1. Introduction
[1.1] In 2019, journalist Lauren Strapagiel (2019) published a Buzzfeed article under the headline, "Smutty Fan Fiction Taught Me More About Queer Sex Than School Ever Could." The short article drew on personal experience and conversations with writers to highlight fan fiction's role in teaching queer adolescents about sex between women. For people familiar with fan fiction, the article offers a fun and validating read, describing the thrills of learning about sex from Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley fics. For people familiar with academic fan fiction studies, however, the article does additional work, serving as a point of comparison that spotlights gaps in the field.
[1.2] On popular online media sites such as Buzzfeed, discussions of fan fiction revolve around smut and queerness, emphasizing sex between people with vaginas and recognizing the contributions of queer women and nonbinary writers. In contrast, the academic field of fan fiction studies pays relatively little attention to works that feature sex between women and even less to writers who create those works.
[1.3] To address this gap, I conducted an interview study of twenty-three f/f fan fiction writers from diverse racial, national, and fandom backgrounds (note 1). I report on a subset of findings that center sexually explicit writing. Drawing extensively from interview data, I explore the ways that participants create and navigate community online, and I document the pleasures and pitfalls of writing sex that aligns with lived identities. Recognizing that gender and sexuality intersect with race, I pay close attention to the experiences, insights, and contributions of writers of color, foregrounding identities and perspectives that fan fiction studies often overlooks (Pande 2018). Throughout the article, I demonstrate that writers of "smutty fan fiction" can do more than teach queer teens about sex. They can also teach fan fiction scholars about the complexity of f/f writing in online settings that are structured by multiple axes of difference, power, and pleasure.
2. Background
[2.1] Fan fiction studies, past and present, pays significant attention to m/m slash. Early work in the field typically focused on heterosexual women who wrote sexually explicit stories about male pairings, framing these works as politically transgressive due to their reworking of dominant media narratives and disruption of sexual and gender norms (Green et al. 1998). Later researchers questioned assumptions of m/m slash's inherent subversiveness, highlighting its heteronormative scripts, marginalization of women characters, and potential exploitation of gay men's culture by writers who played at queerness online (Busse 2006). More recent studies have found that queer women write m/m slash at higher rates than previously assumed (Busse and Lothian 2017), and scholars have called for exploration of trans and nonbinary writers' role in this genre (Duggan 2020).
[2.2] Compared with m/m slash, f/f slash is marginal within fan fiction studies. Nonetheless, multiple scholars have demonstrated its theoretical and political importance. Kelly (2019), for example, analyzed paratextual citations of lesbian poetry to show how f/f fic refuses dominant modes of reference, decenters men, and foregrounds women's relationships. Coccia (2022a) further explored the queer politics of sexually explicit f/f slash, analyzing its disruption of hegemonic definitions of sex and expansive reimagining of the erotic. Scholars have also explored f/f fan fiction's racial dynamics, with Pande and Moitra investigating the consistent underrepresentation of characters of color (2020) and the contributions of f/f fics that center race (2017).
[2.3] Most studies of f/f fan fiction are rooted in literary and cultural analysis. These studies facilitate rich analysis of published texts, but their methodologies preclude investigation of writers' perspectives unmediated by publication. Stanfill's (2019) roundtable with f/f fans of color is a notable exception, documenting experiences of racism that participants may not have disclosed on AO3 or social media. In-depth interview studies can build on this work, through a methodological focus on individual writers rather than on the texts they produce.
[2.4] Within fan fiction studies, interview studies are relatively rare and when conducted often explore non-erotic phenomena, such as English language instruction or writing skill development (Cheng and Frens 2022). A small number of interview studies have usefully documented fan fiction's relationship to LGBTQ+ identity development and provide valuable insights into writing, empowerment, exploration, and healing (Dym et al. 2019; Duggan 2022; Floegel 2020; Hanmer 2014). These studies, however, have several limitations.
[2.5] First, interview studies of fan fiction writers often have very small samples, ranging from two or three participants to a maximum of ten. Second, many interview studies primarily or exclusively focus on white writers or do not report racial demographics. In several studies, white writers make up 90 percent to 100 percent of the samples, excluding the experiences and perspectives of writers of color. Finally, interview studies of sexual identity development typically focus on attraction and relationships but often omit discussions of sex, despite its centrality to fan fiction works. These studies also shed little light on f/f writers who are secure in their queer identities.
