Did anyone else have the experience of reading Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell at the ripe age of 13 and relating to Cath because you read fanfic and had crippling social anxiety, and THEN eventually growing up to be a young adult who wrote fanfic and had crippling social anxiety, in your first year of uni and trying to finish your biggest fic yet by a specific self-imposed deadline at the expense of your finals assessments? Because boy do I have I story for yo—
I didn’t write fic when I read Fangirl for the first time—I didn’t write fic until the summer before my first year of uni, funnily enough—but seeing a character that used fictional worlds/relationships to escape the real one, who struggled in the same ways as me and didn’t so much as change by the end but grow and evolve was really special to me.
Rainbow gave me a little too much credit, maybe… I did not, unfortunately, get a Levi or a Reagan, nor do I have a spunky twin sister to reconnect with. It’s just me and my writing, my blorbos and my fandom friends—even now that I’m going through another fic deadline rush worryingly close finals in my second year, AGAIN—but I can’t help but think about how serendipitous it is that my life ended up mirroring a lot about a character that spoke to me so much as a tween.
I reread Fangirl every now and again and always, I think: oh, I feel like that. She gets it… which is maybe a little bit sad when it’s because you’re hiding in a bathroom for an hour because you’re too scared to go to the canteen, or crying because you’ve lived the whole first quarter of your life and you still don’t know how to talk to people, but even those times, being alone didn’t feel as… alone, I think, because of Fangirl.
I think about Cath when I’m on hour 6 of writing and I’m hunched over my laptop in the dark. I think about her when I put up fandom posters on my dorm room walls, or reply to fic comments, or straight up start crying because, besides fandom, I’m really lonely. (I think about her when I’m not so lonely too—when I talk to people and it goes ok, and maybe I can be person, actually).
I think about Cath when I’m scared. I think about her when I’m terrified and I just have to keep going anyway.
All that’s to say, I’m really grateful that Rainbow Rowell read so much drarry fanfiction wrote Fangirl, and I’m really grateful it was displayed at the front table of the bookstore I was in. I’m really grateful I read it, and related to it, and that I still do.
