This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s spring editorial intern Fainite Auguste. Find her on Instagram at @ceilingdancing. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
The 2010s was the maximalist decade. Tech use was at an all-time high and for the first time, the spotlight was also on normal people. There were Youtubers in their bedrooms showing a couple of thousand people their outfits of the day. Shorter video platforms like Vine, Musically, and Snapchat, were still shiny and interesting.
This was the era of wired headphones, radio, fandoms, vlogging, and electro-pop music. If you were active in the Tumblr community between 2011 and 2017, you either stumbled upon or contributed to fanfiction and fandom culture.
What is fanfiction?
For those unfamiliar, Fanfiction or “fanfics” are stories written by someone who is part of a “fandom” for a specific TV show, movie, video game, or book. Usually, these works exist because a fan is unsatisfied with a character or storyline. It is also common for fans to write stories about real people, like musicians, celebrities, and influencers.
After nearly a decade of reading and writing fanfiction. I can confidently break it down into six separate categories: alternative universe, smut, fluff, self-insert, drabble, and longfic.
As people fall deeper and deeper into the 2010 nostalgia, a wave of Zillennials has taken to TikTok to unveil the fanfiction they wrote and read during their formative tween and teen years. This emergence has sparked a journey for many as they revisit the places where they freely express their thoughts and opinions. It almost feels like homesickness; I also miss online communities and fandoms. Knowing that people also navigated the same website at the same time that you did.
Fanfic History
People have written and shared fanfiction for decades. One of the earliest instances of this was The Star Trek Fanzine Spockanalia, which began in 1967. It was a fan-run magazine consisting of poems, stories, and fan art. As the internet became a focal point in life people began to vocalize their interest.
There was what can only be described as a fanfiction boom in the mid to late 2000s. In December 2006, the website and app Wattpad launched, and by 2011 was the go-to place to read and write fiction shared by aspiring writers from anywhere around the world. Similarly, the Archive of Our Own website, lovingly referred to as “Ao3” by users, was also often used to share fanfiction. These written works brought together hundreds of thousands and, in some instances, millions of people together to experience characters in a new light.
Many of these amateur writers created novel-length fanfiction, some even getting professionally published. There are hundreds of fanfiction with over a million words on Wattpad and Archive of Our Own.
The Negative Effects of Fanfiction
After debuting their hit song What Makes You Beautiful In 2011, One Direction captured the hearts of millions of tween and teenage girls, myself included. Within a year, fan-made content like videos, shirts, posters, and phone wallpapers were created.
One of the most popular categories of fanfiction written by the One Direction fandom was self-inserts. The plot of these self-inserts weirdly revolved around the female main character being “sold” to the band, only for the main character to find that the band treats her with kindness. Another popular self-insert included secretly dating one of the boys in the band.
Over time, people started to “ship” the band members together despite them being in relationships with other people. Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan, Louis Thomlinson, and Liam Payn morphed into characters. Fans developed what can only be described as conspiracy theories, claiming that certain band members were romantically involved.
The most popular was the ship “Larry,” the pairing of Harry Styles and Louis Thomlinson. It was almost impossible to escape the mania. People went as far as to create video compilations of what they perceived as romantic interactions between the two. There were hundreds of gifsets on Tumblr, spreading across the platform. And of course – the fanfiction – there are 118 thousand works on Wattpad under the tag Larry. It got to the point where Harry and Louis could not be in the same room without mass fan speculation.
In a 2017 interview, Louis Thomlinson said, “It created this atmosphere between the two of us where everyone was looking into everything we did,” when referring to the speculated relationship.
Like most people, Larry shippers have moved to TikTok. Unfortunately, people have learned nothing from the damage that was done.
Does Zillennials still read and write fanfiction?
I admit that I occasionally still read fanfiction and I’m certainly not the only one. Archive of Our Own is the website people most often use now, according to a 2020 statistic released by the organization states that traffic reached 1.7 billion.
There is a certain level of care put into it that I will always admire.
How about you? Are you still reading and writing fanfiction? What was your favorite part of fanfic history? Let us know!
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