It started with a DM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not a confession. Not a dramatic reveal. Just a quiet message from someone who recognised her username and knew what she wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the time, she was totally anonymous. Like most fanfiction writers, she existed under a handle, \u2018Honey\u2019, posting chapters late at night, refreshing AO3 stats, sharing drafts in group chats. Her work lived online, carefully separated from her offline life, something intimate, creative and deliberately contained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when that message arrived, it landed softly and heavily at once. Somebody found her. Somebody knew her secret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What she didn\u2019t know then was that this DM would eventually lead to the person she now lives with, to a flat filled with albums, photocards, posters, Disney mugs, and fandom memorabilia. A home they built around shared interests and shared Google Docs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Honey didn\u2019t grow up imagining herself as a fandom person. But once she finds something she loves, she commits fully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always been very intense about the things that I like,\u201d she says. \u201cIf I have an interest, everyone around me knows about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her love for writing started early in school. \u201cI was writing fanfiction in my classes. We could buy 20p notebooks and I filled out about 10 of them. I would just write down anything that came to my head and I had a big massive stack of these notebooks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
School, though, was rarely kind. \u201cI did have a group of friends that shared my interests. Specifically in secondary school, we were also bullied heavily. Nobody knew I wrote fanfiction, but they bullied us because we liked BTS. They egged my household because I liked BTS, which is a crazy thing to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even then, the notebooks offered a private world. \u201cStrangely I never got bullied for those, mainly because I hid them all the time,\u201d she says. Writing was a refuge from the constant fear of exposure and ridicule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Honey has spent long enough in fandom to know how quickly things can turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the moments that still sticks with her started on X when a niche crossover ship she\u2019d been building quietly for years suddenly went mainstream. At the time, her entire account revolved around V from BTS and Rapunzel. A pairing she\u2019d developed through fics and gifs crafted in her bedroom. Then, almost overnight, everyone wanted in on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll of a sudden, everyone wanted their favourite K-pop idol to be Rapunzel,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I\u2019d been doing this for years!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What followed was a familiar fandom spiral: edits circulating without credit, arguments over ownership, and people demanding recognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI wrote a fic, and that became a whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Twitter cycled through blondes. Rapunzel became Regina George, then Barbie and fans fought over who got to project which archetype onto their favourite that week. At one point, a K-pop news account ran an article using a gif she\u2019d made, crediting someone else entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI came up with that!\u201d she says. \u201cTo this day, it still grinds my gears.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The attention tipped into something more exhausting. Her account was suddenly visible in ways she hadn\u2019t asked for, and backlash followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was getting cancelled over and over and over,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was so stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since then, she\u2019s become careful about how she exists online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m just too paranoid about getting cancelled,\u201d she admits. \u201cSo I always try to be as uncontroversial as possible, even in my little spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not that fandom stopped meaning something to her, but moments like this reshaped how safe it feels to be seen inside it. A reminder that the same platforms that make connection possible can just as easily flatten creativity into content, and turn personal projects into public property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Honey\u2019s wariness sits alongside a deep attachment to fandom, not just as entertainment, but as infrastructure. It\u2019s what gave her community when she didn\u2019t have anyone offline to share her interests with. And it\u2019s what eventually helped her build a relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have anyone in person that I could talk to about it,\u201d she says. \u201cEven my close friends, it’s not something they\u2019re into. Whereas with my girlfriend\u2026she was the first person I could actually talk to about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That mattered more than she expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fanfiction became their common language. Something they could return to when conversation stalled, when distance made things awkward and when they were still learning how to exist in each other\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen we didn\u2019t know each other that well, it was something to talk about,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then obviously we got closer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She\u2019s clear that fandom didn\u2019t just sit alongside their relationship, it actively shaped it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think it kind of bridged the gap,\u201d she says. \u201cI always thought I couldn\u2019t be with someone who didn\u2019t share my interests, because I\u2019m so annoying about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She laughs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think it definitely played a big part.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This connection mattered especially when she spent a year studying abroad in South Korea. She and her girlfriend-who goes by the alias June- weren\u2019t officially together yet, but fanfiction became a tether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They read each other\u2019s work and stayed connected through stories when time zones and distance made everything else harder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fanfiction bridged the gap. It gave them something to hold when they didn\u2019t yet have each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
K-pop was an impactful discovery for Honey. It didn\u2019t just give her music. It opened the door to fanfiction communities centred around TXT ( for the non-K-poppies reading this, that\u2019s big time boy group: Tomorrow x Together). Honey gravitated toward shipping, toward storytelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her entry point into TXT fanfiction came through another writer she met online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From there, she began writing herself. Mostly romantic alternate universes. Particularly, fairy tale AUs. Stories that borrow faces from real idols but build entirely new worlds around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI have my two niches,\u201d she says. \u201cI like writing canon fics and I like writing fairy tale fics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She avoids strict canon. Her stories are deliberately removed from reality more like an original story wearing familiar skin. One of her ongoing projects sits near 100,000 words, and it\u2019s nowhere near finished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSometimes I\u2019m not sure if the fics I write could be published,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel like fanfiction\u2026 It’s too long.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their first meeting was in person at a photocard trading event where they connected through their love for TXT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYeah, it was TXT and the same ship,\u201d Honey says. They talked about photocards and fandom drama but didn\u2019t feel brave enough to delve any deeper in person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI feel like that was kind of an icebreaker as well because it was something we had in common\u2026 but we didn\u2019t get into that until after we messaged. Because I was too scared to say it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
