What Are Popular Love Victor Fanfiction Themes And Tropes?

The show got the characters so profoundly wrong in places that fanfiction feels almost like a correction, a return to what the original 'Love, Simon' premise promised. In the series, Victor's relationships sometimes pivot on these manufactured crises—another love triangle, another parental disapproval scene. Writers in the fandom seem to pull those dynamics apart to find quieter, more human moments instead. They'll take a throwaway line about Victor's faith or his family's financial stress and spin an entire story around how that background noise affects his connection with Benji or Rahim, not as drama fuel but as texture. A lot of the stronger fic I've read ignores the later-season chaos entirely, sticking closer to the first-season tone. There's a focus on the awkward, gentle building of something between Victor and Benji before all the secrets and breakups. Writers fill in the gaps the show raced past: the first real conversation after the kiss, the nervous introduction to friends, the quiet panic of realizing you're in deep. It's less about will-they-won't-they and more about how-they-do, which I find infinitely more satisfying. Also, the way fanfiction handles side characters pairing off is fascinating. Like, fics exploring Felix and Pilar often give them more shared interiority than the show managed, building a rapport based on mutual understanding of family weirdness rather than just plot convenience. Same with Lake and Lucy—fics exploring that relationship dive into the social dynamics of their different friend groups in a way the show only gestured at. It feels like writers are using the framework of the show to tell the stories the framework itself was too busy to properly tell.

A lot of the momentum for that fandom was on Archive of Our Own, but not in the main 'Love, Victor' tag—it's in the wider 'Love, Simon' fandom tag, which includes the show. The best stuff is often buried under general 'Simonverse' tags or attached to older fics that got updated when the show aired. One trick that worked for me was searching for the character dynamic, not the fandom name. Like, filtering for Victor Salazar & Benji Campbell, or even Mia Brooks & Victor, if you're into those complicated friendship arcs. The writers who dig into the messy family dynamics or the cultural identity stuff usually tag those themes specifically, so you can find them that way too. Honestly, some of the most insightful takes I've read were cross-posted from Tumblr threads or linked in Discord servers that have since gone quiet. The ephemeral nature of fandom spaces makes finding the 'best' stuff a bit of an archeology project sometimes. I remember this one long-form fic that explored Victor's relationship with religion after the finale, and it had maybe twelve kudos because it was in a niche collection. Worth the dig, though.