Philosophical question raised by my spouse: is it accurate to refer to the Goncharov section on AO3 as fanfiction when the film doesn't actually exist? Aren't they original works?
I think it's more complicated than that- it's "meme fanfiction", as it were, because no one is inventing the story out of wholecloth. In the same sense that "fandom" is a collective space and concept and "fanfiction" is a specific subcultural form of storytelling, Goncharov is in that subcultural space; and even outside of that, it's closer to the copypastas and joke stories written about Pepe the Frog (meme character) or the Down With Cis Bus crew or other meme figures than any real original work.
The only thing it is not is work in the gray area of copyright, which is how other people will sometimes define fanfiction.
If I had to define "fanfiction" personally, I'd say it's a written work based on someone else's IP, done without compensation from the original author or publisher or something like that.
It is based on a lore! The characters are pretty much all sourced from this post (with the exception of a few side characters that don't crop up terribly often) and there are already a bunch of elements that have passed into "accepted canon", like the idea that Goncharov has a heavy clock motif and Goncharov and Andrey have heavy homoerotic undertones to their relationship in spite of the fact that they never act on it. There's enough that i haven't actually seen anything contradictory yet, everyone is playing surprisingly nicely with each other and the lore is building up into some sort of consistent shape because of it.
I don't know that I'd call the lore "already written" but it very much seems to me like one person came up with like three ideas and everyone went "and then they-" about it, building off of one coherent base. it's to the point that Goncharov has a consistent set of characters, themes, and at least some events haha
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The only thing it is not is work in the gray area of copyright, which is how other people will sometimes define fanfiction.
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I don't know that I'd call the lore "already written" but it very much seems to me like one person came up with like three ideas and everyone went "and then they-" about it, building off of one coherent base. it's to the point that Goncharov has a consistent set of characters, themes, and at least some events haha