[2.6] To my knowledge, no published interview studies have explored the experiences of f/f fan fiction writers who create sexually explicit work. A small number of studies have analyzed the perspectives of women who write m/m slash, however, and these provide useful insights. In one study, Lothian et al. (2007) described the erotic pleasures that emerge when women share sexually explicit material with each other online, classifying these exchanges as queer, even when the women identify as heterosexual. In another study, Kukka (2021) discussed the joy that writers in kink meme communities experience when sharing and discussing sexual fantasies in community settings. Neville (2018) also studied women who write m/m slash and found that participation in slash communities positively impacted their offline lives and deepened knowledge of LGBTQ+ issues. All these studies, however, focused on (presumably) white women, often heterosexual, who wrote m/m fics. Additional research is needed to shed light on the experiences of people of color, queer women, and nonbinary writers of f/f slash.
3. Methods
[3.1] I report on an interview study with a racially diverse, transnational sample of f/f fan fiction writers. To launch the study, I consulted with multiple fic writers to assess interest. I then recruited participants in three stages. First, I used convenience sampling to recruit writers from the Killing Eve fandom, sorting these works by hits on AO3 and contacting all writers in the top fifty list who included a Twitter handle in their profile or notes. Second, on two separate occasions, I sorted Killing Eve works by date of publication and contacted all writers with a Twitter handle who had published during the previous week. Finally, I used snowball sampling to recruit writers from other f/f fandoms. Participation was limited to adults (over twenty-one) who self-reported writing f/f fan fiction within the past year, defined as any fic that included a romantic or sexual relationship between women, regardless of the fics' tags. This approach produced a sample of well-established and lesser-known writers from multiple fandoms. It also yielded a high response rate (88 percent), with twenty-three of twenty-six invitees agreeing to participate. Based on nonprobability convenience sampling, this study cannot produce generalizable results, but it can provide valuable insights into an understudied group.
[3.2] To contact participants, I sent an introductory direct message via Twitter, followed by a study information sheet and invitation to participate. After screening for eligibility and obtaining informed consent, I interviewed participants using a modality of their choice. These included real-time text-based interviews via Twitter direct messaging, Discord, or WhatsApp (44 percent); video interviews via Zoom (39 percent); audio interviews via Discord (9 percent); and asynchronous interviews via email (9 percent). I used writers' online pseudonyms in all study communications. The interviews were semistructured and covered multiple topics including fan fiction writing, fandom dynamics, and offline life. Most lasted one to two hours, although one extended to four. All study procedures were approved by my university's institutional review board.
4. Participants
[4.1] I interviewed twenty-three fan fiction writers from multiple nations, including Australia, the Philippines, Portugal, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Participants ranged from twenty-three to forty-one years of age, with a mean age of twenty-nine. Two-thirds identified as women and 26 percent as nonbinary.
[4.2] The study sample was multiracial, including white (65 percent), Asian (13 percent), Chicanx or Hispanic (9 percent), Black/Native/Dominican (4 percent), and Middle Eastern/White (4 percent) writers. Most identified as lesbian (35 percent) or queer (35 percent), followed by bisexual (13 percent), queer/lesbian (4 percent), queer/asexual/gay (4 percent), and bi/ace/queer (4 percent). One participant declined to provide demographic information.
[4.3] Participants brought decades of fan fiction experience to the study. Sixty-one percent began writing fan fiction in early adolescence (eleven to fourteen years old), and 22 percent wrote their first fic as an older teen. Only three participants had discovered fan fiction more recently, during their mid-twenties or thirties.
[4.4] Together, participants had written for fifty-six fandoms. As adolescents, participants had first written for teen-oriented media, such as Harry Potter, The Legend of Korra, and Glee. As adults, most focused on TV shows with lead women characters and queer (sub)text, including Arcane, How to Get Away with Murder, Kevin Can F**k Himself, Killing Eve, La Casa de Papel, Motherland: Fort Salem, Supergirl, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Vis a Vis, Warrior Nun, and Wynonna Earp.
[4.5] Participants had published numerous fics on AO3, ranging from ten to 250 works each. Some had also published on Tumblr, Fanfiction.net, LiveJournal, Plurk, and fandom-specific archives.
[4.6] Study participation was not limited to sexually explicit writers, but most (78 percent) reported writing these fics, which they typically described as "smut" or "porn." Additionally, all participants discussed sex writing as central to f/f fan fiction's pleasures and challenges.
5. "A rite of passage": Fan fiction and queerness
[5.1] Study participants described fic writing as a fundamentally queer activity. Most stated that almost all fic writers were queer, and several claimed that most queer people read or write fan fiction. As Chloe, a twenty-four-year-old white woman from Australia, described, "Writing fan fiction seems a very odd thing to do, but all my queer friends have written it at some point or read it currently. It seems like a rite of passage for some" (note 2).
