Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World

by Jamison, Anne

  But I wrote like the wind, putting out all 68,000 words of “Let Your Light Shine” in twenty-one days. There were more that followed, and people actually read them. Early 2009 was an insane time; the fanfic world exploded. We were all becoming obsessed with two teen characters getting together, smooching, having escapades, and (yes, sometimes) having sex.

  It sounds weird. I know it does. Even though we’re writing legal teens doing legal things, we did get our fair share of shit for being “TwiMoms” writing “TwiPorn.” Um, yep, happy to admit it.

  As I mentioned, I’ve always been a fan of the smut. Some kids like horror and gore, some like mysteries on trains, and others like military crap. I like nekkid bodies and kissing and when your heart does that little twisty-pirouette thing in the swoony parts. THAT IS THE BEST.

  And what’s a better time in our lives for swooning than when we are teens? There are so many firsts: first kisses, and first relationships, and sometimes first times having sex. I had a lot of boyfriends in high school; apparently I liked those “firsts” a lot. And my parents were very progressive about sexuality and our bodies, which if I’m being honest is really fucking healthy. Why society embraces violence over sexuality boggles, but it strikes me as obvious why so many teens and women flock to Twilight and Harry Potter fanfic smut. We are at our most open to experience, most beautiful, most sweetly innocent as older teens.

  I’m way too lazy to look up how many pages were in The Saga, but Steph basically gave us forty bajillion pages of teenage angst and weird obsessed stalker love and foreplay, and then buttoned up Edward’s pants because he almost killed Bella with his monster hardness. In the words of one fanfic, WHERT? The fade-to-black was so epic, one of the best fanfic tropes became the Edward/Bella cockblock. I’d love for someone else to make a list of all the thousands of ways Edward and Bella have now experienced coitus interruptus.

  Don’t worry, there’s no cockblocking in my fic. Or . . . I don’t think there is. I was a woman possessed, writing over a million words in a year.

  I wrote one of the better-known alternate universe vampfics, but Twilight fanfic quickly morphed into its own beast. It became more than finding what we didn’t get from Breaking Dawn or wanting to imagine Rob naked. The writing in the fandom was good. “The Blessing and the Curse.” “Tropic of Virgo.” “The Office.” “The Submissive.” “Scotch Gin and the New Girl.” “Wide Awake.” Holy hell, those stories had me up all night, slowly going blind from reading on my phone.

  It wasn’t just that the smut was good (but damn . . . “Tropic of Virgo”’s “Hello, Spark”? The moment Curseward says, “I’ll suck on you until you dissolve” in “The Blessing and the Curse”? Yes, sir!), it was that the writing was good. Not every story had sex, and certainly most stories didn’t have as much as mine did. But the creativity, and risk-taking, and the sheer investment in writing something amazing was—and still is—there.

  There’s something fascinating about the way a community decides what stories to promote. There isn’t an editor or a team of editors reading a book and choosing to put it out there. Instead, it’s a collection of people—mostly women—who pick up a fic and decide they love it. Sure, there is an element of the hive mind to fandom, but there is plenty of room to have a different opinion. People share links to a story and it either takes off or it doesn’t, and it isn’t always dependent on some standard literary value, such as breathtaking prose or creative erotica. Many editors wouldn’t have given Fifty Shades of Grey a second look. And yet look how many people worldwide who didn’t give a crap about Edward and Bella wanted to read that book because it introduced them to something they’d never seen before: (relatively tame) BDSM. That’s what fic does; you’re obsessed with the characters or the world and so you’re willing to go to new places just to read more. In the process, you end up learning about an entire subculture to which you never really paid much attention before.

