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What does it mean to meet your heroes?

Lately, I keep coming back to this question.

There’s that old saying: never meet your heroes.

It’s tossed around often enough, but it’s honestly one of those warnings that may only truly make sense after you’ve ignored it and hurt yourself in the process. That’s when it sticks, and with that pain you gain a practical sort of caution about expectations and disillusionment.

Perhaps not as an absolute, but it is a valid warning. There is a difference between a creator and their creations. Admiring one isn’t equivalent to admiring the other. People can be wildly different from the version you’ve built of them in your head. Shitty people can make beautiful things that moved you, and beautiful people can make shitty things that didn’t land for you. And that’s just how life works. It’s not very romantic, but it’s true.

Keeping that little distance might seem safer. It preserves the version of the creator you built in your head, untouched and perfect and entirely your own.

But honestly, lately I’ve been thinking about how lonely that mindset is. If we always keep people on pedestals, how do we ever let ourselves be human around them? Or let them be human around us?

Entering fandom spaces—directly engaging, not just consumption—made me face this question in ways I didn’t expect.

For most of my life, fandom was quiet and private; it was the part of me that tore through six-digit fandom tags like it was some kind of sport, consuming fic after fic. My fandom participation was basically just: read. Then read more. If I had time, read even more. I tore through millions of words weekly like it was nothing. I read multiple fics a day for the past seven years. It sounds dramatic, but honestly, that was a huge part of my life. And I loved it like that.

Authors existed to me, but it’s certainly different from the way I perceive them now. I knew their usernames, I left AO3 comments, I got excited when they replied. But direct interaction? 

When there were a hundred thousand new things to read, I didn’t really sit there longing for conversation. My marked-for-later page was endless; some days I literally spent hours just adding fics to it instead of reading anything at all.

Then 2024 hit, and I wandered in the spring—by way of a TikTok that tempted me into trying out romantic fantasy—into “smaller” fandoms: manhwa at first, and then webnovels. Fanfiction of Korean media wasn’t completely new to me; I read Strong Girl Bong-Soon fics back in 2020.

But this time it was different. I dove in so deep I didn’t even look back.

Around September 2024, I started reading fanfiction for this Korean webnovel—a story with a devoted but relatively small fanbase compared to my previous fandoms. I fell headfirst. The protagonist hit me in a truly embarrassing way. We were two eldest siblings trying to hold ourselves together. I saw myself in him, and it hurt me, and I loved it.

But then… well, that series had under a thousand fics. I was used to 100k+ fandoms where you could read until your eyes fell shut and still not make a dent for years. Suddenly I was in a fandom where I could genuinely run out of content—and I did. 

At that point, reading wasn’t enough anymore. 

Coming into a small fandom with already established social circles is… well, it’s not easy. You’re walking into a house uninvited where everyone is mid-conversation and laughing about inside jokes you don’t know yet; there’s no way to sugarcoat it.

In small fandoms, everything feels closer. Cozier, sure, but also more exposed; everyone knows everyone, and a lot of them may have known each other for years. Stepping into that as a newcomer was genuinely terrifying.

Existing in a small fandom creates these wild moments where you keep running into creators whose fics you’ve laughed and cried to. I would scroll past usernames I recognized instantly; I’d be talking to someone casually in a server and then realize, oh wait, I’ve shed tears over your writing before. It feels like accidentally bumping into the authors of the books on your bedside table. I was constantly starry-eyed.

Because Korean webnovel fandoms are so enmeshed—and because I bounced between multiple circles—I ended up familiar with a lot of creators across different spaces.

Coming into these spaces taught me something I didn’t expect: people are often nicer than you think. Like, the creators I admired weren’t sitting there on thrones. We’re all ordinary superstars in our own way; we shine in small, specific corners, but we’re still just people. And most people aren’t going to bite your head off.

It really does just come down to gathering the courage to send a random message. Opening a DM box and typing something stupidly earnest while your hands are shaking because what if they think you’re weird? What if they ignore you? What if you regret it instantly? I’ve done it a few times now, and it never stops being terrifying, although the degree of terror has lessened. But people are usually far more receptive than you expect; passion and admiration touch people.

Most creators love it when you tell them you enjoyed their work and what you enjoyed about it. And as long as you’re polite and respectful, there’s no real harm in trying. Sometimes they respond warmly, sometimes they’re busy, sometimes they’re short with you or don’t reply at all—and that hurts, sure, but it doesn’t mean anything about your worth. Not everything will land, not every conversation will turn into a friendship, but that’s okay. You tried, and trying is worth it.

If you’re entering a fandom, people might not have the time or energy to reach out first, but they may be receptive if you try. Overcome your fears to shoot your shot. It doesn’t hurt. Sometimes it’s awkward, sometimes you hit a wall, but sometimes you don’t. Sometimes someone talks back. And keeps talking.

And sometimes, someone becomes really important. I made close friends; one of them—one in particular—kind of changed my entire life, which is insane to say about a person I met because we both liked the same webnovel. But that’s how fandom works, right? One tiny shared interest and suddenly you’re rewriting pieces of each other’s worlds. Reaching out was scary, especially to people who were already “someone” in the fandom, but sometimes it’s worth taking that step; they might not want a friendship, or maybe they do, and either way it tells you something.

