Breathy voices, innocent girls, bad tattooed boys and sexual tension so heavy you could feel it leaping off the page. Yes, we’re talking about fanfiction, ladies and gentlemen.
This one’s a shout-out to all the teen crazed girls either writing or reading fanfictions on Wattpad about their favourite celebrities. We’re also shouting out to everyone participating in the adult world, while simultaneously clinging to a fanfiction on their phone in an attempt to hide it from their friends and avoid further embarrassment (I refuse to confirm nor deny if this has been my life for the past few weeks).
For those of you who don’t know, fanfiction is fiction written by a fan of and featuring characters from a particular TV series, film or real-life celebrities. The amateur genre seemed to gain popularity amongst teen fans of One Direction, but there’s a plethora of fanfiction to tickle your fancy (Harry Potter, Twilight, Star Wars, etc).
drarry ? pic.twitter.com/a3Acei3Wr6
— ben bir weasley olmalıyım (@softronw) March 17, 2019
Following the ending of the Twilight fanfic trilogy-turned global box-office success, Fifty Shades of Grey, we now shift our attention to another fanfiction success story of similar content: After. Which, in my opinion, is basically a teen version of Fifty Shades.
After was a fanfiction written by Anna Todd in 2013, under her Wattpad user handle ‘imaginator1D’, based on a fictional story of boy-meets-girl and featuring –you guessed it – the boys from One Direction. The story follows a timid and stereotypically uptight college girl, Tessa, as she falls in love with the standard tatted, pierced, and troubled bad boy – Harry.
While the names of the One Direction boys were changed once the book was published, the fact still stands that this is an erotic, sensual and often toxic fictional story written about none other than Harry Styles.
Although, I do think it’s worth mentioning that Todd did not claim to write a story based on Harry himself. Rather that she imagined him while writing the story. Just like she imaged other known actors for other characters within the story.
The bodice-ripping sex scenes seem a little uncomfortable when you remember that Todd claimed she typically wrote them on her iPhone while standing in line at Target or at the grocery store. The story itself is gripping, might I add.
To sum it all up, her online readership ballooned, publishers and movie studios took note and now we have an official After movie and book.
Putting aside my recommendations for interested parties to read the fan fiction and watch the film, we do need to talk about this weird world of celebrity fanfiction that the internet has created.
As far as I knew, if you had some sort of weird fantasy or obsessive crush on a celebrity or movie character, you sealed that information deep in your own private mind. Yet, fanfiction writers have decided to allow these fantasies into the public realm.
I’m not complaining, not really. These stories breathe new life into films and published books written by other authors, even giving celebrity obsessed individuals a place to express their lust for their oh-so-unattainable crushes.
We also can’t deny the opportunity for recognition and success that sites like Wattpad offer for online writers, particularly when we consider the number of films that Netflix and other movie studios have picked up following online popularity.
Yet, there are some that claim that fanfictions are unethical. There is a case to be made when you consider that fanfiction often romanticises relationships between real-life individuals against their knowledge or consent.
In 2017, One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson spoke out about how the fanfictions produced about the imagined relationship between himself and Harry Styles, otherwise known as the ‘Larry’ ship, harmed their friendship.
“It created this atmosphere between the two of us where everyone was looking into everything we did. It took away the vibe you get off anyone. It made everything, I think on both fences, a little bit more unapproachable,” Tomlinson told The Sun.
The problem here is that, when it comes to celebrities, their status often means that people begin separating them from real-life human beings to just an image on a screen. Aside from the legality issues and possible defamation lawsuits that could take place, sometimes this does have negative repercussions on the lives of the celebrities involved (as we saw with Styles and Tomlinson).
I won’t even go into the ethical questions that are raised with the darker side of fanfiction writing. It only takes you a few minutes of searching in the crevices of online forums to find a number of messed up stories featuring underage children, kidnapping and even rape.
A fanfiction reader and writer, Kyra, told i-D; “If the original content doesn’t give you what you want from the characters, you can just go to the internet and find (or write) what you’re looking for. If you have a particular sexual kink and want to read about it, why buy or write an erotic story about a bunch of random characters with no relatable backstory when you can read about characters you already know and love?”
In the case of After, many Harry Styles fans feel that the initial release of the story using him as the main character of a quite toxic and emotionally abusive relationship was disrespectful to the star himself. It didn’t help matters when the film begun to be advertised using his name as a selling point.
Realistically speaking, there is a clear ethical dilemma when it comes to fanfiction writing. However, I seriously doubt the obsessive writers of the internet are going to stop writing fanfiction – harmful or not.
As for After, there’s a case to be made about the use of Harry Styles’ name and also one to be made about the promotion of unhealthy relationships, yet either way: the film is due to be released this April.
Take a look at the trailer below and let us know what you think about the fanfiction genre!