  I wasn’t reading much fic when I started writing it—again, I just had that fade-to-black I needed to exorcise from my brain—but as I grew aware of the sheer size of the community, my obsession expanded to reading all of these stories. All Human, canon vamp, crossover. Slash, poly, BDSM. Angst, fluff, you name it. And here’s the thing about fandom: you get to know everyone—online or even in person. You meet your favorite writers, and they become your peers. It’s nothing like being a movie or television buff in that respect: you might love them, but you’ll never meet and interact daily with Joss Whedon or Nathan Fillion (and if you do, shut up, I hate you). In ways other fan activities don’t, fanfiction communities blur lines: author, fan, reader—everyone plays the same roles. While it’s true that some people can really get ridiculous egos when they have a popular story (what Cyndy Aleo calls the “whale in the toilet bowl” phenomenon), for the most part, fic fandom is a really safe place to fangirl other people and just . . . share.

  When I looked past my own desktop and realized how many other people were out there doing Twific, it felt like the Twilight fandom was already huge, but in hindsight the 2009 fandom was still really in such toddler years. In my early days the fandom hadn’t yet been split over issues such as pulling to publish, pulling fics without/before ending them, or online hate directed at an author. In 2009, the fandom was still sweet, and sincerely wonderful. People pimped stories they loved. When “The Submissive” updated on Tuesdays, Twitter would literally go SILENT because we were all reading it in the bathroom at work. There was a shared excitement over the whole thing that is hard to describe. It’s a little like going to a rave: you get so caught up in the screaming and the jumping and the hugging and the pounding music that you forget yourself and don’t think to ask until later, “Was I being completely ridiculous?”

  The answer is probably yes, but especially in the case of the fandom, everyone else was being just as absurd, so go with it. No one cares.

  I gained readers, and a few kindly offered to beta (edit) my stories. I mean, I had improved in the smut department a little between the ages of fourteen and mumblethirtymumble, but I still abused semicolons and adverbs (my friend DeviKalika liked to call “Let Your Light Shine” “Slowly Porn”), dialogue tags, and HEY, let’s not forget anus. The fandom made me want to be better. I learned to write. I learned to love to read again. I realized how much more I loved reading erotica than watching it.

  I definitely took some heat in real life for writing porny YA fic, and when Christina Hobbs and I first signed with our agent, we didn’t even tell her we used to write fic because we worried that she would laugh quietly and then rescind her offer of representation (she didn’t). I mean, I get it, I really do. There are a couple of issues here. One, writing smut about teen characters is a clear gray area. When is it OK? When Bella is eighteen? If so, are we going to ignore the pesky detail that Edward is always going to be seventeen?

  The second issue is one that I hear a lot: “If you like writing so much, why not just write your own stuff?” Well, I don’t know . . . maybe because I’m not very good yet? Maybe I just want to play around a little? Out in the real world, writing fic is judged, as if it’s somehow silly (it can be), or frivolous (it can be), or a waste of time (it never is). Writing is hard. Character development is the stuff of gray hairs and wine consumption. Fanfic is a way to have fun, to learn to do something, to create something new from something beloved. AIN’T NO SHAME, PEOPLE!

  I believe true fanfic is work that is derived from the same world as the original characters, commonly called “alternate universe” or “canon.” [Book author’s note: This meaning of “alternate universe” to mean alternate storylines, same world and rules, is usual to this fandom.] I see the place for All Human fic in the Twilight community, but I don’t really think those stories are about Twilight as much as they are about Rob, or writing, or wanting to jump into a community and make some words. Writing alternate universe is like walking into a movie set and taking over the directing role. Everything in my stories was how Stephenie initially set them u
p, but then I just . . . well, mostly I just took their clothes off.

  I did that with my Barbies, too.

  When I explained to people that I wrote Twilight fanfic—which I did, because I never hid it in my real life—for the most part they understood. Who wasn’t a tangled mass of bottled-up hormones between thirteen and twenty?

  The best part in my opinion is that some of us never change. If you’re a “hoor,” you’re my people. I still have notebooks under my bed, and I bet my mom will be proud to know they’re still filled with smut.

