I teach a Queer Literature course. My final session is about Fan Fiction. It’s part of the bigger conversation about how we ‘Queer’ narratives or reclaim them (or both). But it’s also about that gap in the literature, in culture many Queer people feel. And have for many many years chosen to write their narratives. It’s often a formative part of growing up and coming out for many young people. But it also continues to be an important part of life for many people as they grow older, and grow up. Oftentimes too for queer women, fanfiction means writing queer men in their stories, as often as it does queer women or nonbinary characters. I passionately believe this is an integral part of queer expereince, and something that carries through to our creative work. I can often spot a fanfiction writer a mile off for many reasons, but one of the many is the way they morph into, express and delve into so many queer narratives with truth and authetncity. The truth is too I think that fanfiction writing has helped these writers and queer people to become the person they are, away from some of the other societal and community norms.
I’m not a queer woman of queer fiction. I’ve never read a queer female narrative that screamed my expereince. I can think of maybe 2 or 3 queer women on TV who in some way feel like ‘me’. But I’ve read countless gay men or queer men of other demographics who felt like they spoke to my soul. (I have also its worth noting read straight characters who I felt were very like me in all but sexulity and that’s important too). The point is I’ve never looked at a character and said I shouldn’t feel like them because I’m not like them.
That the world of fanfiction raised me here is important too I think. In fanfiction you can be whoever you like. I liken it to video games, where you can be a person of any gender, age…whatever you choose. Writing fanfiction allows you to try all that on. To try on different backgrounds, be an older or younger character. But of course for many queer folks, its where they first try on sexuality and gender. Because nobody is telling them they can’t they can write as the queer character they are inside. Or express the gender they are inside, through a character they already love. That’s important to us all.
What’s also important is fanfiction ‘fixing the narrative’ We are so often still denied representation in the media, in stories. So fanfiction allows us to take the characters we love and tell their stories through the queer lens we always wanted them to have. So yes, when I teach fanfiction, it’s usually through the lens of ‘Queering Literature’ and how people have used fanfiction for decades to see the narratives they are missing elsewhere. So, on a very basic level, when they make Merlin and Arthur Gay, because there aren’t enough gay narratives on TV. Or you make the Doctor’s companions fall in love with each other and run off and save the world instead of waiting for him.
Short version of that lecture: Because we still don’t have enough stories that show our world, ourselves. And so as weird as people may find it, there are still thousands of people creating their own stories that way to fill the gap.
Long Version: there are many reasons to write Fic, and alongside that, fanfiction functions as a way for people to work through other things, their traumas, griefs, their dreams they can’t confess elsewhere, and yes ok, weird sex stuff. It’s not just for Queer people. But yes, that’s an important strand. It’s not just for teenagers, as important and formative as for young people. But for some people, some of us, it’s a space we go back to time and time again- when life gets tough it’s a refuge, when creativity hits a wall, it’s a way out. It’s a way into a community for connection and friendship.
What is fanfiction to me then? It’s both my escape and refuge and my writer’s sandbox. As disparaging as people are about it, outside of school assignments, yes Fanfiction was the first thing I ever wrote. And as a ‘proper’ ‘Published Author’ (and yes also holder of a PhD and alleged serious person) in 2020 I went back to Fan Fiction again, both reading and writing.
My history with Fan Fiction started in High School. On dial-up internet and X Files Forums. And thankfully for my teenage writing, lost to the mists of time. But here’s the thing with Fan Fiction, it’s been a rare thing for me; I fangirl a lot, and fangirl hard. But I rarely take the leap to read Fic, much less to write it. There are in fact exactly three things I’ve written Fic for in my life. It’s this ineffable thing where you need to leap back inside something. There are so many shows I have next-level fangirl knowledge for. And I have zero desire to read, much less write fanfiction for. Equally, there’s a fanfic I’ve looked at for teaching or research reasons that we will NEVER SPEAK OF AGAIN (the tentacles, lord the tentacles).
But more than that, it became a refuge- it’s not difficult to work out in 2020 that maybe many of us needed that, a space to hide out in our heads. But also a place to work through a lot of the stuff in my head. That’s what I love about fanfiction; it’s about nothing and everything. It’s about the tiniest detail expanded on, or the smallest moment, and what it means. Or it can truly be about nothing at all, just a need to hang out with some familiar characters a little more.
