Fanfiction & The Queer Community
The names in this article have been changed to retain their anonymity.
The internet is a weird and wonderful place. So, why is it that people often focus on the “weird” and undercut it with criticism and stigma? Just because something is commonly perceived as weird, does not mean it is dangerous or problematic. It just means that it’s different. People often ignore the conjunction in the opening phrase: and. As in this first thing, but also another— a weird and wonderful place. What about the wonderful? What about spaces of community and acceptance? What else exists in this weird web that is wonderful?
Other worlds. Worlds filled with stories, community, and self-discovery.
Archive of Our Own, or Ao3 as it is more commonly called by its users, contains over 7 million fandom-inspired works called fanfictions. These are narrative pieces constructed of both canon fandom material and a writer’s imagination. A fandom is any body of work that has a fan-following, and fanfiction can be found for both obscure fandoms and ones that have reached global fame. For example, Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1879 Operetta, The Pirates of Penzance, has 33 works on Ao3, and television’s Supernatural (CW, 2005-2020) has amassed a startling 303,309 works. Authors from all around the world take to this site to write the stories they cannot find elsewhere, or to give characters the endings that they actually deserved.
One function of Ao3 that makes it so appealing is its lack of gate-keeping. Anyone, anywhere, anytime can post whatever they want; the content options are endless. If readers are willing to do a little bit of filtering and digging they can surely find what they want to read: those two characters that really needed a divorce? It’s there, and so are its variations, anything from a messy divorce, to one where the wife hires a hitman to ‘solve the problem of her husband’ but ends up in bed with the hitman. That beloved character that was killed off because their actor was fighting with production? Someone’s re-written the following three seasons of the show to include them. Those two women that were just ‘good friends’? Well, they kiss now. And share a bed. And own a cat.
United States based Kristin Smith, who writes under the pseudonym Haey1, is one of the 2.5 million authors on this site. As a part of the Ao3 community since 2018, she writes a fanfiction favourite genre of Queer Romance, where the focus is on representing and celebrating queer joy and relationships. She attributes feedback and reader interaction with her work as a large motivation for her writing. Kristin’s most popular piece to date, all my cards are here, is a Harry Potter fanfiction set in an alternate-universe where Marauders-era characters are situated as musicians in a world without magic.
Fanfiction is derived from fan-zines, and one part of that which has remained is the episodic nature of publication; Kristin’s practice is no different. When writing this, she wrote between 500 and 1,000 words each night and then every weekend she would edit and upload a chapter to Ao3. Readers then had the opportunity to tell Kristin what they wanted to see more of in future chapters, suggest constructive feedback, or to express their love for her work in all-caps keyboard smashes and other comments of praise. It creates a unique dialogue between author and reader and in doing so strengthens community.
While Archive of Our Own and other fanfiction websites are hives for inclusive community, they are not known for it. Instead, they are commonly thought of as places over-run by 13-year-old girls’ Harry Styles fantasies and filled with second-rate erotica. “There’s this stigma of fanfiction being like ‘I was kidnapped by One Direction, or I was bought by One Direction’ or ‘I put my hair up in a messy bun’,” Kristin explains referencing a popular fanfiction and trope, “Or there’s this stigma for being written poorly[sic] and only being smut and only being ridiculous things.” In a space without content oversight, this content is expected, but it is filled with so much more. To define Ao3 by its saucier side, illuminated only in a negative light, is to woefully misunderstand it.
Unfortunately, in telling her peers about her success online, Kristin encountered this stigma as her news was met by a room of laughter. This is not a story of shame and embarrassment for Kristin, however, as she had more cards up her sleeves. When she shared that 80,000 people had read it, two girls had gotten tattoos inspired by it, and several people had created fan-art from it, the atmosphere changed, “everyone in the room turned from laughter to being like ‘woah- wait. People think this is cool’… Once people realise that you’re successful and that other people are responding to it they get more on board.” If you can prove your success in a way that is meaningful to your peers— by talking about reads, in a similar way to views on a social media post, and as being something that has generated other pieces (the fan art)— then you can have your negatively-stereotyped work taken seriously. However, without large followings, or views only in the tens or hundreds, most authors do not have the luxury of ‘proof’ to combat the negative experience. Instead, they find only shame and embarrassment.
