- At xojane, Emily Ansara Baines claimed I Learned Everything I Know About Sex From Reading X-Files Fan Fiction in High School. “Thanks to fan fiction, I didn’t mind some dirty talk. I also finally started to understand how oral sex was supposed to work and maybe even be enjoyable. While anal didn’t intrigue me, thanks to X-Files fan fiction I saw how it could be romantic and not, as my girlfriends told me, demeaning. So, when it came to me actually having sex, I felt prepared. At 16, I was the youngest of my friends to embark on that experience.”
- Rosemarie Alejandrino wrote about her anger at the idea that fanfiction should be hidden. “A friend of mine told me that her parents had lectured her about not reading enough books and wasting all her time on the computer. Then she said to me in confidence, ‘I read thousands of words a day, and I can’t tell anybody because … all I read is ‘Glee’ lesbian fanfiction.’ And suddenly I was angry. As someone who found solace and comfort in reading, who looked up to the Matildas and the Belles and the Rory Gilmores of the world, I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be ashamed of reading and to keep such an impactful part of your life hidden from the world.”
- While some students are winning cash prizes for their fanfiction, others decided to teach about it. The Daily Californian featured a story on a pair of undergraduates at UC Berkeley exploring erotic fanfiction. “At a weekly DeCal class called “The Theory of Fanfiction,” students share and explore the forms and themes of fan fiction. Students meet each Monday to discuss the genre’s role in the literary world as well as in society as a whole. Through the class, started this semester by UC Berkeley senior Isadora Lamego and junior Katrina Hall, students explore the history of fandom, the role of social media in developing the genre and fan fiction’s importance in providing a vehicle for alternative sexuality and kink expression.”
- Ten Eighty looked at the line between hearing your audience and turning their interests or identities into an ongoing joke. “There is a possibility of a Queer kid seeing that thumbnail, clicking on it with the hope of their favourite YouTuber coming out as part of their Queer/LGBTQ+ community,” says Jazza. “For the YouTuber to use that click-bait and to then shoot down the possibility of them being Queer as being weird and gross, that’s what made me angry.”
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