June found Honey\u2019s private account and figured out who she was through the clues in her bio. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She took a risk and sent a private message \u201cI know you in real life\u201d. That message set everything into motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, they live together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their house is a shrine to fandom life. Shelves of albums, stacks of merch, decorations shaped by a mutual obsession. It isn\u2019t ironic. It isn\u2019t temporary. It\u2019s intentional. Together, they have built a safe space that looks exactly like their combined inner worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They didn\u2019t grow out of fandom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They grew into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And into each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes they write together. Sometimes they sit side by side on the sofa, swapping fic links and playlists, opening each other\u2019s drafts, leaving comments in the margins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is what intimacy looks like in fandom: shared screens, open documents and mutual brain worms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Honey still writes. Still refreshes stats. Still lives partly under a pseudonym. She also takes commissions, turning prompts into tens of thousands of words. It\u2019s labour, but it\u2019s also love. It\u2019s proof that these stories matter enough for strangers to pay for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She writes too much. She overdelivers. She spirals, then laughs about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And through it all, fandom remains the connective tissue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fanfiction spaces are overwhelmingly queer, not always explicitly, but culturally. They\u2019re built around emotional literacy, shared longing, and collective imagination. They allow people to explore desire safely, collaboratively, and without explanation. For Honey, that meant learning how to talk about feelings through characters first, how to practise vulnerability on the page before attempting it in real life. Stories became rehearsal rooms. Comment sections became community halls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s easy for some to dismiss this as niche or unserious. But for many, fandom is where they learn how to care for one another online, how to navigate conflict, how to be seen. It\u2019s messy and imperfect, but it\u2019s also generous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because fandom doesn\u2019t just teach you how to write romance, it teaches you how to recognise it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Looking back now, that first DM reads less like an interruption and more like an invitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What started as anonymous usernames and shared ships turned into cohabitation, creative partnership, and a house full of reminders of how they met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That DM from June didn\u2019t expose her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It found her.<\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column]\n\t\t\t[\/et_pb_row]\n\t\t[\/et_pb_section]","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fanfiction isn\u2019t just for reading. For one writer, it became the bridge between two lives, proving that sometimes the best plot twist happens off the page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273,"featured_media":943,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"\n
It started with a DM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not a confession. Not a dramatic reveal. Just a quiet message from someone who recognised her username and knew what she wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the time, she was totally anonymous. Like most fanfiction writers, she existed under a handle, \u2018Honey\u2019, posting chapters late at night, refreshing AO3 stats, sharing drafts in group chats. Her work lived online, carefully separated from her offline life, something intimate, creative and deliberately contained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when that message arrived, it landed softly and heavily at once. Somebody found her. Somebody knew her secret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What she didn\u2019t know then was that this DM would eventually lead to the person she now lives with, to a flat filled with albums, photocards, posters, Disney mugs, and fandom memorabilia. A home they built around shared interests and shared Google Docs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Honey didn\u2019t grow up imagining herself as a fandom person. But once she finds something she loves, she commits fully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always been very intense about the things that I like,\u201d she says. \u201cIf I have an interest, everyone around me knows about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her love for writing started early in school. \u201cI was writing fanfiction in my classes. We could buy 20p notebooks and I filled out about 10 of them. I would just write down anything that came to my head and I had a big massive stack of these notebooks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
School, though, was rarely kind. \u201cI did have a group of friends that shared my interests. Specifically in secondary school, we were also bullied heavily. Nobody knew I wrote fanfiction, but they bullied us because we liked BTS. They egged my household because I liked BTS, which is a crazy thing to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even then, the notebooks offered a private world. \u201cStrangely I never got bullied for those, mainly because I hid them all the time,\u201d she says. Writing was a refuge from the constant fear of exposure and ridicule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Honey has spent long enough in fandom to know how quickly things can turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the moments that still sticks with her started on X when a niche crossover ship she\u2019d been building quietly for years suddenly went mainstream. At the time, her entire account revolved around V from BTS and Rapunzel. A pairing she\u2019d developed through fics and gifs crafted in her bedroom. Then, almost overnight, everyone wanted in on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll of a sudden, everyone wanted their favourite K-pop idol to be Rapunzel,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I\u2019d been doing this for years!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What followed was a familiar fandom spiral: edits circulating without credit, arguments over ownership, and people demanding recognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI wrote a fic, and that became a whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Twitter cycled through blondes. Rapunzel became Regina George, then Barbie and fans fought over who got to project which archetype onto their favourite that week. At one point, a K-pop news account ran an article using a gif she\u2019d made, crediting someone else entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI came up with that!\u201d she says. \u201cTo this day, it still grinds my gears.