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laleiaDear Fanfics,
I love you. This is probably a bit forward of me to admit this, considering there are so many people that read so much of you, and I'm sure you hardly know who I am amidst the millions of fanfic readers in your day-to-day life (which, when I broach fanfiction with RL people I meet, I have so far encountered five people who read fanfic for every one that doesn't), but I couldn't go another day without telling you.
Today, for example, I read a lot of absolutely brilliant Sherlock fanfic today (I highly recommend etothepii on AO3 for all the AU!verse, fusion, and otherwise amazingly well-written fanfic. Start with the Sherlock/Addams Family crossover.). I haven't really been excited about Sherlock fanfic in a while (you know how it goes, new fandoms distract your attention), and then suddenly I fell in love with Sherlock fanfic all over again.
Plus, earlier this week I downloaded a whole bunch of fanfic from AO3 to my Kindle, and reading fanfiction on the subway felt so AWESOME, like I was secretly doing something super subversive. Although when my friend flipped through the fanfic on my Kindle, I didn't realize that she had gotten to the ONLY sex scene in the entire 10k+ fic, and was semi-mortified when I realized. This is just like high school when my dad picked up the book I had left bookmarked on my bed and I later realized that the book had been been bookmarked at the graphic rape scene that was again, the ONLY sex scene in the entire book. It's like the universe conspires against me or something.
BUT I DIGRESS.
The point is, I'm just feeling a lot of love for fanfiction in general today. I swear, reading well-written fanfic can brighten up my day SO much, and I have a folder in my gmail for every single Kudos, Favorite Story, Review, or Comment I've ever gotten, labeled "Validation" because going through the kind words can cheer me up when I'm blue.
And because fanfiction is AWESOME, I thought, why not finally get around to the second day of the 30 days of fanfic meme?
2 – Name the fandoms you've written in, and how much you've written in that fandom, and if you still write in it.
Harry Potter --> 20+ fanfics, including all of the stuff on fictionalley that I haven't looked at in eons. I have to say, Harry Potter is my easiest fandom to write in -- I get the most ideas for it and it's pretty easy to pin those ideas down. I don't intend for it to be my most prolific fandom, and yet somehow I end up writing Harry Potter fanfics so much more easily than anything else. I think it's because I've read so much HP fic in my life that I know the universe backwards and forwards, and rarely need to look anything up.
Sailor Moon --> 18 published fanfics, plus 2-3 that I took down from ff.net because of the poor quality, plus umpteen billion unfinished snippets. It's sad that this was once my most prolific fandom, and yet if you look on my AO3 profile, there are absolutely NO Sailor Moon fanfics listed there. I am trying to change this, though! I just need the right muse to strike!
Vorkosiverse --> 8 fanfics. I have to admit that this is the fandom I was most surprised by. I loved the books, of course, and I read fanfic at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
bujold_fic, but I didn't ever think I'd write anything for it. Then one summer, bujold_fest happened, and I couldn't help but write some for one, then two, then three of the prompts. And before I knew it, I started having ideas for fanfics, things that I wanted to say, meta that I wanted to express via fanfic. I have to say that this is the most welcoming fandom by far, and the most awesomely amazing one. People are so nice, and there is so much lovely fic, and their are bilingual ficathons where stuff I write gets translated into Russian or people write fic in Russian for me. I think because the fandom is smaller, people appreciate fanfic more and leave reviews more often. Also, this is the only fandom where I bother to crosspost or link my fanfics to a community, because I feel like I have something of real value to offer. Which is a weird way to think of fanfic ...
Fandoms with 5 or less fanfics written: Leverage (5), Naruto (4), Doctor Who (4), Circle of Magic (3), Card Captor Sakura (2), Samurai Champloo (2), Star Trek Reboot (2), Jackie Chan Adventures (1, but there's a brilliant snippet on my harddrive waiting to be fleshed out!), Belgariad/Malloreon (1), Black Cat (1), White Collar (1), Undercovers (1), Chronicles of Narnia (1), Good Omens (1), Hikaru no Go (1), Sky High (1), Dragonball Z (1), Summers at Castle Auburn (1), Meteor Garden (1), Taylor Swift's song "You Belong With Me" (1), Settlers of Catan (1),
Of these, the following I'm probably most proud of:
Summers at Castle Auburn, definitely. I loved this book so much (still my favorite book --> I've even written a post on how much I loved it), and I was very sad when there was no fanfic anywhere on the Internet for it. That's when I resolved to write one -- three years later, I actually finished it. Written forfemgenficathon but never posted there (because I was late, and then the community got moderated because of spam so that only approved posts got posted and I don't think mine ever did), I'm especially proud of this fanfic even though I doubt there are many readers of the book who will ever bother to look for fanfic for the book. But if they do, it finally exists!
