Latest news with #AO3
Indian Express
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Beyond the canon: How fanfiction became an LGBTQ+ sanctuary
What if Harry Potter fell for Draco Malfoy? What if Sherlock chose Watson over solving cases? What if Elizabeth Bennet married Darcy, but her heart always belonged to Charlotte? These are not just wishful rewrites, they're part of a sprawling literary movement. Fanfiction, long dismissed as juvenile, has become one of the most emotionally honest and radical spaces on the internet. For many LGBTQ+ readers and writers, it is not a hobby. It is survival. Written by fans using characters and worlds from existing books, films or shows, fanfiction reimagines the official versions, often centring voices left out of it. For many LGBTQ+ readers and writers, it is a radical act. A way to exist on the page when the canon never lets them in. Even Daniel Radcliffe has confessed to reading Drarry fanfics- yes, Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy as star-crossed lovers. If that seems subversive, you are only scratching the surface. 'I don't think it's a good way to train to be a professional writer when you're borrowing everybody else's world and characters.' That is the take of George RR Martin, author of bestselling fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, on fanfictions. One of many traditional writers who've dismissed them as unoriginal or even unethical. But fanfiction writers see it differently. For them, it is a way of expression. For decades, fanfiction has been rejected as childish, as derivative, as not real writing. But ask anyone who's cried over a 100k words slow burn between two characters who never kissed on screen, it feels more real than most things. These stories live and breathe on platforms like Wattpad, AO3, Tumblr and vast online archives where millions of users rewrite the rules of storytelling. At its core, it is a radical act. It flips authorship on its head. Instead of revering the official version, it challenges it. These questions are not just playful hypotheticals, they're creative uprisings. It gives readers the pen. Especially those readers who are traditionally excluded from mainstream narratives- LGBTQ+ writers, women, people of colour, the neurodivergent. For them, fanfiction is a way of reclamation, a way to become the main character. While mainstream literature has now expanded its LGBTQ+ offerings- Call Me By Your Name, Red, White & Royal Blue, They Both Die at the End– fanfiction was already there, years ahead, giving readers what they weren't finding in bookstores. Even as mainstream publishing treaded cautiously, offering one LGBTQ+ story for every dozen straight romances, fanfiction platforms were overflowing with these narratives in every shape and form. It wasn't about market trends or visibility, it was about survival, expression and imagining love without societal norms. Though it has had a quieter presence, fanfiction is gaining steady ground among Indian youth particularly closeted and questioning teens and twenty somethings. A growing community of desi writers imagining worlds far more inclusive than the one they live in. Even though Section 377 was struck down in 2018, LGBTQ+ in India still hides in shadows. But online, through fanfictions and forums, it can exist in usernames, in tags, in alternate endings. Even as court deny the right to marry, these stories dare to imagine queer futures not bound by law, but by love. Fanfiction in India remains personal. Often anonymous. But it's where youth are telling their truth. Unfiltered and uncensored. In heteronormative Indian media that still clings to heterosexual couples, fanfiction lets LGBTQ+ voices write their own stories. Fanfiction is about being honest, in ways mainstream spaces still struggle to allow. It is emotional. Vulnerable. Utterly sincere. And for LGBTQ+ writers and readers, that sincerity can be radical. As author of Eleanor & Park, Rainbow Rowell said, 'The whole point of fanfiction is that you get to play inside somebody else's universe. Rewrite the rules. Or bend them. The story doesn't have to end. You can stay in this world, this world you love, as long as you want, as long as you keep thinking of new stories.' Fanfiction dares to imagine what love could look like. What identity might feel like if it weren't policed. It does not ask to be taken seriously. It just asks to be felt. To some, it might seem cheesy, full of tropes and happy endings. But that's the point. And for a generation of LGBTQ+ youth raised in a world that told them they were too much or not enough, fanfiction's more than literature. It's home. (The writer is an intern with
The Verge
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Even AO3 could not withstand the awesome power of horny.
