Finding friends in fan-fic
Did you know that fan fiction is only one form of ‘fandom’? In the digital age, there are so many ways to unlock your favourite worlds, such as cosplay, role playing, music playlists, fan discussions and forums, fan social media accounts, fan-made videos and fan art (search DeviantArt if you’re into that kind of thing).
But this is Writing Magazine, and so we focus on the ‘fics’, as fan-written works are called. There is fiction and non-fiction; the former imagines fictional charcters, worlds and concepts, whereas non-fiction suggests stories concerning real people. Reading both would rid me of my naïvety – in the ‘best way’, as I would find out later…
A disclaimer, though, before we begin: get ready for pure, NSFW (Not Safe For Work) erotica. My first foray into fan fiction showed me rather swiftly that it is mostly about steamy sexual ‘slash content’, where the romance would be specified with a forward slash between the two character names. ‘General’ platonic relationships in fics are, by contrast, demonstrated with an ampersand and are called ‘straight ships’. But to
