I Thank You For This, I Love Being A Fanfiction Writer And All My Fellow Fanfiction Writing Family

I thank you for this, I love being a fanfiction writer and all my fellow fanfiction writing family

Why are people ashamed of writing fanfic? I just saw someone who is writing a fanfic for NanoWriMo - who has dedicated themselves to writing 50k words of fanfic this month - say that fanfic was their ‘secret shame’ on a forum entirely made up of fanfic writers. 

And you know what? That’s not at all uncommon. I can’t even count the times I’ve seen fanfic disparaged as something for teenage girls or unworthy all together and I think I’ve finally worked out why. And the reason irks me just as much as the fact that this happens. 

Fanfic is, by and large, written by women. It’s a creative voice that fills a void left in Hollywood as well as in publishing houses. Only 9% of spec scripts (for movies) sold between 2010 and 2012 were written by women. In 2010, 84% of the reviewers for the New York Review of Books were men and 83% of the books they reviewed were also by men. Female writers make up only 29% of TV staff jobs, a drop of 1.5% from last season, with things looking even bleaker for minorities, who hold only 13.7 percent of TV staff writer jobs. All of these facts add up to one thing - these days, writing is utterly dominated by middle aged, white men. They floods our televisions, our bookshelves, and our movie screens and sometimes we fall in love with the characters but maybe we don’t see the story we wanted told. So we write fic. 

But do you know what I think? I think that shame comes from being bold enough to dare to have a voice. I think we’re viewing our own perspectives as somehow less, unworthy in comparison to the ‘norm’ of ‘real’ storytelling that we see validated by being put on television and movie screens and bookstore shelves. While we might, as a culture, tolerate such daring activity amongst teenage girls, we also view it as childish, something women are meant to outgrow, something shameful to hold onto as adults. But it isn’t just fanfic we’re shaming. It’s our voices, our validity, and that makes me sick. 

So be a fanfic writer. Be the best goddamned fanfic writer you can be. Use your voice and be proud of it because it’s yours. There is nothing ‘less’ about fanfic. And there never will be.