Why is fan fiction so popular with LGBTQ+ people and what is Archive of Our Own?

Fan fiction has long been a staple of the internet, with an untold – and ever growing – number of fan-written works published online, all based on existing stories.

Think of almost any book, movie, show, or franchise and it’s likely that you’ll be able to find at least one fan-written work about it. There’s fan fiction about Harry Potter, Star Wars, Gilmore Girls, Twilight, One Direction, Marvel, The Hunger Games, and much more. Many are hugely popular and famous in their own right.

Platforms like Fanfiction.net, Wattpad, and Archive of Our Own (AO3) are all large repositories for works comprising of dozens of chapters and hundreds of thousands of words inspired by an existing piece of “intellectual property”, IP for short.

AO3 is the most popular website for fan fiction – though the other two are no slouches – boasting over 13 million works across 67,000 fandoms alone. It was created in 2008 and is an open-source website for fanworks contributed by individual users.

Fan fiction is a lot bigger than people might think. Many write them because they love the existing story so much that they want to explore it even further or reimagine a particular storyline or relationship – in fact, relationships and romance are some of the most common aspects of fan fiction, as people might want their favourite character to end up with a different one than the author or show runner thought was appropriate.

This, in part, is why fan fiction is so popular with LGBTQ+ people.

Until recently, thanks to shows like Heartstopper, Elite, Red, White & Royal Blue, Our Flag Means Death, One Day At A Time, Schitt’s Creek, and First Kill, on-screen romantic relationships featuring LGBTQ+ people in general were very few and far between – and if there was an LGBTQ+ relationship, it either ended in heartbreak or death, or was the subject of stereotypes and crass jokes.

Lesbian and bisexual characters in particular were very much subject to the ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope. There was a massive lack of lesbian and bisexual characters on TV until recently, but even when they appeared, they would often be dead a few episodes later. This was the case for Tara in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Marissa from The O.C, and Maya from Pretty Little Liars.

When there is such a dearth of happy, not-dead queer characters on screen and in books, people who identify as LGBTQ+ are likely upset when they finally find one who then dies tragically. So, they turn to fan fiction where they can change the ending – or at least read stories where others have changed it for them – so that their favourites can live happily ever after.

Then there’s “LGBTQ+ subtext”, which in reality is often little more than queer-baiting.

Subtext is a phenomenon that happens when it appears as if writers are hinting at a queer relationship between two characters of the same gender but it never comes to fruition, frustrating fans.

Fans consider Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in BBC’s Sherlock as well as Dean Winchester and Castiel in Supernatural to be prime examples of this practice, arguing that there is clearly romantic and sexual tension between the characters even though there is no pay-off (ie. they don’t end up together).

Once again, fan fiction serves to change the ending. People who ‘ship’ Sherlock and Watson and want them to end up together can get that satisfaction by writing their own fan fiction or reading fan fiction written by others who are like-minded and agree with their opinions.

For stories like Harry Potter for example, which many LGBTQ+ people loved but now feel disconnected from due to the ‘gender critical’ views of JK Rowling, fan fiction means queer people can still engage with the nostalgia and love they feel for the series without supporting Rowling explicitly.

Additionally, there are barely any canonically queer people in Harry Potter, but many feel there should be, or have interpreted a certain character as such instead.

In short, LGBTQ+ people are constantly seeking queer representation and they usually can find more diverse and inclusive stories in fan fiction than they can in the books, shows, and movies that still, to this day, cater to a primarily heterosexual, white, and able-bodied audience.

Fan fiction gives people the opportunity to reimagine anything and everything within their favourite franchises, even if they weren’t written with queer people in mind to begin with.