![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
30 Days meme - fanfic edition
Jul. 3rd, 2011 09:53 am1 – 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 think my brain is wired for fanfic. I remember, as a tiny, tiny kid, watching the Super Friends, and thinking "Why don't they ever show them having a normal day at the Hall of Justice?" I brought that up once, during a conversation about comics with some guy friends of mine, and boy did I get an earful about "what makes a story" and "Think Bigger!" and other assorted crapola like that.
It gave some inner drama. Half of me had been happily writing bandfic (a wee portion of that half was happily, secretly writting bandslash) and half of me was fretting that I wasting my time on little stories that weren't interesting anyone.
Granted, the bandfic my chick friends and I were writing likely wasn't interesting anyone else. Our fic was Mary Sue to the extreme. Which I guess is why I've never been as outraged as most online folks are about her. For the writer, I think she's fun and an important step in developement. It's when she's thrust upon others that her dreariness and other issues show.
Anyway, fanfic originally was something my friends and I did in high school. In college, we went to seperate schools, and while I dropped writing it in favor of orignal fic, I still daydreamed a lot of stuff. At that time, I also got heavily into table and dice rpg-ing. And that definately scratched the Mary Sue itch, and also filled the fanfic urge (creating stories in someone else's universe, using other people's characters). And, by then, I was old enough to buy porn. So instead of having to scribble bandslash, I could read gay erotica. Aaron Travis, John Preston and others were out-doing quality-wise anything I could have wrote for myself. Oh, Masquerade Publishing, I miss you.
So, it was wasn't until 2000 that I discovered online fandom. "Discovered" is being used in a very Christopher Columbus manner here. I mean, I knew a little about online fandom-- articles in the newspaper or webzines about "women who write romantic encounters between Kirk and Spock", "obsessive websites", etc. I didn't seek any of it out, until my r/l wrestling fan friends started to drift away. I went online looking for chicks who watch, and I stumbled upon the Mary Sueiest of Mary Sues.
The story, the name long-lost to internet ether, featured a girl, Angel, who got to use her brother's backstage passese when he was grounded for smoking pot. There she and her friends met various wrestlers and paired off accordingly. She and Jeff fell in deep love. She became a veterinarian, and died after being hit by a car while attending a hurt animal on the roadside. The story ending with Jeff purposing caking a Swanton so that he would break his neck, die, and be with his Angel.
It was gloriously laughable, and it gave me a sweet dose of nostalgia for the bandom days of high school. I scrounged for more, and Lo! I found more. Lots and lots more. I avoided the "slash" thinking it meant slasher, like gory movies. I read one-- Jai's "Chairailious", and from then on, I was hooked.
I lurked for a long, long time. Months. I was lucky enough to enter the fray at a time when wrestlefic readers still left feedback. Which encouraged me. Since then I've dabbled in other fandoms, but none sank in like wrestling did.
2 – Name the fandoms you've written in, and how much you've written in that fandom, and if you still write in it.
Chronogical FTW:
Duran Duran: Mostly, secret slash set in the AU worlds of their videos. In particular Wild Boys and New Moon on Mondays. Which is one of the reasons I was so delighted with Satellites on the AO3 boards. Occasionally, I'll read a few fics but I've never really felt the urge to join in with this fandom. I guess because I'd probably only write 1983 fics, and I don't really want to be that writer.
Local Bands: This was more about fandom than fanfic for me. First experience with a lot of fandom activies, and badfic tropes. It was fun, I don't regret it.
Star Trek TNG: Total Mary Sue, and I'm leaving it at that.
Wrestling: My portfolio of fiction exceeds all other fandoms combined. I still write in it, though slowly and rarely-- a couple of fics a year is prodigious output for me.
I'm disappointed I never attained great status within the wrestlefic community. Not BNFness; I'm too much a dictator for that. Just some level of recognition. Big ego speaking here, but I think my stories deserved that. The early ones, as rickety as they were, were, at least unique. They were both unique and resolutely wrestlefic. I wrote some semi-innovative things-- murder mysteries, sincere ugly/unusual character fics, empowered bottoms. And when I got called out on grammar and other issues, I worked on them. The upsurge in writing quality from "Soda Rules" to "Crows" or "Amends" or even, "Glory Hole" should have got me some kind of praise. Instead, I don't even get pity feedback. /fandom fail.
Concurrent to wrestling, I've dabbled in White Collar, NFL, SPN, Psych, Game of Thrones. But, I am too much at odds with most fandom tropes to commit to a new fandom with the same intensity I delved into wrestlefic.
