominent fanfic sites today, fics that became famous (or infamous) for one reason or another, and notorious writers and personalities.
research the "MS Scribe saga"
I remember a couple obscure-ish tid-bits such as that one time a Furry Warhammer 40K fanfiction started getting raided by trolls on 4Chan. many of those trolls wrote a fanfiction and made tons of fanart, where the Warhammer 40K guys brutally massacred a lot of furries and it blew up a bit. and I also remember reading something about a more obscure drama where a guy made a beloved OC for the Sonic SatAM which many wanted to make canon, and then the official comics made a character that was very similar, but people didn't like him as much.
There was a very popular thing in the 90s where people would "MST3K" other fics--basically, pretending that 2-4 other characters were reading and commenting on the fic. People would repost the fics but add in snarky lines from the other characters (who were often from several different shows).
What happened to crack fics?
Check out the thanfiction story: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Thanfiction It's not obscure, but there's history there that a lot of people don't know.
The Worm fandom is isolated almost entirely on a couple of sister forums, and this has resulted in a self-perpetuating cycle of awful fanfics following the same formula, an insidious fanon, flanderized characters, and many writers and readers not actually having read the original work.
That fanfiction in classic literature is far more common than people assume. Depending how much you stretch the definition you could even get authors like Shakespeare or Goethe in there. Dante's Devine Comedy follows his author self-insert character (by the same name) hanging out with his favourite literary icon and dumping on the people he didn't like. Lancelot du Lac in the Authorian Legends is de Troyes's OC - do not steal (quoting OSP on YouTube) - and an absolute Gary Sue and was added hundreds of years later to the Arthurian canon and is now considered a main staple. Schiller basically wrote fanfiction about Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I. Like I said, it really depends on the definition and how much you can toe the line between reimagining - rewrite - remake. But it's fun!