Woso Stories

Synonyms:
See also:	Sports RPF, Football RPF
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Woso Stories is a term used for fanfiction written about women's soccer, or football, players. It is a subset of RPF.

While the term broadly refers to any fanfiction written about women footballers, it tends to be used more often for works posted to TikTok and Wattpad. It is generally less common to see the term applied to works on Archive of Our Own or platforms like Tumblr, Livejournal, or Dreamwidth.

While the term seems to be used more for fanworks which are Footballer/Reader or Footballer/Original Character, it is becoming more frequently used for fanworks about Football/Footballer relationships and gen fics as well.

History of Woso Stories

Soccer players in the American National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) have typically been the most popular subjects of Woso stories, though the popularity of other players has been increasing, especially since the 2022 Euros.

Some fans have said that prior to the notable increase in popularity in women's football in the 2020s, Woso stories were one of the core parts of the fandom. Now that women's football has received a lot more attention, including mainstream attention, controversy is beginning to occur over the existence of these fanworks.

Fanworks on different platforms

TikTok

Despite TikTok not having the most intuitive or reader-friendly platform and presentation for fanfiction, Woso stories, particularly reader insert fanfiction is popular on there. The works are often split across many videos, sometimes upwards of 40, with each video having 30+ slides of text with an images.

Many of these works are dialogue only fanworks with pictures of the footballers involved (and often a stand-in image with the face obscured for the reader insert) behind each piece of dialogue. While estimating distribution of work types on TikTok is difficult, romance focused works, familial focused works, and gen fics all seem to be relatively popular. For example, it isn't uncommon for the reader insert to be the child of one of the footballers. It is possible different types of works are popular amongst different age demographics, especially as more younger fans engage with women's football fandom.

Readers of the works will often reply to the videos with "rmp", for "remind me please", which is also commonly used on other social media platforms and on Wattpad on fanworks.

Controversies and Criticisms

Criticism of Woso Stories Existing

Where the number of Woso stories on TikTok have grown in popularity, the algorithm tends to push them onto the pages of other women's football fans who are not part of the RPF side of the fandom. For some of these fans, this is their first encounter with RPF and they have strong, negative reactions to and opinions about the fanworks existing at all, which they sometimes share on their platforms. Some of them make the argument that it is sexualising the players, and appeal to others to think about how players would feel if they saw those works.

Fans of woso stories or fanwork creators who are neutral or supportive of RPF, will at times respond and try to discuss RPF within fan spaces and how unlikely it is any of the footballers would see the videos, but there seem to rarely be productive discussions arising from this.

[h3arts4_arsenalwfc_23 ]

Maybe just think before you post because before everyone started hating on them they were the most popular things of woso on TikTok it’s only just because people are now sharing opinions and everyone’s following it

[AWFC❤️🤍]

nah stop posting them overall there wrong

[h3arts4_arsenalwfc_23]

But there not though some are not all are wrong people have different opinions that’s the point but sharing them like this is wrong

[AWFC❤️🤍]

no players shouldn’t be in them say all you want but they shouldn’t

[h3arts4_arsenalwfc_23]

I’ll say all I want because the probability of a player seeing them is lower than low

Some women's football focused accounts on TikTok have subsequently made videos complaining about or insulting the fanworks, their writers and readers, and calling for people to report these works . The comments sections of these videos will sometimes include comments with links to either specific edits or, less often, to external fanworks on other platforms, sometimes with unpleasant comments about the writers of the fanworks, which can encourage people to go to fanworks and leave insulting commentary.

This has resulted in some writers of woso stories being attacked and harassed for their fanworks, forcing them to delete their accounts or abandon their fanworks to stop the harassment. Others have moved off of TikTok to fanwork focused sites, hoping that there will be less harassment there.

Criticism of Contents of Woso Stories

Other people have criticised the content of Woso stories, either because they deem the fanworks to be over-sexualised or inappropriate for the young authors and readers who predominantly engage with them on platforms like TikTok, or because of the topics included in the fanworks.

For example, some authors will include topics such as sexual assault, self-harm, mental health difficulties, and eating disorders in their fanworks. When the criticism has arisen, some people have pointed out that the writers and readers may be dealing with those things in their lives and find the outlet cathartic.

External Sources

• Woso stories search on TikTok
• Woso stories search at Wattpad