Top image: Zachary Tang / RICE file photo
This story is part of RICE Media’s Storytellers initiative, a mentorship programme for budding content creators to learn about the art of creative non-fiction. This piece is a product of a partnership between RICE Media and Singapore Management University (SMU) for its Professional Writing module.
I hated Avengers: Endgame. More specifically, I hated how it ended.
What do you mean Tony Stark died? Yes, it was a noble sacrifice that saved billions of people, but I still hated it. I literally cried out of nowhere at the dinner table, thinking about it. Stupid movie. If only he was still alive. He should be watching Peter Parker graduate high school or eating pop tarts with the other Avengers, not lying in a pile of dirt.
Thankfully for me, countless fans on the internet thought the same. Fanfiction filled the arc reactor-shaped hole in our hearts. While Tony Stark may have died in the movie, his story continues through these stories. Now we can blissfully pretend the last few moments of Endgame never existed and everyone lived happily ever after.
I swear I am totally sane about this. Totally.
Of course, fanfiction can’t write itself. Passionate fans spend hours crafting these stories, sharing their love and making their presence known in fandom spaces. But in real life, these writers are hidden in plain sight. While people may admit they read fanfiction, as I do, it is much harder for people to admit that they write it.
This is the secret life of fanfiction writers among us.
A Different Kind of Mask (by aloneintherain)
The idea of double lives often leads to thoughts of spies or secret agents. But in reality, double lives aren’t that exciting.
Meet my good friend. She goes by Hoshi online but would never let me tell you her real name.
By day, she’s just your average university student. When she’s not busy writing notes about scientific formulae or getting her almost daily dose of bubble tea, she’s screaming at her friends on Discord over a heated game of Valorant.
By night, she logs into Google Docs and steps into her favourite character’s shoes. Her fingers fly across the keyboard as she narrates a tale of people she’s never met but understands all too well.
Hoshi is just one of countless fanfiction writers around the world who live this double life. Many writers in online spaces have day jobs which they keep separate from their writing lives. Of course, most younger writers are students like Hoshi, but I have seen writers with all kinds of careers beyond writing, from hair stylists to neuroscientists.
While they may be open about their daily lives in fan spaces, they are rarely open about their fan lives in daily life. Some writers who have levelled up from fanfiction writing to proper published writing refuse to expose their fandom identities, preferring to keep their amateur and professional writing careers separate.
Even people as close as family members may not know about this second life of theirs.
Parents these days are increasingly supportive of their children’s niche passions, but progress seems to be slow when it comes to fanfiction, often needing an extra push before giving their support. I asked Hoshi if her parents were aware that she wrote fanfiction, and she replied with an unsurprising no.
“My dad knows I write in general, but he doesn’t know I write fanfiction. My mom doesn’t even know I write.”
In a perfect world, fanfiction writers wouldn’t have to hide their passion from the light of day. Alas, the world we live in is flawed, and so is the general public’s perception of fanfiction. The concept of writing fanfiction isn’t inherently negative, but it has gained a bad rap among many people outside of fandom spaces.
The Internet Is Not Just For Porn (by cyerus)
When I first pitched the idea of writing about fanfiction for this piece, most people immediately thought of stories with any and every Harry Potter character kissing each other, a trope so widespread that even Bo Burnham mentions it (or, well, the NSFW version of it) in his song ‘Welcome To The Internet‘.
In particular, my professor brought up the infamous example of My Immortal, a Harry Potter fanfiction series published online about 20 years ago. This is one of those stories that’s so bad that you can’t tell if it’s intentionally bad or just plain bad. To give you an idea of how bad it is, here’s a few quotes from chapters 3 & 4, in all its grammatically wrong glory:
“AN: STOP FLAMMING DA STORY PREPZ OK! odderwize fangs 2 da goffik ppl 4 da good reveiws!” (For context, AN stands for Author’s Note.)
“He took of my top and I took of his clothes. I even took of my bra. Then he put his thingie into my you-know-what and we did it for the first time.”
And finally, as Dumbledore asked calmly, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS!”
Unfortunately, of all the good fanfiction out there, this is the one that stood the test of time and gained recognition beyond fandom spaces.