[5.2] Participants explained that fan fiction primarily appealed to queer readers because of its sexual content. "Fan fiction readers are really into smut," said Cass, a twenty-four-year-old white nonbinary writer from the United States, while Keyla, a twenty-nine-year-old Black, Native, Dominican woman from the United States, explained that "people like the forbidden and the representation we so rarely get onscreen." Alice, a twenty-nine-year-old white woman from the United Kingdom, elaborated,
[5.3] People want sex, or at least sexual tension, no matter how much they try to convince you they're just in it for the story. I totally get it. We as queer people don't get to see queer sex on TV or in books anywhere near as much as heterosexuals do. Fics feel like the only place to get well-written queer sex produced by someone actually queer. Most free lesbian porn is for men, the stuff that isn't is expensive, trashy romance novels are mostly NOT good, and ones for queer relationships are few and far between. I think there's zero shame in wanting sex in fics, because where the hell else are we gonna see it? For free. Written by queer people who care.
[5.4] These findings underscore fan fiction's noncommerciality and enhance understandings of its gift economy, expansively reframing the gift to include free sex resources for queer readers, as well as general stories for fans (Coppa 2017; Turk 2014).
[5.5] The centrality of queer sex within fan fiction—combined with the genre's accessibility and privacy—provided a useful resource for people discovering their sexuality. Maya, a twenty-eight-year-old South-Asian woman from the United States, explained, "Fic and fandom have been instrumental in the exploration of my identity, most significantly my sexuality; growing up in a very heteronormative immigrant family, queer media and the fic I wrote for it definitely was my doorway to identifying and trying to understand that aspect of myself." Importantly, fan fiction not only normalized queer identities but also provided detailed descriptions of queer sex. Several writers described learning about sex from fan fiction when in adolescence. "It's a little embarrassing," explained Jules, a thirty-one-year-old nonbinary Chicanx writer from the United States, "but Lizzie McGuire fan fiction is where I figured out what sex was." Alex, a twenty-three-year-old white woman from the United States, elaborated, "I was writing a lot of smut before I had sex for the first time, copying other people who wrote it well. I'm pretty positive that if I'd never read fan fiction before having sex, I would not have known remotely what to do."
[5.6] Two writers had also used fan fiction to help them imagine viable trans futures. Kai, a twenty-four-year-old white nonbinary writer from the United States, explained, "There's a big reason there's a correlation between trans people and fic writing. With fic writing, you're really thinking about the character's future, whether that's going to end in demise or whether that character is going to be happy and find contentment with themselves or a partner, whatever it's going to be. Oftentimes people in their formative years have to employ that same kind of imagination just to envision a future for themselves, a loving future, what it could look like to be content."
[5.7] These findings support and enrich previous research on fan fiction's role in LGBTQ+ identity exploration, incorporating the perspectives of people of color and nonbinary writers. They also expand understandings of f/f slash's political significance, suggesting that the correspondence of fan identity and on-screen representation facilitates not only media activism but also meaningful narratives of queer and trans futures and sex.
6. "The fun stuff, obviously": Fan fiction and pleasure
[6.1] Although many participants noted the value of fan fiction for learning about sex and sexuality, the majority (78 percent) were now at different points in their lives and actively involved in offline queer relationships and communities. Writers from every nation in this study participated in offline queer friendship groups, book clubs, activist organizations, or bar, nightclub, and dating scenes. For example, Isa, a thirty-eight-year-old woman from the Philippines, had worked with a national LGBTQ+ organization for over a decade. Additionally, more than a third of participants were currently in relationships with women or nonbinary partners, and several were raising children in same-sex marriages. These experiences counter assumptions that f/f fan fiction is a valuable but temporary stepping stone from online exploration to offline experience. Several writers explicitly flipped this timeline, explaining that they only felt comfortable writing f/f fan fiction after they were secure in their queerness. Jen, a twenty-three-year-old white woman from Australia, explained, "Fic writing is completely linked to sexuality for me. I stopped writing fic when I realized I was gay because I no longer felt comfortable writing m/f but didn't have the language to write queerness. Now that I'm older, out, and very much in the queer community—I have the language now." For these writers, fan fiction functioned as an important point of connection with queerness, but not an exclusive one.
