The Fast and the Furious

The Fast and the Furious, also referred to as simply Fast & Furious, is a series of films revolving around fast cars, street racing and various sorts of crimes. The series began in 2001 with The Fast and the Furious, followed by 2 Fast 2 Furious in 2003, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in 2006, Fast & Furious in 2009, Fast Five in 2011, Fast & Furious 6 in 2013, Furious 7 in 2015, The Fate of the Furious in 2017, and F9 (2021), with two additional films in development. There is also a 2019 spin-off film, Hobbs & Shaw.
The premise of the first film is the undercover investigation by Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), of a series of truck robberies that occur while the trucks are in transit. Dominic (Dom) Toretto (Vin Diesel), a noted street racer and ex-con, is the primary suspect and the subject of O'Conner's undercover investigation. O'Conner inserts himself into Toretto's street-racing crew, but quickly finds himself in too deep.
2 Fast 2 Furious paired Brian O'Conner with old friend Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) in a story that moves the action to Florida and does not feature Dom Toretto. 
Tokyo Drift, set in Japan, had a whole new set of characters and does not have much plot relationship to the earlier films, although Vin Diesel does have an uncredited cameo as Dom Toretto. Some fans believe the events of this film take place after Fast Five.User Generated Trivia for Tokyo Drift on IMDB, accessed May 1, 2011 The director, Justin Lin, has confirmed that reading of the timeline of the films.Set Visit Interview: Director Justin Lin On Fast Five posted January 26, 2011, accessed May 3, 2011
Fast & Furious reunites the cast of the first film in a story that plays as a direct sequel and features Brian O'Conner in another undercover assignment that brings him back in contact with the Torettos. 
Fast Five reunites many cast members of all the previous films in a heist drama set in Brazil.
Fast & Furious 6 is the least stand-alone movie thus far, as it draws most of its plot from hanging threads from Fast & Furious and Fast Five, and it has references to all previous movies. It also directly sets up Fast & Furious 7, which was released in 2015 and takes place (at least in part) in Tokyo like Tokyo Drift. The film features Kurt Russell as Mr. Nobody.
== Fandom ==
The original film was immediately recognized, even by mainstream press, as having clear homoerotic undertones."There's also a bit of homoeroticism at the heart of the race-cars-and-boys saga..." in They Pull Me Back In by David Edelstein, Slate Magazine, June 22, 2001. Slash fans readily picked up on this aspect of the film and began writing fanfic, continuing as more characters and plot were added to the canon with the subsequent films.
Fan activity started shortly after the movie premiered, primarily in Yahoo Groups email lists, but grew dramatically with the creation of the LiveJournal community quarter_mile and successful pimping of new fans, particularly through the use of vids. The self-titled renaissance in this fandom, with multiple fans contributing fanfic and vids, peaked in Summer 2005.
A lot of fans refuse to acknowledge the existence of Tokyo Drift and list it as the worst in the franchise.
The 2009 release of the fourth film saw a flurry of new works produced, but not at the original fandom level. 
The most popular slash pairings are Brian/Dom, with many Brian/Rome works written after the second film was released. Rome began to appear in Dom/Brian stories occasionally at that time. There are two canon het relationships that get some outings in works, Dom/Letty and Brian/Mia. There is also some femslash, threesomes and the occasional love triangle.
== Notable Fanworks ==
Stories:Much of the fanfic is available only on the mailing lists, but there is quite a lot publicly available:
* Gravity by Dawn—a seminal early story in the fandom
* Baja by Devil Child—one of the first, if not the first, story in the slash fandom, and one of the originators of the gone to Mexico trope
* Unfinished Business and other fanfic by Maygra—helped spread the fandom to a wide audience
* Deus ex Machina and other stories by Khaleesian (AO3 Link)—responsible for luring many people into the fandom, especially in the early days
* Ciudad de Estrellas and other TFatF fanfic by Gwyneth—along with her vids, helped create the "renaissance" of the fandom
* On a New Track by taibhrigh, a Sentinel AU story, Brian O'Connor, an undercover police officer with LAPD is sent in to investigate the mysterious and apparently crime-filled world of illegal street racing. His main target is a man named Dominic Toretto, the prime suspect in a series of truckjackings. But once in place in Dom's organization, Brian discovers Dom is more than he appears to be and Brian has to decide between turning Dom in or finding a way for both of them to get out alive.
Vids: These vids all had a huge impact on drawing people into the fandom
* Stripped by Gwyneth
* The Chemicals Between Us by Lierdumoa
* Loaded Gun by Gwyneth
Zines:
* 2 Trans 2 Furious (2023)
== Community ==
* quarter_mile (LJ comm) also at Dreamwidth
== Mailing Lists ==
* The Fast and the Furious Slash archive link ("This is a place to post all of your slash fiction to the movie The Fast and the Furious and talk about the slashy nature of the characters. Anything and I do mean ANYTHING goes. Just keep the actor gushing (i.e "Vin Diesel's so hot!" although he is) to a minimum. Real People slash on any of the cast members of the movie is welcome as well as talk about cast members other projects (such as Blue Crush.)") (Yahoo Group created August 2001)
* Fast and Furious Slash archive link ("Slash fanfiction and discussion about the movie the Fast and the Furious.") (Yahoo Group created January 2002)
==Resources/External Links ==
* The Fast and the Furious Overview at Crack Van
* Fandom: the Fast & the Furious Overview (on LiveJournal) at Newbieguide
* Fandoms I Have Loved 9: The Fast and the Furious overview by thefourthvine
* Going for a little ride by khaleesian, a Brian/Dom essay for ship_manifesto (Nov 2004)
* entry on the franchise at Wikipedia (canon resource)
* Quarter Mile: Fast and the Furious (Brian/Dom) Index
==Archives==
* Fast & Furious (Movies) at Archive of Our Own
==References==
 
Category:The Fast and the Furious