That’s what its always been about for me, an ineffable need to hang out with the characters more. To be inside their heads. Because inside characters heads is always a place I found answers to my own life, whether it was writing my own or borrowing someone elses.
It started with X Files. People often assume I was in it for Gillian ‘queen of the queer women’ Anderson. And while I do in fact worship that queen…actually retrospeciively I realise I was in it for Mulder. The weird, autistic coded slightly asexual man who feels more like me than passionate baby-needing Scully. Once again a man is more aligned with my inner life and I’m cool with that. I’m happy I spent so much time in Fox Mulder’s head as a teenager, I felt less alone less strange there.
Next up was Sherlock. Where like everyone I was trying to undo the spectacular queerbaiting of Steven Moffatt and co. (I will call a spade a spade there, it was spectacuarly bad). But also again Sherlock the autistic coded asexual was the head I felt at home in. And the fact that platonically his brother Mycroft loved him regardless (something they got very right in the show) and that the loveable sweet John Watson also loved him (platonically or otherwise) made me feel at home. I loved writing the Holmes brothers with all my mind and soul…I’ve never felt so at home. And not just in Sherlock fic but many a female writer has taken on Holmes and made him her own, it’s not that unusual and I don’t think we should have to make him ‘Shirley’ Holmes for our stories to be valid. Equally in Fanfic land, we shouldn’t have to write an Irene Adler fic just because we’re a girl. And our Johnlock isn’t invalid it isn’t a violation, it isn’t stealing stories from men, it’s a creative expression, often a deeply personal one.
Because fanfic and female sexuality are really closely tied. As those safe spaces for exploration away from the male gaze. But also I would argue those of us who learned our craft there, we take it into the real world. Because we realise the stories of women that the world wants us to write we cannot write, because they are not us.
(An aside too that it’s a characteristic of autistic women to have internal male expressions or concepts of themselves and/or that also a lot of queer women also say ‘gender? Don’t know her?’ as well in ways that are too complicated for a blog on fanfiction)
Then for me, in 2020 I went off the deep end with Schitt’s Creek and I was in fanfic land again. In part a product of the time and a desperate need for escape. My world had been shattered by the loss of theatre when I finally felt I was starting something. Destroyed too by academia and unable to imagine a future where I wrote books there. I felt like I’d never write again.
For me, it was about the process of writing them. With each story, I felt more confident, more at home writing again. That was something I’d lost. I’ve spent a number of years being battered by both the legacy of academia and my attempts to write for theatre. Neither, mostly it feels is going well. And 2020, well that just about finished me for theatre writing, even at the time of writing this, even with a play on next month, I can’t quite bring myself to pick myself up and write anything new for the stage. But in writing fic, I started to tell stories again, bring characters to life on the page...and I started to enjoy it. I finally found a way to creatively ‘play’ again. Writing fic was my time out, my downtime, my escape. But it also taught me that I can find that writing routine and discipline again. It gave me the drive and spark to find that. Now I balance that time with ‘real life’ creative projects and fic, and you could say it had a ‘real world’ or ‘real writing’ impact. Not that this was ever the point. The point was long winter mornings and evenings to ‘folklore’ and ‘evermore’ and Aqualung finding a way to be creative….and it worked. It was something to anchor me to ….something. Most important it was something creative, a place to escape. Honestly, too, the idea that someone might read and like what I wrote, over a play nobody might ever see, or an academic book three people might read...while stuck in pandemic limbo, it felt like something I could do, something to connect my writing to something or someone. As a writer, it gives you a feeling of being part of something. Of achieving something. In a sea of critique and rejection. So while I was busy filling a rejection jar with £5 and Andrew Scott gif for my ‘real’ writing, I was cultivating kudos and comments for my fic by the 100s. And yes, it felt good. Away from ‘you’re not good enough,’ I heard, ‘this really moved me,’ and that was enough. In a sea of rejections, that matters. Because I look at my A03 comments and think ‘I made something that mattered to someone’ even if it only mattered to them for an afternoon, a moment in the middle of the night. I made a corner of someone’s world a bit brighter. And writing it made mine a bit brighter too. So it’s a win-win.
And you can also write the utterly obscure and self-indulgent. Yes, sometimes this is the sexual content everyone likes to giggle about. But also just the very particular-to-you stuff. That thing that feels so self-indulgent you couldn’t write anywhere else about it. That maybe nobody cares about. But also, maybe they do. That headache story? People loved it. Because it's more than that, it’s character exploration, relationship development, dialogue, internal monologue, and descriptive writing.