[6.2] For most interviewees, fan fiction writing was not motivated by the need to learn about sexuality in anonymous online settings, but by a desire to have fun. This took multiple forms. Several participants described the joy of creative writing. Beatriz, a twenty-seven-year-old white woman from Portugal, explained, "I really enjoy writing because it's a creative outlet. I like the concept of building something myself, creating something artistic that I can share with people. I enjoy coming up with dialogues and exploring the way writing can be so abstract, the way you can express something without ever saying it, just by putting the right pieces in the right way to create that mood."
[6.3] Others reflected upon the fun of writing for characters they loved and sharing their stories with like-minded readers. Carmen, a thirty-one-year-old woman from Puerto Rico, explained, "I like it when I can get something right for people, when I think I'm approaching what they like and see in canon, sort of like putting down a daydream and finding it along the way."
[6.4] Similar to Carmen, most participants connected fic writing to their fannish love of specific media, seeking to extend time with favorite characters and fictional worlds. Others, however, distinguished their interest in fic writing from source media and fandom. For example, Ellie, a twenty-seven-year-old white woman from the United States, kept fandom at a distance and viewed canon as "creatively intriguing" but ultimately little more than a "prompt." Additionally, Kai explained a "more substantial side of fanfic" where queer and trans writers used source media to "explore grief, desire, temptation, or remorse," with varying degrees of fannish attachments. By separating fic writing from original media and fandoms, these comments expand understandings of fan fiction writing, suggesting a broader range of interests and investments than is often reported.
[6.5] Participants who wrote sexually explicit fics (78 percent) described additional motivations and pleasures. Some used this writing to deepen enjoyment of their own fantasies. For example, Rachel, a thirty-year-old white woman in the United States, used fan fiction to explore her interest in "obsession and control and power," noting that "it feels just the right amount of steps away from my everyday life." Similarly, Sadie, a thirty-four-year-old white woman in the United States, explained that "being able to read and write kinky fic and talk about it in terms of characters helped me own it in a way I hadn't been able to before." For these participants, explicit sex writing facilitated erotic exploration and empowerment, echoing studies of m/m slash writers.
[6.6] Interviewees also offered new insights into sex writing as a form of education or advocacy. Isa, for instance, incorporated sex into her fics as "an example of sex positivity, which in my world, in the Philippines, is not talked about much." Similarly, Quinn, a thirty-two-year-old white nonbinary writer from the United States, wrote "ace-friendly fics" to showcase intimacy with an asexual partner, while Keyla wrote BDSM fics to correct misperceptions of D/s as violent or unequal, "as well as the fun stuff, obviously." For these writers, advocacy and education contributed to the pleasures of sex writing, imbuing the work with extrinsic value.
[6.7] Sexually explicit writing also helped interviewees to manage the stresses of everyday life. Isa, for example, described this writing as a temporary reprieve from her activist work in the Philippines: "There's so much going on in the real world here that's hard to celebrate. Things to do with our president, like who is he killing now, who is he fighting against, what kind of ridiculous stuff is coming out of his mouth, who among my colleagues are being arrested again. So you find ways to forget about it for a bit. It's clearly an escape, but also staying true to who I am." By emphasizing integrity in the context of political violence, Isa's remarks enrich discussions of fandom escapism that often omit complexities and the experiences of fans of color (Pande 2018).
[6.8] As Isa and other participants discussed, fan fiction fun could be multilayered, encompassing creativity, fantasy, and escapism, as well as political commitments to queer joy. This points to a broader range of creative pleasures than typically reported and highlights the problems of generalizing about f/f writers from small samples, including the sample reported here.
7. "It's good to feel less alone": Fan fiction communities
[7.1] For all study participants, fan fiction writing took place in community settings. This took several forms. A couple of writers participated in multifandom writer communities on Discord or Dreamwidth, primarily writing during organized gift exchanges. Most, however, took part in media-specific fandoms through Twitter, Tumblr, and group chats. Some writers restricted their fandom participation to occasional pseudonymous conversations, while others shared real-life identities, chatted daily, and met up offline. Some of these connections developed into long-term friendships and one participant met their wife at a fic writing convention.
[7.2] Many writers described fan fiction as an antidote to isolation. Jen, for example, described her immersion in fan fiction communities during Australia's 2020–21 COVID-19 lockdowns: "A big reason that I wrote so much fic over the pandemic was that, due to lockdowns, I was suddenly disconnected from the queer community and queer people generally. It felt almost like being a teenager again. I think writing fic was one way of expressing/exploring sexuality when I was locked in my house and unable to interact with the queer community IRL—couldn't date, go to clubs, see my queer friends, etc. But I could write about queerness and share that with other queer people online."
