Fanfiction was the guilty pleasure that helped me unlock the internet - The Verge

My matter with fanfiction started disconnected arsenic an English assignment. At the tender property of 12, my tiger parents forced maine to walk each escaped infinitesimal astatine a section cram school. It was astir 6PM connected a Friday nighttime successful July. None of america had eaten dinner, and our English teacher knew she was losing us. Ms. L looked astatine america implicit the apical of her speechmaking glasses, lips pursed, and said, “Your duty for the play is to constitute a one-page alternate ending to William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.”

At the time, I didn’t recognize we were being told to constitute fanfiction, but that’s however the aforesaid mean that begot Fifty Shades of Grey ended up becoming a decades-long blameworthy pleasure.

Normally, I resented the other homework cram schoolhouse piled onto my plate. But for immoderate reason, that Romeo and Juliet assignment sparked thing successful my academically fried brain. Cram schools revolve astir brute forcing mathematics and vocabulary drills until you tin origin quadratic polynomials successful your sleep. None of the 20-page homework packets ever asked america to ponder “what if...”.

What if Juliet decided Romeo’s corpse was a motion she should tally distant from her abusive household and get herself to the nunnery Ophelia shunned? I stayed up precocious Sunday nighttime writing, editing, rewriting, and reediting my one-page masterpiece. It got a B+, which successful my family, was the equivalent of a treble F-. I was grounded, but thing heavy and primal successful my psyche had changed.

It’s cringe to admit, but I spent astir of that summertime obsessed with Gundam Wing. I was raised connected a steadfast fare of Cartoon Network’s Toonami, and I person nary defence different than being a anemic preteen. In protestation of my grueling homework load, I snuck into my surviving country aft my parents fell dormant and prayed that the crackle of a 56K modem wouldn’t aftermath them up. Google was starting to popular off, and it led maine consecutive to the horny satellite of Gundam Wing fanfiction. It was the archetypal clip I utilized the net for thing different than homework oregon AOL games.

Ninety-nine percent of it gave maine a bosom attack. I hid my tomato-red look down my fingers portion browsing done fan-curated libraries. Yet I was arsenic thrilled arsenic I was scandalized. Here were thousands of radical reaching done the machine to inquire “what if?” Granted, astir of the questions were, “What if protagonists 1 and 2 boned successful the astir deranged mode possible?” But they had the audacity to inquire specified a brazen question and constitute astir it successful excruciating detail. Publicly.

As an anxious preteen, that assurance was alluring. I wanted the state to inquire unhinged “what if” questions and research them. I stayed up precocious into the nighttime connected LiveJournal, lurking arsenic smarter radical than I created communities astir fandoms they loved, wondering however I could pat into that. I clicked nexus aft nexus until I ended up astatine Fanfiction.net. Suddenly, I gained entree to a escaped room afloat of thousands of stories that offered a glimpse into a satellite beyond the 1 my parents planned for me. It was the precise archetypal clip I understood what made the net and the subcultures it spawned truthful exciting.

Before I knew it, I started asking much of my ain “what if” questions each clip I finished a movie, TV show, oregon novel. Eventually, I started giving myself support to scribble immoderate answers down.

My English teachers disapproved. This was an unprestigious mode to explicit creativity. True genius, they said, came from archetypal work, and it was a discarded of endowment to ponder legally dubious what-ifs. (Ironically, this is however I learned astir the just usage doctrine.)

I wanted to spit backmost that I was bushed of only speechmaking the stiff prose of dormant men. I wanted to outcry that determination was an service of deranged authors online penning immoderate of the astir transgressive stories I’d ever laid eyes on. Sure, you tin archer immoderate of them are written by folks with a tenuous grasp of grammar (see: My Immortal, a Harry Potter fanfic that is wide regarded arsenic the worst connected the net and has its ain wiki). But I couldn’t find thing similar it connected the shelves of my section bookstores. I wanted to reason that, successful 2001, this was 1 of the fewer online spaces that introduced maine to the thought that queer radical could person a happily ever after. But I didn’t person the vocabulary to accidental immoderate of that yet, truthful I kept my rima firmly shut.

Out of spite, I kept speechmaking my uncouth fics connected apical of my much “legitimate” reading.

Reading The Mummy fanfics led maine connected an yet fruitless yearlong effort to work and constitute hieroglyphics. I learned much astir the Civil War by speechmaking a 130,000-word alternate beingness fic written by a past grad pupil than I ever did from AP US History. The footnotes successful that communicative rivaled the ones successful Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire. I decidedly learned astir classism successful French slang aft a two-year stint lurking successful the Les Misérables fanfic community. (Did you cognize writer Victor Hugo had a 100-page digression successful the novel astir French slang?)

Fanfiction isn’t specified a taboo pastime anymore. It’s wild, but since the aboriginal days of Fanfiction.net and LiveJournal, it’s crept into the mainstream. Fifty Shades of Grey is simply a Twilight fanfic that besides got turned into a movie. Rainbow Rowell wrote Fangirl, an acclaimed caller astir a assemblage pupil who writes a megapopular fanfic astir a Harry Potter-esque series. That was past spun disconnected into Carry On and Wayward Son, an incredibly meta sequel bid wherever you get to work the communicative the Fangirl protagonist writes. There is an full Wattpad-to-movie pipeline, wherever a One Direction fanfiction with a cardinal readers connected Wattpad got turned into Netflix movies. The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, a romance caller that precocious went viral connected TikTok and got a movie deal, started retired arsenic a Star Wars fanfic. There are several much examples.

The genre is inactive met with plentifulness of derision, but it’s besides openly celebrated successful a mode that felt intolerable erstwhile I was 12. I don’t work arsenic overmuch of it arsenic I did erstwhile I was a teen. Fandom has gotten a small excessively retired determination for me, and big beingness leaves little clip for blameworthy pleasures. But aged habits dice hard. I inactive person alerts acceptable up for my favourite fics, and Archive of Our Own is the archetypal tract I unfastened if I hatred the ending of a story. I whitethorn person grown up a bit, but acknowledgment to this delightfully weird net subculture, I don’t inquire myself “what if I had the assurance to write?” anymore.