Chatfic

Tropes and genres
Synonym(s)	chat fic
Related tropes/genres	text fic, Documentation, Epistolary, not!fic, commentfic
See also	Instant Messaging, IRC
Related articles on Fanlore.

Chatfic is a term with at least two meanings in fandom.

1. fanfiction written in a group chat
2. fanfiction written in the style of a group chat

In the first definition, popular in Bandom and possibly 2000s LiveJournal fandom generally, two or more fans discuss a fic they want to write. One fan may then post the chatlog as-is or clean it up to some extent. LJ community sidekickfic defined it thusly:

a sort of story-type thing wot two or more people write using chat programs, with each of them taking different characters and attempting to reach an end, with varying degrees of success as such things tend to wander off into meta and new stories, and that's cool too

In the second definition, the characters within the story are using chat to communicate. This type of fic was notably popular in the Homestuck (see pesterlog) and has grown in popularity across fandoms more generally in the 2010s

Several fic archives have policies banning chatroom-style fanfics; see List of Content Banned by Archives#chat/script format, keyboard dialogue based entries, netspeak.

Examples

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

Definition #1:

• Amish!Patrick: The Revenge, ^{Archived version} by Schuyler and tricksterquinn, posted to damnyouwentz 2006-05-24
• Discordance, ^{Archived version} by Luunyscarlet, Maka_Tsubaki, novelDaydreamer, PFDiva, Purrs, tabbyfeathers, VoidTarot, and winteryKite. This work meets both definitions by being in the form of a Discord chatlog and also having been written collectively in a discord server.

Definition #2:

• Truth Is a Whisper (Hanson story) by Bethany and Amber Hopper

• if 2 phantom thieves were on the moon and one killed the other with a rock would that be fucked up or what, ^{Archived version} by mellofricker

External Links

• Chatlogs tag at AO3