'Never Been Touched Like This': The Teens Who Write Erotic Metalcore Fan Fiction
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'Never Been Touched Like This': The Teens Who Write Erotic Metalcore Fan Fiction

While many older rock fans denounce the genre, metalcore has become an outlet for teenage girls, who have taken to publishing erotic stories based on their favorite bands to express their sexualities—and, sometimes, to deal with impulses to self-harm.

There's something about musical purists that makes them look down on any genre whose widest audience is teenage girls. Pop, with its legions of Beliebers and other fan collectives, is frequently criticized for this, but there's another, lesser-known genre that attracts similar sneering from some corners: metalcore. These bands attract the same level of dedication from their fans due to a fusion of factors: lyrics that address issues that resonate with young people; frequent appearances in music magazines with young readerships, like AltPress and Kerrang!; good-looking band members; and a willingness to engage with their fans unlike anything Justin Bieber has expressed so far in his career.

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Perhaps it's also this perceived availability that makes modern metalcore a magnet for fan fiction writers. Young, female metalcore fans who want to to play out their sexual fantasies in a place without judgment—or even work through personal mental health crises—have carved out their own communities on Tumblr, Wattpad, and Archive Of Our Own, and the bands they idolize are at the center.

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Inspired by classic metal, melodic Scandinavian death, and hardcore punk, and evolving into its current guise through bands like Killswitch Engage, Trivium, and Bullet For My Valentine, metalcore became an integral part of the later years of the new wave of American heavy metal. Nowadays, the term loosely encompasses any band that utilizes riffs and elements of thrash and punk alongside melody and clean vocals. Its current iteration is polarizing; the blog MetalSucks, always blunt, described modern screamo (the writer uses "screamo" to describe "current Rise Records-style bands who play discordant metalcore") as "worse than the Holocaust." In 2010, even the New York Times noticed that Warped Tour, the traveling music festival which began as a skate-punk showcase but is now regarded as the go-to event for young, Hot Topic-wearing rock fans, is "a war between the rising electro-punk scene and the traditionalists."

There are entire Reddit threads dedicated to dissecting exactly what's bad about metalcore. "In my experience a lot of metalcore fans… think the genre started in the 2000s instead of in the 1980s. I can't stand poseurs," writes one poster. But his writing off of fans as nothing but poseurs ignores the demographic most obsessed with the genre: teenage girls. "I don't think any of those folks are posing," replies another. "They're mostly young teenagers who are just getting into the genre, and maybe don't have the time to research every single thing about it." A closer look at metalcore's teen girl fandom reveals that the music—particularly popular bands like Asking Alexandria, Of Mice & Men, and Black Veil Brides—serves as an outlet for girls who are dealing with trauma or mental illness.

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"He grabbed my wrist and ran his fingers over the cuts lightly. I had never been touched like this. 'You're beautiful. Please don't do this to yourself because of some stupid guy keeping you from doing what you want to do. Love yourself,' he murmured," reads one passage from a Wattpad fiction entitled "Mend Your Broken Heart," in which Of Mice & Men's Austin Carlile rescues the protagonist from an abusive relationship. Another has Asking Alexandria's Ben Bruce in a similar situation: "He slid your shirt up gently and ran his fingers over your scars. 'No guy that would hurt you bad enough to make you want to hurt yourself is worth your time,' Ben told you softly. 'Listen… I've only known you for like two hours but you deserve better than this, you deserve to be happy.' Ben pulled you to him and pressed his lips to your scars."

Of Mice & Men's Austin Carlile. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

The imagery is similar across many of the stories: A metalcore band member enters the narrator's life—sometimes by chance, other times as a reappearing old friend—and sees the marks of her self-harm in a moment also charged with sexual tension. Sometimes it leads to sex (often written in more tantalizing prose than the likes of 50 Shades Of Grey), and there's also a smut sub-category for those who only come to the internet's fanfic corner for boning. Occasionally, the role the music plays in helping keep the narrator sane is explicitly mentioned: "…a band called Black Veil Brides. They were amazing and sometimes you honestly felt like the lead singer was singing directly to you—like he knew everything you were going through… It kept you from cutting too deep. But tonight nothing could calm the voices in your head."

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Ashley, 21, has been writing fan fiction since she was 12. "I have struggled with depression for years, and I had a three-year period of self-harming," she told me over email. "I've always used writing and music as a non-destructive [way of] coping with my issues. When it came to writing about band members, it seemed to have an extra benefit, because I was combining my two favorite things at once through fan fiction. It has always been the best way to get away from the real world for a while."

Ashley says that as well as it being a form of escapism, fan fiction provided her a sense of community. "I didn't really know it was a thing that other people did until I found some stories online one day," she said. "It made me feel a lot less strange that there were other people doing the same thing. Some of the friends I have made through fan fiction have similar problems with their mental health. When you write about things like depression, it gives an invitation to the reader to speak about their own issues and the knowledge that the people they are speaking to have some clue as to what they are going through. It ends up becoming a safe place for people to vent without judgment." Marie Taylor, a cognitive behavioral therapist, agrees with this observation. "It may be that [teenagers] find fan fiction an arena to meet like-minded, non-judgmental people that they can connect with," she says. "It follows that this open forum provides a platform for young people with difficulties such as depression and anxiety, and also self-harm, to communicate the emotions they are unable to in day-to-day life."

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I suppose there is a part of me that is flattered, but at the same time there are some very strange things that make me feel a little uncomfortable.