Posted Jul 8, 2025 at 2:22 PM UTC Even AO3 could not withstand the awesome power of horny. Archive of our Own went down for a few days over the 4th of July weekend, upsetting the holiday fanfiction reading plans of the site's millions of users before service was restored. AO3 goes down occasionally for all sorts of issues, but the reason for this outage was special and hilarious. When Horniness Becomes A Storage Issue [
The Verge
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Fanfiction writers battle AI, one scrape at a time
In the online world of fanfiction writers, who pen stories inspired by their favorite movies, books, and games, and share them for free, there are unspoken codes of conduct. Among the most important: never charge money for your fanfic, and never steal other people's work. It makes sense then that fanfic writers were among the first creators to raise the alarm about their work being fed into learning language models powering generative AI without their knowledge or permission. But their efforts to stop the encroachment of AI into fan spaces is an uphill battle. The latest salvo came in early April, when user nyuuzyou scraped 12.6 million fanfics from the online repository Archive of Our Own (AO3) and uploaded the dataset to Hugging Face, a company that hosts open-source AI models and software. Nyuuzyou's upload was quickly discovered by the Reddit community r/AO3, where hundreds of users posted furious reactions. A Tumblr account, ao3scrapesearch, built a search engine that allowed authors to search their usernames and see if their work had been scraped by Nyuuzyou. 'This is something that takes time and effort and your heart and your soul, and you do this in a community.' Fanfic writers flooded the comment section of the dataset on Hugging Face, getting into arguments with AI defenders. Dckchili defended nyuuzyou's scrape, claiming that it didn't matter because Big Tech crawler bots have already scraped the archive numerous times. RaraeAves argued that 'the creeps' are depending on fanfic writers to not fight back when their labor and creativity are being exploited. When Nikki, a Star Wars fanfic writer who goes by infinitegalaxies online, typed her name in the search engine, she saw that more than 70 of her fics had been scraped. But one jumped out. It was a collective essay she'd co-authored with 11 other writers to raise awareness about the threat of AI to fandom and uploaded to AO3. The irony did not escape her. Nikki mostly writes fanfiction about Reylo, the romantic pairing (or 'ship') of the characters Rey and Kylo Ren from the Star Wars sequel trilogy. The Reylo fandom is close-knit and prolific, with more than 30,000 Reylo stories posted to AO3. About half are set in the canon Star Wars universe of light sabers and space adventures, but the other half take place in alternative universes and explore everything from coffee-shop romances and workplace dramas to medieval knights and fairy kingdoms. One particularly beloved fic in the fandom is set in 1994 and recasts Kylo Ren as Kyril, a mafia boss in newly post-Soviet Russia. The fandom has produced writers like Ali Hazelwood and Thea Guazon, who have made the leap from fanfic to become highly successful, published romance authors. For Nikki, the Reylo fandom offered a new sense of belonging. She found a home in the supportive community of writers and readers and relished the freedom to write whatever she wanted. 'Fandom is largely a gift economy. We're just here to have fun and do things out of the goodness of our heart. And to give things to each other and make work in community,' Nikki says. This sentiment is echoed by many others in the Reylo community, including Em, who writes under the pen name okapijones. Em fell in love with the characters of Rey and Kylo Ren because they represented the enemies-to-lovers light / dark archetypes that reminded her of Beauty and the Beast and Pride and Prejudice. But she hated the way their story ended in the Star Wars sequel trilogy and went looking for other fans who wanted a different ending. 'Fic changed my life. I have met some of the best friends that I have ever had through fic and through the fanfiction community,' Em says. 'There's no rules, there's no editors. It's a pure creative playground, and that is going to breed innovation. Some of the most creative stories I've ever read, some of the wildest storytelling, is fanfic. And that excites me as a creator, because you can just do whatever you want.' 'This is something that takes time and effort and your heart and your soul, and you do this in a community,' Nikki says. 'And then you're telling me you're just going to poop it out two seconds on a screen. And I was just like, who asked for this? This is gross.' In 2023 came Sudowrite's Story Engine, powered in part by OpenAI's ChatGPT. Nikki remembers watching a video about the new 'writing assistant' AI software that allows users to enter details about characters and plot points and generate an entire novel. She was so appalled that it made her cry. Nikki, who works for a software company, had already seen her workplace shift toward integrating AI. But she hadn't imagined her hobby would be impacted by it too. 'Trying to knock this stuff down, that's probably the best thing that one can be doing now.' Later that year, the prevalence of highly specific sexual terms related to the wolf-biology fanfiction trope of Omegaverse appeared in Sudowrite, revealing that ChatGPT had likely been trained on fanfic without the authors' knowledge. Since then, Nikki and many others have been advocating against AI in all its forms in fandom, including using AI to generate fanfic or fanart. 'It's theft at its core. There's no ethical use of something that's built on stolen labor,' Nikki says. Although she's against genAI in principle because of its reliance on data taken without consent, she also says it breaks with fandom norms of free exchange. 