I get it. It can be hard to give fanfiction a second chance when most people’s first and only encounter with it seems to be a prepubescent girl’s amateur attempt at writing emo-tinged porn. But works like My Immortal aren’t the only reason people think so poorly of fanfiction.
Hoshi tells me that self-insert stories written by idol fangirls are also many people’s first thoughts of fanfiction. These stories often see Y/N (‘your name’, not ‘yes or no’) in various situations with their idols, though mostly romantic. Y/N could be high school sweethearts with V from BTS, or members of a biker gang with Luke from 5 Seconds Of Summer.
The fans who write these stories are often seen as delusional, coming up with scenarios they know realistically would never happen to them. They use fanfiction to build, or even encourage, the parasocial idol-fan relationship with their favourites.
Fanfiction is a lot more than just shitty porn or delusional self-inserts, but most people beyond fandom spaces don’t care about that. Once this idea of horrible stories has stuck to people’s heads, they don’t bother to look beyond the stereotype because a few bad examples are representative of all fanfiction to them.
These negative perceptions make it difficult for fanfiction writers to be open with what they do.
Rather than fighting against this general idea with arguments that fall on deaf ears, many writers choose the more peaceful option of keeping their fanfiction writer selves within the safer space of fandom. They clearly feel affected by these negative perspectives, but this doesn’t stop them from continuing their love for fanfiction.
In Another Life (by LittleLuxray)
“I like fanfiction because they offer an alternative view to canon,” Hoshi tells me.
‘Canon’ refers to the original storyline of the piece of media. While the canon is what the original creator intends for the story, their word is not law. Fanfiction writers take what is given to them in canon, be it the characters or the world-building, and expand on it in infinite directions.
One such direction fixes the original story’s perceived flaws. As Hoshi elaborates, “A part of [why I like fanfiction] stems from personal dissatisfaction with how the canon story is written out.”
Her first foray into writing fanfiction came in the form of popular webtoon series, Solo Leveling. The original story had too many unanswered plot holes that compelled her to pick up the pen and fix these problems herself.
“I get pissed enough at the original series and channel the anger and saltiness into writing inspiration.”
These fix-it stories were what got me through the ending of Endgame, but they’re not the only kind of fanfiction out there.
Some writers may appreciate the original story as it is, and wish to add ideas to the original lore. This often comes in the form of taking existing scenes and filling in the gaps between them. There could also be character studies that dive deeper into understanding the how and why of beloved characters’ behaviours.
Others like to imagine how different characters would act in a whole new environment. How would the Wizarding World of Harry Potter function in a cyberpunk future? What if the Avengers were superheroes in the cowboy era? Alternate universes let writers explore character dynamics that stem from new circumstances.
While different writers may have various reasons and ways to write fanfiction, it ultimately stems from their love for the original stories. And what is love if you don’t put effort into it?
These Things Take Time (by sonhoedesrazao)
As Hoshi tells me, people do not realise the amount of hard work that fanfiction writers put into writing it.
It can be so easy to say, “I could totally write like that”, when reading stories that others have written. Even I have caught myself thinking that way.
But not everybody can write good fanfiction. It takes skill. It takes perseverance. It’s not something you can easily do in a flash. And that’s something I learnt firsthand.
Eager to share her interest, Hoshi invited me to a session with her local writing circle.
It was a rather small circle with all kinds of writers. One writer in particular has written stories with over 100 thousand words. For reference, this is about as long as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Meanwhile, another writer regularly gets commissions to write NSFW fanfiction, living proof that Singaporeans can be sexy with their words.
Despite all of them writing different kinds of fanfiction, they have the urge to improve their writing in common. Which is why they regularly come together as a circle.
During the session, the writers discussed all kinds of tips and tricks to help them in their writing. From Discord bots to keep track of how many words they’ve written in a day to pointers on how to spice up scenarios, I realise just how seriously these writers take fanfiction. The level of effort they put into this is much more than I’ve put in for many of my classes.
We did a writing exercise to practise dialogue, and never have I felt more unconfident in my writing skills. Everyone else seemed to be writing so effortlessly, scenarios spawning in their head in mere seconds. Meanwhile, my brain was still on the loading screen, barely spewing words.
