Fan-fiction is not cringe

Fan-fiction by many people is considered weird and cringe but I am going to change your mind.

back in high school I knew a girl, she was kind, tried her absolute hardest in school but no matter what amount of effort she pout in she struggled to read because of her dyslexia and struggled to write because of her coordination disorder. Her teachers had no idea how to help her until one afternoon she was caught sneaking her phone behind her book and instead of being mad her teacher was intrigued. The girl who couldn't read was sitting there reading Wattpad. she had changed her device so the background was black and the text was green and this had stopped the text from moving. seeing this as a solution the teacher went on to let the girl submit her own fanfics for assessments, submit black and green documents, and even sent her pdfs of class readings so she could read them in black and green.

That girl... was me! Its why this whole website is in black and green. it is also that kindness that stopped me from giving up on writing altogether and allowed me to be here writing this article.

But what drew me in to sites like Wattpad and AO3? it was simply just the community. it was the fact that stories could be incomplete, they could be written with random usage of punctuation and grammar. there was an understanding that everyone was still learning, that it was a kind place to trial writing and gain feedback but also that you could read about topics many regular books did not cover and explore more genres than you possibly would have simply because the people you are a fan of are the main characters.

One of the earliest pieces i read was either related to 5sos or 1D and despite the fact I wouldn't usually go for something in this genre it was a victorian style melodrama and I loved it! I loved how the style allowed the characters to interact with each other and I ended up not only using that piece for an assignment I also did an entire essay on the style of victorian melodramas.

I think thats something that gets lost when people reduce fanfics down to just this one cringe thing, that what it is actually bringing is community, self expression, and the ability to explore something beyond your own bubble of what you know. I think that is why the dialogue needs to change around fandom its not cringe its a creative starting point!