The Healing Balm That Is Queer Fanfiction

A guest essay I begged Chloe to write, and my favorite fanfics!

My buddy

Chloe

and I routinely send each other text messages screaming “LEE PACE IS 6’5” at each other. I send her antique wall hangings of finely-carved hands I see on vintage Instagram shops; she sends me fancams of the Pride & Prejudice hand flex that rocked me as much in 2005 as it does now. We went to see Phantom of the Opera together on Broadway and when I went to check in on her in the morning, as she dozed on my couch Lugosi was sleeping across her esophagus like an ermine stole. We love Chloe in this house and I BEGGED her to write an essay about her experience reading and crafting queer fanfiction, a passion of hers at which she excels. It makes me so happy to see her shine. Here you go!

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There is something so intrinsically devastating about an unfinished story, or, perhaps even worse, one that goes spectacularly wrong. 

We’ve likely all experienced it - a popular movie franchise ends on a what the fuck note, a show the entire world was invested in completely loses the plot and crumbles into chaos, abrupt and awkward romances are force fed down our throats - and it is an especially bitter flavor of disappointment. Stories have meant everything to humans from the beginning of time, they are part of what makes us human, and to have them so terribly botched tugs at the heartstrings of our innate connection to storytelling and our inherent dislike of that which just doesn’t feel right.

When a cherished show is canceled or mishandled, it comes with a particularly vicious pang of pain, but that sting blooms into something even more excruciating when the story itself revolves around queer characters. The notoriously distinct lack of LGBTQ+ media often means the morsels we are given are beacons of hope, they are affirming and heartening and inspiring, only for them to far too often end in a myriad of devastation - cancellation before the romance can fully flourish or relationships cut short in their prime (Hannibal, Dead Boy Detectives, A League of Their Own, First Kill, Gentleman Jack, Our Flag Means Death), cancellation that leads to a dissatisfying movie wrap up (Sense8), or the the dreaded phenomenon known as queerbaiting (Supernatural, Sherlock, Merlin). 

This is where fanfiction can step in to temper the loss, to fill in the blanks left behind by disappointing or frankly infuriating conclusions; fanfic fixes as well as expands and imagines, it speculates as much as it can also all out commit to certain concepts, and it can even heal us in more ways than one. Of course, fanfic is certainly not limited to queer romances and relationships - heterosexual or ‘het’ fic abounds and it always will - but because of the lack of satisfying, well executed queer media, queer fic flourishes. Solace can be found in the freely given written word of those who transform their ideas into stories based on existing tales, and who dedicate themselves to sharing them with the world with no expectation of receiving anything in return. We do this for free; writing fanfiction is purely a labor of love, a hobby with no financial motivation or gain, and there are so many mind-blowingly talented writers out there penning fics the length of massive novels of every genre under the sun and offering them up to whoever might fancy a look at them. Fanfiction is by no means a new concept, but it’s only relatively recently begun to have a positive light shone on it as a legitimate genre of writing. People creating fiction based off of other fiction has been around as long as writing has been, and fans of specific works writing their own spin on things really began to evolve in the 18th century - it’s not stopped since.¹ Even erotic fanfiction, known in fandoms as smut, has existed for centuries, a shining example being Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, which was published in 1726 and spawned a number of grotesquely bawdy addendums.²

Many authors in fandom today including myself find niches to nestle themselves and their oeuvre into; fluff, angst, romance and yes, smut, are all popular themes in which writers can carve themselves out a home, and within those genres exist tropes we all know and love to the point that they’ve become memes - enemies to lovers, only one bed, forced proximity, fake dating, the list goes on- each of us continuing to greedily devour different iterations of the same character and the same tropes over and over because truly, they never get old. The world of fanfiction is limitless, quite literally; the concept of alternate universes, colloquially known as AUs, thrives within each fandom. They are endless, ranging from all manner of human AUs throughout history for characters that are celestial beings or otherwise, to the more mundane coffee shop and college/university AUs all the way down to priest AUs, mafia AUs and the infamous omegaverse, the latter of which needs an essay all to itself. Human AU’s are my personal favorite to write, and often I get carried away with what I intend to be short, single chapter stories (known as one shots) turning into sprawling projects complete with intricate worldbuilding - so much for porn without plot aka PWP.