Shannon, a 20-year-old Asking Alexandria fan, has written fan fiction in the past, and she says she found it a safe space to discuss mental health issues. "It's a healthy release," she says. What's more, she thinks the community's openness about these issues allows people to help one another. "I have found that many people talk about their problems in order to protect others from the same thing."

Ales Zivkovic, a counselor with the NHS in the UK, isn't surprised that writing is such an attractive outlet for some teens. "I see a lot of very creative depressed people in my therapy room," he says. "It is a common thing that depressed people will put their thoughts and feelings down in a creative form—either by writing or by drawing. I think this is good, because it gives them a sense of worth and purpose, and that is what depression needs to be fought.

"As for self-harm and sexual content," Zivkovic continues, "it's obvious that some of the writers are suffering from depression and are putting down stories that are conveying their own inner world. Depression in general comes from feelings of worthlessness and the sense of giving up on oneself and the world. Self-harm is sometimes the symptom of that. [Some of these] stories are very indicative of that; a girl harms herself, but then stops—or cuts less deep—as she gets 'rescued' by a musician. If you translate the line of, 'I cut myself until the musician comes and prevents me from cutting myself,' you could also put it as, 'I feel worthless and hate myself unless someone else shows me their love.'"

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Fan fiction communities are also a place where young women can explore their sexual fantasies (and, sometimes, impress their readers). "[Sexual plot lines] exist because most readers are almost always going to want it," says Ashley. "Most of the time I write sexual scenes because I feel that's what the story calls for—that's how those characters' relationship should play out. I enjoy the idea that I can explore the things in my mind without any sort of backlash from talking about it." Shannon is a little more reserved in her writing but sees erotic scenes as par for the course in fan fiction. "I don't find it strange that fans write about [sex]," she says. "I just feel they're trying to express their own sexuality."

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But the difference between these communities and, say, One Direction fan fiction is that musicians from the metalcore worlds aren't the untouchable, inaccessible iterations of humanity that A-list celebrities often are. Some interact regularly with fans on social media, and their Instagram feeds aren't full of yachts and exotic holidays, but rather boozy nights out with their tour crew and pictures of their pets and families. They seem much more human.

Sometimes, that's great. "Band members replying to me [on social media] has helped me," says Shannon. "For example, Ben Bruce has replied to me various times via DMs, tweets, and Instagram. He has told me he was proud of me for being clean of self-harm for three years." Shannon believes her favorite musicians are receptive and respectful of the community their fans have built. "I feel stuff like this means a lot to the band members—just as much as it does to the fans," she says.

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I asked Ben Bruce if he'd agree with that assertion. "I don't feel a sense of responsibility to respond and interact with fans—I interact with them because I am genuinely appreciative and grateful of their love and support for me," he says. "I like to reciprocate that. It's nice to know that I can bring people around the world some sort of joy."

Asking Alexandria's Ben Bruce. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Though the attention can get overwhelming. "Most of the time I am very open and upfront with my fans, and I share a lot of my life with them," he says. "However, on occasion people do overstep their boundaries and think I owe them every detail of my life." This bothers him more than being written as a character into a story. "I have mixed emotions towards [fan fiction]," he admits. "I suppose there is a part of me that is flattered, but at the same time there are some very strange things that people think up that make me feel a little uncomfortable. We've all had sexual fantasies about someone that we either know or know of—it's perfectly natural. Some of the stories get a bit strange, and make me shudder at times, but for the most part I just tend to laugh it off and remember when I was in their shoes. To be fair, I remember thinking plenty of naughty things about Avril Lavigne when I was a kid!"

Direct interactions with fans can, inevitably, take a darker turn. Last year, pop-punk solo artist Jake McElfresh was accused of sending lewd messages to and exchanging nude pictures with underage fans; he later admitted to Billboard in an interview that he had sent messages and exchanges photos, though he denied having sex with minors. Lloyd Roberts, the former guitarist in British pop-punk band Neck Deep, was also accused of sending explicit messages to a minor, which he denied. (After a police investigated—which, Roberts said, he requested himself—he was found innocent of any wrongdoing.)

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In both cases, the accusations began in the same space where fan fiction is written: Tumblr. "I wouldn't like to generalize, but most of the time when there is anonymous posting of allegations the reason is that the victim does not want to go through thinking [about] and 're-living' the story [in court]," says Zivkovic. "Victims are often worried they will not be believed and are therefore reluctant to do anything about it." While there's widespread, necessary criticism of the attitudes that make women reluctant to report assaults, the British magazine Rock Sound took a different stance to the Lloyd Roberts situation in a blog post that outraged some readers: It warned against anonymous online accusations. In the post, they encourage victims to go to the police instead of making accusations online, and include the assertion that "we will also not sit by and watch people ruin the lives and careers of others for the whole world to see." The reality is a little more nuanced: The official FBI definition of a false allegation is one that is provably untrue after an investigation. Cases in which there's a lack of evidence or a victim refuses to cooperate are not officially classified as false. Accusations on the internet are even harder to quantify for this reason; often, they're a case of one person's word against another, put in the public domain anonymously and without the involvement of law enforcement.

Fan fiction, it seems, exists parallel to a world in which real interactions can turn dark. But the fact that it's fantasy is also what makes it feel, to so many girls, safe. Ultimately these blogs are a space where writers are free to explore and exorcise their problems and find like-minded people who also find hope in their favorite songs. "In [Asking Alexandria's] song 'Run Free' they have the lyrics 'escape your inhibitions', which I took [to mean] 'Don't let anyone stand in the way of what I want to do in life,'" says Shannon. "I feel their lyrics have a meaning. Or if they don't, I can make a meaning for myself."