Podcast: Finding Fame in Fan Fiction
Highlighting a former fan fiction author’s experience in the digital limelight
Podcast by Olivia Hicks
INTRO: Welcome to Klipsun Out Loud, podcasts from Western Washington University’s award-winning student magazine, Klipsun. This edition’s theme is candid. I’m your host, Olivia Hicks and today’s topic is highlighting a former fan fiction author’s experience in the digital limelight.
Larionova: “People to this day are like, ‘I hated the ending, but I also loved it and I threw my phone across the room.’ I can’t believe people are still reading this stuff and responding to it.”
Olivia: Karen Larionova looks back on her fame in the fan fiction community with a complicated nostalgia. Joining Wattpad, an online fan fiction platform, in October of 2014, the then 14-year-old used the site to explore her sexuality through creative writing.
With nearly 500,000 reads, Larionova’s most popular fan fiction, “Lessons,” told the story of Emily, a — as the teaser explains — girl with “a major crush on the hot guy at school, Hunter, but she has no idea what to do to get his attention. After all, she’s the girl no one really notices. But getting noticed becomes the least of her worries when she goes to a big party, plays spin the bottle, and comes lip to lip with the baddest girl in the grade above her. Even weirder is when she agrees to get kissing lessons from the same girl she kissed at the party! K-I-S-S-I-N-G what does that spell? DISASTER!”
Larionova:“It’s also not a very, not a very woke novel. Like it was definitely like me lowkey bashing my sexuality, which I don’t know why I was freaking out about my own sexuality at the time. And I think that was a projection of myself … Not that I was writing with the intention of picturing myself in that place because like through my description of the characters I look or sound nothing like either of them. But there was like a sense of me projecting my feelings and insecurities and anger.”
Olivia: While Larionova’s writing provided an outlet to express her identity, it also wasn’t without fault.
Larionova: “When the main girl who was figuring out her bisexuality completely throws away this person, treats this older lesbian like trash and goes back to the man was 1,000% a negative stereotype and projection that I was dealing with in real life. I was facing a struggle of sexuality and identity.”
Olivia (me): This nuanced and tangled way of reflecting on fan fiction — the good, the bad, and, especially, the ugly long-term effects, isn’t something unique to Larionova. Fan fiction is a creative outlet for pre-teens to express repressed feelings about sex, love and angst, but not without the consequence of a skewed perception of sex and stereotypes as depicted in mainstream media. For Larionova the goodside of fan fiction is …
Larionova: “kinda also the downfall. I really do think that through my process of writing that really famous lesbian fan fiction and even the other ones that weren’t successful that were just like, YouTubers, or whatever, I was able to explore a lot of topics that I wasn’t experiencing in real life and I was able to share them with other people and have people validate my feelings. I think as a 14-year-old, people who are that young and that vulnerable do seek out validation and for someone who might be ostracized or outcasted from the mainstream popular people, it was very nice to have that community in a group of people who don’t know me and just value what I do. ”
Olivia: The rise of social media and fan fiction anonymity have created opportunities for tweens to gain popularity, validation, and, most importantly, a community online.
Larionova: “All people would know about me as the author is that I’m a good writer, which was really unique as opposed to in school when people would not even know that I’m a good writer, they would assume other things about me or they’d heard rumors about me.”
Olivia: When classmates and friends would talk openly about their first times, Laironova didn’t have the experience or knowledge to add to the conversation. Instead, she turned to fan fiction.
Larionova: “When I was the age of the characters in my book, I was very embarrassed and I felt kind of weird about expressing really honest feelings and a really honest conversation about sexuality and having sex. Because that’s the time in your adolescence when you’re expected to now talk about your sexuality and have sex. And I wasn’t at that time. And my friends were and I was like, I have written about sex and haven’t had it which is very weird. And I felt embarrassed that I was kind of in that position that like everyone else got to experience my fanfiction and I hadn’t.”
A quick scroll through the thousands of comments responding to her writing, shows that Larionova’s lesbian story — although stereotypical — provided a form of LGBTQ+ representation for readers as well as herself. Comments like “living my dream” and “punk girls are hot” and “reminds me of this girl…” are just a few that show how powerful the 14-year-old’s words were.
Olivia: Now a junior in college, Larionova is able to return to her writing with a detached perspective and greater sympathy for her adolescent self.
Larionova:“I think even now, I would relate more like the older lesbian and I feel like somehow, subconsciously, I was relating to both of them, although I didn’t know it. And so I think it’s super interesting how I wrote all this out expressing my anger and projecting onto these people that don’t exist and I thought weren’t real but in the end, they were all a part of me. And I was throwing that out there in a very vulnerable way and I didn’t even realize it. And now I’m just stuck with that time capsule.”
Olivia: But fan fiction isn’t what it was in 2014 anymore. In the age of adaptations, streaming services and the bombardment of advertising at every turn, fan fiction sites like Wattpad are evolving from the free and accessible creative outlet they once were.
The commercialization of sites like Wattpad created opportunities for writers to make money off of their stories, such as with the creation of the “paid stories” section of Wattpad in 2018, but it also created paywalls for readers. Now readers have the option to read ad-free for a fee.
The adaptation of popular fan fiction into published books and films, brought fan fiction into the public eye, creating yet another possibility of cashing in a check for writing about romance.
Larionova: “There is still a tiny percentage of me that is waiting for Wattpad to email me or direct message me and be like, we love your writing so much! Can we publish it or turn it into a movie or you write something else for us?”
Olivia: But those adaptations don’t typically reflect the safe online space Larionova found to produce LGBTQ+ stories. All of the movies that have been produced by Wattpad Studios feature romantic narratives with straight main characters
Larionova: “It basically puts capital on stuff like sex, even though Wattpad I’m sure is claiming that it’s all like PG content. Even if it is, it’s still romance. That’s a pretty sensitive topic for younger people and if you’re promoting ultra-straight ultra-masculine patriarchal, white stories on that platform, that’s what those readers are going to get. And because they can’t afford to pay for premium or whatever, and they’re keeping they keep getting ads on all these things. And so that’s going to uphold these standards.”
Olivia: While the chances of Larionova’s story making it all the way to the big screen are slim, she still doesn’t regret writing it.
Larionova: “There were multiple times I wanted to delete the story as I got older because I was like it doesn’t really matter that I have this famous story. And it’s kind of weird and embarrassing. I think, ultimately, I’m glad I decided to keep it because I do think it’s like a time capsule and honestly I am kind of proud of myself. I had not specifically counted, but each chapter was about 1,000 words. And there were 50 chapters. So that’s about 220 pages in like a physical novel if you were to print it out. So I did write basically a novel. And so at this point, I actually carry a lot of pride with that because I finished a project that was pretty major.”
Olivia: If other fan fiction writers or fans are nervous to bring their stories to life, Larionova recommends pushing past the potential embarrassment and writing anyway, just for the love of writing itself.
Larionova: “I really enjoy writing and I think when I was 14, that’s what I enjoyed writing and that’s okay. If you’re a writer and you really want to write something that you think people might not like or it might be weird or cringy, write it anyways.”
OUTRO: That’s it for this edition of Klipsun Out Loud, podcasts from Western Washington University’s student magazine, Klipsun. Thanks for listening!