How Fanfiction Around True Crime YouTubers Actually Works
I started noticing it around 2021. People were writing fictional stories about Sam and Colby's real dynamics. At first I thought it was just a niche fandom thing, but it kept growing. The content spread to Archive of Our Own, Tumblr, TikTok, and eventually spawned whole communities that operate almost like independent publishing houses. The core appeal is simple enough: these two have chemistry that reads like a slow-burn relationship even when the videos are about haunted locations or paranormal investigations. Writers latch onto that tension and run with it. Here's how it actually functions in practice. You start by consuming the source material methodically. Not just the main channel videos. I mean every podcast episode, their collaborative content with other creators, the behind-the-scenes moments, social media interactions, and interview appearances where they're off-camera more than on. The better writers absorb not what Sam and Colby say in edited videos but how they react when they think nobody's paying attention. There's a difference. The writing itself usually follows one of a few established tracks. The most common is character study — essentially long-form essays dressed as narrative fiction where you explore internal motivations rather than plot. Another major branch is alternate universe fiction, which takes their personalities and drops them into different settings like college, a coffee shop, or a completely fictional world. The third, and honestly the most technically demanding, is canon-compliant fiction that fills in gaps the shows leave open. That last one requires the tightest research because fans will tear your work apart if you get details wrong.
I learned the hard way that accuracy matters more than most people expect. I wrote a fic about three years ago where I had Sam making coffee in a particular kitchen setup. I'd seen it once in a vlog. Someone tracked down the actual episode timestamp and commented with a floor plan of that kitchen based on other angles visible in different videos. I lost an hour rewriting that scene. The workaround I use now is building a reference document before I write a single word of prose. Screenshots, timestamps, clothing continuity notes, location identification. It adds about twenty minutes to pre-production but it saves me from looking foolish later. One thing nobody talks about enough is how the Sam and Colby fanfiction community handles shipping differently than most fandoms. Shipping means pairing two characters romantically in fanwork. In many fandoms this is straightforward. Here, there's a particular tension because the subjects are real living people. This creates what I'd call ethical friction within the community. Some writers draw a hard line at any romantic content involving Sam and Colby together. Others argue that once content becomes public, it enters interpretive space. The result is that you'll encounter both extremely explicit stories and very casual works side by side on the same platform, often with fierce disagreement about whether either should exist at all. The technical side of publishing matters more than it should. If you're posting on Archive of Our Own, the tagging system is your biggest asset and your biggest liability. Wrong tags can push your work to the wrong audience or bury it entirely. I've seen solid fics get zero traction because the author tagged them under genre labels that don't match how the algorithm surfaces content. The fix is reading the top performing fics in your chosen category and copying their tag structure. It's unglamorous. It works.
There are serious limitations to this whole ecosystem that beginners ignore. The primary bottleneck is burnout. I watched multiple promising writers leave the community within six months because they treated fanfiction like a second job with deadlines and expectations. Fan projects don't have to work like that. The secondary bottleneck is content saturation. Sam and Colby fanfiction is heavily produced. New stories entering the archive face competition from thousands of existing works using the same tags. Standing out usually requires something genuinely different in perspective or structure, not just better writing quality. Another practical issue is the monetization question. Fanfiction exists in a legal gray area depending on jurisdiction. Using copyrighted characters for commercial gain crosses into territory that gets complicated quickly. Most writers in this community avoid it entirely. A smaller number test the waters through platforms that allow derivative monetization under certain conditions. Either way, it's not worth the legal exposure for what amounts to pocket change in most cases. If you want to actually start writing, here's a sequence that won't waste your time. Pick one format and stick with it for your first three pieces. Character study is the easiest entry point because it doesn't require complex plotting. Write five thousand to eight thousand words. Read your work aloud before posting to catch pacing issues that invisible on screen. Post it with complete and accurate tags. Then wait. Engagement in this particular community moves slowly. Most pieces get their traction between day three and day seven after publication, not immediately.
Get the Full Details
The community has forums and Discord servers where feedback happens. Join one. Don't post your work there for critique before it's ready though. Half the experienced writers I know made that mistake early on and ended up paralyzed by conflicting notes. Get your draft to a point where you're reasonably confident, then share it. One counter-intuitive insight: the highest quality fanfiction in this space rarely comes from people who are obsessed with the YouTube channel specifically. It comes from people who are good at understanding interpersonal dynamics and happened to find their practice subject through Sam and Colby content. If you focus on character psychology rather than fan service, your work will age better and attract a more serious readership. The reverse is also true. Content written purely for ship dynamics tends to get consumed fast and forgotten within weeks. The obsession angle in the topic title is real but it cuts both ways. Healthy obsession fuels good research and detailed work. Unhealthy obsession leads to burnout, entitlement to attention, and increasingly erratic posting schedules. I've seen both outcomes. The writers who lasted built sustainable routines. Two to three thousand words a week. Regular breaks. No self-imposed deadlines on unpaid projects. That's it really. The rest is just showing up consistently and accepting that most of your work will be read by fewer than fifty people. The five percent that catches fire changes everything, but you can't engineer that part.
If this format isn't for you, the related space of video essay analysis around Sam and Colby's content is growing in parallel and shares a lot of the same audience. Sometimes writing criticism instead of fiction gives you the same creative outlet without the character interpretation headaches. Worth considering if you find yourself wrestling with ethical questions about writing about real people.
