Why I Write Fanfiction and Feel Super Guilty About It

The ick! My god, the ick.

Hello, I'm back again, and like I told you about the last time, I'm still working on that West Wing fanfiction about Sam Seaborn recovering from a traumatic hostage situation. Last time we met, it was almost 100 pages. Well, I'm embarrassed to report that it has breached the 100-page mark after I went back and wrote a beginning for it. Yeah. A beginning. Because I felt like I got to the end, but felt like I wanted to know what was happening before the story I started back in 2022. 

A great use of my time and productivity! And a super swell way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of The West Wing's premiere. If that wasn't enough, I also found out how to download another 9-1-1: Lone Star fanfiction I wrote that I want to rewrite, because that's another excellent way to put off writing the original stories I'm terrified to touch right now. 

That was a very negative way to start this article, but there's a reason I feel so gross about writing fanfiction that goes beyond how it keeps me from my own stories. It's the way I'm hijacking other people's stories. 

Everyone is a fan of things. We all have favorite movies, TV shows, bands, actors, etc. but most fans of things are content to simply enjoy those things. Some of us who have the instinct of storytelling and, in my case, writing, want to take those stories to new places, sometimes to see what we'd like to see. (For example: For a different West Wing fanfiction, I really wanted to see Sam Seaborn and Ainsley Hayes go on a date and be a couple. As a former coworker at Marvel described it, fanfiction is when you want to see two characters kiss. And I did.) 

It was -- and still is -- fun to write those two characters bantering, making out, and having very sexy sex with each other. (Let it be known -- I have written some West Wing smut.) It's a really, really fun exercise. And it might even be good writing. But it's not for anyone to see. 

This is not how I used to feel about the fanfiction I wrote, and this is where my guilt comes in. 

Years ago, I was a fan of the show Bones. This was back in 2008, when I was at probably the worst job I've ever had in my life. Writing Bones fanfiction was my escape, as was the live comedy and acting I was doing way back in my 20s. But my fandom had gotten to the point where I'd become part of a fanfiction community. Again, that by itself is not necessarily a problem. But once you've become part of a community, the work is shared. It's beta read. But it's just sort of there for everyone's enjoyment. I'd been part of a Scream fanfiction community back in high school, when it was the late 1990s and the internet made noise when you turned it on. 

In the cases of both Scream and Bones, things happened that I didn't like. Characters I liked were written off, either by being killed (in the case of Randy in Scream 2) or inexplicably becoming killers (in the case of Zack on Bones). So I did what any fan would do -- I wrote my own scripts. My "alternative" version of Scream 2 was the first full-length screenplay I ever completed, which was really exciting! I thought it was the first step towards an actual screenwriting career. And while there is a hint of a story there, it's not at all good! But it was a start, and I'm actually proud of that. 

I also wrote a script for Bones in which Zack Addy was proven to not have been a killer. It was part of a blog contest with another fanfiction writer who wrote her own (great) script explaining why he was a killer. There was no winner. We were both standing by our theories, but we were also really psyched that we'd actually teamed up to do this. (And for the record, I was right.) 

At the time, there was a part of me that kind of hoped my story would make it somewhere. I'd legitimately researched things for that Bones script and made an effort to write it as if it was a spec script that I'd put in a packet. And there was also a part of me that wanted it to be part of the official Bones canon. I'll chalk that up to being so desperate to not be at the job I was in at the time. 

I don't feel that way anymore, and it comes from witnessing toxic fandom at its worst. (Also the wisdom of aging.) It's not the vast majority of fandom, but it's the worst part and the noisiest part. When fans believe they have some sort of ownership over the things they love, when they think they can influence the story somehow and get angry, hostile, and even make threats to the people who are part of the story's creation or production when they don’t like a story’s direction, that's toxic fandom. That's when you're not a fan anymore, you're just an asshole who gets mad because you didn't get your own way, or you realize you have no control over something that was never yours to begin with. 

That is what I feel like I see in the mirror sometimes as a fanfiction writer. 

I worked at Marvel for three years. While I was shielded from the toxic part of the fandom, my friends and colleagues in the social media department saw the worst of the worst. The angry incel fanboys who were upset that a female character was getting some time in the spotlight, or a character who wasn't white, or a same-sex coupling, as if there had only ever been straight white boys who were fans of Marvel. This has never been true. Never. 

I also witnessed it when the female-led Ghostbusters movie came out. I was beside myself with joy over this movie. Not only were there women -- hilarious, talented women -- playing Ghostbusters, like I'd always wanted to be since I was nine years old, but we were finally getting Ghostbusters costumes that were real and not "slutty Ghostbusters" costumes! Of course, the menfolk were livid, including friends of mine. Like they loved Ghostbusters more than I ever did. (Not possible.) 

It's not just men who can be toxic fans, either. Toxic fandom does not discriminate! (How woke!) For every homophobe blasting a lovely same-sex pairing, there's another faction demanding that straight characters suddenly change orientation. Like the whole "Make Elsa from Frozen Have a Girlfriend" thing. If these are things the creators who do own these stories want to do with their characters, then it'll happen. Because, by the way -- fan service sucks. (See: Josh and Donna hooking up on The West Wing during the post-Sorkin years, or what I like to call "the crappy reboot of my favorite four-season show.") 

But I think about that toxic fandom every time I open one of my dumb stories. How insulting and rude must it be to the people who create these shows that I am just willy-nilly stealing their original creations and kidnapping them into my own silly and/or horrific scenarios? In the case of West Wing, it always bothered me that Sam's character -- and Rob Lowe's acting  -- went so underutilized and underappreciated to the point that Rob Lowe left the series. He's said years after the fact that he could have lived with not getting the money he wanted, but they stopped giving him anything to do. I wanted to give him something to do. And I wanted it to be Ainsley Hayes.  

This feels like an affront to Aaron Sorkin, and I feel bad about that. And all these years later, when everyone was getting mad at Hart Hanson for writing off Zack Addy (and Eric Millegan) when that year's writers' strike painted them into a corner, there I was, being a dick too. I wasn't writing angry letters, just an angry screenplay. But still! Part of me wanted Hart Hanson to read it and know how pissed I was about that storyline. (Hart and I follow each other on Instagram and I would like to make it abundantly clear right now: I do not want you to ever read that thing, Hart. Not ever.) (And also, I'm sorry, even though it was fun to write.)

Creators can do with their shows what they want. It's their story to tell, not mine, not ours. And as much as I'm having so much fun writing dialogue for all the characters on The West Wing and 9-1-1: Lone Star, who the hell am I to do that, exactly? 

I have no illusions about where these stories will go. In the case of one of the West Wing fanfiction stories, it did become something original (a sexy political thriller!), and I'd love to see it go somewhere. But in the case of Lone Star, it's purely just a fun exercise. As much as I know it's not a statement against the showrunners' and writers' storytelling decisions -- or the fact that the show is ending after this season -- there's still that ick that I feel. I don't want to feel like I'm one of those toxic fans. 

The solution to all of this, for me and those toxic fans, is to write our own damn stories. And I would, but I had to write this essay about writing first.