THE ORIGINAL
STAR TREK
FAN FICTION
WAS MOSTLY
WOMEN WRITING
SCHLOCKY
HOMOEROTIC
ROMANCES
ABOUT CAPTAIN
SPOCK, TWO
SOULS
TRAPPED IN
CONTRIVED
SITUATIONS
WHERE THEY
HAD TO HAVE
SEX OR DIE.
It was through fandom that I learned a more visceral
vocabulary of anti-sexism and anti-racism, in literature
as well as life. In LiveJournal and other fanfic commu-
nities, I learned the lexicon of privilege and structural
oppression. I learned that there is a profound connection
between the way a person sees the world and the stories
they read and write. If you believe that Western imperi-
alism is a net good, you will write one kind of epic space
drama. You’ll write a very different kind if you recognize
the need for safe spaces and trigger warnings—terms
that function not as censorship but as an in-group sig-
nal: These are places where trauma is discussed, where
we care about others, where everyone has been through
something and escaped through the backlit bolt-hole of
online fandom to find people just like us.
But fandom also helped me meet people unlike
myself, and that was just as important. There comes a
time in the life of every lonely, misunderstood, intelligent
child of privilege when they must confront the fact that
being intelligent, lonely, and misunderstood is not the
worst thing that can befall a person, that some people
have a great deal more to contend with on top of being
an unsalvageable dweeb. I was and remain a clueless
Caucasian shut-in with a lot to learn, but that part of
my education started when I began following fans and
creators of color. My first real friends who weren’t white
lived thousands of miles away, and I knew them through
jerky avatars and punnish screen names and an exhaus-
tive knowledge of Tolkien lore. I educated myself with
the articles and books they linked to. There were long,
torturous flame wars. I listened. Itook notes.
Fandom was as important to my college education as
anything I learned at actual lectures, which I sometimes
skipped in favor of debating alternative fan theories of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the pub. In my final year,
when it turned out Oxford didn’t offer degrees in fanLAURIE PENNY (@pennyred)
is a journalist, a TV writer, and
the author, most recently, of
Bitch Doctrine. She wrote the
fiction story “Real Girls” in
issue 27.01.