[7.3] Participants also explained that fan fiction networks could counteract the isolation that accompanied family responsibilities, such as parenting or elder care. As Rachel explained, "When you become a parent, the potential for shared interest is like, oh yeah, we both have kids. And that's it, you know? To find a community outside of that has been really interesting and fulfilling."
[7.4] Several writers also appreciated the transcultural reach of fan fiction communities, which facilitated connections with people of similar racial and cultural identities. For example, Victoria, a twenty-six-year-old biracial woman from the United States, described befriending a queer woman who shared her Middle Eastern background, while Isa dropped culturally specific clues into her fics to connect with lesbians from the Philippines.
[7.5] For some writers, sharing sexual fantasies made these connections particularly meaningful. Participants described the sheer fun of collectively brainstorming sex scene ideas, collaborating with fan artists, and writing "crazy smutty fics" to cheer up fandom friends. As Carol, a thirty-five-year-old white woman in the United States, noted, "It's an interesting community because you put your id out there. You could have a conversation about non-con kink and it's a regular Tuesday in fan land."
[7.6] Writers also noted the validation that writing in community could bring. Victoria, for example, explained that readers' comments had helped her resist sex-negative messaging: "My parents are extremely uptight and religious, and I grew up with them conveying that sex is 'bad,'" even before adding a queer context. Now I basically write porn on the internet LOL. But I've received a lot of encouragement and those conversations help mend the damage."
[7.7] Huan, a twenty-four-year-old nonbinary writer from Taiwan, elaborated, "I love writing about feelings, such as loneliness, fatigue, never getting what you want, being passive, being terrified, being very very sad. If I write about relationships, I love to explore power, devotion, and dom/sub dynamics. If I write about identities, I love to write about being a monster, being something most people think is not normal. I remember after sharing my fics, a reader told me they felt like this as well. Sharing my thoughts is terrifying, but at the same time I may find someone who relates to them. I think it's good to feel less alone."
[7.8] These findings enhance understandings of f/f fan fiction communities, foregrounding the ways they facilitate friendship and connections based on shared internal worlds.
8. "People will rip you apart": Racism and fan fiction
[8.1] The fan fiction communities that participants described, however, were far from ideal. Several writers of color discussed the challenges of navigating predominantly white fandom spaces. Keyla, for example, explained her reluctance to participate in fandom group chats due to experiences of marginalization and microaggressions, while Jules and Victoria identified an "insidious" racism that permeated white fandoms. This took multiple forms, including white fans' dismissive treatment of characters of color and refusal to acknowledge racism within their favorite shows.
[8.2] Participants also explained that efforts to discuss racism within white fandoms were typically futile. As Jules stated, "people will rip you apart and be like, well you should just be grateful for what we have." Jules further explained that Trump-era politics and the Black Lives Matter movement had brought racial tensions to a head within fandom, highlighting the limits of escapist entertainment and exposing "a weird conservatism that messed with the illusion that this is one big happy fandom family and everyone gets along." These findings corroborate previous work on the "fandom killjoy," whose fannish pleasures require an antiracist politics that threatens many white fans (Pande 2018; Stanfill 2019).
[8.3] Racism manifested in fan fiction too. Participants described fic writers' neglect of TV series that feature women of color in shippable roles (e.g., How to Get Away with Murder); the sidelining of powerful characters of color within fan-favorite shows (e.g., Motherland: Fort Salem); and the privileging of white women over women of color in interracial ships (e.g., Killing Eve). For example, Carol described the limited number of fics written for a Black character in Motherland: Fort Salem: "Captain Anacostia was lying in wait. Sarah Alder and Anacostia Quartermaine fics would be amazing. Mentor/mentee power dynamics, mommy kink, age gap. Lay it on. But it's never getting written in fandom because fandom is racist as fuck and Anacostia is Black."
[8.4] Participants who wrote Killing Eve and Wynonna Earp fics further described stereotypical portrayals of women of color, through language that described them as "untamed" and "spicy," fetishistic descriptions of bodies and hair, and plots that disproportionately assigned them to criminal or sex symbol roles. Jules, for example, described, "I remember reading a Wynonna Earp fic and one of the characters got robbed. The person that robbed them was a gang member, very clearly a POC character. Her name's Rosita. I think she's supposed to be Mexican or Hispanic and people are like, oh, I like Rosita, Rosita's a great character, but then they'll use her just to be a sex symbol or gang member." These observations complement studies of race and representation in f/f slash, highlighting patterns of neglect and shedding new light on racial fetishization within these fics (Pande and Moitra 2020; Coccia 2022b).
