I Owe Everything I Know About Sex To Fan Fiction

In the early 2010s, I’d see people on Tumblr talk about these beautiful, book-length fan fictions that made them weep — always eagerly anticipating a new chapter from some superhuman author who’d soon add an update like “Literally at my own wedding reception, but wanted to get this to you all!” I respected it. But I’d also think, Um, aren’t we all here for the smut?

At 14, I didn’t have the patience to sustain a slow-burn romance — to me, fan fiction was meant to be consumed a bit ferally. While I now appreciate all that anticipation (I’m following one such story on the fanfic site Archive of Our Own), I’m really fond of the version of myself who knew exactly what she was here for when she devoured spicy stories about Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and Doctor Who. I may not have been kissing anyone in high school, but I still cobbled together an understanding of sex, desire, and the mechanics of it all from the sidelines (aka my family computer).

Indeed, my favorite fan fiction was vivid enough to elicit my curiosity, yet honest enough to make me realize “Wow, this is a big deal.” And I wasn’t alone. Chatting with other people who consumed mature fan fiction growing up, I heard about how familiar characters facilitated conversations about sex and sexuality that their school’s sexual education fell short of addressing (if at all), particularly for LGBTQ+ students. For some, fanfic offered an opportunity to explore their identity in a supportive space; for others, it provided a practical, play-by-play understanding of what safe, fulfilling intimacy can look like.

Below, five readers open up about the ways they found solace — and some very lasting wisdom — in the lines of their favorite fan fiction.

Olivia,* 23, New York

I went to an all-girl Catholic high school, and my grade school was also super Catholic. We didn’t have any actual sex education classes. I probably started reading Wattpad fanfics in sixth grade about content creators the Martinez twins and Dolan twins. And I was such a Marvel nerd too — very into Spider-Man. All the good stuff.

I definitely had some that I didn’t finish, or I would close once it got to that chapter — I just had no education on sex, so it felt super out of this world, like I shouldn’t have been reading it. But I definitely got to the point where I was like “Hold on, this is great.”

I genuinely owe everything I know about sex to fanfics, which is so insane to say. Foreplay was a big thing. I was like, “What are you doing?” I thought you just kind of went for it, and that was it. I started doing my own research on contraception and sexual health, too: How do I get on birth control when the time comes? People don’t talk about women’s health enough, so having a girl as the main character helped me. Even if I knew what a UTI was, I don’t know that I would have known what to do with it — like, to go to CVS and get on meds — if I hadn’t read that stuff.

I was comparing everybody to my fanfic boyfriends.

Looking back, some of it was silly — like how everybody was finishing so frequently, so easily. That’s not gonna happen seven times, each time. My first few experiences with physical intimacy, I was like, “Am I doing something wrong?” But I’m really glad that I read it before I started all that stuff. It protected me a few times. It made me more choosy, because I was comparing everybody to my fanfic boyfriends. I didn't put up with things that I would have if I hadn't read about it.

Katie, 32, Connecticut

I started reading Draco Malfoy and Ginny Weasley fan fiction on a very classic AOL dial-up Internet website called MagicalTheory.net. Before school in the morning, I used to sneak down to the basement, which would occasionally flood — so I’d get myself onto this rolling chair, scoot across the water to the family computer, and start reading everything at about 9 years old.

Eventually, my erotic curiosities had developed enough that I was like, “Oh, I can sort by the kink interests that I'm really fascinated by.” The most salient for me was a fan fiction I discovered at 14 or 15 about two of the men in Panic! at the Disco, called “Tell Me to Stop.” It was about a really experienced submissive teaching a really inexperienced dominant how to be an ethical dom. It was the best consent education I ever received, and I still recommend it to people.

I came out really young, and fan fiction made me feel more seen and less sick. I grew up in a rural, conservative community in small-town Connecticut, where I felt like my queerness was this black mark against me. But then I would go on LiveJournal and find all of these comment sections where people talked about queerness as beautiful, desirable, sexy, interesting. I could read all these wonderful stories about people escaping those closets in myriad ways, and it helped me find queer community. I remember reading about female pleasure and pleasure-giving techniques and how to take care of other people. And getting to sex ed in high school, we had to label a visual representation of female genitalia, and there was no clitoris, and I was like, “... You’re missing something pretty f*cking vital here.”

I amassed this incredibly rigorous and detailed sexual vocabulary.