'I did it because I love those characters, because I wanted to play in that sandbox, because I wanted people who also love them to read it. It is a gift.' Em says. 'They stole it without my permission.' But over the last few years, fanfic writers say there have been numerous examples of genAI entrepreneurs trying to cash in on their work — such as people like Cliff Weitzman, the CEO of text-to-voice app Speechify, who was found to have scraped thousands of fics from AO3 and uploaded them to WordStream, a website linked to his app, without the authors' permission. (He swiftly removed that after fans pushed back on social media.) Then there was a text-to-speech app from Wishroll Inc, which marketed itself on TikTok as 'Audible for AO3.' The app was announced in May 2024 but was withdrawn later that month after fan pushback. 'It's like a whack-a-mole thing. Every time you turn around, there's, like, another grifter trying to steal your shit,' Nikki says. It may seem odd to hear such a strong sentiment from a writer who, like most fanfic creators, uses copyrighted intellectual property as a 'sandbox' to make up their own stories. But advocates for fanworks say they are 'transformative,' meaning a 'fanwork creator holds the rights to their own content, just the same as any professional author, artist, or other creator,' according to AO3. This is very different from what a LLM does when, for example, it generates a novel based on prompts. AI can't replicate the creative human process of 'transformation,' which involves inventing and integrating new ideas. LLMs can only reshuffle and regurgitate content that already exists. And, unlike the AI-generated books flooding Amazon, one of the principles of fanfiction is that writers do not make any profit from their work. That hasn't stopped AI infiltrating fandom in other controversial ways. Some readers, eager to get new updates of their favorite fics, have taken to uploading them into ChatGPT to generate new chapters, much to the consternation of some authors. Some have taken to locking their stories, requiring readers to have an AO3 account to access them or deleting them from the internet altogether. In the case of nyuuzou's scrape, fans coordinated online to file take-down notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the nonprofit that administers AO3, also filed a takedown. On April 9, Hugging Face disabled the dataset. OTW responded to user concerns about fanfics being scraped in a board meeting on April 26, saying, 'We have added a CloudFlare tool to prevent AI scraping and other bots. This helps a lot but is not perfect. However, more robust solutions would have a significant negative impact on some of our users, especially those using older devices.' Nyuuzou remained unrepentant, filing a counternotice and reuploading the dataset to sites hosted in Russia and China, which are far less responsive to DMCA complaints. Contacted by The Verge via a Telegram account linked on his Hugging Face profile, nyuuzou said he was an 18-year-old student and IT worker in Russia who is 'not interested in fanfiction' and uploaded the dataset for 'legitimate research purposes.' 'My goal was to support community research in areas like content moderation, anti-plagiarism tools, recommendation systems, and archival preservation,' nyuuzou wrote via Telegram. 'I think a lot of the disagreement comes from misunderstandings about why these datasets exist. This was never about creating chatbots or large language models for commercial use.' Founded in 2016 by French entrepreneurs, Hugging Face started out building chatbots for teenagers. Since then, the company has expanded to hosting open-source models with the stated aim of 'democratizing AI' by making machine-learning development accessible to the public. 'Our goal is to enable every company in the world to build their own AI,' Jeff Boudier, Hugging Face's head of product, told Amazon Web Services (AWS) in February. But Hugging Face is deeply connected to large companies. In addition to its ongoing collaboration with AWS, IBM invested $235 million in Hugging Face in 2023 and announced it was collaborating with the company on watsonx, IBM's generative AI platform. Nyuuzou said he was surprised by OTW's aggressive reaction to the dataset, writing, 'I had hoped for dialogue about how research datasets might align with preservation goals.' 'That's really disingenuous,' says Alex Hanna, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and author of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want. She's skeptical of the idea that any dataset uploaded to Hugging Face wouldn't ultimately be used to train LLMs. 'Why would you have a large tranche of unstructured data available on the web if not to train a language model?' Although individual scrapers like nyuuzou are small fry in the wider economy of genAI, which is dominated by billion-dollar companies like OpenAI, Hanna says it's still up to sites like AO3 to aggressively protect their users' work. As for fanfic writers themselves, she thinks Nikki's strategy of whack-a-mole is the way to go. 'Trying to knock this stuff down, that's probably the best thing that one can be doing now,' Hanna says. Nikki and Em, the fanfic writers, had a more heated response to nyuuzou's explanation for the scrape. 'Fuck you, dude,' Em says. 'We do free labor for the love of the game and are not profiting off of it — other than creating a community, gaining practice for our craft and creating content for characters and stories that we love. And that is being stolen to fuel things that have such larger implications.' Nikki says she's determined to keep pushing back against AI's encroachment into fandom spaces. 'I don't go looking for a fight,' she says. 'But when people come to us with a fight, I will fight.'
