The year is 2014. I throw my wavy brown hair up into a messy bun and log onto Tumblr. I scroll past GIFs of Lana Del Rey and sepia-toned images of cigarettes until I find exactly what it is I’m looking for: smutty fan fiction. While this is a small glimpse into my teenage girlhood, there have been generations of girls – both before and after me – who have partaken in the activity.
The timeline of fan fiction in human history is long and illustrious – it can even be argued that Shakespeare’s plays could be classified as such! But it was during the 19th Century that the practice really began to take off; most notably with fans of the original Sherlock Holmes series who took it upon themselves to write their own stories, especially after (spoiler!) John Watson’s death in 1893.
Modern fan fiction authors still write about Sherlock – that hasn’t changed – but the internet has allowed folks to upload their own stories easily through sites like Archive of Own (AO3) or Wattpad, with the majority of users unsurprisingly being young girls and women.
On Instagram, I asked folks to discuss their own experiences with fan fiction and teenage girlhood. “I’ve always felt like a horny little creep deep down, so the fan fic community was a safe space,” said one respondent. “It remains to this day the best written smut and romance I’ve ever read.”
When I asked what people primarily read, a lot of familiar names popped up: the aforementioned BBC Sherlock series, Harry Potter, Supernatural, The Hunger Games and Doctor Who. There were also a considerable number of examples of reading stories about real people, such as those about members of bands like One Direction, Twenty One Pilots, and Muse.
“My friend told me to download Wattpad so we could read One Direction fan fics together,” one friend tells me. “It was so fun immersing myself in these wild stories that were fun, silly, and made you feel closer to the stars I idolised so much.”
I sat down with Sascha Samlal, a PhD Candidate in Cultural Studies at The University of Melbourne, to discuss why fan fiction plays such a key role in teenage girlhood. “Shame has always been a part of fan fiction, because it was seen as cringe and as ‘something that girls do’,” she tells me over a glass of beer. “A lot of the time, these stories are written by teenagers trying to figure out questions about sex and sexuality, but away from the prying eyes of adults or the sex education they’d otherwise get at school.”
Sascha’s words ring true, as the majority of people who reached out to me spoke about using fan fiction as a vehicle to explore their own sexualities.
“Having that online community helped me know it was okay to have crushes or sexual feelings,” one person tells me. “I don’t think I realised it at the time, but it was a way for me to delve into what kind of characteristics I was attracted to, and why.”
Of course, there are drawbacks when it comes to teenagers using fan fiction as a tool to learn about sex. “Minors shouldn’t really be reading and especially shouldn’t be writing smut,” one respondent argued. “…Kids are always going to be curious about sex, so at least this is a creative and safe platform to explore that curiosity.” Some fanfic authors also delve into darker themes, including non-consensual elements in their stories, which can be incredibly harmful for a young person’s understanding of sexual dynamics.
“I do not think all fan fiction is good, or that it makes acceptable sex education,” Sascha explains. “But I do think it can play a really important role in learning to understand your own romantic desires, and I don’t think a lot of people learn about romance through stuff like porn.
“Fan fiction helped me learn what I actually wanted from a relationship, and even gave me the vernacular to actually talk about sex.”
Sascha also addresses the elephant in the room: fan fiction about real people raises serious ethical dilemmas. One answerer specifically mentioned how Larry Stylinson fans – the fan-pairing of Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles – negatively affected the real parties involved, with even Tomlinson himself stating that the ship “irritated” him but that he understood it was “the nature of the job”.
“It would be quite unsettling for the real people that fanfics are based on,” one person tells me. “[That] must’ve made the celebs they’re based on feel so uncomfortable.”
Sascha explains to me her own thoughts with real-life fan fiction: “I understand that if you or I were to come across a completely false story about having sex with someone we didn’t know, that would be deeply traumatising.
“But I think there has to be some recognition that these are public figures and they do promote their image in a certain way, and that image can be reused and remixed by fans.”
There’s no denying that fan fiction possesses both pros and cons when it comes to its part in the teen girl experience, but it appears that even mainstream markets are chomping at the bit to get in on the action. Infamously, the popular book series-turned-film franchise Fifty Shades of Grey was originally a Twilight fan fic, and the recently published Alchemised novel has its roots in the popular Harry Potter pairing of Draco and Hermione. Both have gone on to sell thousands (or in the case of Grey, millions) of copies, each finding its way onto the coveted New York Times’ bestseller list.
But, Sascha explains, the public reaction to such adaptations is not always positive. She specifically brings up After – the Anna Todd novel and subsequent film series based on Harry Styles – as an example.
“The wider public looked at it as a freak show, and within the fandom everyone was angry. People even started this rumour that Anna Todd was blacklisted from [Harry’s] concerts.
“But there’s more paranoia when it comes to queer fan fiction. Speculation about sexuality is derided as something that’s invasive and unethical, even though it’s an important queer practice within queer circles.”
As for the future of fan fiction, Sascha says that the time-honoured practice still has mighty strong legs to stand on, even today in this Tumblr-less world.
“I think that there are so many futures for fan fiction, ones that we are seeing now across different digital platforms,” Sascha tells me. “The future of fan fiction is, in many ways, its past.
“Fans have a unique ability to adapt to new technologies in order to continue their productive communities, and that is amazing…What I hope for fan fiction, which might be paradoxical, is that it stays small and revolutionary, operating within the boundaries of its own context in small, private pockets of the internet.
“This is where fan fiction thrives – within its own community, for its own community.”