Settlers of Catan. It's a fandom on AO3 because I wrote the first fanfic. I basically started the fandom. I am SUPER proud of that. (Okay it's like a Swedish board game or something and hugely popular in non-English-speaking parts of the world so I'm sure there are a million non-English fanfics written for it, but ALLOW ME THIS DELUSION.) And of course my fanfic is one large inside joke (in the original version which I wrote for a friend, all of the characters are named after one of us, and almost all the lines spoken are based off events in our actual games, most famously --> when I yelled out "I didn't see the forest for the trees!" in reference to focusing so much on Longest Road that I boxed myself in!). But it was a ton of fun to write!
I'm actually proud of the fact that I've written in such a variety of fandoms. My first Doctor Who fics, I wrote before I'd watched more than an episode or two of Doctor Who. (I'd merely read tons of fanfic.) Some of my fandoms are ones I'd never have thought to write in if my friends hadn't requested it. I write most of all because it's fun, and this is why I unrepentantly write meta-disguised-as-fanfic, and label my original characters "Mary Sue", tongue in cheek. I love fanfic because it can be something short, and yet still powerful. Because you already have emotional connections and backstory, it can be so much more powerful with fewer words.
I know people who've "grown out of" writing fanfic. Which, I can understand if you no longer have the muse, and no longer get the urge to write fanfiction. But I also know people who've "grown out of" of reading fanfic. Who've matured out of it.. And that's something I don't understand, because fanfiction is such a joyous thing for me. It can be the high point of my day for me -- which isn't to say that my days are bad, just that the fanfics can be really good. Fanfics for me can fulfill some sort of basic desire, and I can't ever foresee myself being too mature for them.
Here's to hoping fanfics never stop making my giddily happy enough to devote an entire entry to them.
Love,
Me
I love you. This is probably a bit forward of me to admit this, considering there are so many people that read so much of you, and I'm sure you hardly know who I am amidst the millions of fanfic readers in your day-to-day life (which, when I broach fanfiction with RL people I meet, I have so far encountered five people who read fanfic for every one that doesn't), but I couldn't go another day without telling you.
Today, for example, I read a lot of absolutely brilliant Sherlock fanfic today (I highly recommend etothepii on AO3 for all the AU!verse, fusion, and otherwise amazingly well-written fanfic. Start with the Sherlock/Addams Family crossover.). I haven't really been excited about Sherlock fanfic in a while (you know how it goes, new fandoms distract your attention), and then suddenly I fell in love with Sherlock fanfic all over again.
Plus, earlier this week I downloaded a whole bunch of fanfic from AO3 to my Kindle, and reading fanfiction on the subway felt so AWESOME, like I was secretly doing something super subversive. Although when my friend flipped through the fanfic on my Kindle, I didn't realize that she had gotten to the ONLY sex scene in the entire 10k+ fic, and was semi-mortified when I realized. This is just like high school when my dad picked up the book I had left bookmarked on my bed and I later realized that the book had been been bookmarked at the graphic rape scene that was again, the ONLY sex scene in the entire book. It's like the universe conspires against me or something.
BUT I DIGRESS.
The point is, I'm just feeling a lot of love for fanfiction in general today. I swear, reading well-written fanfic can brighten up my day SO much, and I have a folder in my gmail for every single Kudos, Favorite Story, Review, or Comment I've ever gotten, labeled "Validation" because going through the kind words can cheer me up when I'm blue.
And because fanfiction is AWESOME, I thought, why not finally get around to the second day of the 30 days of fanfic meme?
2 – Name the fandoms you've written in, and how much you've written in that fandom, and if you still write in it.
Harry Potter --> 20+ fanfics, including all of the stuff on fictionalley that I haven't looked at in eons. I have to say, Harry Potter is my easiest fandom to write in -- I get the most ideas for it and it's pretty easy to pin those ideas down. I don't intend for it to be my most prolific fandom, and yet somehow I end up writing Harry Potter fanfics so much more easily than anything else. I think it's because I've read so much HP fic in my life that I know the universe backwards and forwards, and rarely need to look anything up.
