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Publication: The Heights, , Boston College , Chestnut Hill, MA
Picture this: It’s a nice evening over Winter Break as you sit with your family. You’re bored, and your family is spewing nonsense because of course they are. You know you’ll be here for a while, so you pull out your phone. TikTok isn’t entertaining you, and Instagram just reminds you of how much happier and cooler everyone else is, so you turn to your favorite website: Archive of Our Own. You type in your favorite ship (and if my mom is reading this that means your favorite imagined couple, whether they be an actual couple in media or not) and settle in for a riveting story that will send your endorphins to new heights. Then, everything comes crashing down when your mom asks, “What are you doing on your phone?”
“Uhhh, reading,” you say.
“What are you reading?” your mom asks in response, either because she loves you and is curious or because she loves you and is suspicious.
“Nothing, really,” you respond, societally conditioned to do so because you’ve been told that fanfiction is “embarrassing” and “stupid.”
And that right there is what I am here to fight against. I...