This is amusing because I was going to say that not confusing second-language learners of French with passé simple actually sounds very sensible, rather than making them believe they should use it in common conversation, but I understand your frustration x’) I got into a lot of small arguments with my English teachers at school because they would say “this form/phrase is never correct, use this instead” and I’d immediately think of exceptional examples I’d read… in English fanfic.
And about fanfic, that is indeed an interesting question. I remember when I started out writing fic, I used passé simple but still wrote as simply and closely to SF as possible — skipping subjunctives or using the easiest tenses as often as possible and even using passé composé regularly. I’m sure a lot of it was technically grammatically incorrect, but I was praised for my writing and my good grasp of my grammar (especially for my age). I think this was and still is the general trend; you do sometimes encounter the odd perfectly grammatically correct fic in passé simple with perfect concordance des temps, subjonctif imparfait, etc, but this seems weirdly jarring if the fic’s topic or tone isn’t especially serious.
I remember that I did eventually start writing French fic in present tense without really thinking about it, though probably because I’d been reading English fics that did it — and this caused lots of immediate reactions in the French fandom, from “Wow, that was surprising, but interesting choice! It gives a feeling of realness and instantaneousness! Very creative, I might start doing it too!” to “This would be a good fic if it weren’t in present tense. That’s just plain wrong. Change it to passé simple, that’s the rule”. (I was very surprised ‘cause it hadn’t even occurred to me that I was doing anything unusual, it was just a lot easier and more natural to write…)
That was around ten years ago though. These days, from what I’ve seen, I think more and more of French fanfic has absorbed the English trend of using present tense and second person as well (I think it was at first seasoned writers deliberately experimenting with something new, and now there are also young newbie writers who simply don’t know/think about “the rules” and feel free to do whatever as well); but it’s more noticeable/noticed, since there’s such a strong tradition tightly linking fiction and passé simple. You do run into the occasional grammar nazis who try to bring the rules of the Académie Française to the creative fanspace, though.
This is just my experience of French fandom; I’ve been more into English space for the last few years though, so there may be people with a totally different experience! There’s definitely something interesting going on there, though, and I think it might be relevant to note that many French fanficcers read a lot in English, but write in French, and might “bring” English fandom trends as well as linguistics characteristics to French fanspace. (The Harry Potter did some fun things back in the days…)
