30 Days of Fanfic Meme
Sep. 14th, 2011 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laleiaBecause I've actually been steadily working on Sailor Moon fanfic for the first time in a decade (okay, that's a slight exaggeration), in honor of (finally!) returning to my first and original fandom, I'm doing the fanfic meme, which I've been thinking about for a LONG time.
1 – How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?
I used to love Sailor Moon. I'd only ever watched it dubbed in English or in Chinese, but I knew I loved it nonetheless. So when I had Internet at my disposal, I eagerly tried to see what the world wide web had to offer me.
Aside from the Sailor Moon Super Senshi Playground's pictures and jigsaw puzzles, the web apparently had a lot of fanfic to offer me.
And that was my first exposure to fandom. I started off reading Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura fanfic and very quickly learned what "lemon" meant in a fanfiction context. (I'm pretty sure my first exposure to fanfic was ALSO my first exposure to NC-17 fanfic via some website called ______'s Lemonade Stand. I no longer remember whose lemonade stand it was, and Google is not helping me with this.)
I read a ton of fanfic, and started writing my first fanfic for Sailor Moon ... oh ... a LONG time ago. According to fanfiction.net, I started posting Sailor Moon fanfic in 2002? But I think I've deleted/removed one or two of my oldest, most terrible fanfic, and I was definitely writing long before I started posting. I used to have long Word Documents with my fanfic in it, and it was only long after I'd finished 6-7 of them that I geared up my strength to actually open up a ff.net account and post one.
Every Sailor Moon fanfic I've ever published is horrible. There are no words for how poorly-written they are. Beyond the matter of OOC writing, the AUs that have nothing to do with canon, the deus-ex-machina resolutions to everything because I was never capable of building up to a climax much less making up a satisfactory resolution, the perfunctorily-inserted and most boringly-described kisses ever, there were also the terrible plots that were thinly-veiled recycled versions of every cliche Sailor Moon plot ever, most especially the "All the other Senshi kick Usagi out and she goes on to be kickass without them and make them regret it".
The only good thing I can say about them is my spelling and grammar was probably consistently good. Also, that some of the most poorly-plotted ones still get Favorite'd on fanfiction.net on a semi-regular basis (as in, once a month). My best Sailor Moon fanfics are the ones that never got posted because they got to be eternal works in progress that I never stopped tweaking because I was never satisfied, and thus they never got finished. You can probably see the dilemma here.
I learned a lot from writing all that dreck, though, which is why I'm a huge fan of fanfiction.net. I think it does a great job of getting you through all the bad writing that is necessary before you get better. I still don't consider myself a good writer by any means, but I certainly like to think that I'm better than I used to be.
1 – How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?
I used to love Sailor Moon. I'd only ever watched it dubbed in English or in Chinese, but I knew I loved it nonetheless. So when I had Internet at my disposal, I eagerly tried to see what the world wide web had to offer me.
Aside from the Sailor Moon Super Senshi Playground's pictures and jigsaw puzzles, the web apparently had a lot of fanfic to offer me.
And that was my first exposure to fandom. I started off reading Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura fanfic and very quickly learned what "lemon" meant in a fanfiction context. (I'm pretty sure my first exposure to fanfic was ALSO my first exposure to NC-17 fanfic via some website called ______'s Lemonade Stand. I no longer remember whose lemonade stand it was, and Google is not helping me with this.)
I read a ton of fanfic, and started writing my first fanfic for Sailor Moon ... oh ... a LONG time ago. According to fanfiction.net, I started posting Sailor Moon fanfic in 2002? But I think I've deleted/removed one or two of my oldest, most terrible fanfic, and I was definitely writing long before I started posting. I used to have long Word Documents with my fanfic in it, and it was only long after I'd finished 6-7 of them that I geared up my strength to actually open up a ff.net account and post one.
Every Sailor Moon fanfic I've ever published is horrible. There are no words for how poorly-written they are. Beyond the matter of OOC writing, the AUs that have nothing to do with canon, the deus-ex-machina resolutions to everything because I was never capable of building up to a climax much less making up a satisfactory resolution, the perfunctorily-inserted and most boringly-described kisses ever, there were also the terrible plots that were thinly-veiled recycled versions of every cliche Sailor Moon plot ever, most especially the "All the other Senshi kick Usagi out and she goes on to be kickass without them and make them regret it".
The only good thing I can say about them is my spelling and grammar was probably consistently good. Also, that some of the most poorly-plotted ones still get Favorite'd on fanfiction.net on a semi-regular basis (as in, once a month). My best Sailor Moon fanfics are the ones that never got posted because they got to be eternal works in progress that I never stopped tweaking because I was never satisfied, and thus they never got finished. You can probably see the dilemma here.
I learned a lot from writing all that dreck, though, which is why I'm a huge fan of fanfiction.net. I think it does a great job of getting you through all the bad writing that is necessary before you get better. I still don't consider myself a good writer by any means, but I certainly like to think that I'm better than I used to be.
