Written by your webmaster on July 16, 2025.
Today's title comes from "Can't Get 'Em Out" from Between The Lines. It's a musical about a girl named Delilah who falls in love with Oliver, a fictional character from a book she's reading. Seems appropriate.
Today's post is about how I fell for Electra and how I realized I was ficto, because I believe those two subjects are very firmly intertwined. It's also something I've been meaning to write about in more detail. A lot more detail. Not everything I write will be this long.
For the TL, DR folks: Me developing romantic feelings for fictional characters is nothing new. My use of the ficto label is very new, and while I've been flirting with the idea for quite a bit of time but never committing, I saw Starlight Express and realized I was undeniably ficto.
My developing feelings towards fictional characters is not a new trend. I've been this way since I was young, although I don't care to air out my little-kid-self's dirty laundry, as I like to think my taste has improved since then. When I was around 13, I had the displeasure of developing feelings for someone. Real-life feelings, like what you would call a crush by middle school standards. This crush did not like me back. And the person who this crush did like had friends who did not like me. This fact was very much made known. So I used fiction as an escape of sorts. Even if people in real life did not like me, surely the fictional characters I imagined in my head would like me, and that was something, wasn't it? They'd do if there was no real person to like me in that way.
I got into the self insert and selfshipping communities around 2017- some of the friends that I've made back then I am still in contact with today. As I spent more time in these online spaces, I realized that I wasn't the only person who had these types of feelings. So I spent several years in the selfship space, making friends, losing friends, falling in love, falling out of it as my fixations and interests changed. I was aware these characters weren't real, but they brought me comfort all the same, especially when the COVID shelter-in-place started and I was stuck inside. Through my time in this community, I realized that my feelings weren't something to deny or be ashamed of, so I let them deepen naturally. I considered myself a selfshipper because I was part of the community. The label worked at the time. I believed I had the capacity to develop feelings for real people, but I selfshipped for fun (because who didn't want to draw themselves holding hands and making out with a fictional character of their choice!) and for coping (because life, at some moments, absolutely stank).
Around late 2023, I left the selfshipping communities on Tumblr and Twitter for personal reasons. During my time away, I realized I needed to seriously work on myself. That work hasn't ended, but I'd like to think I've become better and wiser than the person I was in 2023. I have since entered Bluesky and Reddit, but it'll be a long time before I return to Tumblr, if at all.
Let's take a brief jump back in time to 2021, when I was in the process of realizing I was aromantic asexual, and not biromantic asexual, as I had always thought I was. (More on this in a future blog post.) I was vaguely aware of the fictoromantic label, but I didn't want to use it at the time because it didn't suit my needs. I thought that my attraction to fictional characters wasn't significant enough to warrant the use of the label.
At this point, you may be wondering... if you'd had these long-lasting, deep feelings for fictional characters since a young age, why are you only using the fictosexual and fictoromantic labels now? What gives?
I got into a little musical called Starlight Express. You may have heard of it, probably from me. The exact plot details aren't relevant, but the show is about an anthropomorphic steam train named Rusty who wants to win a championship race against a diesel engine, Greaseball, and an electric engine, Electra. And while Greaseball was the character that piqued my interest in the musical, on account of her being a hot lady train, Electra was the character who stole my heart. If I'm being honest, I didn't know that I'd develop such deep feelings for them, because my first thought when my feelings for them began was mostly "we'll see how this goes for fun, yeah?" (More on this, on feeling drawn to a character versus making a conscious choice, in a future blog post.)
I made my Bluesky account with the intention of only really talking about Electra. To turn over a new page when it came to my online presence, you know? So I only talked about Electra. And I think this lack of switching my focus helped keep me stable and allowed me the opportunity to have my feelings grow naturally into what they are today. I don't think I'm monogamous when it comes to my selfshipping and my crushes-on-fictional-characters phenomena, but I do believe that at the moment, Electra is the character for whom I have the deepest romantic feelings.
And as my feelings grew, I started to have this nagging question in my mind... shit, am I fictosexual? Fictoromantic? One of those labels? I had considered using the label for a while, but I didn't feel like my feelings towards these various fictional characters were deep enough for me to consider them my real-life partners, which in my eyes meant I shouldn't use the label. Besides, not many people in non-arospec/non-acespec spaces or in otherwise non-ficto spaces knew about these labels. I didn't want to explain my queerness to other people and have them not get it or think it's weird or stop taking me seriously. A lot of people considered themself to be in relationships with these fictional characters beyond just selfshipping with them. I wasn't sure if that was really me. It wasn't that I thought it was weird, I was worried that other people would think I was weird, and in that regard, I felt like it wasn't really me because I didn't want to open myself up to that. Maybe in my heart I knew who I was, even if my mind wasn't ready to accept it.