When it was time to share what we had written, I realised how childish my work sounded compared to the rest. Of course, you can’t compare someone who’s never written fiction since primary school compositions to those who have been honing their storytelling skills for years, but it really just goes to show how much effort these people put into something that many brush off as “just a hobby”.
The biggest thing I noticed is the pride these writers have in their works. They were more than happy to share their stories with the rest. Even when they had reservations about certain parts of their story, they listened intently to any feedback they got and worked on them the moment they could.
But no matter how excited they were to let their friends read their work, publishing stories for the public to read is a whole different ball game. Even when going by their hidden identity online, these writers subject themselves to the mortifying ordeal of being known.
An Exercise In ‘Worthless’ (by glassedplanets)
It takes an absurd amount of courage to post publicly on the Internet. I mean this sincerely as someone who doesn’t even post on my private social media accounts because I don’t want my friends to judge me.
When fanfiction writers publish their works online, they can never control how others will react. You never know when your works might become internet famous, and if it’s for all the right reasons.
We’ve seen what happened with My Immortal. Regardless of whether it was meant to bait people into hating it, it ended up becoming a total meme because of how bad it is.
But even something as poorly written as My Immortal still has a person behind it, taking the time and effort out of their lives to actually write it down and put it up on the Internet. Unfortunately, people tend to forget about the people behind the screens, focusing purely on the comedy of it all.
Even if it’s not that large-scale, hate comments can spawn out of nowhere, and they’re usually not even constructive. A month ago, I saw a fanfiction writer get called slurs and spammed with hate comments by an anonymous commenter just because they didn’t like how a character was written.
You would think this would discourage fanfiction writers from posting, but it doesn’t. Where there is a risk of hate, there is also a chance for love.
This love manifests in many forms. The writer’s own love for the original work. The affection their characters may show in their story. The positive readers’ comments that their works may receive.
Most importantly, love can manifest itself in the love that writers have for their own works. But this is the part that comes hardest.
Hoshi recounts her earliest days in writing. She chalks it up to the typical Singaporean upbringing where she was taught to be the best in whatever she did, but she hated not writing as well as other writers in her circle back then. It took her three years and a lecture from her fellow writer before she loved her “imperfect” works enough to publish them.
But even with enough self-love and confidence in their works to post them online, most writers still don’t have the same confidence to be open with their writing identities in real life. Something that can bring them joy is still seen as a potential point of shame or embarrassment, enough for them to keep their passion under wraps.
This reconciliation between their personal enjoyment and society’s views leads to their double life. When forced to keep these masks up, creating split identities in different spaces, which one of them is their true self?
Crossroads (by sedimentsofstarlight)
Fanfiction writers don’t have a single identity that defines them.
Let me clarify: all their identities are truly them.
Yes, fanfiction writers present themselves differently to different people. Yes, it seems like they have many completely different personas. But no, that doesn’t mean any of this is fake or not them.
“It’s not like I flip a switch,” Hoshi elaborates. There are boundaries between her personal life and her fandom life that she will never cross, like actively promoting that she writes fanfiction in her personal life. Ultimately, she leads all of these lives as if she were the same person.
Hoshi doesn’t hide her love for all her favourite series just because she keeps her fanfiction writing in the dark. She still hangs a Genshin Impact keychain on her school bag. She still keeps a Blue Lock character as her phone’s lock screen. She still wears anime-themed clothes out in public.
Hoshi takes the same seriousness she approaches her schoolwork with and puts it into her writing. She infuses her stories with the very real emotions she feels in her everyday life.
It only makes sense that all these faces are parts of one whole. After all, isn’t every regular person the same? How we act with our friends is different from how we face our family, which is again different to how we meet our bosses or professors. But despite these different masks, all our experiences from our different identities form one greater identity.
No matter how much fanfiction writers are forced to hide a part of themselves from most people, it does not erase the fact that it is part of their identity. Let’s not deny people who they are.
I don’t expect to see myself in a world where people are open about writing fanfiction like people would actively talk about their other hobbies like sports or music. But I do hope to see at least a world where people don’t give fanfiction writers the same flak they do now.
Let them write their stories in peace please, I want them to keep writing my Tony Stark fix-it fics.
