The literary world’s most misunderstood genre made me the author I am today.
The year is 2012. A young and hopelessly insecure Brittany finds herself feeling lost and directionless in the world around her. She goes through the motions of life, pretending that discussion of Autumnal fashion trends, Taylor Swift’s latest album, and the hottest guys in English class could somehow, someday, be enough. She yearns for childhood, when everyone seemed on the same page about the insipid woes of reality. There was a time when sessions of play-pretend were regarded as sacred, soul-grounding acts of detachment from the solid human self.
What happened? she thought. When did everyone decide to grow up?
The crushing weight of societal expectation began to pile atop my shoulders, urging me to join the crowd in their incessant grownup-ness. I couldn’t bear it, let alone attempt to carry it. Then, right when I needed it most, a brigade of fictional characters stepped into my life and hoisted Planet Earth up into the sky. I discovered an abundance of media franchises with characters who felt like family, and places that felt like home.
Suddenly, I realized I wasn’t the only counterfeit adult in the world. There were thousands — if not hundreds of thousands — of others, and they’d all congregated in similar career streams. Media makers, from authors to screenwriters, directors to editors, composers to animators, and so on… They were all living their lives under the same unspoken oath. They were giddily rebellious defiers of reality perceived only by the senses.
Some create to explore and escape. Others create to ignite and invite change. Regardless, all specialize in opening portals, making unknown pockets of the multiverse known.
My discovery of this magnificent career field happened when I visited my local theater to watch The Avengers. Two and a half hours witnessing Marvel’s first installment of their saga-to-be were absolutely life-changing. In Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Thor Odinson, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Bruce Banner, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, and even Loki Laufeyson, I saw the friends I’d never had. In Marvel’s altered version of our monochromatic world, I felt impossibly, enigmatically at home. When I returned from the theater, my life was filled with colors I’d been blind to prior.
I wanted to venture back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but not just through watching the film. I wanted to pave my own path there, and thus, my fan fiction journey began.
Finding Myself In The Character I Wanted To Play
You’ve likely heard of The Alter Ego Effect, but if you haven’t, it’s essentially a self-development protocol aimed at helping people discover the truest versions of themselves through designing an alter ego. The irony here is that one’s alter ego tends to be a manifestation of all the authentic traits they’ve been taught to hide. In many ways, it’s more about peeling away layers of self-imposed fraudulence in order to find what is really real.
Within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, designing an alter ego also meant designing a “super self”. Within the safe and private confines of my anonymous Wattpad account, I was able to recreate my persona without the limits, fears, and insecurities experienced in my previous life. My character was a blank canvas, and I was an artist holding a paint palette of endless possibility.
I made my new self stronger, more confident, and more authentic than I’d ever had the courage to be. Through her, I unknowingly dug through the muddy mounds of false personality traits I’d integrated just to gain acceptance and approval from others. For example, at my high school, I often felt like wearing dainty pink skirts and creamy kitten heels would get me oogled. Plus, in my notoriously sexist town, it would be like an outward offer of permission for the boys to ridicule and condescend to me. So, I opted for black-on-black clothing. I wore boring jeans, plain shirts, and the occasional bomber jacket that felt hopelessly unaligned with me.
In my heart, I simply loved pastels, lace, and silky ribbons tied into bows. It had nothing to do with my gender, but because of the culture around me, I still felt I had to put up a shield of inauthenticity as protection.
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, however, this was anything but the case. The men of Marvel weren’t sexist, at least not in the Brittany Timeline established in my fan fiction. Here, I was safe to dress as I pleased. I was safe to explore different options, and become become become more of myself with each passing chapter. In my laptop’s side tabs, I’d cultivate shopping lists filled with all the clothing in my Marvel closet. Years later, I’d develop the courage to purchase them here, too.