It is perhaps ironic that I had this conscious awakening when Electra was the most real. I was lucky enough to be able to see Starlight Express a few weeks ago as of writing, and I fear I have never recovered emotionally from that night. (Even if my feelings for Electra were not what they are, I would stand by that statement.)
After six whole months of talking about this musical nonstop to my parents, convincing them that it was worth seeing and not simply the musical about roller skating trains, after one ten-hour plane flight and one missed train, I had made it to Wembley. And after seven whole months of deep intense feelings for a character from the musical, I had finally seen them live. I had heard their songs, seen their light-up costume, felt the rush as they skated past me. As in, literally, right past me. And I didn't cry and mess up my makeup. (I'm not a crier, but I was so worried that I Am The Starlight would have left me such a MESS that I spent half the song thinking "don't cry don't cry don't cry.")
To anyone else on the ficto spectrum, it seems obvious. Let's take ourselves out of my shoes for a moment. Picture this: somebody who has not shown an IOTA of deep, long-term romantic attraction to anyone real goes to see Starlight Express and spends the entire time making goo goo eyes at an anthropomorphic train. The same anthropomorphic train happens to be on the itabag that she has conveniently brought to the theatre. She has talked ad nauseam about the aforementioned train to anyone who would listen and enjoys thinking about them, even when she does not talk about them. She has struggled through drawing John Napier's complicated designs to create art of the train. She made the train her Discord profile picture a month before seeing Starlight and has not felt tempted to change it since then when she once flip-flopped between profile pictures once every two to three weeks.
Clearly, the closet is glass. You all can take the opportunity to laugh at me for not realizing this sooner. But this realization was new to me! Something had finally crystalized, and while I was still high on the dopamine rush from hearing AC/DC and Pumping Iron live, a question had started to form in my mind, one that I didn't want to answer but knew the answer to.
"What if I never fall in love with a real person the same way I've fallen in love with Electra?"
I suppose you could say the realization hit me like a train. A very well-dressed train with light-up wheels.
I had been solid and secure in my aromanticism, but the question continued to haunt me throughout the rest of my time abroad. I knew there was nothing wrong with never falling in love! But I felt like by admitting to myself that I was in fact ficto, I was giving up on the prospect of a 3D relationship, and putting myself into a situation where I'd forever run the risk of being judged. Like, if I used the labels fictosexual and fictoromantic for myself, in the eyes of the general populace, I'd be alone. I don't want people to think that I've given up on a 3D relationship because I can't find a man/woman/person. And if people I knew IRL knew about this part of me, they'd judge me or leave me or make fun of me because I can't find a man/woman/person. It's almost a cliché at this point. I get my feelings spurned once at the tender age of 13 and the experience is enough to turn me to fiction for the rest of my foreseeable life. I don't want people to think that. Hell, even within other queer communities, I fear people might not entirely understand; fictosexuality and fictoromanticism are a little more niche.
What really helped me feel happy, or at the very least content, with my ficto-ness was talking about it with friends. Talking about my conflicted feelings with people who were willing to let me talk without fear of judgement helped me give myself the room not to judge myself for my own identity and to accept this part of myself for what it was. And I'm grateful that I have friends that I can trust and safe spaces online and in person. I know there are a lot of fictos who don't have that luxury, and if I didn't talk about how I was feeling with people, my self-discovery would have been a lot rougher. Friends- you know who you are. Thank you for being there.
So a couple weeks ago, I started using the fictosexual and fictoromantic labels. It was as if something had fallen into place once I had let go of some of the shame that I felt. (You really think I could work through all that in 2 weeks?) And now that my fear of judgement has decreased, I feel a lot happier and confident in my specific brand of weird queerness. That the label fits me, maybe better than I had originally thought. And I think that by exploring my ficto-ness I'll be able to learn even more about myself in the process. And this little blog-slash-shrine-slash-exercise-in-learning-frontend is my space for that self-discovery.
I'm not going to pretend that everything is sunshine and roses now that I've found a label that works for me. But, at the very least, I like this part of myself. I wouldn't be me without this.