I have a sexual trauma history from childhood. I did experience sexual vulnerability and some violation — and it's not like this wholesale removed my sexual agency, my sexual appetite, interest, education. I relied more on the norms and skills I learned via fan fiction to communicate this to partners than the sex ed I was getting in school. Because of my abuse history, I was like, “Am I a sex-obsessed little deviant freak weirdo? Is there something wrong with me for having all this information, for wanting to read about this?” I wanted to understand sex. It had been wielded against me as something really frightening. And I amassed this incredibly rigorous and detailed sexual vocabulary.

I'm a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology (posttraumatic stress disorder and sexual functioning). I write erotic fiction — my first book came out in January. And when I started writing, I was able to borrow what I've learned from psychology and sexual science research, and all of the conversations I had throughout my adolescence and early adulthood about other people's sex lives — that I never would have had if fan fiction didn't give me the tools and the vocabulary to speak sex into the space between two people. I'm so grateful that I found it. It was life-changing.

Emily, 29, Florida

I remember finding out about fan fiction on Tumblr, but then someone mentioned Wattpad, and I was down the hole. I was finding so many different types of stories about One Direction. That's what got me hooked. I do remember some spicier ones, and when I started reading, I was like, “This is kind of like a movie.” I remember the book After, literally being on my tablet all day and all night.

I was reading about these characters who had the confidence to say what they want — and these idols in my head were so affirming. They were like, “You’re blushing.” I’d be like, I am blushing! My favorite thing would be putting something that I read to the test — like the small, subtle flirtations that you’d read about. Or when the other person would do something, and you’d be like, “Oh, my god, Harry Styles did that in this chapter. This is what they're talking about. This is the feeling that I'm feeling down there.”

I truly feel like it did prepare me for the sexual part of life. Like “I know what this is; I’ve read it before.” I learned foreplay because of fanfic. We had health class, and I don't think we learned much about stimulation. I remember thinking, Why aren't we talking about this?

Jordan, 36, New York

Around 13 and 14, I found the fandoms I really got into — Naruto, YuYu Hakusho, all the anime. Fan fiction was a great way to explore different possibilities with these characters. And it was kind of a door opening in a way, because at first I was thinking, like, Oh, my god, this is raunchy! I should not be reading this stuff. Then I’d come back.

Fan fiction showed me it’s OK to be queer.

Growing up, I wasn't exposed to LGBTQ culture as much as I could have been. I identify as part of that community, but for the most part, there was a stigma around it. So fanfics are great — not only because they let me delve deeper into a franchise I love, but also because they let me explore sexuality. I was writing a lot of yaoi fanfics about The Beatles and The Who on LiveJournal.

Pop culture is not only a mirror but also a window — I feel like fan fiction is an extension of that. Growing up, I was often by myself. Fanfic gave me an outlet to explore different things and read people’s stories without feeling like I was being put on the spot or feel like I’m out there. It made my entire world a lot richer. It helped me become a bit more comfortable with my own “weirdness.” I’m still trying to pinpoint what I am — right now, I personally identify as gray ace. Fan fiction showed me it’s OK to be queer.

Emily, 37, Pennsylvania

I went to 12 years of Catholic school. I was like, “I'm gonna be a nun. I'm all about Jesus.” When I got into high school, I started to be like, “Actually, I do not vibe with anything that's going on around me.” It wasn't until age 14 or 15, when I was starting to find fan fiction like Drarry, that I was like, “… Wait. This stuff exists?” Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy were teenagers doing stuff, and I was like, “… I’m a teenager!”

It made me more excited to learn about how people identified.

As a kid — this is probably a similar experience a lot of people assigned female at birth (AFAB) have — I was weirded out by my own body. So it was really interesting and nice to read stuff I wasn't participating in in a sexy way, and still see humans interacting that way, without feeling implicated in it or icky about my own role in the situation. I could relax and not be part of the experience. That was a real revelation.

I learned a lot about how people communicated about sex and consent — like, here are actual scenarios where I can read about what's going on, what goes where, how to prepare for this. Going to Catholic school, I didn't have any friends who were out; we couldn't do that. So reading fanfic opened my horizons to the fact that there were communities of people out there who were out and could have these conversations. It made me more excited to learn about how people identified and helped shape what I care about, which is people feeling safe and being able to express who they are.

*Name has been changed.

These interviews were lightly edited and condensed for clarity.