[8.5] Interviewees also offered new insights into writers' navigation of racism within fic and fan communities. Keyla, for example, described productive conversations with readers and writers concerning the identification of characters of color as "the Asian woman," or "the Black woman," when the whiteness of white characters went unmarked. Participants also described writing characters of color into prominent roles, switching to more diverse fandoms, and blocking or muting people on social media. Nonetheless, two writers in this study had limited their fan fiction writing due to racism: One had successfully switched to publishing original fiction, while another had withdrawn their work. These findings underscore the pervasiveness of racism in fandom and the need to center writers of color within fan fiction research.
9. "A frivolous filthy thing": Challenges of fan fiction
[9.1] Interviewees described additional challenges of writing fan fiction. Virtually all participants discussed its stigma, which they primarily attributed to its associations with sex. As Maya stated, "Fanfic is thought of in pretty embarrassing, tawdry terms, basically just porn for whatever characters you're lusting after," while Beatriz lamented its reputation as "this weird thing that people do when they have no life and too much free time and are obsessed with writing strangers having sex." For some writers, the stigma of fan fiction writing had increased with age, as an activity that might be developmentally appropriate for teenagers but not for adults. Hannah, a forty-one-year-old nonbinary white writer from the United States, attributed this to fan fiction's lack of fit with capitalist values: "There's an idea that it's a silly thing because you can never make money on it. And our society, capitalism, is like, oh, you're good at that thing, you should make money at it. I sometimes felt like I was wasting time." Notably, Huan was the only participant who had not experienced this stigma, describing fan fiction as a popular guilt-free activity in Taiwan.
[9.2] By linking stigma to sex and time, interviewees affirmed that "fan time" is viewed as subversive because it disrupts economic and domestic expectations of women (De Kosnik 2016). Interviewees also offered new insights into stigma's effects. For example, some writers struggled with internalized shame and embarrassment. Alice described feeling "creepy" at times for her enduring interest in explicit fan fiction, while Hannah described their personal journey with shame: "Most of what I was writing was total smut, just jerk off material for people. That's something I was a little ashamed about. I'm not at the shame place now, but I absolutely have been in the past and would not have admitted that this is my hobby, both because it's a frivolous thing and because it's a filthy thing."
[9.3] Many participants managed stigma by keeping their fan fiction private. Most only disclosed their hobby to select friends or partners, while some kept it completely secret. Faye, a thirty-four-year-old white woman from the UK, explained, "It's my guilty pleasure, so no one knows. I like that it's something just for me, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not also aware of how people outside the fic bubble perceive it." Some participants enjoyed this secrecy, but others experienced it as a loss, wishing they could share their interests, skills, and successes with friends and family more easily.
[9.4] Participants also described challenges internal to fan fiction communities. Two participants reported pressure from readers to only write explicit fic, even when ambivalent to do so. For these writers, reader engagement could be complex, particularly when seeking an audience for their work. Danielle, a twenty-five-year-old white woman from the United States, explained, "I don't really like writing sex scenes. I didn't want to do it for a long time. I didn't even read explicit fan fiction. Then I saw that it was very popular, so I read a little and was like, okay, I don't hate this as much as I used to. Then I thought about writing it, to try something new, but also to get more popular, cause I'm not gonna lie, I'm not above those tactics. This is what people really like to read." This comment affirms the influence of fan fiction's "economy of kudos" (Byrne and Fleming 2018, 698), with at least some sexually explicit writing emerging from a complex web of encouragement, pressure, compromise, and constraint (Guarriello 2019).
[9.5] Several writers also reported harassment by readers for their depictions of gender, sexuality, and sex. This included writing sex scenes that paired one member of a fan-favorite couple with a side character and writing cis women characters as nonbinary. At times, reader criticism became hostile. Readers had accused two writers of color of glorifying or normalizing sexual abuse: one for including an appropriately tagged sexual assault scene in her fic and another for writing consensual age-play kink. Writers noted that reader harassment was rare, but intense. As Victoria described, "People called me a 'pedophile' and showed up in the comments telling me it's 'sick' and I need to stop writing."
[9.6] Participants offered useful context for understanding antagonistic readers, beyond the pervasiveness of anonymous online harassment. Some pointed to broader tensions in f/f fandoms between writers who like to explore "fucked up" power dynamics and readers who desire more "wholesome" stories. Hannah explained, "It's a strange dichotomy where you have a relationship that's kind of fucked up, and I'm on team fucked up relationship. Let's go deep in that. Let's explore how that works. Then you have a whole other side of fandom where they just want a love story. Is it that we're so starved for content that anytime you see two women having a connection you want it to be this idyllic thing?"
