Growing Up A Fangirl
How my early exposure to fan fiction molded my future sex life.
Illustration by Al Short
Written by Olivia Hicks
“I am a moth to his flame, and he never hesitates to burn me,” read my illuminated, shattered iPod touch. I was 12 years old, tucked safely under the covers at a sleepover, when I first typed “Wattpad” into the App Store and clicked download.
It was 2012. Fueled by my love for boy bands and books, paired with the constant cries of persuasion from my childhood best friend Margaret, I took an eager first step into the world of fan-created, self-published literature that night with an urge to explore the unknown, off-limits world of sex.
My naive self didn’t know that nearly 10 years later my early exposure to fan fiction would leave me with both valuable knowledge about the need for representation in literature and a tainted relationship with sex.
Online fan fiction is an eclectic medium with critics claiming it’s solely the sexual fantasies of teen girls and admirers deeming it complex reinterpretations. Created by fans, fan fiction produces prequels, sequels and reinterpretations featuring characters from books and movies — like those appreciating Jacob’s abs or Edward’s shimmering bod in the “Twilight” series. Classic storyline inspiration consists of daydream-like scenarios of musicians spotting an admirer in the nosebleeds or actors bumping into a fan at a coffee shop.
With its range in characters, cliches and climaxes, fan fiction has been able to create digital spaces for fans to come together to type out their adoration. In its purest form, it’s an outlet for appreciation and unrestricted literary creativity.
On the cusp of puberty, fan fiction became a safe haven to consume sexually explicit content for my tween-age self. Bleary-eyed while scrolling through adaptations lengthier than the entire Harry Potter box set, I felt like I had stumbled upon some magical world of words.
Steamy fantasies paired with artful prose built a corner of the internet tucked away from the common idea that girls didn’t, and more importantly, shouldn’t consume pornographic material. Fan fiction remains an escape from the for-profit and male-centric porn and media industries for readers whose identities are underrepresented in both.
“The importance of explicit fan fiction in the sexual development of all participants, but particularly of those who do not identify as male or heterosexual, suggests that fan fiction may be filling in a gap that is not being offered elsewhere,” said Lindsay Mixer, a bisexual, aromantic social sexologist, in her Humboldt State University master’s thesis titled “And Then They Boned: An Analysis of Fanfiction and its Influence on Sexual Development.”
For LGBTQ+ readers, fan fiction provided a free way to produce and consume sexually explicit content, as well as reimagine themselves as represented in the original storylines of fan-favorite books and movies, Mixer said. In her research, straight and cisgender survey respondents preferred fan fiction as an avenue to explore sexual likes and dislikes compared to traditional porn.
Digital fan stories didn’t just aid in my own and others’ sexual development. Fan fiction also acted as a literary learning playground, with endless opportunities to consume diverse narratives with just a single click
At 16, after my brief “too cool for fan fiction” lapse in judgment, I found solace in flipping through virtual book pages yet again. The fan fictions I returned to brought a nostalgic comfort in the flurry of AP classes and the weight of textbooks in my backpack.
I wasn’t the only one who found an other-worldly refuge in reading fan fiction. While my love for reading was reignited by fan fiction, it sparked my friend Margaret’s appreciation for literature.
Margaret — the very one who introduced me to fan fiction — despised reading in or outside of the classroom, receiving chronically below-average reading proficiency scores. A seemingly insignificant decision to begin reading fan fiction one day changed the course of her future. After reading 56 chapters of a Niall Horan fan fiction in a single night, Margaret was hooked. Within months, her reading levels soared to those of a college student, despite being a seventh-grader. She’s now finishing her junior year studying English at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota.
Margaret credits fan fiction entirely for her decision to pursue an English degree. “If I hadn’t started reading fan fiction, I probably wouldn’t be reading at all. I think it really tapped into a space that I wanted to be in and a community,” she said.
Fan fiction, however, isn’t all meet-cutes and representative sultry scenes. Although earth-shattering to readers like Mixer’s respondents, Margaret and myself at times, it also left me mimicking the stories translated from my phone screen into my muscle memory.
Nearly a decade after discovering fan fiction — under a different set of covers shielding my eyes from a college guy’s sparsely decorated bedroom — I feigned sleep in a horror of realization.
While lying in a generic room that could have been any man’s, I discovered that each sexual experience I’d had was a performance. The content I had come across at a young age was reminiscent of traditional porn: unrealistic, often centered on violent domination and made primarily for men. Conjured up in the minds of impressionable young girls growing up in the age of instant internet access, it’s no surprise the fan fiction I stumbled upon crumbled my pliable perception of sex.
My body had simulated what I’d been told by other 12-year-olds that a make-believe illusion of Harry Styles would like.
Fan fiction still remains a part of my weekly reading diet, despite its shortcomings. Now that I’m aware of positive sexual content in fan stories, I’m able to reclaim my autonomy, sexual education and find healthy alternatives to porn. As a valued source of sophisticated creative writing, fan fiction holds a similar slot of prestige in my heart and virtual bookshelf that my favorites (Fyodor Dostoevsky and Sally Rooney) do.
As I conjure up a memory of myself as the open-mouthed and arched object I once felt and acted like, I’m filled with overwhelming gratitude toward the writers who revolutionized the traditional depiction of sex they saw in media. Creators who decided to sit down and type out their own fantasies as an act of rebellion.
Above all, I’m grateful to be a part of the purpose of fan fiction Mixer illustrates: A gift economy made by women for women. Or, as fan fiction audiences have shown, a gift economy made by a wide spectrum of identities for readers from all corners of the internet.