This freedom that so many use to tarnish fanfiction, also allows Kristin to write what she wants, how she wants. “There’s just something about fandom Queer Romance, that is different to published [literature],” she explains, “[fanfiction] is not trying to do whatever published fiction is. It’s trying to give you a love story and it’s not trying to do much more than that.” Kristen explains that authors writing traditional books are writing to appease potential publishers who require their stories to be rich and layered with adequate plot and thematic elements. She further notes that fanfiction is not bound by these rules which allows her to write what she wants to read: “two gay people yell[ing] at each other and fall[ing] in love.” Authors can write what they want to read without worrying about appeasing literary agents with a necessary criteria.
However, this freedom to all can come with some obvious downsides: explicit content, distressing themes, and triggering content. To counter this, during the posting of a work authors must select a maturity rating, and any “archive warnings” covering commonly triggering content, that is featured in their work. There is an onus then, for readers to read these tags and use the side-bar filtering element to find works that they do want to read, and remove those they don’t wish to from their visible results. Some people wish for censorship on websites like Ao3, however, it would undermine the nature of the site, and the very thing that so many people love about it: accessibility and community.
Kristen’s experience of finding queer community within fanfiction is not the only one. One testimonial in a 2020 penguin article from a member of the queer community notes that, “stories help shape cultures and if you hear no stories about something that is a part of you then … that part of you can't possibly develop and mature at the same pace as the rest,”. When members of a minority community do not see themselves represented in the world, it makes coming to terms with that part of themselves a momentous and daunting task. Current statistics^ from Ao3 show that Queer relationships are the most written pairing in 9 of the 10 most popular fandoms on their site and the most popular content tags are ‘fluff’, ‘angst’, and ‘romance’.
The attraction to fanfiction comes clear when you consider the lacking, inaccurate, and disrespectful representation of LGBTQIA+ people in mainstream media. Identifying as a Lesbian, Kristin explains her frustrations with this poor depiction of queer people, “I remember a time when the best gay movie on Netflix was ‘Blue is the Warmest Colour’,” she laments, “all they do is have sex and eat pasta. It’s a terrible fucking movie!”. Many queer people have had to take their searches to places like Ao3 because of the lack of representation in mainstream media. So, when finding these websites that are filled with the widest range of queer identities and experiences, it is no wonder that Kristin and so many others are drawn to these communities.
While Queer representation has become more readily available in print literature, there is still progress to be made. Most queer stories only contain gay relationships, exclude other sexualities, and rarely touch on gender identity. For example, two popular queer young adult books: Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston and Alice Oseman’s graphic novel series, Heartstopper only depict relationships between men. The Publishing Post speaks to this point, “it’s important to keep in mind that representation of one queer identity is not representation of all queer identities,” while also pushing the crucial point of why representation is important, “if we would like to live in a society where ‘coming out’ stories are no longer a big deal and people just readily accept one another, we must normalise these types of stories and literature.” Queer tropes like the ‘coming out story’ can be dismissed in fanfiction because it allows authors to project into an idyllic future where being queer or non-gender conforming is normalised. In fandom, people can feel free to unproblematically be who they are.
Ultimately, it is the love of fandom from fanfiction users that allow these spaces to thrive as accepting communities. “I just love fandom,” Kristin says, “I just love the excitement you get talking to someone else who understands this really niche thing that you also love.” The freedom that writers have on these sites creates a connection and intimacy between people in a way that is rarer in print literature. Fanfiction is doing what print literature is not— creating a place for unheard stories, novice writers, and community. In fanfiction, queer people do not have to search for something to relate to; we do not have to search to see our reflections.
^Current as of 2021, when this article was originally written.