Fanfiction, Furries, and Fiverr, Oh My
By Samantha Moody
It’s the 20th May 2020, nearly 2 months into the UK lockdown, and I am on deadline. Time to write!
“Xander pauses. His hands grope towards his back, then lower… ‘Uhhh, guys, do I have a tail?’ Willow nods. ‘And ears. And… um…’ Her eyes drift to--”
I stop typing to check the reference image my client has provided; an anthropomorphic rabbit with curves that put Lizzo to shame. This is not spec screenwriting, this is fanfiction - and in this case pretty much porn.
There’s another five thousand words of fetish erotica to complete before my call with a horror game developer to cross check his storyline notes. I’m not meant to communicate with clients outside of the Fiverr platform (more on that below), but I’m much more likely to get a 5 star rating if I do, and more stars mean more orders.
How did I get here?
When I was made redundant from a global bank in December 2019, I found myself burnt out and ready for some time off. Time to figure out my life. Take a breather. Maybe start my own business.
And then COVID stopped the world, but not the bills.
I needed work, fast. Work that could be done entirely virtually at a time when companies were actively firing or furloughing staff on a daily basis. Creative writing had been just a hobby, a discussion point at parties where I talked about maybe writing a book one day, but when Fiverr popped up in a search for job options I was intrigued.
For those who have never encountered it, Fiverr.com is a platform where freelancers set out their own storefront to sell directly to consumers. As a seller you can name your price with a minimum $5 charge – for which the site takes its name. All you need is a paypal account -- and to accept the 20% cut taken from every payment.
I checked the most popular “gigs” (fiverr lingo) under the writing category. Fiction, ghostwriting, story services filled my screen. But wait. The highest rated job? Erotica fanfiction. Hmmm. I created a gig – custom fiction and fanfiction – and made a thumbnail with a description. I was… let’s say… flexible when it came to content. In the immortal words of Mrs Dolly Levine: ‘If you have to live from hand-to-mouth, you'd better be ambidextrous.’
Success, I thought, was guaranteed. But in my first month I made less than $100, and in my second maybe $200. Another depth of the COVID depression.
I was literally on hold to negotiate delaying my mortgage when the magic order came in. A buyer with a passion for Buffy the Vampire Slayer in search of (I kid you not) someone willing to rewrite the entire series. The catch? Xander had to be transformed into a giant bunny woman.
I’d say it was the desperation that made me accept, but, as a Buffy super fan, it wasn’t. I was in.
I wrote the first episode at a discount to get a feel for their taste, with a no-hard-feelings agreement that I’d still get a 5 star rating if they hated it. Not only did they love it, they ordered the rest of the series and told a very specific subset of their friends. Furry Fanfiction.
My time had come.
Back to 20 May, and the pressure to produce is real. Churning out 20-30k words per week in fetish fiction for a variety of clients, I work from 6am to midnight and take home just enough cash to cover my bills. Beyond the cash, I am thriving in a way I never had before. Each order is a new horizon, a creative challenge to overcome. I write furry porn for profit, though I do make a friend promise to destroy my hard drive if I suddenly die. No one need see my reference file of busty bunny girls and well-endowed wolf men. Imagine the eulogy.
In 2020 the niche erotica scene sported a ton of bored people with a voracious appetite. My profile was passed around on message boards: imagining The IT Crowd as frolicking forest animals? Here’s someone who’ll write it. Need Kylo Ren to fall in love with a lizard man? Check out this link. Discrete services to fulfill furry desires; receive your order and do with it what you will.
Business boomed to the point I was booked a month out. I raised prices, set order limits, and had some very strange dreams. I had even stranger conversations. And I was a writer.
It was everything I’d ever wanted. Almost. I didn’t own the work. I couldn’t publish it. But I was filled with new found confidence and desperate to apply it to ideas that were wholly mine.
In November, when the job market heated up, I made the decision to take a 9-5 and pour the creative energy I’d ignited into my own projects. I finished my orders, sent a heartfelt note of thanks to the many customers that supported me, and set my gig to inactive.
Nearly two years later, I’m still burning the midnight oil, but now I pen scripts about flawed young women overcoming the strange and the bizarre on journeys of self-discovery. I’ve begun to make my way in screenwriting, winning the BAFTA Rocliffe award for TV Drama in 2021 and winning a spot in Stowe’s California Writers’ Retreat, an incredible experience that continues to shape me creatively. With the coming recession, I know there may still be lean years ahead, but I’m on the road to breaking in. If I can write porn for furries, what can’t I do? And yes, I still love Buffy.
Stowe Alum Sam Moody is a BAFTA Rocliffe winning UK screenwriter from Birmingham, England, and as well a US national. Sam learned to fit in by scaring her cousins (and herself) senseless with late-night horror stories. She graduated with a Law degree from the University of Nottingham during the 2008 financial crash. Jobless, Sam escaped to Japan to find herself but instead found a haunted apartment and taught English in a Junior High School. She’s since worked in corporate innovation and technology. Sam is an Austin Film Festival Pitch Finalist, Big Break Semi-Finalist, and Stowe Story Labs Alumni. Inspired by her experiences starting over and her complicated family relationships, she pens female-led supernatural coming of age stories. Her humour is distinctly British, and so is her spelling.