I think my brain is wired for fanfic. I remember, as a tiny, tiny kid, watching the Super Friends, and thinking "Why don't they ever show them having a normal day at the Hall of Justice?" I brought that up once, during a conversation about comics with some guy friends of mine, and boy did I get an earful about "what makes a story" and "Think Bigger!" and other assorted crapola like that.
It gave some inner drama. Half of me had been happily writing bandfic (a wee portion of that half was happily, secretly writting bandslash) and half of me was fretting that I wasting my time on little stories that weren't interesting anyone.
Granted, the bandfic my chick friends and I were writing likely wasn't interesting anyone else. Our fic was Mary Sue to the extreme. Which I guess is why I've never been as outraged as most online folks are about her. For the writer, I think she's fun and an important step in developement. It's when she's thrust upon others that her dreariness and other issues show.
Anyway, fanfic originally was something my friends and I did in high school. In college, we went to seperate schools, and while I dropped writing it in favor of orignal fic, I still daydreamed a lot of stuff. At that time, I also got heavily into table and dice rpg-ing. And that definately scratched the Mary Sue itch, and also filled the fanfic urge (creating stories in someone else's universe, using other people's characters). And, by then, I was old enough to buy porn. So instead of having to scribble bandslash, I could read gay erotica. Aaron Travis, John Preston and others were out-doing quality-wise anything I could have wrote for myself. Oh, Masquerade Publishing, I miss you.
So, it was wasn't until 2000 that I discovered online fandom. "Discovered" is being used in a very Christopher Columbus manner here. I mean, I knew a little about online fandom-- articles in the newspaper or webzines about "women who write romantic encounters between Kirk and Spock", "obsessive websites", etc. I didn't seek any of it out, until my r/l wrestling fan friends started to drift away. I went online looking for chicks who watch, and I stumbled upon the Mary Sueiest of Mary Sues.
The story, the name long-lost to internet ether, featured a girl, Angel, who got to use her brother's backstage passese when he was grounded for smoking pot. There she and her friends met various wrestlers and paired off accordingly. She and Jeff fell in deep love. She became a veterinarian, and died after being hit by a car while attending a hurt animal on the roadside. The story ending with Jeff purposing caking a Swanton so that he would break his neck, die, and be with his Angel.
It was gloriously laughable, and it gave me a sweet dose of nostalgia for the bandom days of high school. I scrounged for more, and Lo! I found more. Lots and lots more. I avoided the "slash" thinking it meant slasher, like gory movies. I read one-- Jai's "Chairailious", and from then on, I was hooked.
I lurked for a long, long time. Months. I was lucky enough to enter the fray at a time when wrestlefic readers still left feedback. Which encouraged me. Since then I've dabbled in other fandoms, but none sank in like wrestling did.
2 – Name the fandoms you've written in, and how much you've written in that fandom, and if you still write in it.
Chronogical FTW:
Duran Duran: Mostly, secret slash set in the AU worlds of their videos. In particular Wild Boys and New Moon on Mondays. Which is one of the reasons I was so delighted with Satellites on the AO3 boards. Occasionally, I'll read a few fics but I've never really felt the urge to join in with this fandom. I guess because I'd probably only write 1983 fics, and I don't really want to be that writer.
Local Bands: This was more about fandom than fanfic for me. First experience with a lot of fandom activies, and badfic tropes. It was fun, I don't regret it.
Star Trek TNG: Total Mary Sue, and I'm leaving it at that.
Wrestling: My portfolio of fiction exceeds all other fandoms combined. I still write in it, though slowly and rarely-- a couple of fics a year is prodigious output for me.
I'm disappointed I never attained great status within the wrestlefic community. Not BNFness; I'm too much a dictator for that. Just some level of recognition. Big ego speaking here, but I think my stories deserved that. The early ones, as rickety as they were, were, at least unique. They were both unique and resolutely wrestlefic. I wrote some semi-innovative things-- murder mysteries, sincere ugly/unusual character fics, empowered bottoms. And when I got called out on grammar and other issues, I worked on them. The upsurge in writing quality from "Soda Rules" to "Crows" or "Amends" or even, "Glory Hole" should have got me some kind of praise. Instead, I don't even get pity feedback. /fandom fail.
Concurrent to wrestling, I've dabbled in White Collar, NFL, SPN, Psych, Game of Thrones. But, I am too much at odds with most fandom tropes to commit to a new fandom with the same intensity I delved into wrestlefic.
