Can someone explain fanfiction?

Fanfiction isn't just about erotica, though!

I love reading fan-fic but as others have said there is a lot of crap writing as well as the good ones. In my experience some genres/program's/books are generally better written than others. Bones (tv crime drama) is generally speaking pretty awful but Stargate (sci if tv) is generally pretty good for example.
Have a play, find some recommend ficfrom rec sites and see what you think. Happy reading!

Pop over to the TSA thread and ask for recommendations. There is fanfiction based in pretty much every famous literary work and many TV shows/movies. There is even Bible-based fic and some alarming Tetris-based stuff

Pick your universe: Harry Potter, Sherlock, Twilight, etc. Then choose your level of eroticism required from PG-13 to NC-17. Finally, the characters you would like to be involved. In Harry Potter, for example, you could have Harry and Ginny, or Harry and Hermione, or Harry and Draco. In fact, pretty much any combination of characters is out there.

There are sites out there that cater for specific relationships, so www.walkingtheplank.org is devoted entirely to fanfiction featuring Harry Potter and professor Snape in a variety of erotic situations, whereas www.thehexfiles.net has Harry/Draco fiction.

Then there are whole internet communities who recommend fanfiction, so google, say, Star Trek Fanfiction Recommendations and you'll save yourself reading an awful lot of shite.

And if you like Twilight, do yourself a favour and read Cleolinda Jones's blog and movies in 15 minutes. But don't drink tea while you're reading. Just saying

Harry Potter link

Thepetulantpoetess.com is good for HP, it's moderated so the quality is high, unlike fanfiction.net aka as "the pit of voles".

There's tons and tons of Harry potter fan fiction

Try fan fiction.net for starters. Be warned, there's a lot of crap.

It's extremely variable, as you would gather. Some of it's absolute drivel and some is really well written and adds an extra kind of depth to the story or world.

fanfiction.net has loads but there are no quality controls and no way of searching by rating or number of favourites or anything like that.

I have a good link for some Harry Potter stuff but I'll have to find it later.

Fan fiction is where fans steal the characters and then add to the stories or take them in a direction the author hadnt. Or they develop parts of the stories which the author had just skimmed over like giving supporting characters a full back story.

It's a bit like watching a chick flick and wondering what happened after 'happy ever after'

Some authors like Anne Rice feel it is like theft and try to have the stories removed and some like JK Rowling like it as it keeps people buying the books

it's what it sounds like

fiction, written by fans, about the characters of which they are a fan.

50 shades was originally written as Twilight fanfiction. Christian is Edward, Ana is Bella