[9.7] Keyla additionally highlighted fans' overidentification with characters: "When people hyperfixate on a movie or a show, these characters become their comfort characters. And if one thing is written wrong, they're going to let you know: Zulema would never say this, Martha would never say that, Eve would never do this. People are finding pieces of themselves in the characters, and to them, it's like, you're writing me wrong."
[9.8] Writers also pointed to purity trends in fan fiction communities more generally, as well as some readers' inability to separate fantasy from reality. These trends extend beyond f/f fandoms and reflect a broader phenomenon where self-identified fandom "antis" seek to eradicate taboo sexual content on the grounds that it normalizes and enables real-life abuse (TWC Editor 2022).
[9.9] Readers who blurred the line between fantasy and reality created additional complications for some writers, particularly those who wrote sexually explicit fics. Several writers described difficult interactions with intrusive readers, and Keyla explained that explicit writing sometimes attracted unwanted sexual attention: "There's an obsessive fixation component that attaches to shows, but it kind of attaches to writers too. A lot of people tend to think that because they know your work, they know you. And because I write a lot of the dirty stuff, I've had to block lots of people, because their first instinct is to go for the filthy comments. I'm like, oh, thanks. Do you want to buy me a drink first?"
[9.10] Finally, two writers reflected on the impact that explicit sex writing might have on their own sex lives. Alice explained, "I sometimes wonder if it can be desensitizing. I'm not sure. Do we become less sensitive to stuff because we write about it so much? Every time I write a detailed sex scene, am I becoming immune to the allure of sex?"
[9.11] Together, these sets of concerns highlight the complex terrain of fan fiction writing, as well as the creative and emotional labor that writers invest in these worlds.
10. Discussion
[10.1] As a field, fan fiction studies has paid relatively little attention to the insights and experiences of fan fiction writers, as well as to the specificities of f/f slash. It has also primarily focused on white fans and neglected a sustained analysis of race. Heeding calls to interrupt these trends, my in-depth interview study with a racially diverse, transnational sample of f/f slash writers, with focus on sexually explicit writing, demonstrates the viability and value of such research and offers several insights.
[10.2] Similar to previous research, my study found that f/f fan fiction provides a supportive space for queer identity exploration (Duggan 2022; Dym et al 2019; Floegel 2020; Hanmer 2014). It also found that explicit sex writing plays a key role, introducing readers to queer sex. Previous studies of f/f writers have neglected this detail, but it corroborates anecdotal evidence (Strapagiel 2019) and complements studies of adolescents who learn about heterosexual sex from m/f fan fiction (Carboni and Bhana 2019).
[10.3] Unlike previous studies, most of my participants were immersed in offline queer communities and relationships. The prevalence of fic-writing among adults secure in their queerness challenges an underlying assumption of some research, which frames f/f fan fiction as a time-limited activity that ends when people enact their desires in the real world. In contrast, my research aligns with Duggan (2022) in finding that queer and nonbinary writers keep closer ties between online and offline LGBTQ+ communities than previously assumed.
[10.4] Diverging from most interview studies, this article highlights the experiences of f/f writers of color. As such, it provides a fuller account of fan fiction communities than is often reported. As Pande (2018) argues, fan studies typically only addresses race in response to specific controversies, neglecting the significant contributions of fans of color to online creative communities. In this study, writers of color had contributed to fandom for many years, producing high-ranking fics, participating in fan conferences and events, and creating welcoming spaces for new writers. These writers offered fresh perspectives on seemingly race-neutral topics, including the nuances of escapist writing and the value of connecting with queer people of color via fan communities.
[10.5] Participants also detailed the everyday operations of white supremacy within f/f fandoms, contributing to a wealth of research on racism in fan communities (Pande 2018; Pande and Moitra 2017; Stanfill 2019; Thomas 2023; Wanzo 2015). Participants also described their strategies for navigating such spaces. These included centering characters of color within their own writing; dropping culturally specific clues into fics to connect with peers; switching to more racially diverse fandoms; and leaving fan fiction to write original fiction. While some fans have criticized the latter move as selling out (Byrne and Fleming 2018), writers of color in this study made clear that fan fiction spaces are not utopias, despite their remove from profit-driven markets.
