For fanfiction readers and writers, Wattpad has been a space to write and consume any and all types of literature since the early 2000s.
Spaces like Wattpad, Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own have been almost sacred spaces that every teenager has probably come across at least once in their life, but recent updates to Wattpad’s terms and conditions have left many of our beloved, long-standing fanfictions to disappear with no warning.
Fanfiction sites have become spaces for fans to create fiction based on their favorite ships, alternate universes and endings they and other readers want. This has created communities that keep fandoms alive long after they’re gone or no longer producing new content.
Yes, fanfictions are, or can be, sexually explicit, and smut is a very big part of most fanfiction, as many fans are living out their ships in their creations and literature. Smut is what has kept Wattpad alive, and the genre has become even more popular in other spaces like BookTok, especially with the popularity of shows like “Heated Rivalry.”
Wattpad has explained that its updated terms and conditions aren’t new, just clarifications on explicit content and what’s allowed on the platform. However, these clarifications create even more subjective determinations of what counts as smut. The new wording defines smut as “sexual content that supports the story [and is] not the main purpose,” and that’s the part that gives me the most pause. Anybody who’s spent any time in the fanfiction writing trenches understands what a bombshell that is.
Beyond the explicit content debate, this is about more than just the platforms but the spaces they create themselves.
For queer fans, fanfiction has never just been smut or self-indulgent alternate universes but places to experience and find our stories and experiences represented when standard media often leaves us with subtext-heavy glances, queerbaited storylines and token side characters that only exist to make the leads look progressive. Fanfiction allows us to take those bits and pieces and build whole worlds that let us imagine our identities, relationships and desires as the center of the story, rather than the margins.
Representation, no matter where we find it, creates a place for some individuals to experience a language and space to explore our queerness where we probably would never have been able to experience or explore it otherwise. These places can truly be the scaffolding for identity, with protections like anonymity and communal chatrooms to explore before we’re ready to say it out loud.
It has been clearly established since Wattpad announced its update that it is definitely not banning smut entirely and that plenty of it will remain, but now it will be tucked behind warnings and reworded to fit the platform’s increasingly blurry definitions. But that’s exactly what makes this shift so quietly devastating.
So, as fans have already begun to and will continue to migrate and find refuge in other fanfic platforms, it is important to remember that we are stepping into already established spaces with their own cultures, norms and rules that need to be respected and learned.
For example, Archive of Our Own was built by fans and community members to specifically protect this content, so going in and immediately reporting fanfics for improper tags and descriptions is doing exactly what Wattpad did to us there.
If we want to keep our sites safe, sustainable and a home for explicit and non-explicit content alike, we have to show up open-minded, willing to learn new systems, norms and community expectations rather than assuming old habits will transfer to different sites.
Protecting these spaces means understanding that they are fragile, that they took years to build, and that keeping them alive and open requires the same care and intentionality that queer fans have always brought to carving out spaces where we could finally see ourselves.
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