The weird, wonderful world of fanfiction
It’s me, I’m the maniac. (Photo: Bob’s Burgers)
My first foray into fanfiction was sometime in 2012, late at night, on a borrowed laptop that I really wasn’t supposed to be using for non-school related activities. Embarrassingly, it started with Y/N fics—self-inserts, if you will. I was a big One Direction fan and… Well, I’ll let you connect the dots yourself.
But my shameful (but brief!) Harry Styles x Reader phase led me down the Tumblr rabbit hole, and anyone who’s fallen down there will tell you it leads to places you never knew existed. It’s how I discovered that the Harry Potter fandom was alive and thriving, and that’s how I got into actual good, gripping fan-made fiction, hosted on the OG fanfiction.net (RIP).
Ff.net isn’t the first and only fanfiction website, but in the earlier days of internet fandom culture, it was the biggest. And it isn’t actually dead, but it may as well be. In 2012, there was a massive NC-17 purge on ff.net, as the site banned material that was deemed inappropriate for anyone aged 17 and younger. This included sexually explicit fics, fics with curse words in the titles, Real Person Fiction, and more.
The NC-17 witch hunt on ff.net led to the creation of Archive of Our Own, or AO3, a “fan-created, fan-run, nonprofit, noncommercial archive” that is run by fans, and thus works for the interest of fans.
Ten years later, AO3 is still standing, and is currently the biggest fanfiction website. A lot has changed since my first exposure to fandom, and the top fanfiction on the Archive in 2022 shows that.
Minecraft, Chinese BL, and more
Interestingly, the top two ships on the site involve Minecraft YouTuber Wilbur Soot, with over 18,000 new works entered under his tags this year alone. Also in the realm of gaming YouTubers, the tag Dream x GeorgeNotFound landed at top eight. A far cry from the days when actors and singers dominated RPF, more people are writing about Youtube personalities in 2022.
Wei Wu Xian x Lan Wang Ji, the main ship from the wildly popular Chinese BL drama and webcomic The Untamed (also called MDSZ, an abbreviation of its Chinese title) made it to the top three spot, and is also one of the only non-white ships in the top ten. It’s worth noting that while the web novel was explicitly romantic, the drama adaptation was heavily censored due to China’s ban of LGBT portrayals in films and TV, so it’s no surprise that fans took to writing their own content.
At top five, Blackbeard x Stede Bonnet from David Jenkins’ Our Flag Means Death features an indigenous character. Along with Bakugo x Izuku from anime series My Hero Academia at top six, these three were the only ships with POC characters in the top ten.
Coming in fourth, surprisingly, was the tag for Sirius Black x Remus Lupin– with 7,600 new works written featuring the ship. Some speculate that this may be due to the ship being side characters in most Harry Potter fics, although some say it may be due to the resurgence of Marauders enthusiasts in the HP fandom. Draco Malfoy x Harry Potter was also in the top ten, because of course it is.
Steve Harrington x Eddie Munson was in the top ten slot, with over 6,500 fics written about them despite Stranger Things 4 being released only a few months ago. Meanwhile, Castiel x Dean Winchester from Supernatural, landed in the top nine—despite the fact that its first season was released 17 years ago.
In with the old, in with the new
There are plenty of new faces in the top AO3 tags, but some of the fandom dinosaurs are hanging in there, too.
Two of the top written ships are from Harry Potter even though its first book was released 25 years ago. Similarly, Supernatural is not only in the top ten for 2022 but also in the top three most written ships on AO3 of all time, alongside Sherlock Holmes x John Watson from Sherlock and Derek Hale x Stiles Stilinski from Teen Wolf.
Most of the top written ships feature white characters, and all of them are M/M. Some criticize fandom culture as a whole for this, saying it shows that MLM relationships are fetishized. Although, some argue it might also be a reflection of how media is heavily dominated by white males.
It’s also worth noting that almost all the fanfics on AO3 are queer, and almost all fanfic writers are queer. And if you ask almost any fanfic writer, they’ll tell you one of the reasons they write is to see themselves represented in mainstream media. Fanfic provides a safe space for people to explore ideas and their own identities—and it’s just fun.
Amidst renewed threats of censorship and nuanced discussions on the morality of fanfic, communities continue to gather in celebration of the things that they’re passionate about—and they should be allowed to do so, as long as they do it responsibly. That is, after all, the philosophy AO3 was founded upon.
The platform encourages anyone in any fandom to write whatever they want, no matter how sexual, weird, and morally questionable, as long as they use the right tags and warnings—which is why I once accidentally stumbled into the Jesus x Buddha tag, but that story is for another time.