Sailor Moon --> 18 published fanfics, plus 2-3 that I took down from ff.net because of the poor quality, plus umpteen billion unfinished snippets. It's sad that this was once my most prolific fandom, and yet if you look on my AO3 profile, there are absolutely NO Sailor Moon fanfics listed there. I am trying to change this, though! I just need the right muse to strike!
Vorkosiverse --> 8 fanfics. I have to admit that this is the fandom I was most surprised by. I loved the books, of course, and I read fanfic at
bujold_fic, but I didn't ever think I'd write anything for it. Then one summer, bujold_fest happened, and I couldn't help but write some for one, then two, then three of the prompts. And before I knew it, I started having ideas for fanfics, things that I wanted to say, meta that I wanted to express via fanfic. I have to say that this is the most welcoming fandom by far, and the most awesomely amazing one. People are so nice, and there is so much lovely fic, and their are bilingual ficathons where stuff I write gets translated into Russian or people write fic in Russian for me. I think because the fandom is smaller, people appreciate fanfic more and leave reviews more often. Also, this is the only fandom where I bother to crosspost or link my fanfics to a community, because I feel like I have something of real value to offer. Which is a weird way to think of fanfic ...Fandoms with 5 or less fanfics written: Leverage (5), Naruto (4), Doctor Who (4), Circle of Magic (3), Card Captor Sakura (2), Samurai Champloo (2), Star Trek Reboot (2), Jackie Chan Adventures (1, but there's a brilliant snippet on my harddrive waiting to be fleshed out!), Belgariad/Malloreon (1), Black Cat (1), White Collar (1), Undercovers (1), Chronicles of Narnia (1), Good Omens (1), Hikaru no Go (1), Sky High (1), Dragonball Z (1), Summers at Castle Auburn (1), Meteor Garden (1), Taylor Swift's song "You Belong With Me" (1), Settlers of Catan (1),
Of these, the following I'm probably most proud of:
Summers at Castle Auburn, definitely. I loved this book so much (still my favorite book --> I've even written a post on how much I loved it), and I was very sad when there was no fanfic anywhere on the Internet for it. That's when I resolved to write one -- three years later, I actually finished it. Written for
femgenficathon but never posted there (because I was late, and then the community got moderated because of spam so that only approved posts got posted and I don't think mine ever did), I'm especially proud of this fanfic even though I doubt there are many readers of the book who will ever bother to look for fanfic for the book. But if they do, it finally exists!Settlers of Catan. It's a fandom on AO3 because I wrote the first fanfic. I basically started the fandom. I am SUPER proud of that. (Okay it's like a Swedish board game or something and hugely popular in non-English-speaking parts of the world so I'm sure there are a million non-English fanfics written for it, but ALLOW ME THIS DELUSION.) And of course my fanfic is one large inside joke (in the original version which I wrote for a friend, all of the characters are named after one of us, and almost all the lines spoken are based off events in our actual games, most famously --> when I yelled out "I didn't see the forest for the trees!" in reference to focusing so much on Longest Road that I boxed myself in!). But it was a ton of fun to write!
I'm actually proud of the fact that I've written in such a variety of fandoms. My first Doctor Who fics, I wrote before I'd watched more than an episode or two of Doctor Who. (I'd merely read tons of fanfic.) Some of my fandoms are ones I'd never have thought to write in if my friends hadn't requested it. I write most of all because it's fun, and this is why I unrepentantly write meta-disguised-as-fanfic, and label my original characters "Mary Sue", tongue in cheek. I love fanfic because it can be something short, and yet still powerful. Because you already have emotional connections and backstory, it can be so much more powerful with fewer words.
I know people who've "grown out of" writing fanfic. Which, I can understand if you no longer have the muse, and no longer get the urge to write fanfiction. But I also know people who've "grown out of" of reading fanfic. Who've matured out of it.. And that's something I don't understand, because fanfiction is such a joyous thing for me. It can be the high point of my day for me -- which isn't to say that my days are bad, just that the fanfics can be really good. Fanfics for me can fulfill some sort of basic desire, and I can't ever foresee myself being too mature for them.
Here's to hoping fanfics never stop making my giddily happy enough to devote an entire entry to them.
Love,
Me