  An Interview with tby789 (Christina Hobbs)

  WHEN TBY789 (CHRISTINA HOBBS) STARTED reading Twilight fanfiction in 2008—relatively early in Twilight fandom fic-years—most (though not all) stories still featured sparkly vampires and took place in Forks, Washington. Review counts were still comparable to those in most other fandoms. A multichapter fic might have fifty reviews. Reviews were not yet widely acknowledged as a mass currency by which stories could be found and read. “Fic diving”—browsing around for new stories on FanFiction.Net as opposed to following a trail of awards, reviews, and recommendations—was not yet understood as an adventure activity, evidence of one’s commitment to democratic values, or an anarchic poke in the eye of fandom hierarchy. It was just the way you found new stuff to read.

  Then she found the website Twilighted, and saw that the fic world there was very different.

  Strange things were afoot in the Twilight fandom, and tby789 and her fic “The Office” were a big part of what would be a transformation in the way fanfiction was read and received, both by other fic writers and ultimately in the world at large. In part, this change had to do with the way Twilight fics began to understand their relationship to their source material: very loose, sometimes barely tangential, in fact—increasingly, Twilight fanfics were more “inspired by” than set in or even based on Stephenie Meyer’s books and their world. As Jolie Fontenot notes, and some of the other contributors in this section illustrate, many Twilight fan writers were more irritated by the books than enamored of them, or if they were enamored, they were irritated at themselves for this preference. tby789 did not fall into this category—she was an unabashed fan of the series—but her fic was still worlds apart from Meyer’s style and sensibility.

  More similar to the typical Twilight fic writer than her clumsy, virginal teen precedent, “The Office”’s adult Bella was assertive, potty-mouthed, and professional—when she wasn’t riding her “beautiful bastard” boss all over the office . . . and the elevator . . . and the stairwell . . . and the parking garage . . . (That behavior had little in common with the actual lives of fandom women, but a great deal in common with their fantasies about “Robward.”)

  By many accounts, the “smut revolution” in All Human Twific came about with “The Office.” Now, that’s not to say it was the first to do sex. There was, and always has been, a lot of sex in fanfiction. But even more than the influential BDSM story “The Submissive” that Lauren Billings’ essay mentioned as silencing Twitter once a week, “The Office” put sex front and center and kept it there. “The Office” was also, immediately and tenaciously, front and center in the fandom. It was aggressive and raunchy, but its volunteer marketing was very smooth. It was up for only nine months and got millions of hits. And inspired more than one tattoo.

  I’ve argued that part of the change “The Office” wrought was to help inspire the rise of Porn as Plot (as opposed Porn without Plot), a narrative that really told a story almost entirely through sex. Obviously, that turned out to be a big deal. TO, as the story became known, was hardly the first fic to use a lot of sex in a story (see, for example, all the other fandoms, ever, at least since Star Trek—and, in a closer Twific precedent, the million-plus words of canon smut written by tby789’s future writing partner, LolaShoes/Lauren Billings). Nonetheless, “The Office” and its often quite shy author had an enormous impact on the history of Twilight fanfiction and thus, ultimately, on the history of fanfiction, and even of publishing.

  The real (cash) economic effects of the evolution from fanfiction “filling in” or “continuing” Twilight, to fiction “based on” Twilight, to fanfiction “inspired by” Twilight only made themselves known later, when it emerged that Twilight-generated presses Omnific and TWCS could publish repurposed All Human fics with very little revision and face no legal challenges. But this change in the writing culture of the Twilight fandom accounts for only part of the community’s transformation into what amounted to a big business based on a currency of credit (review counts, shout-outs, recs) rather than cash. The complex, innovative, often professional-grade marketing of these (as yet) noncommercial products is an equally important part of the story.