[10.6] My research further highlights the value of centering pleasure within fan fiction studies. As members of offline queer communities, most of my participants did not write fan fiction to explore or validate their identities but to have fun in relation with others. Previous interview studies have paid surprisingly little attention to the concept of fun, instead focusing on fan fiction's use as writing instruction or resource for isolated queer youth and adults. These uses are important, of course, but focusing on them exclusively risks overshadowing writing for pleasure. This becomes problematic when the overlooked pleasures derive (at least partially) from writing about sex, particularly sex between women or nonbinary characters.
[10.7] Participants wrote sexually explicit f/f fan fiction for multiple reasons: as silly gifts for friends, thoughtful interventions into sexual politics, masturbatory material for readers, temporary escape from everyday stresses, and to counter sexual shame and deepen enjoyment of personal fantasies. Participants viewed f/f slash writing as a politically and culturally significant activity that provided space to promote meaningful narratives of sex positivity, BDSM practices, and ace intimacies. At the same time, participants described racist dynamics within fan fiction that fetishized and exoticized women of color. These findings underscore the need for intersectional analyses of sexually explicit f/f slash, with particular attention to writers themselves.
[10.8] By taking the perspectives of f/f fan fiction writers seriously, this study is one of the first to document some of the challenges they face. Almost all writers described the stigma of fan fiction, which significantly shaped the conditions under which they wrote. Participants also described challenges that arose within fan fiction spaces, including intracommunity pressure to write smut exclusively, and the possible effects of sex writing on their own lives.
[10.9] Several participants detailed the harassment of writers who strayed from expected sex and gender scripts. Previous studies have described fan fiction's homonormative tendencies, with frequent emphasis on marriage, monogamy, and happy endings (Guarriello 2019), but mine is the first to report writers' first-hand accounts of the pressures to adhere to these norms. Participants also received criticism for including nonbinary characters in their fics. Most directly, this points to readers' transphobia and attachments to canonical gender. It also points to the limits of AO3's reliance on binary gender (f/f, f/m, m/m) when classifying works.
[10.10] I recognize writers as the creative backbone of fan fiction communities and call for their experiences to be taken seriously within the field. This includes experiences of joy, connection, and creativity, as well as experiences of conflict and doubt. Moreover, I highlight the complex politics of writing sexually explicit fics within fandoms that can be racist, transphobic, erotic, antagonistic, playful, transgressive, supportive, punitive, appreciative, demanding, homonormative, and queer—frequently all at the same time.
[10.11] This study has several limitations. First, I recruited participants using nonprobability sampling, and the results are not generalizable to other f/f fan fiction writers. In particular, my initial recruitment of Killing Eve writers may have overrepresented authors interested in kink and power-play due to the show's canonical queer psychosexual relationship. Second, the sample was predominantly white, despite including a higher proportion (30 percent) of writers of color than is typical. Third, the study was limited to English-speaking writers and primarily focused on English-speaking countries.
[10.12] The study demonstrates the value and limits of conducting interview studies from an acafan (academic/fan) position. On the one hand, my visibility as a fan fiction reader and writer allowed me to recruit participants and establish trust and rapport during interviews. On the other, my insider status inevitably shaped and closed down some conversations, albeit in ways that are hard to track. Moreover, as Pande (2018) notes, the acafan position does not preclude broader power dynamics that shape research interactions. Most notably, my visibility as a white middle-aged genderqueer academic will have shaped interview dynamics at least as much as my fan fiction experience.
[10.13] Despite these limitations, I suggest ways that future researchers can access more diverse samples. First, researchers can recruit from fandoms that attract fans of color. Recruitment for this study began through the fandom for Killing Eve, a show that features a woman of color lead and that attracts a racially diverse transnational fanbase with particular (but not limited) appeal to Asian viewers who watch for leading actor, Sandra Oh. Second, researchers can recruit participants through direct invitation, instead of general social media announcements, to counter self-selection biases that may amplify whiteness. Finally, researchers can consult with writers of color before launching their project, to ensure that it addresses areas of concern.
11. Conclusion
[11.1] I demonstrate the value of interview studies with diverse groups of f/f fan fiction writers and underscore the need to address sexually explicit writing. I approach sex and pleasure as legitimate and complex sites of inquiry, deserving of serious intersectional analysis. I also recognize writers as expert informants with valuable insights into creative practice and community dynamics. By emphasizing the joys and challenges of f/f fan fiction writing, I present a fuller picture of fan fiction communities than is typically reported and spotlight the considerable labor that writers contribute to the field.
12. Acknowledgments
[12.1] I'm grateful to the fan fiction writers who shared their time and insights with me for this study, as well as the anonymous reviewers who provided invaluable feedback and support. The research was supported by San Francisco State University's Office of Research and Sponsored Programs.