Fanfic writing as a futures thinking tool

It’s hard not to think about the future when the heat index in some parts of your country has already hit 40°C. It’s the start of the summer where I’m from, and it’s not that difficult to imagine that it will only get hotter.

I’ve been taking a class on futures thinking for my Master’s, and it made me think about how fiction has played such a huge part in how we think about the future. Back to the Future promised us time-traveling cars, The Jetsons a universal remote control for appliances and food you can get by pressing a button (not to mention flying cars).

Star Trek presents a utopia (and the underlying problems behind such a vision).

Legends of Tomorrow and Wynonna Earp show us how absurd and loving the future can be, and Frankenstein and Poor Things promise us a world where humans have so much control over the process of creation and evolution.

In a world where it feels like everything is going wrong all the time, how can stories nudge us into being hopeful and making a change where we are?

Stories help us imagine who we could be.

When I was in my teens, I started watching The L Word out of curiosity and I also looked for an online community for The Devil Wears Prada because a) I thought it was a great movie, b) I thought Miranda and Andy had great chemistry, and c) I wondered if people would feel the same.

I started writing The Devil Wears Prada fanfiction, mostly slice-of-life, domestic stories about Miranda and Andy getting together. At the time, I wanted to grow as a writer by writing domestic moments without being too cheesy. I was also a teenager trying to figure out what adulthood was like.

A year after that, I realized I was not straight.

With the benefit of some time and distance, I’ve come to realize that being in a community with other queer women made me realize that the possibilities for my future were much broader than they once were. Writing fanfic was my way of working out what I wanted. No one in that fandom knew I was going through a journey or that I was about to come out.

There’s evidence that being in a community with others helps us come to terms with our identity and acquire the language we need to identify and express who we are.

Would I have discovered my queerness without fandom? I guess so.

But being in fandom helped me see that what I wanted was normal, the positive feedback I got for my domestic, fluffy fics showed me that my idea of what made a family was something to be celebrated, and that there are other people like me, so I don’t have to feel alone.

Stories help us imagine what the world could be like.

Say what you want about the omegaverse, but it does imagine a world where power is given (or taken) based on our anatomy and our biological functions dictate our roles in the world.

That kind of world might have seemed inconceivable to most of us when the omegaverse started to emerge in fandom, but there are parts of it that are closer to the real world than we think. Female alphas can reproduce with female omegas in the omegaverse. What happens to our world if women can start reproducing children without even the need for sperm? What would society look like?

For some people, tropes like the omegaverse allow them to imagine a world where they get what they want (like a family with children).

For others, the essentialism in omegaverse is a stark reminder of the world we live in, where “What makes a man? What makes a woman?” makes it easy for people who can’t imagine a kinder, more nuanced world to misunderstand, misrepresent, and mistreat transgender and non-binary people, for starters.

On the flip side, the sheer number of found family stories (over 100,000 in Archive of Our Own alone) and domestic fluff (over 200,000 on AO3) reveal a desire for community, for seeing and loving people beyond the family we were born to, for quiet, happy lives. It tells us we seek comfort in stories where people extend love, friendship, kindness, and understanding to each other. If that’s what we read or write to escape, then the real world could use more love.

And it does beg the question—what does that look like in the real world? More public spaces for people to gather without having to buy something? More opportunities for people of different backgrounds to find each other and find that they have more in common?

The clues to the world we want to create can be found in fic, too.

Stories clue us in on what we care about. (And that’s where we can start changing things.)

When I started writing fanfic, I didn’t think I would come to terms with my sexuality and broaden my idea of my own identity and future.

I just wanted to write.

I kept at it and I stayed in fandom, and that one choice has led me to wanting to pursue my Master’s. It has led me to try to figure out how people can learn lessons from fandom and enjoy more creativity, community, and connection in their own lives.

Why is that important to me? Because when I was going through burnout and what I’d later find out was depression, fandom was one of the few places where I could still be in community with other people. I was pushing others away, isolating myself, but in fandom, I felt connected to others.

I can’t spare people pain, but what if fandom provided clues for me to figure out how people can feel less alone, less disconnected from themselves and their creative energy?

That question is at the core of this newsletter and the work in fandom that I want to do next.

Our ability to imagine, to see a world beyond what we have now, to question why things need to be as they are in ‘canon’—these are skills that we need now, as the world becomes more complex. Our ability to connect with others, empathize with them, and be in community with them… that becomes more important as people try to force us to see other people as, well, Other. These are things we find in fandom and things we hold dear when we’re in fandom.

So the next time you read a fic and you find yourself gravitating towards a trope, maybe ask if it’s calling you to change. It doesn’t have to be a life-changing, Earth-shattering change. At least not right away.

Maybe you’re being called to find people like you.

Maybe you’re being called to imagine something new.

Or maybe, you’re being called to enjoy the moment, to enjoy yourself, and to sit in a coffee shop.

✨ If there are any creative folks reading this, I highly recommend that you check out the futures wheel as a plotting tool the next time you feel stuck. It’s a great way to imagine what comes next, and it’s a good way to come unstuck when you think you’ve backed yourself into a corner.

And now, a quick roundup…

🚨 My favorite wee-woo show, 9-1-1, has started airing its 7th season (I’m still waiting for it to arrive to my country via Disney+). My other comfort show, Grey’s Anatomy, has been renewed for a 21st season! I’m invested in the current batch of interns the same way I was with the original five, and I really hope this show goes on for just a little bit longer.

🤼‍♀️ I do still watch pro wrestling, so I’m pretty excited for WrestleMania weekend. It has one of my favorite storylines and I’m excited for a number of matches (the Rock and Roman vs. Cody and Seth on night 1, Becky vs. Rhea, the tag team ladder match, and Cody vs. Roman on night 2).

🐶 Bluey is coming out with two episodes very soon, including a nearly 30-minute long one! (Yes, I belong to the section of the Bluey fandom comprised of single Millennials healing their inner child through a cartoon. It’s also just a damn good show.) If you haven’t seen it and don’t know what the fuss is about, Curry Quest is one of my favorite episodes that does well as a standalone and is also a great meta introduction to The Hero’s Journey.

Thanks for reading and Happy Friday. 😁