So I wrote over 700,000 words of fanfiction in 2020-21. That’s over 7 books or 7 PhD thesis worth. Was it a waste of time? Some would argue so. But really, what were any of us doing of any use in that timeframe? It was my escape. It was my hobby (I’m shit at crafts and jigsaws I needed something). It helped me in a tough time to escape. But it also helped me tell the stories I needed to tell.
There’s a feeling now we have to make everything part of our ‘work,’ so writing fanfic is pointless because it can’t be monetised, or exchanged for career progression. Of course, I would argue it makes me a better writer in other areas, too, so that’s moot. As is the idea, we only do things for career or monetary gain. I started writing fanfiction in my bedroom as a teenager with no concept of it being anything other than for the fun of it, the stories in my head. What’s wrong with returning to that? Especially at a time we all desperately needed an escape.
And no, as we’ve got this far, it isn’t ‘just a load of porn’ ...I mean, my porn writers are out there, and I take off my hat to them (though they’d likely prefer I take something else off). Personally, my work is vanilla as all hell, I’m a queen of a jump cut to ‘and later…’ but that’s a personal preference. People have written erotic novels for decades, and frankly, that’s a less exploitative industry than the places some of you were going to practice a bit of self-indulgence during lockdown ….but I digress (but also subscribe to ethical porn, and pay for your porn, please and thank you). The point is yes, people write porn, but also people write sweet, charming, heartbreaking, silly, funny, action-packed, hockey filled or outright strange stories...just like ‘real’ books.
Secondly, sure, it might be weird to people not in this world. But lots of things are weird to me too if I’m not part of that world- football is weird to me but lots of people enjoy that, getting drunk in a club is weird to me, walking up mountains is weird to me, a love of maths is weird to me...just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean its wrong.
And it’s all that while playing in the sandbox of something you love.
And that, my friends is a particular and potent kind of drug.
And I can’t explain it to anyone who doesn’t know. But if you know. You know.
But on a more serious note. Many Fic writers, myself included, use it to work out, quite frankly, their own shit that they can’t do elsewhere. And in a pandemic, locked away from other humans this has quite literally been a lifeline. All those messed up feelings that you’re having? All those issues long repressed that you can’t distract yourself from? Got nobody to talk to? Talk them out with your characters. We write our way out. In a way that we never could in ‘proper’ writing. And sometimes, often in fact, it speaks to someone else going through the same thing. And you feel a little less alone.
For queer women, it’s so important. To write away from the male gaze, as fanfic is a largely female-dominated space. And I don’t believe it’s fetishization when queer women write queer men, I believe it’s an expression of our female sexuality. It’s also a way to explore elements that are kept from us due to the arbitrary rules of gender behavior and all sorts of nonsense that tell us how to behave. It’s also about distance; we can say things as male characters we cannot as ourselves or characters deemed extensions of ourselves. It’s freeing and beautiful, and cathartic. And I, for one, will not be telling any woman she should not have that space to express herself.
Writing these stories has been healing, both in the things I’ve written about, dark places, silly places, ideas, and forms that wouldn’t fit anywhere else. They’ve also allowed me to grow my writing skills, style quietly, and more importantly, clawback confidence that I can do this; I am quite good at this.
They’ve also brought me joy. The joy of writing them, disappearing into these worlds, and telling myself stories. But also brought me a connection with people. I realised that stepping away from the pressure and competitiveness of ‘professional writing meant a connection that I was missing (I’m sure some fic writers see it as a competition- those big-name fans I talked of, but I don’t care if I have three readers or 30,000 personally, and I know it doesn’t make the work less worthwhile for me). And the joy I found in comments and conversations with people reading these stories, was a reminder of why we write- to share our experiences with the world our thoughts, to connect with people.
Because that’s the thing, I know I’ve connected to people with Fic. I’ve had people tell me those stories have made a difference. They made a difference to me and that’s all I was doing it for real. I accidentally started a long fic during that process. One that then turned into two novel-length stories. One that accidentally became six stories that are finished but not. Those stories, those characters, became my life raft but also a means to tell stories I’d never been able to tell another way. In writing them in Fic, they became stories I could tell on their own terms. And that became something magical.