Interacting with creators changed how I write; I learned from them, adapted, got inspired, absorbed their strengths through sheer exposure. I love learning. I love getting better. And hearing praise from people whose writing shaped me—that genuinely inspired me to keep going. It made me feel like I belonged, even when I wasn’t sure.

And I guess that’s where this circles back to “meeting your heroes”. It’s worth taking the risk. It really is. You might get disillusioned; you might get hurt; your favorite space might not stay your favorite forever; but you also might find people who change your life. You might learn things about yourself you wouldn’t have learned otherwise. You might step into a room full of strangers and walk out with art you never would’ve created and friendships you didn’t know you needed.

Because I still remember so vividly what it felt like to be new—awkward, overeager, terrified of saying the wrong thing—I try really hard to extend the same warmth I once desperately needed. I like welcoming people. Asking questions. Telling someone I’ve already read their work and loved it. Art inspires art, and someone did that for me once. Returning that feels right.

There’s something genuinely wonderful about interacting with the people behind things you love. Not because you expect them to be perfect or life-changing, but because it closes a small gap between you and the world; it reminds you that the things you love didn’t fall out of the sky—they came from someone who probably also loves the same stories and characters that you do. People in fandom make things because they care; they’re also tired students or overworked adults or passionate teens; they have real lives and messy rooms and homework or jobs or obligations. It’s so easy to forget they’re just people behind screens; numbers and usernames make them seem intimidating, but they’re not.

I think that’s the part people forget: creativity is cyclical, and meeting someone who writes something you love means meeting someone who was once moved by someone else too.

But of course, this isn’t the only outcome; the world contains all kinds of people. There are shitty people. There are also people who aren’t shitty but just don’t mesh with you. You might admire their work and imagine they’ll be warm or curious or open, but they might not like something you like, or they might curate their space in a way that shuts you out. And yeah, it can hurt—it does hurt—but it’s also their right to curate their circle, their boundaries, the content they consume. Sometimes you just bounce off each other, like magnets. And you sit there staring at it, wondering if you fucked up or if you weren’t interesting enough or kind enough or something enough, but really it’s just life. Even if you feel foolish for caring so much.

People are allowed to choose what they consume and who they talk to; boundaries don’t mean they hate you, even if it feels like it sometimes.

And then there’s statistics—followers, hits, comments, whatever we’re all pretending not to care about. They don’t define your worth, even though your brain tries to convince you they do. And it’s hard not to defer to people with big numbers or older accounts or reputations that echo through fandom spaces. But numbers aren’t personality traits; they aren’t indicators of kindness or compatibility; they don’t mean someone is wiser or morally correct or even pleasant.

People are just people.

Some have very strict preferences; some are casual and open; some make incredible things but are honestly unbearable to talk to; some might be dismissive or rude about things you love and it stings in that specific way where admiration collapses into embarrassment because here you are respecting their work while they kind of think you’re an idiot. And that’s an interesting place to stand, somewhere between awe and hurt.

Maybe part of this is just the way I’m built, but I love a lot of things very intensely; I read so much that I end up recognizing people long before they ever know I exist, and I notice patterns and usernames and writing voices quickly. I care quickly. Maybe too quickly. And I’ve learned the hard way that sometimes the energy you pour out doesn’t come back to you. I once got blocked over a dumb joke I made by an author whose fics I’d bookmarked and devoured and genuinely loved, and I just sat there staring at the screen like… oh. It stung in a really specific way, but eventually I had to shrug and move on. Everyone isn’t for everyone. People curate their online lives to protect their peace; it’s not a personal referendum on my value.

I’ve always struggled with self-worth, especially around people I care about and admire. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I’m a chronic people pleaser; I hate being disliked. I always want to smooth things over, make people comfortable, avoid conflict, be the calm one, the nice one, the unobtrusive one. And that has led to me bending myself too much.

There are creators who I admire, and then I talked to them and realized they were not what I expected. And instead of backing off or standing up for myself, I’d still feel that stupid little tug in my chest like I should mold myself to them, to adjust myself, like my respect for their art meant I owed them something in how I behaved around them to try and impress them.

Letting go of that has been difficult; realizing that your heroes aren’t authorities and that you don’t need them to like you is strangely freeing but also a little sad. You can admire someone for their art without getting along with them personally; those two things are separate. Your admiration doesn’t require their validation. They don’t get to define your worth or your right to exist in a space.

Sometimes you learn things about creators whose works you admire. Sometimes you learn someone you admired hurt people you’re close to; sometimes the dots connect in ways you wish they hadn’t. Fandom is small, unbelievably small—six degrees of separation collapses into like two. It can be genuinely shocking.

But, important point: you’re not a bad person for having consumed content made by someone you don’t like or don’t mesh with. No one’s making profit off fanwork. A like or a hit isn’t a personal endorsement. Attention is a kind of social currency, sure, but it’s not a vow of loyalty. Sometimes you just like a thing because it’s good, even if the person behind it isn’t.

You’re allowed to love a story without loving its storyteller.