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The attention tipped into something more exhausting. Her account was suddenly visible in ways she hadn\u2019t asked for, and backlash followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was getting cancelled over and over and over,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was so stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since then, she\u2019s become careful about how she exists online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m just too paranoid about getting cancelled,\u201d she admits. \u201cSo I always try to be as uncontroversial as possible, even in my little spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not that fandom stopped meaning something to her, but moments like this reshaped how safe it feels to be seen inside it. A reminder that the same platforms that make connection possible can just as easily flatten creativity into content, and turn personal projects into public property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Honey\u2019s wariness sits alongside a deep attachment to fandom, not just as entertainment, but as infrastructure. It\u2019s what gave her community when she didn\u2019t have anyone offline to share her interests with. And it\u2019s what eventually helped her build a relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have anyone in person that I could talk to about it,\u201d she says. \u201cEven my close friends, it's not something they\u2019re into. Whereas with my girlfriend\u2026she was the first person I could actually talk to about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That mattered more than she expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fanfiction became their common language. Something they could return to when conversation stalled, when distance made things awkward and when they were still learning how to exist in each other\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen we didn\u2019t know each other that well, it was something to talk about,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then obviously we got closer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She\u2019s clear that fandom didn\u2019t just sit alongside their relationship, it actively shaped it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think it kind of bridged the gap,\u201d she says. \u201cI always thought I couldn\u2019t be with someone who didn\u2019t share my interests, because I\u2019m so annoying about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She laughs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think it definitely played a big part.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This connection mattered especially when she spent a year studying abroad in South Korea. She and her girlfriend-who goes by the alias June- weren\u2019t officially together yet, but fanfiction became a tether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They read each other\u2019s work and stayed connected through stories when time zones and distance made everything else harder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fanfiction bridged the gap. It gave them something to hold when they didn\u2019t yet have each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
K-pop was an impactful discovery for Honey. It didn\u2019t just give her music. It opened the door to fanfiction communities centred around TXT ( for the non-K-poppies reading this, that\u2019s big time boy group: Tomorrow x Together). Honey gravitated toward shipping, toward storytelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her entry point into TXT fanfiction came through another writer she met online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From there, she began writing herself. Mostly romantic alternate universes. Particularly, fairy tale AUs. Stories that borrow faces from real idols but build entirely new worlds around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI have my two niches,\u201d she says. \u201cI like writing canon fics and I like writing fairy tale fics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She avoids strict canon. Her stories are deliberately removed from reality more like an original story wearing familiar skin. One of her ongoing projects sits near 100,000 words, and it\u2019s nowhere near finished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSometimes I\u2019m not sure if the fics I write could be published,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel like fanfiction\u2026 It's too long.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their first meeting was in person at a photocard trading event where they connected through their love for TXT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYeah, it was TXT and the same ship,\u201d Honey says. They talked about photocards and fandom drama but didn\u2019t feel brave enough to delve any deeper in person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI feel like that was kind of an icebreaker as well because it was something we had in common\u2026 but we didn\u2019t get into that until after we messaged. Because I was too scared to say it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
June found Honey\u2019s private account and figured out who she was through the clues in her bio. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She took a risk and sent a private message \u201cI know you in real life\u201d. That message set everything into motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, they live together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their house is a shrine to fandom life. Shelves of albums, stacks of merch, decorations shaped by a mutual obsession. It isn\u2019t ironic. It isn\u2019t temporary. It\u2019s intentional. Together, they have built a safe space that looks exactly like their combined inner worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They didn\u2019t grow out of fandom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They grew into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And into each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes they write together. Sometimes they sit side by side on the sofa, swapping fic links and playlists, opening each other\u2019s drafts, leaving comments in the margins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is what intimacy looks like in fandom: shared screens, open documents and mutual brain worms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Honey still writes. Still refreshes stats. Still lives partly under a pseudonym. She also takes commissions, turning prompts into tens of thousands of words. It\u2019s labour, but it\u2019s also love. It\u2019s proof that these stories matter enough for strangers to pay for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She writes too much. She overdelivers. She spirals, then laughs about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And through it all, fandom remains the connective tissue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fanfiction spaces are overwhelmingly queer, not always explicitly, but culturally. They\u2019re built around emotional literacy, shared longing, and collective imagination. They allow people to explore desire safely, collaboratively, and without explanation. For Honey, that meant learning how to talk about feelings through characters first, how to practise vulnerability on the page before attempting it in real life. Stories became rehearsal rooms. Comment sections became community halls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s easy for some to dismiss this as niche or unserious. But for many, fandom is where they learn how to care for one another online, how to navigate conflict, how to be seen. It\u2019s messy and imperfect, but it\u2019s also generous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because fandom doesn\u2019t just teach you how to write romance, it teaches you how to recognise it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Looking back now, that first DM reads less like an interruption and more like an invitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What started as anonymous usernames and shared ships turned into cohabitation, creative partnership, and a house full of reminders of how they met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That DM from June didn\u2019t expose her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It found her.<\/p>\n","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,10],"tags":[39,23,38,40,50],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kudos-posts","category-kudos-top-story-posts","tag-bts","tag-fanfic","tag-kpopfanfic","tag-romance","tag-tomorrowbytogether"],"yoast_head":"\n