Buzz Feed
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
37 Perfect Gifts For Book Lovers In Your Life
A personalized floral book stamp so the next time your friend lends out a book to their incredibly forgetful sibling, they can quickly remind themselves to return the precious novel to its rightful owner. Plus, it just looks so freaking cool. 🤩 A TikTok-famous 3-in-1 convertible "reading chair" your buddy can curl into at the end of the day with their favorite book and cup of hot cocoa. It has an outlet so they can charge their Kindle before it dies in the middle of a great chapter, a side pocket they can use to stash all their fave snacks, hidden storage in the bottom to hold their coziest blanket, AND it pulls into a full sleeper bed so they can reach ultimate levels of relaxation! A wearable blanket so they can snuggle cozily as they read about the detective getting closer and closer to solving the murder that has plagued his entire career. Yeah, they're gonna need the extra comfort when that plot twist finally gets revealed. A clever bookshelf street sign perfect for firmly decorating their home into the mini library it was always meant to be. This has options like "Thriller Ave," "Romantasy Rd," and the super helpful "To Be Read" — now they can quickly find that fantasy novel they've been meaning to read all week. A pair of horizontal glasses for all those bookworms out there who want to be able to read while lying down snuggled on their couch. This is sure to be a reader's greatest discovery since AO3 was created. A book lover's journal perfect for tracking all of theur adventures and the characters they've met along the way. They can review up to 52 of their fave (or absolutely despised) books, load up on the details, and even complete reading challenges. The next time they're wracking your brain tryna figure out the name of that one book they read with a dragon, all they need to do is thumb through this journal! A book-tracker bookmark to help keep them accountable as they tackle that Goodreads Book Challenge once and for all. Or a handmade pressed flower bookmark so gosh darn cute that they might find themselves staring at these rather than the actual words on the page. A waterproof Kindle Paperwhite to carry an entire library worth of books so they're always entertained while soaking in the bath, going on a long plane ride, or just sun tanning on the beach. It features an anti-glare screen and an adjustable built-in light (with a brand new warm light option 👀), so they can read into the night or even while out under the bright sun! Plus, not only does it carry thousands of downloaded books, but the battery life lasts up to 10-freaking-weeks!!! AND a remote control page turner so they can continue the adventure even as they leannn back into their pillows — because let's be honest, it's pretty much impossible to remove your arms from the cocoon of blankets you've got them under when you're this cozy. It works for Kindles, iPads, and Android tablets. A set of floating bookshelves because their best adventures deserve to be the centerpiece of their room. A cool pin set so they can proclaim their favorite hobby loud and proud for all to see. This is a set of six, so they can stick them on their bags, hats, or their classic jean jacket. A book-shaped purse for anyone who wants to strut down the street while carrying their favorite title. From Wuthering Heights to Frankenstein to 1984 — their fave classic novel is just waiting for them to show it off. A pair of socks to keep their toes warm as they spend yet another night reading 'til dawn — because frankly, there's not enough time in the day to read all those novels they have on their TBR list. A set of starry evening eye masks they can apply to add a bit of ✨sparkle✨ as they sit back on their fluffy couch and continue their enemies-to-lovers novel. These masks use hyaluronic acid and collagen to brighten and reduce puffiness from their under eyes — which is perfect because they do not want their colleagues to know how little sleep they've been getting, thanks to their new fave book series. A scratch-off poster of 100 must-read books for those times they're in a bit of a reading slump and need something new to peruse. A box of Novel Teas so they can relax and sip their warm brew — and read a punny lil' quote as they do so! A cool ~interactive~ literature mug with a QR code they can scan to reveal quotes from the biggest literary giants like Charles Dickens, W.E.B. DuBois, Jane Austen, and more. There are 365 quotes total, so they can read a quote a day for a whole year! A cult-favorite luxury-scented candle that'll transport them from their home to the woodsy forest of their favorite fairytale or the flowery fields in Twilight. With a jasmine, oud, and sandalwood blend, it'll make them feel like a lounging royal as they light it up and lean back with their favorite book. A cult-favorite ~secret~ popcorn salt because the taste of movie theatre popcorn is elite, and they want that same buttery-salty-goodness without having to actually exit their home. Their nights at home curled up with a book just became a whole lot better. A personalized frosted glass tumbler you can add their name to because, frankly, it already depicts what they look like at 2 a.m. when the enemies finally turn to lovers. An acrylic book-shaped flower vase for anyone