Fictosexuality: The Complete Guide to Attraction to Fictional Characters
Friday, December 5, 2025.
Fictosexuality refers to enduring romantic or sexual attraction to fictional characters. Not a fleeting crush. Not a “well, he is pretty cute for a cartoon lion.”
Not a temporary fever brought on by binge-reading too many fantasy novels at 2 a.m.
Fictosexuality is:
• persistent.
• meaningful.
• experienced as a legitimate orientation.
• emotionally loaded.
• psychologically coherent.
• and—for many people—central to their sense of identity.
Researchers studying sexual identity formation have long noted that desire can occur toward persons, archetypes, symbols, and imagined others (Berlant & Edelman, 2014). Fictosexuality is simply the contemporary form of this ancient phenomenon.
It is not pathology.
It is not delusion.
It is not failure.
It’s just the human imaginative capacity doing its usual overachieving thing.
Why Fictosexuality Exists (The Psychological Core)
Let’s step gently into the psychology here—because it’s tender.
Fictosexual attraction arises not because people “prefer fake things,” but because fictional beings possess traits that real partners cannot consistently maintain.
Fictional characters offer:
• emotional predictability.
• narrative coherence.
• stable personality structures.
• idealized responsiveness.
• no mood volatility.
• no relational ambiguity.
Rust’s work on sexual labels and identity demonstrates how individuals adopt identities that fit emotional experiences rather than clinical diagnostics (Rust, 2000). Fictosexuality fits this: a label that clarifies something deeply felt but previously unnamed.
Real humans are remarkable and maddening for the same reasons: they are inconsistent, shaped by trauma, influenced by childhood, biologically wired for reactivity, and occasionally capable of ruining entire evenings with a single lost sock.
Fictional characters, meanwhile, are consistent because someone wrote them that way.
They are immunized against the chaos of real intimacy.
The Lineage: From Ancient Myth to Anime
Fictosexuality is often treated as a novel internet invention, but history disagrees.
Mythology
People have desired gods, demi-gods, and mythic archetypes for millennia. Those stories weren’t merely narratives; they were emotional proxies.
Literary Characters
Readers in the 18th and 19th centuries were regularly undone by fictional figures. Scholars recorded the phenomenon long before Reddit existed.
Hollywood Icons
Parasocial desire exploded with film and television, as documented by Hall & Barrett in their work on social semiosis and identity formation (Hall & Barrett, 2017).
Anime & Manga
Then came nijikon—Japan’s “2D complex”—a decades-old framework describing attraction to two-dimensional characters who deliver emotional clarity real relationships rarely sustain.
Video Game Avatars
By the 1990s and early 2000s, gamers were confessing crushes on characters who were not technically alive, which did not stop anyone.
Fictosexuality is simply the umbrella term for a phenomenon older than nearly every sexual label currently in circulation.
What Sets Fictosexuality Apart From Berrisexuality
Both describe attraction to fictional beings, but they’re not interchangeable.
• niche.
• playful.
• specific to an example.
• used with self-aware humor.
• functions as identity-play.
Fictosexuality:
• broader orientation.
• meaningful to many.
• emotionally complex.
• describes a pattern of desire rather than a meme.
• often adopted by people seeking self-understanding.
Berrisexuality is a sort of a knowing wink.
Fictosexuality is more like a broader category.
In other words, one is a cotton candy stand at a county fair; the other is the fairground itself.
The Neuroscience of Why Fictional Characters Feel Real
Here’s where it gets fascinating. As I’ve mentioned before, I ‘ve worked clinically with several writers and devotees of fan fiction. They know a thing or two about the contours of ardent human desire.
The Brain Treats Stories as Social Reality
Neuroscience shows that when we engage deeply with narrative, the brain activates social cognition pathways identical to those used in real relationships.
We feel for fictional characters because the brain does not fully differentiate between narrative presence and physical presence.
Predictability Feels Safe
Fictional characters have consistent attachment patterns. They reliably act “in character,” unlike real partners, whose responses contain the entire unpredictability of human history.
The Fantasy System Reduces Allostatic Load
Chronic relational stress increases physiological burden (allostatic load). Attraction to safe fictional figures reduces this burden by offering:
• no conflict.
• no renegotiation of boundaries.
• no risk of betrayal.
A fictional love interest never blindsides you with a breakup text at 6:07 p.m. while you’re eating leftover Chinese.
