I have written fanfiction since I was thirteen years old. I told no one for years. I still don’t tell that many people. But I just watched a movie called Turtles All the Way Down where Star Wars fanfiction features heavily into it.

Is fanfiction cool now? I severely doubt it but I wonder… because we’ve seen fanfiction go mainstream. Fifty Shades of Grey became one of the biggest franchises in bad BDSM history and it’s just Twilight fanfiction. Ditto the After series, which is just Harry Styles fanfiction(If I was Harry Styles, I would totally sue for that). Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan got their start writing fanfiction too.

I read a few articles about the subject and they all come down to the same thing. Writing is writing and it’s good or bad. We should be celebrating people being creative, not shame them for it.

However, much like how DND has become more mainstream, there is something that is still considered nerdier than it. LARPing. Disclaimer that I want to try LARPing and play an NPC that never goes on adventures. I just want to be a barkeep that offers quests to people and never leaves his bar or an item shop owner. Seems like a nice peaceful life.

Discretion over, my LARPing in the fanfiction world is real person fanfiction. There’s just something too parasocial and offputting when you write about real people.

Though to be fair, another great work, Dante’s Inferno is real person self insert fanfiction. Where Dante is like “I met Vergil and we became best friends and also I saw all these people that didn’t like me in hell”. So, maybe it’s not my cup of tea because I’m too blind to it.

There might come a day that I’ll feel confident enough to share one of my fanfics on this blog. Put my full name on it. Today isn’t that day. But for those that are able to do it, I salute you.

And hey, if you’ve written your own fanfiction and want to share, leave a comment with the link.

If you haven’t written fanfiction, go forth and do so! Get weird with it.