who wants to feel like a romance book heroine and display their bouquet elegantly — because pretty decor is a 🎶tale as old as time🎶. A personalized embroidered bookmark to help prevent them from the habit of dog-earring their pages — but like, in the cutest way possible. A Shakespearian insult chart because they need more creative ways to insult that awful read recommended by BookTok — and why not borrow some phrases from The Bard himself? Vintage-inspired bookshelf games like Monopoly, Scrabble, Candy Land, and more that hold all of the pieces to their favorite classic board games while being beautiful enough to blend seamlessly into their aesthetic bookshelf. An LED reading light because you know their partner is tired of being woken up by the bright lights of the bedside table lamp every time your friend wants to read "just one more chapter." An attachable Stanley Cup snack bowl perfect for their "girl dinner" nights lounging with the latest edition of the Fourth Wing series. Trying to balance both a large plate of snacks and their oversized Stanley is too much of a hassle for their relaxing night at home — this'll keep everything they need all in one place. A pair of handmade bookcase earrings because they want the whole world to identify them as a proper bookworm with a proper fashion sense, thank you very much. A gorgeous wicker egg chair they can curl into (almost like a cat) as they witness the fake dating finally turn to real love in their current read. 👀 A luxury bath pillow to elevate those relaxing reading-in-the-tub sessions and make the seating so freaking comfy they'll never want to leave. They can say buh-bye to the feeling of ice-cold tile sticking to their back, they'll be lounging on plush cushions as the heroine finally discovers what her paramour has been keeping from her. A totally bookish coaster, so they can protect their coffee table from water rings while also displaying their literary passions for all to see. A ~brilliant~ wooden book light for the perfect mood lighting and the perfect aesthetic in their little reading corner. A faux book display with a hollow interior so they can stash any unsightly wires, cords, routers, or outlets behind it. Now their space can look clean and organized with no one the wiser that just behind those aesthetic-looking books is a messy jumble of wires. A Night Court sweatshirt because ACOTAR is a way of living, not just a hobby, and its hold on their heart deserves to be reflected in their wardrobe. Or a "Morally Grey Book Club" hoodie so the world can understand their book taste (and their whole vibe, really) without them needing to utter a single word. Don't be shocked when they start getting hounded for book recs every time they leave the house. A 50-pack of book-themed stickers because their laptop case absolutely should be the perfect reflection of their ✨bookish personality✨ and ✨literary soul. ✨ A pair of vintage-inspired book-themed whiskey glasses so they can sip in literary style. They come in Alice in Wonderland, Hamlet, Pride & Prejudice, and The Tell-Tale Heart themes. To get them all, or not to get them all... that is the question. Now they're ready for their 🎶 "adventure in the great wide somewhere!" 🎶
Indian Express
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Desire, dissent, and the female gaze: Why women write so much fanfiction
When I was 11, I found the 'cool kids' in my bus discussing their favourite theories on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the way back from school. Desperate to join their conversation, I borrowed the first Harry Potter book from the library — unaware that it would change the course of my life. Over the next few years, I would read the series again and again and again. I would become what they call 'a fangirl', and I would wear the badge with pride. At the time, I was going through puberty in an all-girls school, and I knew I must pick a fictional man to fall in love with soon. I picked Ron Weasley (I was 'not like other girls', clearly). And I got to work, scouring the internet so I could learn everything about this Great Love Of My Life™. Inevitably, one day, I wound up on and read a fanfic where Ron and Hermione do more than kiss— gasp! (The kids would call this 'a canon event'.) Naturally, my brain exploded. I had discovered something rather magical. A sprawling, underground library full of stories where anything could happen. My favourite characters could slip off their narrative leashes and be free. They could fall in love with someone else, rewrite their endings or just have really graphic sex in the restricted section of the library, and no one would bat an eye. But the real kicker: not only could I read these stories… I could write them. I could take these characters, so beloved and so familiar, and use them as puppets — my puppets. (When it comes to teenage girls, give them the chance to play God and trust me, they will run with it.) At 22, I found myself studying 'Fandom Studies' as part of my college degree (yes, that's a real area of study — God bless English Lit). Reading what the scholars have to say on the subject compelled me to revisit my own childhood in an attempt to understand why fanfiction meant so much to me. Was it just because it ushered in my sexual awakening? Or did it also lay the foundation for me to become a writer? My boyfriend at the time