Fanfiction and Art - Attack on Titan
The term fanfiction or fan fiction, often abbreviated as fanfic or simply fic, refers to a fictional story written by fans of a movie, novel, television show or any other literary or dramatic work. In these stories the characters, situations and environments from the original story are used to create a fanmade story with new plots and new roles any way the writer wants to create an ‘original’ story.
Although there are many kinds of different stories within fanfiction, a considerable part of the fanfiction world revolves around romantic or sexual relationships between characters, usually those not treated in the original version and often described with explicit details. In addition, within the fanfiction referred to relationships, a large percentage of them are homosexual relationships, with couples formed by men being the most common.
Some of the most popular fanfiction platforms are the following:
- Archive Of Our Own (AO3)
- Commaful
- Fanfiction.net
- Wattpad
- Quotev
Fanfiction Rating System
In order to avoid controvert or extremely sensitive contents, (which is labeled as MA), some platforms like FictionRatings.com uses a rating system to label their stories according to its nature. For instance, Fanfiction.net uses this FictionRatings.com system.
Based on this system, the allowed ratings are K, K+, T and M.
- K rating: These fanfictions are suitable for audiences that are 5 years old or older. Any story labeled as Ka should be free of coarse language, adult topics and violence.
- K+ rating: Suitable for an audience that is from 9 or order. These stories should contain minor coarse language and violence. It should be free of adult themes as well.
- T rating: Suitable for readers from 13 years old or older. There are some non-explicit violence and minor coarse languages, as well as some minor adult themes.
- M rating: The stories are suitable only for people from 16 to above. It contains coarse language, violence and adult themes but only if they are not too explicit.
Attack on Titan fanfiction
Focusing on two of the fanfiction websites, such as Fanfiction.net and Archive Of Your Own, there are many Attack on Titan romantic stories that are mixed with comedy or “confort”, in addition to numerous dramas and even tragedies. There is a certain balance in the types of ratings, but the M rating is slightly more abundant than the other, followed by the T and the K+ rating.
Also, there is a great number of crossovers, that is, stories in which the characters from other series or movies appear alongside the characters or the story of Attack on Titan. The most popular crossovers with Attack on Titan are the following:
- Naruto (198)
- Inuyasha (71)
- Harry Potter (65)
- Hetalia - Axis Powers (54)
- Fairy Tail (45)
- Fullmetal Alchemist (43)
- Kuroko no Basuke/黒子のバスケ (36)
- Sword Art Online/ソードアート・オンライン (32)
- Tokyo Ghoul/東京喰種トーキョーグール (31)
- Bleach (30)
- Dragon Ball Z (29)
- Godzilla (28)
- Pokémon (22)
- Ouran High School Host Club (19)
- Kuroshitsuji (19)
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians (18)
- Hunger Games (18)
- One Piece (17)
- Pacific Rim (17)
- RWBY (16)
- Death Note (15)
- Halo (13)
- Avatar: Last Airbender (13)
- Shrek (12)
- Evangelion (11)
- Homestuck (11)
- Legend of Zelda (10)
- Katekyo Hitman Reborn! (10)
- Soul Eater (10)
- How to Train Your Dragon (10)
- Blue Exorcist/青の祓魔師 (10)
- Five Nights at Freddy´s (10)
In Archive Of Your Own, the sexual content seems to be more explicit, with more stories labeled as M, T or simply not labeled at all. Many of them do not focus on a simple romantic story, but tell more than one. There are several romantic stories with different characters within the same single story.
Some of the romantic stories that seem to be popular are the most are those between Levi Ackermann and Eren Jaeger, Mikasa with Jean, Levi with Erwin, Krista and Ymir and Sasha with Connie.
Fan Art
Nowadays, online platforms and social media are a very recurring resource for publishing artistic works of all kinds. They are a very popular artistic source among those who make designs based on series works such as Attack on Titan. Sizes may vary, from very small to wallpaper size (the size of a computer screen). In addition to the traditional method of hand drawing, numerous technological tools are used in these cases as well, such as graphic tablets, or computer programs, like Photoshop or Indesign. Some of these online platforms are the following:
- DevianArt
- CGSociety
- Behance
- Tumblr
- Dribbble
However, the worldwide popularity of the Attack on Titan series and art has resulted in official artistic exhibitions featuring the graphic and artistic art of the universe of Attack on Titan being held.
As a tribute to the series with the story of Attack on Titan planned to come to an end in 2020, an Attack on Titan art exhibition was held from July 5 to September 8 2019 at the MORI Arts Center Gallery, in Tokyo. Additionally, also in Osaka at the Hirakata Park from September 21 to December 1, 2019. The exhibition was named “*Attack on Titan Exhibition Final Exhibition - THIS IS YOUR STORY-*”.
Visitors to the exhibition could enjoy artfully-constructed galleries of manga artwork and three audio-visual shows all on the Attack on Titan series. In addition, a signed autograph of Hajime Isayama the manga illustrator. In 2014, there was a similar Attack on Titan exhibition at the Ueno Royal Museum in Tokyo in which more than 250,000 visitors attended.