If you have grown up on the internet, or spent at least some time in fan culture circles, the idea of being ‘Sold’ to One Direction is probably a familiar idea. Most, if not all Gen Z are familiar with the story of slipping out of bed and tying your hair up into a messy bun before being sold for cigarette money by your abusive mother.
For the uninitiated, this story, a 1D fanfiction, has transcended internet culture, across fandoms and age groups to leave its lasting mark on pop culture for good. But where it all began? A website by the name of Wattpad, a fanfiction writing community for those who want to express, explore, challenge and create.
Now by no means do I believe the Sold to One Direction fanfiction is the pinnacle of fanfiction culture, but it clearly demonstrates how much fanfiction has managed to sneak its way into modern popular culture.
Some of your favourite books—The Love Hypothesis, Twilight—they all started out as teenage girls writing fanfiction on their laptops in their bedrooms. For many, writing this sort of fiction is our first experience with the online world (and the writing world as a whole). Picking a group of characters or making your own and imagining them in your own alternative universe gave fans power to change the story; to challenge the context.
It was empowering to be part of this community, and to this day, the fanfiction world is still raring full speed ahead.
I, too, found my start with writing on various fanfiction websites. I started out on Wattpad, writing various short stories about Youtubers or my own characters, before graduating up to AO3 (Archive of Our Own), the more ‘mature’ side of the fanfiction world.
It felt serious to write for an audience that expected beta readers and had a proper tagging system. To write on AO3, you had to know how to strategically tag your works and how to write a catchy blurb to appear on the front page. Fanfiction culture had begun to develop its own lingo, its own little republic on this side of the internet. It was a place where the girls, the fans, the gays and the theys could gather to write, to make up new endings for their ride or die ship parings. This corner of the internet was sacred, it was paradise.
Perhaps the reason for its paradisiacal nature for me was the safety of the community, majority of which were queer. Most of my childhood I had isolated myself by writing with a paper and pen in an exercise book in the library—and coming from rural Queensland, there was nobody who truly understood what I was writing or why I was writing. When I began to read more online, speak to more people, understand and explore a wider variety of complex queer issues that expanded beyond my high school library or Samsung tablet, I began to feel my feet touch the ground.
In a period of years where queer media never did touch the mainstream and the gay bill in Australia hadn’t been passed yet, fanfiction was a haven of queer people exploring their sexuality through their art and through their characters. Regardless of if you wrote on AO3, Wattpad or some other extreme, community was always found in the comment section, cheering you on. Kudos and bookmarks were pats on the back that people not only found your writing good, but the stories you told were appreciated and enjoyed. For many, these accomplishments and these votes by random internet users was probably enough to keep them alive, keep them creating, keep them pushing across the line.
It was a time in my life where anything was possible, anything was championed. For many, including myself, it was our first time stepping into a world where queer relationships were the norm. Now, when I attend queer writing panels with other artists, nine times out of 10 we find common ground in fanfiction culture; a place on the internet crowned home to the weird and outcasts.
When I look back at fanfiction now, and my time spent writing such, I feel nothing but immense pride and hope for the community of young people growing up in this area of the internet. In times of political turmoil, in times where queer media finds scrutiny in the mainstream, queer people find resistance in showing up and turning out in this corner of the internet.
Whether it’s writing your favourite ship because there’s no fan media for it, making Draco gay to spite JK R*wling, or pitting Donald Trump and Joe Biden in an enemies-to-lovers slow burn, fanfiction websites have always been a place to be heard, to be seen, to challenge.
This article was proudly sponsored by Pride Foundation Australia.