\u201cQueering characters is no less, and no more, political than anything else a queer person does,\u201d says Aleksandr, a 21-year-old agender fanfiction reader from Novosibirsk, Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo yes. It is<\/em> political.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Decades of underserving queer communities in literature and wider entertainment industries means \u2018queering\u2019 in fanfiction has grown to be a method of reclamation that imagines possibilities mainstream media will not touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fanfiction readers and writers do not lack originality, but it is the world that lacks the stories they need. This is why they remake the ones they\u2019re given: fanfiction becomes a queer reconstruction of stories that excluded them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cQueerness [in fanfiction] just feels natural, not constantly being pointed at with a neon sign or stereotyped,\u201d says @cerubiaid, an artist and writer from Tumblr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cQueer characters in fanfic tend not to get reduced down to things like the carnal lesbian, or the flamboyant gay male, they just happen<\/em> to be queer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s easier to relate to since, a lot of the time, these are made by other queer people, not almost exclusively straight cis writers, directors or producers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Queering\u2019 in this context refers to the re-imagining of characters through a lens that rejects traditional binary categories of gender and sexuality with which original characters may have been initially identified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This often means re-imagining characters who are (or are assumed to be), for instance, canonically straight, through an LGBTQ+ lens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA lot of [mainstream] media is \u2018queer coded\u2019, which is essentially when media hints at two characters being gay, but never explicitly say they are, partly to avoid controversy, or partly just an accident,\u201d says @demonratthing, a queer user from Tumblr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut fanfiction is fanfiction, which includes things that were not explicitly said in the source material. You may consider it \u2018queering\u2019 characters, but I’d say it\u2019s quite presumptive to assume everyone on screen, or in books, is straight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here should lie some growing philosophy on the vast hollow emptiness of mainstream media and the corporate-owned entertainment industries that bring to few original characters the cheap, bland, recycled queer tropes accepted under the heteronormative structures of traditional publishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the stark truth is that marketability in mainstream media defines what \u2018acceptable\u2019 queerness is in wider society, and its tropes naturalise straight relationships as the default, universal and unquestioned way for characters to behave and fall in love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe production of original fiction is, obviously, centred about the idea of a story that would sell since we live in a capitalistic society,\u201d comments @mochi-la, a Reddit user and writer on AO3. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHowever, there is no such thing as a barrier between the writer and queer fanfiction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSafety in fandom spaces is a privilege, is the thing,\u201d adds @WaxMakesApples, another Reddit user and writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere is no holy veil of purity that keeps us safe, just the human effort of all those involved; and the simple fact of the matter is that, as much as we like to blame capitalism for everything, there are more reasons to promote bigoted ideals than simple monetary gain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fact that queer fanfiction doesn\u2019t cater to a mainstream audience means that it can offer authors a complete lack of restrictions on what they write. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Stories do not start from zero, but use existing characters as a shared reference point in a plot that does not need to be marketable nor sellable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFanfiction doesn\u2019t have a marketing or capitalist dimension because otherwise it would be censored,\u201d says Yu, a 21-year-old fanfiction reader from Pontedera, Italy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFanfiction is something written for oneself and shared with others. That\u2019s the only thing that makes the writing truly sincere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI have absolutely written more \u2018risky\u2019 topics in fanfiction that I wouldn\u2019t have covered in original fiction because fanfiction is all about freedom of expression.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For most, fanfiction becomes a testing ground for gender and sexuality that does not need to be tragic and scandalised to be allowed to exist, making space for safer exploration and desire without shame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While some of these fan stories seem to exist as a consequence of intense political climates that cause authors to write about, defend, or react to social divisions in relation to queerness, some disagree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI get a little tired of this argument about fanfiction being so much queerer and freer than original fiction,\u201d says @NobodyWatchesAOLBlst, a Reddit user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are a million queer indie authors out there, and acting like your only choices are fanfiction or Corporate Het Romantasy of the Week (or god forbid, Classic Written by a White Guy) does no one any favours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI love writing fanfiction because I get to just do the fun part (writing) and don’t have to worry about finding an agent, querying, working on a deadline, promoting on social media, or any of the boring backend business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So is queer fanfiction the result of its cultural environment? