Euphoric

After it's debut this summer, Euphoria has become the most controversial and talked about teenage show since Skins and Gossip Girl, and it pushes well beyond the borders that either of those predecessors set in place. Centered on the life of drug-addicted 17-year-old Rue, this show features an ensemble cast and dives into issues of rape, abortion, drug abuse and distribution, broken families, pornography, transgenderism, death, Findom, and good old relationship drama.

If you think that's not enough, one of the characters, Kat, is a self-proclaimed fanfiction smut writer with a cult following on Tumblr after her publication of Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson, Larry Stylison, pornographic fiction. The show received a ton of backlash for its usage of the two men's likeness, but also opened a conversation about fanfiction that normally isn't found in mainstream cinema.

Fanfiction is the reworking of another author's original characters into new stories created by the amateur authors. It can be found on websites like WattPad and Tumblr and can garner millions of reposts and reads among the online communities there. Fanfiction gives ownership back to the people and can have many positive and inconsequential aspects to it; it allows minorities to add themselves to their beloved media and allows fans to rewrite narratives they may not have been pleased with. It allows fans to have an active participatory role in their favorite stories and films and blurs the lines between amateur and professional writers.

Conversely, fanfiction has been associated with women and is considered low culture, crass, unoriginal and exploitative. It has even been deemed "Mommy-Porn" which is laughed at and ridiculed. Interestingly enough Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight, both high-grossing, high-impact series of novels and movies, both originated as fanfiction. Both of those films are often made fun of yet are still being consumed in mass quantities and making a huge profit.

Fanfiction can become problematic when creating stories based on real, living people. The Larry Stylison phenomenon was huge with fanfiction writers and even impacted the real men's lives and relationships. However, it was a massive movement nonetheless, and I think it was an interesting choice to shed light on something so massive yet underground. Though they received heat, Euphoria opened a door for mass culture to at least see how huge fanfiction is. Hopefully as Kat continues to arch, we will see a better portrayal of an already "low-class" genre.