Food in Fanworks

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Tropes and genres
Related tropes/genresCoffeeshop AU, Bakery AU, Chef AU, Baking AU
See alsoCookbook, Fannish Cooking, Feedism, Food Kink
Related articles on Fanlore.

Fanworks featuring food as a key theme or element are popular in many fandoms.

Food for plot or characterization, placing the characters in settings where they make food, either professionally (Coffeeshop AU, Chef AU, Bakery AU, etc) or for their personal pleasure (Baking AU, etc.)

Some fanworks take the form of recipes or feature recipes within the text.

Food as a way to show romance in fanworks: characters cooking their love interests favorite meal. Dates including food at fancy restaurants or something homemade. Fanworks can use food for intimacy with characters touching during cooking lessons. Romantic gifts of the character's favorite comfort foods is a popular thematic element.

The Hurt/Comfort trope in fanworks can have characters bringing an injured/sick character food. Common thematic elements are cooking the hurt character healthy meals as a form of comfort.

In the crackfic genre, it can have one or more of the characters as food.

Food in fanworks used as a framework for showcasing canon character traits. When a character has a canon stance on certain food/drinks, fanworks can include food/drinks items for maintaining canon character traits. Alternatively, characters liking or hating certain foods to show Out of Character.

Popular thematic elements in fanworks involving food include characters being excellent chefs or horrible chefs. Another popular thematic element is a character only eating take out.

Elizabeth Minkel wrote an extended article about Food in Fanworks for Atlas Obscura in 2024, interviewing fanfiction writers such as aimmyarrowshigh, ppyajunebug, azriona, and SnapDragonAndDungeons. She also references YouTuber Andrew Babish and his series "Binging with Babish," in which he cooks foods directly inspired by those in movies and television. In Minkel's article, azriona is quoted:

“That I wrote something that convinced someone else to try something new? To do something that might make their lives a little better? How many authors get to say that? I do,” she says. “If I have no other legacy in fandom, I have that. I hope, 10 years later, that they’re still cooking, even if it’s only a few things, or once in a while, or if they don’t even remember how they got started. I hope they just cook, for themselves or someone else, and feel good about what they’ve made.”[1]


Food as a sexual experience in fanworks: a stand-in for other activities, a kind of foreplay, or a kink in itself (Feeding kink). Food might also be used as an accessory during sex (Food kink.)[2]

Favorite food

Canon examples reasonably popular in fan works

Some characters have a strong fixation and association with a favorite food in canon, and this carries over to fan works.

Exaggerated by the fandom

Sometimes there is a canon basis for a character having some sort of association with a certain food, but this trait is noticeably exaggerated by the fandom.

  • Ace Attorney - Maya Fey and hamburgers
  • DC Comics
    • Stephanie Brown and waffles - In canon, home-cooked waffles represent a healing bond between her and her mother. In fanon, Steph's quirkiness and sunniness is often embodied in her love of waffles.
    • Tim Drake and coffee - In canon, Tim tends to enjoy cola and energy drinks. The coffee-addicted Tim fanon tends to be associated with Tim being sleep-deprived, overworked, neglected, self-sacrificing, and sickly. Due to Tim's infamous reputation for being heavily fanonized, "Coffee Tim" is sometimes used as a term to describe "Fanon Tim".
    • Dick Grayson and cereal - There have been a few rare canon instances in which Dick is too busy to replenish his food supply except for a sad stash of shelf-stable pantry items such as cereal. The cereal-obsessed Dick fanon tends to be associated with characterization of Dick as a manchild who is inept at basic meal preparation.
    • Lena Luthor (as portrayed in the 2015 Supergirl TV series) and kale
    • Edward Nashton and pumpkin pie - In The Batman (2022), Edward is sad to miss out on a slice of pumpkin pie when law enforcement arrests him in a diner.
    • Jason Todd and bread - The fanon originates from a scene in The Lost Days when Jason is homeless and breaks into a bakery to eat bread with gusto. This fanon never reached the popularity of Tim & coffee, Steph & waffles, or Dick & cereal, and the meme pretty much completely faded into obscurity by the time of 2016 or so.
  • Harry Potter
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe
  • Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn: Ike and meat
  • One Direction
    • Louis Tomlinson and carrots, which he mentioned once in as a joke in 2010
    • Louis Tomlinson and "chicken stuffed with mozzarella, wrapped in parma ham," which he made the mistake of mentioning twice (and cooking once for Harry, allegedly)
    • Harry Styles and pastries (he worked in a bakery prior to One Direction)
  • Undertale: Papyrus and spaghetti. Ironically, while he loves to cook spaghetti, his actual favorite food is dinosaur egg oatmeal.
  • Full Metal Alchemist: Edward Elric's hatred for milk.

Comments

the absolute worst thing a fictional character can do is admit to liking a food because the fandom wILL make that their entire personality for the rest of time[3]

I think the most hateful thing that you, as a creator, can do towards one of your own characters is confirm their favorite food, because it’ll cause irreparable brain damage to fanartists and it’s all they’ll ever reduce the character to.[4]

Example Fanworks featuring Food

Multifandom

  • Stove Stories, a collection of "fannish works featuring food as a vehicle of social interaction" on the AO3

Bandom

Beauty and the Beast

Boku no Hero Academia

Earth's Children

Fire Emblem

Harry Potter

The Hunger Games

Leverage

Like Water for Chocolate

Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh

  • Cori Falls was well-known for adding at least two meal scenes to her stories, and describing in great detail what the characters ordered or prepared.

Sherlock (BBC)

Stargate Atlantis

Supernatural RPF

One Direction

xxxHolic

Voltron: Legendary Defender

Coffee

Coffee is a beverage used as a mild stimulant for thought and creativity. Given the ubiquitous nature of coffee and its strong association with creators, it is probably not surprising that many canonical works as well as fannish works include the consumption of coffee, tea or equivalent beverages. There are currently ~5500 works on the Archive of Our Own tagged with Coffee (sourced 10 September 2020).

The Coffee Shop AU became a very popular alternate universe fanfiction trope in the opening decades of the 21st century, and can be found across a wide range of fandoms. Among other things, it draws on the social aspects of coffee shops.

Example Fanworks featuring Coffee

Gallery

External links

References

  1. ^ https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/food-and-fanfiction
  2. ^ See, for various examples, the fics tagged "kink:food" at the Blindfold SPN kink meme's pinboard account. (Accessed 30 Dec 2011).
  3. ^ https://twitter.com/cautiousamber/status/1336987536682483712?lang=en
  4. ^ https://cerastes.tumblr.com/post/686872277926739968/i-think-the-most-hateful-thing-that-you-as-a
  5. ^ https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/food-and-fanfiction
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