Let Fanfiction Be Radical
Fanfiction has always been political.
Even when we don’t call it that, it is. Writing into the margin. Imagining queer love. Re-centering forgotten characters. Reclaiming ancestral power. Reshaping the stories we were denied has always been an act of resistance. Even when it feels like play. Especially then.
I’ve been thinking about a recent wave of conversation around AI in fandom. A lot of the concerns being raised are valid. The fear of creative theft, of disconnection, of losing the heart of what makes fandom special. I feel that. But I also noticed something in the way the conversation is unfolding. The way it sometimes leans into binaries, into “real” and “not real,” into who belongs and who doesn’t.
That struck something in me. Not because I disagree with the importance of protecting creative work. But because I believe protection without reflection turns into gatekeeping.
Fandom is intellectual. It always has been. But it’s also emotional. Embodied. Lived. It’s built by people who don’t always have access to academic institutions or publishing opportunities. People who write in their second or third language. People who are disabled, tired, undocumented, working three jobs. People who come to fanfiction because it’s the only place they’ve ever been allowed to create.
I know this because I was a queer Puerto Rican boy writing Animorphs fanfiction and roleplaying on AOL Kids message boards when I was twelve. I got torn apart for my grammar, my spelling, my ideas. But I stayed. Because I needed to imagine a version of myself that lived. Because for some of us, this is the lifeline.
That’s why I wrote We Sisters Three. I’ve always loved Charmed. But I needed a version that reflected me. So I reimagined the sisters as Puerto Rican women navigating a lineage of magic that had been sealed, suppressed, rewritten into something more acceptable. Because ancestral magic is often seen as dangerous. As impure. I know what that feels like.
This story doesn't come from a generator. It comes from grief. From memory. From questions I’ve been asking my whole life. And like many writers who get paid to write (which I do as well), I use tools sometimes. To help me think through a scene. To reorganize a tangle of thoughts. To support my voice when language feels distant. That doesn’t make my story less mine. It doesn’t erase the heart.
And that’s the thing. When we talk about AI, or access, or what counts as writing, we have to be careful about how we hold the conversation. Not because critique isn’t necessary. But because sometimes our fear of harm makes us forget who we’re standing beside.
We can talk about harm without drawing hard lines around belonging. We can hold boundaries without reinforcing walls that were never meant for us to begin with.
Because here’s what I see too and this might hurt a little, but I need you to consider it.
We still celebrate and contribute to the Harry Potter fandom, long after the author made her views on trans women violently clear and has supported legislation that hurts trans women and their bodies. We still write fics, build AUs, reclaim space in that world. And somehow, we find nuance for that. We find ways to reimagine, to take the story back. We say we’ve separated the art from the artist. That this space is ours now.
And maybe it is.
But I think about that when I see people writing entire posts about how AI is killing creativity or how using support tools means someone isn’t a “real writer.” I think about how quickly we lose compassion when someone’s writing process doesn’t look like our own. How many people can still find empathy for a billion-dollar franchise and none for a disabled writer who used a tool to finish their paragraph.
And then I think what are we really protecting?
Let me say this gently. Sometimes, in our effort to defend the art we love, we draw lines that push people out. We speak from frustration, from burnout, from fear of being erased. And that’s real. But it’s worth asking who we might be erasing in the process.
Because I see AO3 as a sacred space too. I know what it has done for writers. I know how much it has protected. I believe in it. I upload there. I read there. I love what we’ve built. But it’s not immune to the patterns of the larger world. Fandom is not a utopia. It is still a mirror.
And sometimes that mirror needs cleaning.
Because what I’m seeing right now in fandom is a lot of fear. And where there’s fear, there’s often flattening. We’re not having the full conversation. We’re skipping the part where access is political, too.
Is AI art less valid when it's the only tool someone with no hand mobility can use? What about a fanfic writer who only writes in Spanish, but knows their work won’t be read unless it’s in English? What about someone who wants to write a Buffy AU where Buffy dies and Kendra lives. Yeah, I said it because I want to READ IT. I want to read about how a Black girl from Jamaica finally gets to be the main character but no one else does because it doesn’t center the white one?
Who gets to call that work real?
Because yes. Some people are pasting full AI-generated stories into AO3 with no care, no voice, no labor of their own. That’s not okay. And yes. Artists deserve compensation. Writers deserve to be read with reverence. We pour hours and soul into this work for free. We give. We give. We give.
I think about how many people write slash without reckoning with what it means to be queer in real life.
How many Black Panther fics use T’Challa as a side character or a narrative prop.
How new fandoms like Sinners grow and draw in white creators who want to play in those worlds but don’t always enter with care.
And how often, when someone says, hey, this feels wrong, this feels extractive, they’re told to lower their voice. Be nicer. Say it in a way that doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable.
There is so much tone policing in this community too. Especially when the people speaking are Black. Brown. Queer. Femme. Disabled. Neurodivergent. When we are loud, we are aggressive. When we are soft, we are ignored. When we are honest, we are told to be nicer.
But care doesn’t always sound like a whisper. And not all truth arrives gently.
Still, this isn’t a callout. This is a call in.
To remember that fanfiction isn’t neutral. It never was. That writing into stories we didn’t create, especially across cultures and histories and identities, comes with responsibility. Not perfection. But presence. But care.
And if you find yourself writing essays about who counts as a writer, while also joking about how you haven’t finished a WIP in ten years or how you have no discipline, maybe take a breath. Maybe ask yourself why someone else’s access to tools, or different creative rhythm, feels like a threat. Maybe ask why the part of you that’s scared has made someone else the enemy.
Writing is hard. Creating is hard. And some of us are doing it in the margins. In the gaps. Between shifts. In another language. Through trauma. Through fatigue. Through grief.
Let people get there how they get there. The heart is what matters. The voice is what matters. The story is what stays.
That’s why I helped start the Forgotten Fanfiction Collective. A space for the ones who are always told to wait their turn. For writers who are tired. For those of us who are BIPOC, queer, femme, disabled, neurodivergent. For anyone who needs to be the main character for once in a community that often treats us like background noise.
We’re here. We’re writing. And we are blazing a trail whether you read us or not.
Because fanfiction can be a radical space.
It already is.
We just have to let it be.
Martin Adela