How fanfiction helped me fall in love with my fat, Black, queer self

I’ve made a living off of projecting confidence and sexual liberation to the public. As a fat, Black identity- and lifestyle-focused content creator, those qualities are vital for the brand of the type of person whose lived experience necessarily challenges the sexist, anti-Black and fatphobic world around us. But I wasn’t always the sex-positive and self-assured person I am today.

Growing up, I was one of the only fat, Black kids in a predominately white school system. I was insecure about my body and sexuality, my anxiety rendering me unable to share my experiences with others. I was angry because I felt sexless and invisible when it came to love and sex, and yet, like my classmates, I was going through puberty and had so much pent up sexual frustration. Being unable to have conversations about this part of myself, especially with people who looked like me, constantly ate at me. Being a virgin made me feel even more insecure and like being queer, fat and Black was a problem. 

Influenced by my identity dysphoria yet afflicted by my raging teenage hormones, my desire to have my fingers dance upon the skin of others manifested in caressing the keys of my laptop. I knew early on that there was a lack of safety for Black non-men to express lust, so I turned to writing, namly fanfiction, as an outlet to express everything I didn’t have the courage to speak.

Fanfiction was provocative. As an avid reader of the genre, I fell in love with how writers adapted pre-existing worlds in their image. They crafted the perfect scenarios where characters could live in limitless worlds, be who they wanted to be and autonomously cultivate relationships with people of their choosing. But I recognized early on that a lot of what I was reading was limited in representation. While people were creating new worlds, the content I consumed rarely featured characters that weren’t white or Asian—and even those characters were flat with even flatter storylines. Never were there any characters like me; even so, I, too, wanted to live in an alternate reality. 

I saw this lack of representation as an opportunity to put a personal spin on my favourite fandoms, to write a home for myself. My primary goal was to build worlds where I would feel safe. Pulling inspiration from my favourite anime, video games and novels like Bleach and Final Fantasy VII, my stories were a blend of alternate universe elements and canonically accurate details. I maintained large portions of the settings and characterizations of pre-existing characters from source materials while inserting original characters and storylines. 

My protagonists were the blueprint of an existence I wanted to build. Sometimes inspired by important people in my waking life, they were beautiful, strong, courageous, witty and powerful. Their presence captivated the hearts of all the other characters, and they all had a level of sex appeal that was aspirational and enviable. Above all else, my main characters were Black, cishet women who were curvy, a feature that made them well sought-after by the men they came into contact with.

In my writing, I distanced myself from my fatness. Having been told by the real world around me that something about my body was wrong, I created curvy characters to allow me to experience all the feelings and desires that my thin counterparts were living. I hate to say this now, but these characters allowed me to be socially acceptable by temporarily expelling the parts of me that I felt were undesirable. I developed a secret online persona, separate from my real self, and I’d wait until my family was asleep so that I could write freely without being disturbed. I kept the work to myself, out of fear of being teased, shamed and shunned. 

But writing these protagonists made me feel empowered and safe enough to explore my sexual curiosity without naming it as my own. Crafting chapters with citrusy and lemony content gave me room to manifest fantasies and acts that I only dreamed about. (The citrus scale in fanfiction is used to describe the intensity of sexual activity, from cirtusy or mild interactions like hugs and cheek kisses to lemon or actual sex.) It took me away from the harsh realities and fear of being unwanted and never able to live out my desires. Playing God in my own hedonistic paradise granted me the freedom to visualize a world where I would not only be equal to my peers and their sexual experiences, but I would be them. 

And although I felt alone with my IRL insecurities and fears, fanfiction brought me a community that not only understood my needs but also supported my work. During my so-called fanfiction writing career, I developed a mentee-mentor relationship with someone named M. I didn’t and still don’t know much about M. Were they fat and Black like me? Were they a queer kid trying to find their way, too? Were they a middle-aged white man in their mom’s basement? I’ll never know. What I do know is they were a staunch advocate of me and my work. M was someone I could always rely on to share ideas with and get constructive feedback from. Most importantly, they listened to my musings and preconceived notions surrounding sex and identity without judgment. Although we didn’t know much about each other, and M seemingly vanished into thin air a year later, the virtual bond I developed with this person showed me that my desires and sexual urges were valid, even if the medium in which they were presented was purely imaginative. 

In my early 20s, I retired from writing fanfiction and started having sex. The pleasure and validation I discovered in my whimsical world of fanfic writing inspired me to embrace all facets of myself as a Black, fat, queer sexual being. In its own way, it taught me that I could show up as my authentic self and be present in my encounters while emulating the playful and adventurous spirit that my writing embodied. I embarked on a soul-searching journey to release myself from the shackles of social oppression, determined to create an existence in this world that affirmed me. I finally realized that all my fears and shame around hiding my sexual self were manifestations of socially-influenced imposter syndrome. I was always the embodiment of my protagonists. I was that quirky, witty, beautiful, sexual and autonomous being that was at the core of all my main characters. I just didn’t see it because the lens through which I was seeing myself was a white surpremacist one, not truly my own. I spent so much time diminishing myself to appease others that I didn’t even know I could speak my truth.  

Writing fanfiction allowed me to see the importance of using my voice to honour my identity, not hide it. It led me on a path to challenge the world around me and honour my entire being through my work, regardless of the opinions of others. Above all else, it taught me that I could create an existence that was candid and liberating without fundamentally changing who I am as a person. Today, I love every part of me, and I have fanfiction to thank for that. 

This story was published with support from Critical Minded.