The first time I discovered the wonderful world of fanfiction, I was 11 years old. The age of Tumblr was gradually dying, and the era of Wattpad was changing lives around the globe for tween girls everywhere.
From the rise of the self-insert Y/N One Direction kidnapping stories, to that time during the pandemic in 2020 when everyone was “shifting” to meet Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter, fanfiction has become a rite of passage for many of us who were anxious teenagers looking to escape reality.
WHERE IT ALL STARTED
I remember the first time I discussed fanfiction, in the back of a science classroom in my first year of high school. I was a freshly turned tween girl with a greasy ponytail and the wrong prescription glasses when I discovered my all-time favourite ship, “Drarry.” With no clue what the website Wattpad even was, I was intrigued.
Having loved the universe of Harry Potter since I was a young girl, combined with my own everyday questioning of my sexuality, this was the perfect combination to kick off what became a now-crippling addiction.
THE LOCKDOWN ERA
I read a lot of fanfiction during my teenage years, especially during lockdown. I remember sitting through online classes reading 500,000-plus-word fanfictions, refusing to read anything else. To this day, I can still get through a whole fanfiction in one night, compared to weeks spent on a single chapter of a published novel.
There were many late nights, staying up until the small hours of the morning, immersing myself in different fandoms. I submerged myself in a variety of universes across many different eras of my teenage life, from my obsession with the Marauders era of Harry Potter, to a month-long Hamilton phase, to an anime phase after that. Fanfiction let me escape the woes and worries of everyday school life. Some of the best pieces I’ve ever read were lengthy fanfictions written in the early 2000s that will probably never be updated.
FROM SOMETHING I HID TO SOMETHING I LOVE
Reading fanfiction as a young teenage girl was always something I never admitted to doing, since it was labelled as antisocial and nerdy.
Now, as a woman in my early 20s who still stays up late hoping two fictional characters will just kiss already, it’s let me meet some genuinely interesting and fascinating people. It also gave me the chance to try my hand at creative writing as an aspiring novelist at a young age, though I’ll probably never publish what I wrote at 11 years old until the day I die.
Fanfiction has always been part of my daily routine, whether it’s a short oneshot or a drawn-out slow burn where the characters don’t even hold hands until chapter 20. I read them all. Across my entire 21 years of life so far, I’d guess I’ve read over 5,000 different fanfictions, though admittedly, that number is very exaggerated.
My latest obsession is the newish TV show Heated Rivalry, and its power couple, Shane and Ilya. I discovered it a few months ago after a friend begged me to watch it, and I fell completely for the two of them.
WHAT IT GAVE ME
Fanfiction gave me an insight into what different relationships could look like, as a teenage girl who didn’t have many romantic connections of her own. It was a space where I could indulge in my own romantic ideals.
I recently met someone 13 years older than me who still reads fanfiction to this day. The second I found out she had the same obsession with AO3, we became best friends almost instantly.
Fanfiction was a rite of passage for me, growing up in an online-obsessed society, and it’s introduced me to more fandoms and media than I could have ever found without it.
So the next time you finish a Netflix show and wish you could see what happens next, or just want two fictional characters to finally end up together, give fanfiction a try.