oh, i am what i am, i'll do what i want, but i can't hide;

[tiny_ninja]

Challenge #2

In your own space, talk about your fannish history.

Oh man. Where to begin?

I started writing fanfiction before I really had an idea of what it was, or that other people were doing it, too. Mostly I wrote stories for my friends to read, carried around in notebooks that I would scribble in whenever I had a free moment. In high school, I was working on a massive Dark Shadows story - yes, the 1960s one, and it's where my Rissa Jennings name came from, and it was a sequel to a friend my story wrote. And there was a Chronicles of Amber story too, also written in a notebook, that I rather loved, focusing on Random and Vialle's daughter. And a poorly written but lots of fun Highlander story that I really hoped would someday see the light of day.

Then I got to college, and had unrestricted access to the Internet. And I found LiveJournal.

My first "official" fandom I posted works for was Highlander. I was 18 and I wrote drabbles for a weekly challenge. That led to joining a Highlander RP and being introduced to online roleplay. I ran an icon challenge for Lost, and posted a few fics to LJ that I really should resurrect and repost to AO3 at some point. I wrote an awkward AF Mighty Morphin Power Rangers/Power Rangers in Space crossover called Here With Me, focusing on Tommy's little sister, which, 16 years later, would spark the ideas that led to the massive Power Rangers/MCU crossover I'm working on now. I also wrote an Auron/OC fic called Kiss From a Rose that had been a lot of fun, focusing on Lulu's family and backstory.

...and then I stopped.

I got a lot of shit for my first Power Rangers story. Not necessarily from reviewers - their words were mostly constructive - but from my friends for writing for such a "childish" fandom as Power Rangers. There was also the idea that writing original characters in your stories was "wrong" and therefore all the work I'd done wasn't worth anything. And I caved. I shoved my fics into the back corner of my mind, and focused on my RP games, and thought that would be enough.

I joined a Harry Potter game before I'd read all the books, and used the Lexicon to bullshit my way through the app. I made the best version of Zacharias Smith I've ever seen (yes, I'm biased). He followed me through two solid games and then I adapted him to fit a massive original character game I joined called Light of May. It is, to date, the largest and longest-running game I've ever played, and it lasted for more than five years. While I tried to play elsewhere after that, it was never quite the same, and once Gabby arrived, the idea of doing anything more than a few PSL lines with close friends is foreign.

I worked on original works. I wrote what made me happy, and then I got back into fandom again. I'd always lurked so I never really left, but I got the itch to finally do something again. I got an AO3 account and posted short fics (mostly FFVI) as gifts for runicmagitek. I started talking about the things I wanted to write with my friends, especially Runic, Matt, and Meghan, and all three of them encouraged me to say "fuck it" and write what I wanted. Matt just comes to work and gives me ideas, and he's the reason (or to blame, tbh) for why I managed to write the first draft of A Hero Lies in You. We were talking about the reasons why that one MMPR fic from college didn't work, and he went, "You know, you could just add Tommy and Tommy's sister to the Power Rangers 2017 timeline. Maybe they're twins."

And then I proceeded to write a 75,000 word fic about how that would go about. Edit 1 is current out to beta and I'm hoping to start posting it by the end of this year, depending on what edits come back.

I've joined fic challenges. I'm actually writing again, not just a few tags here and there when I get the time. It's nice to get back to something that brought me joy and while I still hear that nagging voice in the back of my head, I'm doing my best to ignore it. I've still got my original works in progress, too. I'm having fun, and that should be what matters in fandom.

Comments

[seleneheart]

I'm really glad you were able to get back into writing! It's terrible what your 'friends' did.

[tiny_ninja]

Thank you! And yeah, but it was more than a decade ago now, and I've learned to listen to myself more. I'm not going to let others' words keep me from writing what makes me happy. ♥