  To be clear, other fandoms had also employed marketing strategies for their fanworks. But the Twilight fandom operated largely in isolation from other fandoms, so in some sense, they really were inventing the wheel, despite wheels that already existed elsewhere. And so they were free to go straight to the most recent technologies currently available, rather than starting from older web protocols and customs. The look of web design (like the technologies and programming languages that create it) changes incredibly fast, and in this way, a new, naïve fandom had the advantage of not having to wade through old archives and websites and skill sets on its path to innovation.

  In another unintended advantage of their status as newcomers to fandom culture, Twilight fans hadn’t come of age with the same threat of cease-and-desist orders, fanworks purges, or police shutdowns of fan conventions, and so did not suffer from the chilling effect such experiences had on other, earlier fandoms—even, as we’ve seen, on Twilight’s close precedent and contemporary, Harry Potter. Furthermore, many of the most popular authors, designers, and webmasters in the Twilight fanfic fandom were professionals, former professionals currently at home with children, or university students studying to become professionals. Their involvement in internet fandom notwithstanding, many had tastes and lifestyles that ran to the commercial and mainstream rather than to the cult or geek.

  I asked tby789 and her fandom “director of marketing,” Moijojojo, about this time of transition, and how it was that “The Office” became such a game-changing phenomenon.

  When did you first notice things changing in the way fic was presented?

  tby789: When I came in to the fandom in 2008, [the fic archive and discussion site] Twilighted was already doing things a little differently. Authors could have forums there, and the avis [avatars, or icons associated with online personae] were more personalized. It also had a more commercial feel; visitors were asked to donate to keep the site going, and then their avatars could display a little “I donated” button.

  Plus it was all black and red, which annoyed a lot of people, but it was a distinctive look.

  Then came the signatures—people could include little displays, like advertisements or brands, under their names. Readers who liked a story would make them—it was a way of giving back to writers. So on Twilighted, signatures became a way for readers to identify their tastes and market their favorite stories.

  What were your own early graphics like?

  tby789: “The Office” “blinkie” (a little sign that blinks through several different images) read: On the conference table, in the stairwell, in the elevator. Then you’d see a coffeepot flash onscreen, then a stapler, then La Perla panties. Followed by, “Get yer panties ripped at The Office.” That was Moijojojo/Eddiescherry. She did all the initial “Office” graphics.

  So much of [the signatures’ design] was ridiculous, there were so many manips of Rob in . . . a fireman’s hat or whatever “character” fit that particular story. And there wasn’t supposed to be nudity or porn in the signatures—but there were so many animated GIFs that were . . . very explicit.

  My students talked a lot about the marketing of fic in the Twilight fandom—how much of it seemed commercial, like branding, even though there was no money changing hands. How did that come abou
t?

  tby789: We definitely had an “Office” “brand.” And the visuals were a big part of the package. I didn’t want garish; I wanted everything in black-and-white images. Classy smut. We used to joke that it needs to look like money. And they did. There were avis, blinkies, banners, videos, and I liked them to have a look. But it wasn’t just the visuals; we wanted readers to feel like they were a part of something. So we started calling readers “interns” and giving them titles (usually Moi, whose title was “research and development,” handled this part). As the author, I was CEO, and I chatted with people on the Twilighted thread—about the story, but also about underwear or clothes, even our children to some extent. It was like a giant twenty-four-hour chat room that went on for tens of thousands of pages. Sometimes the discussions moved so quickly that after being away for hours, even I had no idea what was going on.

  I didn’t do all that on my own—no one did. There was a system.

  Moi, tell me about your role in marketing “The Office.” What were your ideas, and how did you come up with them? And why, in the first place, did you devote all this time and energy to marketing someone else’s fic?

  Moijojojo: I read the first chapter of TO before it was posted, and told Christina there was no way it wouldn’t be a huge success. It was a perfect storm of sorts; the premise was new and fresh, her transmutation of the canon characters was completely different than anything that had been done in fic before, and the lemons [sex scenes] were smoking hot. I think the fandom had unknowingly been waiting for something just like it, and when it hit, the reaction was nothing short of explosive.