In late 2021 I started a novel writing course. Inspired by finding love in fanfiction again and the ability to write prose, I wrote a novel from that course. Then I realized it was two novels. So I split them. Now it’s almost three stories and a million short bits of writing in that universe. The stories themselves are good. They’re important stories about grief and loss, and how we find our place in the world. They’re about choosing family and choosing our people. They’re a bit funny and a lot sad but these characters feel like home. I live with these characters in my head constantly. I have a thing, which the internet tells me is called maladaptive daydreaming, where you can just snap into a very specific daydream at a given time, just drop into that world. It might be embarrassing to admit, but I’ve lived in this world, with Ben and Nick and Tim and Mark for two years now. I have told myself countless stories, which aren’t from books. But I live with them, ok my little imaginary friends, and through that I think I’ve done the best work I could have ever done.
What I did was create that feeling of fanfiction in my original stories. A world that I want to exist in and expand. Characters that feel like home.
More than that, though, this story did what fanfiction has always done for me; it gave me a voice, a way to tell my stories in ways I cannot as myself. Even through countless blogs and oversharing on the internet. Much like in fanfiction, these characters gave voice to everything I needed them to and more. They told me about me, about the way I’d coped with things; they told me about me in my identity and the way I am. They gave me hope that I wasn’t broken even when the world tells me I was because they fixed each other and me a bit.
These characters I’ve clung to, they’ve replaced that fanfic feeling in that they are the place I escape to, the place that lets me be most myself. But recently, I was told I was wrong, offensive even, to have written them. Because they’re men, and I am not. And I’ve never been so upset at a rejection. But also, I think this illustrates a fundamental gap in understanding of queer cultural experience.
Because in writing queer stories in fic, queer women aren’t appropriating gay men/queer men; we are expressing variations of female sexuality, escaping from the male gaze, but also articulating parts of our sexuality that cannot be expressed in traditional queer female characters. This rejection made me feel like I was a betrayal of my gender, even though I tried to explain that as an asexual female-presenting woman, I often find myself far removed from queer women’s experience. Some queer women feel closely aligned with heterosexual, heteronormative experiences. Many don’t. Many Asexual people, too, feel more aligned, more at home in queer male-dominated spaces and communities because they feel alienated by queer women, in feeling very different from them. In my writing, male characters come from feeling more ‘at home’ in their heads. It’s not a fetishization or appropriation; it’s simply where I found a voice.
These characters gave me a voice for so much, as it did in fanfiction writing. And I know that many female writers feel similar; when freed from expectations of writing ‘women well,’ we find our voice. When freed from the male gaze, we find our voice.
But more than that, maybe just maybe, it's a case of gender being a fucked up concept, particularly when trying to write fictional narratives, and sometimes the story finds its character and nothing more? Sometimes it’s not that deep; sometimes, simply, the characters speak to us because they speak to us.
I found my fanfiction world, that fanfiction feeling (if you know, you know) in writing some original stories. Today, as I write this, I’m reeling from being told I was wrong to choose male characters to tell my stories. I didn’t choose the male characters much like that fic-writing brain they chose me. I’m heartbroken that someone told me they were wrong because they feel like so much part of me. That I had at once told their story and mine. Which is what happened with fanfiction. I felt like I had finally found that magical alchemy in my original writing; that feeling of losing yourself, of flying with the characters, of finding yourself in the process and wanting to stay in that world forever.
And you know what, I have. And I will go back to Nick and Ben and Mark and Tim in the same way I’ve gone back to fanfiction time and time again. Because they give me an escape. But they also give me a place to feel seen, to find the parts of me and say the things I’ve not been able to. They are the very heart and soul of me and the fact I’m so upset at being told they are invalid because I wrote them or that I am invalid for writing them shows me something is right there. That I want nothing more than for others to disappear into their world like I have like I will continue to do…makes me believe in them.
Have I sort of fanfic-ed my own work? A bit. But is that also a feeling I’ve chased forever? Also yes.
I promise the world this: if the world lets me find a way to share the stories, I’ll share all those extra bits, the silly stories, the additional heartbreaking moments, the one-shot-crack-fics of my own characters I wrote at 10pm for a giggle. I promise if readers want them I’ll give them all to you. Because fanfic taught me that you create the world you need, and I think if I need them, others do too.
My story, of Nick and Ben and their asexual love story. Of grief and intergenerational truama, and finding their family, is something I’m determined to share. I started a blog for them here and you can read the following extracts:
The why of this book and a first taste
A bonus story about going home again
Losing myself in their world helped like fanfiction did before it…I hope they help people too.