The fandom I write for is Good Omens; the much beloved novel of the same name, written by Sir Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, was adapted into two successful seasons of television by Amazon, and was greenlit for its third and final installment, but that has since changed from its usual 6 episode run to a single 90 minute feature length episode after Gaiman was accused of sexual assault by multiple women.³ Losing so much time with our undeniably-in-love-but-ineffably-ineffectual-at-communicating characters, an angel and demon played by Michael Sheen and David Tennant respectively, is a loss. I wouldn’t presume to speak on behalf of the entire fandom, but it seems that overall many of us are simply thankful for any sort of conclusion as opposed to all out cancellation and that Gaiman will not be involved as showrunner, but two things can be true at once, more than one emotion can exist at the same time - gratitude and relief to see how Aziraphale and Crowley’s story ends, and hollow, aching grief born from not being able to witness all of their final journey. This story, the novel and the series and these celestial beings, mean an unfathomable amount to innumerable people of all ages and backgrounds. It is a comfort show for many with comfort characters, and has been the inspiration for more than 75,000 works on the fanfiction hosting website Archive of our Own; that number grows every single day, and in the interim between now and the next time we see our darling angel and demon, I know that number will continue to explode.

After season 2 of Good Omens aired in late July of 2023, when the only ever slightly ambiguous romantic feelings between Aziraphale and Crowley were blatantly confirmed (it had always been there, but with any queer show, there are usually some naysayers and deniers until there is outright sex on the screen, and still some articles erroneously and hilariously continue to describe them as the best of friends, but I digress) there was a burst of new fic that hasn’t really stopped in its momentum. That’s when I joined the fandom as a writer after more than 15 years of not writing anything but academic papers, and even that had been more than a decade ago at that point. 

It’s through writing fic again that I was able to rediscover a voice that had been forcibly taken from me as a teenager. I had been dabbling in queer fanfic as a late teen (my original fandom was The Lord of the Rings, and I am still a diehard Legolas/Aragorn shipper), and growing up in a deeply homophobic mini Bible belt of a town meant that I didn’t disclose this to anyone.  My then incredibly shitty and abusive boyfriend discovered what I was doing and made me stop while citing what a fucked up degenerate I was, and I was so negatively affected by this and everything else he put me through that I didn’t even read fic again until I was in my late 20’s. I had to work through a lot of internalized shame as I started writing stories again; I had to constantly rally against this insidious inner thought process that was lying to me about who I was and what I was doing, and I actually ended up employing this as a literary device in my fic Vine Slips of a Strange God⁴, in which a human variant of our favorite disaster demon Crowley had been so viciously dismantled by an abusive ex partner that said abuser’s voice lived on within him as a persistently hissing inner dialogue even six years after the relationship ended. As a queer woman, writing queer stories for others not only is fulfilling, it’s healing, it’s rallying against the voice in my head that sometimes takes on the timbre of my own ghost, the one that doesn’t seem to ever fully quiet no matter how many years pass. 

My work is laced with the lush, descriptive imagery previous teachers and professors discouraged me from using, extended metaphor and timeless symbolism amongst kinky smut and intense emotions as well as tragedy, and there is nothing I am more proud of than when I get a comment from someone who reads my work and discovers something about themselves in the process of doing so. What a beautifully rare gift and honor it is to be able to touch anyone in this world by our creative media of choice, but to aid in some sort of revelation, to help someone come home to something inside them they hadn’t known was there or had been lost to them, like writing had been lost to me? There will never be words to adequately describe what that means as an author and as a person, and I will always be grateful to the depth of the marrow in my bones for the chance to be able to connect with anyone through my work, and I’m also grateful for the chance to connect with myself through my writing, even though it’s not always pleasant.  

Writing is raw, no matter what or who you’re writing about, whether it be original characters or your versions of existing ones, and I was caught completely unawares by just how deeply writing a story between two traumatized people would turn into an exorcism of my own traumas and past. Storytelling is, at its core, personal, and I always knew that I suppose, but I didn’t expect it to be so personal - I did not anticipate flaying myself alive as I navigated through the harrowing pasts of an emotionally and psychologically abused Crowley who was made to believe he was nothing and a grieving, guilt stricken Aziraphale that convinced himself he deserved nothing.⁵ I didn’t ever think that there would be so much of myself within the adaptations of our favorite angel and demon, but I am, and what a gift and terror it is to be known through them. It’s yet another way that fanfiction can bring us closer together; even through our well loved characters, we can exist and bloom, and the most shameful, shattered parts of us can perhaps find the love they need via these relationships we build and nurture between pages of carnal delights. It’s vulnerable, it’s scary, it’s exhilarating and it is freeing. It’s everything, really.

Writing again has changed my life in a myriad of ways, from being able to express myself and practice radical vulnerability through the written word, to connecting to people around the world and building relationships with them.  There is such a wonderful sense of community in fandom, and it tends to rally around fanfic as well. Every fandom has their classics that many of the fans have read, and everyone is waiting (patiently and very normally) for at least one of their favorite fics to update if it isn’t already completed.  