Obviously, it goes far deeper than clothing. However, I hope this metaphor provides a bit of insight into the extent to which fan fiction helped me escape who I was trained to be and discover who I wanted to be. With each new development in my Marvel plot line, I unearthed a buried part of myself. If it wasn’t something old and nearly forgotten, it was something new and exhilarating. A romantic wish I’d made when I was ten years old. A fresh, sparkling lust for freedom and adventure. Radiant power bubbling shamelessly to the surface of my soul.
To put it simply, writing fan fiction taught me who I truly am and showed me what I truly want.
Eventually, Fanfiction Became A Full-Blown Writing Career
Remember how I mentioned that all the counterfeit adults of the world seem to have gathered under one umbrella of career paths? Well, when I began to contemplate how I might make a life for myself on this physical plane of existence, I decided to pursue the same paths.
At first, I dabbled in several artistic mediums. I toyed with visual art in the classes offered by my high school, but found myself dreadfully lacking in the talent department. I once spent upwards of two hours desperately trying to draw a dimensionally accurate sphere, a mere exercise in shading that my teacher labeled as easy. When I approached him with my final piece, he looked at me with deep, concerned sincerity in my eyes and asked if I was seriously planning to hand it in for a grade. He thought I’d been joking, or otherwise slacking off.
Needless to say, I put the pencil down and let my aching fingers rest.
Next, I tried acting, and truly loved it. Acting felt like a means of embodying fantasy worlds, for just a few fleeting hours, right here on Earth. With the right cast, it was like a communal hallucination, a collective journey to the otherworlds. It was permission to play pretend professionally, and for an audience that wouldn’t assume psychosis for doing so.
Still, acting lacked something for me. The periods of interdimensional travel were far too short, and sets can only be so immersive. Even big Hollywood movie sets are egregiously interrupted by massive cameras and unsightly grayscale equipment. Regardless of a story’s imaginative potential, the process of bringing it from script-to-stage or script-to-screen is just that, a process. It isn’t a calm, nurturing pool of fantasy to wade in. It is a wave to be surfed as effectively and efficiently as possible. Acting classes and workshops were more my speed, but to make a whole career of it just seemed too daunting.
This left me with an answer almost hilariously obvious. Writing.
For years, I’d been writing fan fiction daily. I literally could not go through a single day without typing at least part of a chapter on my Wattpad account. It was medicine for the many sicknesses of reality. It soothed my soul and eased my heart into a place of eternal safety. Writing had always been that warm, delicately rippling pool of iridescent cerulean water. It was a hot spring suspended in the void, an oasis and a haven.
I would write forever with no financial incentive, but to actually support myself with it would be a dream come true. At first, many of my loving, timid caregivers questioned my decision to go after something so uncertain. They advised I secure a more predictable career path and treat writing as a hobby with distant potential. For someone else, this might have been sound advice, but to me, it felt like a gilded shackle. The fearless people who’d crafted the franchises that became a home to me couldn’t have treated their writing as a mere hobby. Their dedication was reckless, but it was also relentless.
I adopted the mantra, “I can’t fail if I never stop.”
Writing is the one thing I can’t ever see myself growing exhausted with or bored of. Every story is a new adventure, and every chapter is a new opportunity to uncover hidden parts of myself. In a way, it’s a steadfast and consistent practice of self-love. Fan fiction showed me how much I needed such a practice, and writing professionally reaffirms its importance every day.
Whenever the expectations of the world creep up behind me, or my people-pleasing tendencies of the past threaten to make an unwelcome appearance, I race to my writing desk to remind myself of who I am. Who I really am, as manifested in all the characters I aspire to be. I think a lot of artists do this, and I think the writers we admire are more like their main characters than they let on.
So, whether you write fan fiction about being sold to Harry Styles, your wispy blonde locks propped up in a messy ponytail, or superhero stories where you fight alongside Captain America and Tony Stark, know that it is so much more than silly musings. People who don’t understand might be bewildered by the strange, fantastical scenarios us daydreamers yearn for in the sweet safety of our mind sanctuaries, and I say we let them.
The only person who has to understand, appreciate, and cherish these adventures is you. But who knows… Someday, the fan fiction you write might evolve into the fiction others find a home in.
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