It was 20 minutes into Plus–WriCampia’s LGBTQ+ affinity group–when I realized I knew one of my closest friends here from Tumblr, a popular social media discourse site.
It is not an exaggeration to call it an incredible coincidence to meet someone from a social media site of 600 million in the wild at our camp. At the same time, queerness and fandom, especially fanfiction writing, are often connected. At WriCampia, where self-discovery and storytelling are so deeply intertwined, this is all the more true.
Fanfiction, as a genre, has existed for thousands of years. A working definition of fanfiction is writing stories about content that did not originate with you; I myself wrote fanfiction before I knew what fanfiction was. “The Divine Comedy” by Dante is technically fanfiction of the Bible – a self-insert OC (or “original character”) of Dante himself. A story called Telegony, written by Eugamon of Cyrene a century after Homer died, is fanfiction of The Odyssey that asks the question, “What if this story was actually about Odysseus’s love child with Circe?”
The genre is alive and well today, and very queer. On the popular fanfiction site Archive of Our Own (AO3 for short), there are 18,180,000 works; out of all of them, 8.5% (1,557,495 works) are tagged as F/F (femslash, or women interested in women). 40.8% (7,421,401 works) are tagged as M/M (slash, or men interested in men); 3.6% (660,908 works) are tagged as “other” (meaning ships of characters that don’t align with “male” or “female” categories). Overall, 52.9% of fanfiction stories on AO3 are tagged as queer romantic fanfics, while only 20.9% (3,812,445 works) are tagged as a heterosexual romance. (The remaining 28.1% are tagged as gen, multi, or are untagged.)
Offline, WriCampia is another environment in which queer and trans people, and characters, are disproportionately represented. In a Yearly WriCampian poll from Aug. 2024, 68.6% of respondents reported that they identify as under the queer umbrella. This year, in August 2026, 69.8% of the 86 respondents (of a total of 215 campers) reported that they were queer.
I interviewed two counselors who were once campers: Sophia (they/he) and Natalie (she/her).
I asked Sophia about their experience as a queer trans person in camp. “It was wonderful; WriCampia was the only place I could be myself,” he told me. This was not an uncommon sentiment across several interviews.
Natalie was thoughtful as she recalled what it is about fanfiction that appeals to her so immensely. “Cause it’s fun, because I love it,” she said with a laugh. “For joy and because I want to. There are so many stories and so many characters I love so much and don’t want to let go of them.”
Natalie is a longtime fan of Naruto and the Saw franchise and has written fanfiction for both.
I asked Sophia what it felt like to come back as a counselor in Plus. “It’s very chaotic, but in a good way. Everyone has a lot of energy but it’s great to see Plus grow from a small room when I was a camper to this huge gym space now.” He explained to me that back when he was in Plus, it was just a couple kids, in comparison to the many campers who attended this year.
For campers, I interviewed Middle Camper Cam K. (it/its), 13, who loves to read fanfiction.
“I read fanfiction because I use fluff as emotional support, and it’s really hard to find books that are only fluff [a light and cheerful short story genre in fanfiction lingo] long story short: I read fanfiction for therapy,” it answered.
The notion that fanfiction is therapeutic may seem like a joke to some, but for many queer people, especially young queer people, fanfiction is a source of profound comfort. Middle Camper Cedar (he/they), 13, told me they use fanfiction as a way to improve their favorite media. “I can take my favorite pieces of media and push the things I love about them to the limit,” he told The WriCampian during a Plus meeting.
This is a recurring theme with many of my interviewees, with some emphasizing the representation angle of fanfiction.
“I actually view fanfiction as a way to add representation where it’s lacking,” said Middle Camper Emory L (she/they), 13.
Overall, it seems that queer writers gravitate towards WriCampia for the same reason they gravitate towards fanfiction: comfort, community, and representation.