Imagination Enhances Identity Exploration
Twenge et al.’s analysis of changing sexual attitudes across generations (Twenge et al., 2017) highlights how younger adults use fantasy spaces to test identity, desire, and relational models before applying them in real life.
Fictosexuality often becomes a developmental space—a rehearsal for intimacy.
Common Myths (And Why They’re Wrong)
Myth 1: Fictosexual folks “hate real relationships.”
Incorrect. Many have real-life partnerships. Fictional attraction does not preclude human intimacy.
Myth 2: Fictosexuality is a coping mechanism.
It can be—but so can every form of attachment. Humans use relationships (and fantasies) to regulate distress. See also: every poem ever written.
Myth 3: Fictional attraction is pathological.
Nothing in the research literature supports this. Identity theorists such as Barker (2016) and Weinberg (2018) frame these identities as culturally situated, psychologically coherent choices.
Myth 4: It’s “just a phase.”
It might be temporary, or it might be enduring. it’s functions the same as all desire.
Fictosexuality and Real-Life Relationships: A Therapist’s View
You can address this topic directly, as a couples therapist, without shaming clients.
Here’s what matters clinically:
What emotional need does the fictional attachment meet?
Safety? Consistency? Autonomy? Freedom from rejection?
Does it interfere with real-life functioning?
Most often, it does not. When it does, the issue is usually avoidant coping, not the identity itself.
Is the client using fantasy to avoid trauma-triggered intimacy?
This is an attachment question, not an orientation question.
Does the attraction coexist with satisfying human relationships?
If yes, there is no problem to solve.
A therapist’s task is not to “cure” fictosexuality; it is to help the client build a narrative that dignifies their desire.
Why Some Folks Choose Fictosexual As a Label
Because labels do work.
Identity research by Rust (2000) demonstrates that people claim labels to:
• reduce shame.
• articulate experience.
• find community.
• separate self-understanding from pathology.
• explore desire in safer ways.
Fictosexuality lets people say:
“This is not random. This is who I am.”
And that matters.
Is Fictosexuality an Orientation?
Short answer: For many, yes.
Long answer: Identity is socially constructed, and therefore “real” when people say it is.
Scholars like Sedgwick (2008) and Katz (2013) argue that all sexual categories are historical artifacts.
If people experience fictosexuality as an orientation, that is what it is.
The Cultural Significance of Fictosexuality
Fictosexuality reveals something profound about modern intimacy:
People are exhausted.
Real relationships require emotional labor many feel too depleted to offer.
Fantasy is psychologically restorative.
It provides structured, predictable emotional rewards.
Desire is diversifying.
For better or worse, digital life is clearly expanding the erotic landscape, not diminished it.
Labels soften loneliness.
Even humorous ones. Fighting loneliness is the essential therapeutic endeavor.
Fictosexuality is not a glitch in romantic culture.
It is just more data.
Final Thoughts
Fictosexuality is not a threat to real relationships, nor is it a misunderstanding of reality. It is a meaningful orientation for many people—a desire shaped by imagination, narrative, safety, and emotional coherence.
It is older than berrisexuality, older than fandom culture, and older than digital life.
It is not new.
We simply have language for it now.
And like all terminology born at the edge of cultural change, it expands our understanding of what it means to want, to love, and to find refuge in the stories that keep us human.
May we continue to greet these identities with curiosity, humor, and grace.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Barker, M. (2016). Sexuality and gender for mental health professionals: A practical guide. Sage Publications.
Berlant, L., & Edelman, L. (2014). Sex, or the unbearable. Duke University Press.
Fahs, B. (2019). Uncomfortable labels: Challenging harmful structures in sexual naming practices. Journal of Sex Research, 56(7), 865–878. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2018.1511390
Hall, K., & Barrett, R. (2017). The role of social semiosis in sexual identity formation. Annual Review of Anthropology, 46, 69–84. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102116-041455
Katz, J. (2013). The invention of heterosexuality (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.
Rust, P. C. (2000). Bisexuality: A contemporary paradox for women. Journal of Social Issues, 56(2), 205–221. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00162
Sedgwick, E. K. (2008). Epistemology of the closet. University of California Press.
Twenge, J. M., Sherman, R. A., & Wells, B. E. (2017). Changes in American adults’ sexual behavior and attitudes, 1972–2012. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46(8), 2273–2285. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0760-0
Weinberg, T. S. (2018). Sexual scripts and evolving identities in contemporary culture. Sexualities, 21(6), 905–922. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460717701699