had never read fanfiction and didn't get its appeal. This got me thinking — was there something specific about being a woman that made fanfiction so compelling to me? Turns out, the answer is a resounding yes. From the female lens Women drastically dominate fanfiction. More than 80% of people who read and write fanfiction on Archive of Our Own (AO3), the most popular fanfiction site, are women. In fact, more of its users identified as genderqueer (6%) than as male (4%). Why is that? For one, some scholars speculate that women are more inclined to write for free. Since fanfiction violates copyright by reimagining others' intellectual property, hosting platforms prevent writers from receiving any monetary compensation. Most AO3 authors are okay with that and take pride in being a part of the platform's anti-capitalist 'gift economy' based on exchange and collaboration. Men, however, are not likely to write for free, suggests American author Camille Bacon-Smith. Women, on the other hand, already engage in several acts of unpaid labour and can perhaps see the value of such writing. Historically, 'anonymous' has always been a woman. Even literary icons like Jane Austen, Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelly published their early novels anonymously or under the mere title of 'lady'. While things changed for the better over time, books written by women are still priced lower than those written by men, a 2018 study found. It also noted, 'the more female a genre, the cheaper the books.' In this context, one can fairly assume that the genre with the least monetary value (fanfiction) should come to be the most female-dominated of them all. A place to rewrite rules Women may also take to fanfiction because it's inherently transgressive. Popular media is often from the male perspective — written, directed or produced by men. The transformative nature of fanfiction provides a means to subvert dominant cultural narratives as well as patriarchal or heteronormative ideas within media. Captain America and Bucky can be #couplegoals, Hermione Granger can be black, and your favourite member of One Direction can be in a wheelchair. Despite being a straight cis-het woman myself, I have found myself reading lots of slash fanfiction (stories of romance/sex featuring two characters of the same gender, typically straight, typically male). This baffled me till I read what Mel Stanfill, one of the researchers behind the 2022 AO3 survey, told Refinery29: 'Slash allows women to explore sexuality without the baggage of identification and the gender norms they are subjected to in real life'. The act of reimagining familiar stories invites alteration of not just gender roles, but also those of race, power and reality itself. For women and other marginalised groups, the freedom to craft a story on their own terms, without commercial barriers and away from scrutiny and judgement, is a kind of escapism they would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Owning desire Another popular idea is that fanfiction is just 'porn' for women. To be fair, while not all fanfiction contains romance or erotica, a lot of it does. The same things have been said (usually by a man, accompanied by a scoff and a smirk) about the modern BookTok romance novel. However, the idea of some kind of 'porn for women' is not just brilliant, but also important. And it's been around for ages (think — Mills & Boon). In a world where female desire has been routinely either erased or presented as 'forbidden' (even in its most straight-cis-vanilla-hetero-'normal'-form), fanfiction is where these desires (however kinky) can go to breathe. This is perhaps why some of the most successful fanfictions on the internet are not just based on romance but on sex. Psychologist Leon F Seltzer has written how men are hard-wired to receive visual cues as sexual impulses, but most women are not. Women require stimulation in the mind to become aroused. 'If there's such a thing as porn for women, it's the romance novel,' he wrote in a 2012 article. Dr Helen Wyatt, a sex therapist, notes how, for women, getting into a state of arousal means first feeling safe. Mainstream porn, which centres heavily around the male gaze, can be jarring or even disturbing to watch. In contrast, the gradual lead-up to sex in most erotic fiction, combined with the personal investment readers have in characters, helps them feel safe and therefore uninhibited. In fanfiction, the world, the backstory and most importantly, the characters are already achingly familiar. And it is therefore one of the safest places to explore desire. Women read and write fanfiction for a variety of different reasons. Many, like me, found themselves entrenched in a fandom, hungry for more material. Many others have used it as a space for escapism, dissent, power, sexual release or a combination of all these things. It can be collaborative or it can be anonymous — you get to choose. It is vast and nebulous and uncensored. There's no one to watch, judge, or police you. But the magic of it boils down to that feeling I had when I was 13, reading my first bit of Romione (that's Ron + Hermione, for the uninitiated) smut — the feeling of entering a text, deconstructing it and making it my own, dabbling in a world of infinite narrative possibility. A world with no rules, except the ones you decide should exist.