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Most agree on one thing: the most prominent feature of fanfiction and its platforms is how easily it forms a call-and-response, a question-and-answer, a read-and-reply. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet it seems the messages and personalities of characters in queer fanfiction (albeit, not always deep ones) stand out in a way that original fiction does not always replicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After all, it is harder to make something stand out from a blank base. But this is why queer fanfiction seems to be reached and appreciated more by people than original fiction might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe very root of fanfiction is gay,\u201d says @demonratthing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s mainly that, even though it is slowly changing, mainstream media does not typically have queer people or relationships in it, so we make our own representation to help us feel seen and understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEver since the earliest Kirk\/Spock fanfics, fanfiction has become a safe space for queer people to come online and build a community.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n For the oldest readers and writers, gay fanfiction (most commonly referred to as slashfics) was epitomised by a relationship between Kirk and Spock (or Spirk, <\/em>K\/S) at the beginning of the Star Trek era as the world went through the AIDS epidemic, which peaked in 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs a Trekkie, I think a lot of fanfiction came about because we were sold the concept of a progressive and accepting society in the shows, but the first big chunk [of the series] was made in an era where being anything other than straight wasn’t particularly well accepted in wider society,\u201d says @TrekBec82, a bi \u2018elder millennial\u2019 from AO3 who has been in the fandom since 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo it’s almost a tradition at this point for fans to queer up their favourite characters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a story of the old, where queerness in literature or television seems to be often reduced to a background character, a timid kiss, a sexless relationship, or a \u2018blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it\u2019 nod.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the reason why fanfiction isn\u2019t new, and neither is queering characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prolific Kirk\/Spock fanwriter Della Van Hise published erotic Star Trek slashfics from 1987 under many pseudonyms, most notably Alexis Fegan Black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She became an official Star Trek novelist with her tie-in novel, Killing Time, <\/em>which became infamous for forcing Gene Roddenberry to crack down the book\u2019s overtly gay sexual elements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, the first printing was recalled and subsequently edited before being republished. But the damage was already done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cStar Trek was the<\/em> show that spawned fandom as we know it, not just fanfic generally and slash specifically,\u201d says @TrekBec82.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo I\u2019d say the people, predominantly though not exclusively middle aged women, who wrote Kirk\/Spock from the 60s and passed it around from hand to hand, are the Founding Parents, mostly Mothers, of modern slash fanfic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Overall, readers and writers, especially queer ones, resort to fanfiction because mainstream characters already come with cultural power and the luxury of skipping worldbuilding and jumping straight into desire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis change in understanding of the audience is important, and the fact that it’s written with no profit motive enhances its importance,\u201d says @Eager_Question, a 30-year-old Venezuelan living in Canada. With a Master in Philosophy, they have been reading and writing fanfiction since they were 12.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt redefines what it means to succeed [in fanfiction]. Success is not \u2018getting someone to read it\u2019, but \u2018achieving the right emotional resonance that the reader came to you seeking\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Readers and writers of queer fanfiction are by no means the architects of the original stories they engage with, but are thinkers instead; beings of dream who hope new worlds into existence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of this, some argue fanfiction becomes a form of cultural insurgency: queering characters who already exist means creating an uncensored queer symbol in something that a whole culture recognises. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut fanfiction is not mainstream in a way that would allow it to be \u2018substitute\u2019 for better [queer] representation. Nor do I think of it as being a \u2018proof that representation alone isn\u2019t enough\u2019,\u201d says Aleksandr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe point is not that representation alone is enough, because fanfiction would have existed no matter how enough<\/em> it is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe write fanfics because we want to create, to tell our own stories, even if those are mpreg One Direction slashfics.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A starship captain and a Vulcan officer made eye contact in 1966. Sixty years later, the internet is still writing them a love story. Coincidence\u2014or a quiet revolution to decades of being written out of the story? Anabella Prodan reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":1132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[37,23,57,45,80,54],"class_list":["post-1123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lore-posts","tag-ao3","tag-fanfic","tag-fanfiction","tag-lgbtq","tag-queer","tag-shipping"],"yoast_head":"\n