I had the absolutely out of the blue, incandescent joy and luck to have found an amazing group of people when I started live writing Vine Slips on Twitter last year (you will never catch me calling it X, even on pain of death) before uploading it to AO3. I am still in close contact with many of these folks today, and as I prepare to start posting part two of said series, it's through these wonderful people that I find the motivation and generous encouragement to continue this hobby of mine as well as genuinely warm, loving friendship. The memes live rent free in my head, too:

It is not an exaggeration to claim that writing and delving into fanfiction this last and possibly most horrendous year I’ve yet to go through has saved my life and helped me find a voice that had been lost within me for so many years, one that I’d been convinced was gone forever. I hope that I can continue to share my decadently depraved and achingly tender stories with my fandom friends for years to come, that we can all scream and cry at every twist and turn and come together to support each other in our respective work and beyond via the ageless tradition of sharing stories, especially unapologetically queer ones; what a lovely, lovely thought, and one that I will cling to whenever that sinister inner dialogue starts naggingly whispering to me again. 

Humans need stories; we need stories of absurd forced proximity and only one bed that forces our heroes or our favorite enemies together, and we need stories that wrench our hearts into agonized twists from the trauma given to these characters that we love to torture and then sometimes heal (hurt/no comfort is a trope all to itself). We need the hopeful endings we never got, and we need ones that can heal the broken things inside us that we didn’t know were still in pain and festering away for years. People have always told stories about other stories, and we will continue to do so until we’re gone - and it is more important than ever in the rise of fascism to continue to create queer stories in particular, queer tales that push boundaries, that explore kink, that end beautifully and that break us down into sniffling piles of anguished, cathartic tears. 

If you’ve ever at all been curious about the concept of fanfiction, I implore you to seek some out; I am being sincere when I say the most breathtaking works of art I have ever read were found in fandom, not a bookstore. You might just be surprised by the precious gems you unearth.

Chloe’s favorites:

Rough Enough for Love, by Nekhen

Fandom: Good Omens 

Rating: Explicit 

Word Count: 403,339

Golden Handcuffs, by seekwill 

Fandom: Good Omens 

Rating: Explicit 

Word Count: 70,595

stalwart sun, wily moon, by dustnhalos

Fandom: Good Omens

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 369,969

This Dangerous Game, by MissDisoriental. 

Fandom: NBC’s Hannibal 

Rating: Explicit 

Word Count: 270,272

Gentler Means, by stoic_swan

Fandom: NBC’s Hannibal

Rating: Explicit 

Word Count: 175,396

Bram Stoker’s HANNIBAL, by DBMars

Fandom: NBC’s Hannibal

Rating: Explicit 

Word Count: 586,775

Chloe

, known as depraveddame on most platforms, is a queer writer in her 30’s who is obsessed with delicacy, decadence, and depravity. A collector of antiques, broken things, and kinks, she’s mostly just hoping to be a source of some comfort and joy to others via shockingly filthy smut and sexualizing religion like it’s her profession. You can find her published works on Archive of our Own and snippets of her WIPs on tumblr and bluesky. 

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Tara’s favorite fanfictions:

“heart and bones” by honey_wheeler, a Renly/Loras fanfiction, of A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones. I feel that it is sincerely one of the best works of fiction I have ever read of any genre, and I wish it would be sold in print so I could have it proudly on my bookshelf.

“Coma Girl and the Excitement Gang,” a Fleabag fanfiction written as a screenplay that reduced me to tears, by Beth7232.

“Apostasy,” a series in two parts of again, Fleabag and the Priest, by JonquilB. Season two of Fleabag is the piece of media that speaks to me most, more I feel than any song, book, or movie. It’s this. And so the idea of spending the rest of my life without these characters is anathema to my spirit, leading to copious rewatches and consumption of further tales of this love story.

“fascinating rhythm",” by yarnofariadne. Milo (“as in Venus de”) Roberts from An American in Paris charmed me when I was 16, so much so that I decided to name my future daughter after her on first viewing. This piece sees Milo meet her deserved happy ever after. A true bad bitch, and I am so grateful to have developed a friendship with this writer! If she’s reading, hi!

And everything Victoria Audley does, a lot of stories inspired by folklore and fairytale legends, known and niche.

And, because

Ashley Reese

made me laugh:

1.  In the beginning, there was fan fiction: from the four gospels to Fifty Shades

2. Fan Fiction Was Just as Sexual in the 1700s as It Is Today

3.  ‘Good Omens’ Season 3 to Consist of One 90-Minute Episode, Neil Gaiman Not Involved in Production

4. Are you into blasphemy and sacrilege as kinks? Do you enjoy slow burns, bone pulverizing angst and achingly tender connection amidst depraved smut that includes one spitroasting oneself in their shower? This fic might be for you.

5.  These broken Crowley and Aziraphale are from my aforementioned Human AU Vine Slips of a Strange God, in which Aziraphale is a priest who lost everything, and Crowley is the church gardener who had everything taken from him.