Fanfiction and the LGBT+ Community

 by Lucy Albuery

In every D&I meeting, whenever I ask if people want to write anything for this newsletter, someone will always ask me if they can write fanfiction. People have never committed after I have said yes, but the extent of this joke got me thinking about fanfiction in general, and most particularly why it is so popular in the LGBT+ community. 

However, first I’d like to defend fanfiction as an art form. Fanfic sites, such as AO3 and particularly WattPad, have reputations for being scary corners of the internet full of 12 year-old girls with bad grammar and terrible spelling, writing their fantasies of having a relationship with celebrities they've never met, and in general just being “cringe”. Those stories do exist, but I’ve found the majority of stories to be interesting and thoughtful writing. They explore the identities of the characters and alternate angles that the plot of the original source material could take, whether that makes sense in the context of the original or within a complete reimagining of it. Fanfiction is also a great gateway into writing fiction: it provides an opportunity to write stories based around pre-existing characters and scenarios, eliminating the need to undergo the long, often tedious process of creating characters and world-building. Fanfiction based upon an already popular piece of media is more likely to reach a much wider audience, giving more exposure to your writing and, hopefully, more helpful feedback. 

But why is fanfiction a medium so popular to create LGBT stories? I think it’s as simple as the desire that all people want to see themselves presented in the media they consume. This is why stations like MTV, that shows programmes focused on young people such as Teen Mom have an average viewing age of 23.2 whilst NBC, with shows featuring older individuals such as Law & Order, has an average viewer age of 49.4. This is particularly true for members of minorities such as LGBT individuals who are less likely to encounter people like themselves in their real life, who they can relate to, and see their experiences be a normal part of everyday life. According to ONS, 6.8% of UK adults identify outside of the label of heterosexual, however other studies (such as the 2021 Ipsos worldwide studies) suggest this figures is closer to 20%. Even so, GLAAD found that in 2021, only 9.1% of recurring characters on primetime television were LGBT. For transgender individuals, who are estimated by the Government Equalities Office to make up 0.3-0.6% of the UK population, they are only represented by 29 characters in all of broadcast, scripted TV and were not represented by any character from a major movie studio from the past 4 years. Furthermore, people falling outside of the gender binary, an estimated 1.2 million American adults, were only represented by 2 characters. Moreover, with PBS finding that 73% of all film characters are white, the diversity of the queer characters that are shown is very limited, and ignore the massive intersectionality that exists within the LGBT+ community. 

Anecdotally, I have also found that the stories being told about these characters can be very similar to each other and lack the massive diversity of stories within the LGBT community. For example, having seen many portrayals of LGBT people, I have rarely seen a coming out story where a teenager comes out before they have a had any queer relationship. Also, I have rarely even seen a story that continues after the coming out process. Whilst coming out is an important and mostly universal part of the Queer Experience™ it’s not the only one and definitely not the only one exciting enough to write films or episodes of TV about.

So whilst there is an increasing number of LGBT people being presented on screen, the full extent of the queer experience is not shown and what is shown is sometimes very unrepresentative due to it being written by people who haven’t experienced the situations they are writing about. (To clarify, people should not only write about what they know - I love sci-fi and I accept that the screen writers of some of my favourite shows have never time-travelled, but when stories as sensitive as coming out, queer relationships are portrayed, and there are a plethora of talented queer writers in the world, they should be the ones to manage this topic.) It is often obvious if a scene related to LGBT issues was written by a queer person or not. The first time I noticed this was in the latest episode of Doctor Who, in which one companion points out to another that she’s in love with another woman; her response is “I haven’t told anyone yet, I haven't even told myself.” That insight into early stages of coming out and coming to yourself could only have been written by a queer individual. 

I think this is the main reason why fanfiction is so gay: without authentic stories that mirror their experiences, in all the intricate and messy details, queer people make their own. It’s a cathartic chance to process their own experiences through someone else's story or just to create more LGBT stories, in doing so normalising them and giving respite and representation to others. 

So here’s an assignment: to reduce the stigma and embarrassment of fanfiction and to take credit for the valuable and important work you do for queer representation - this week, if you have, tell someone you have written fanfiction.