[Meme] 30 Days of Fanfiction -- questions 1-3

[edenfalling]

This meme has been making the rounds for a couple months now, and I thought it might be interesting to answer the questions. But I do not have the patience to keep up a single meme for thirty days, so I am going to answer them in batches.

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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 actually made a post about that back in 2006. But to summarize, while I always had vaguely fannish impulses, and once went so far as to loosely plot a ridiculously indulgent self-insert sequel to Pamela Service's Winter of Magic's Return and Tomorrow's Magic, I didn't encounter fanfiction as such until February 2002, when I was twenty years old.

During one of my depressive episodes, I stumbled across Cassandra Claire's "Very Secret Diaries." In the surrounding material of one entry, she mentioned a Harry Potter story she was simultaneously working on. Curious, I followed the link... and fell down the rabbit hole into HP fandom. A few months later, I realized I'd mostly been reading Harry/Hermione stories, and made a deliberate effort to read Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny to see if I had a preference or was just being lazy. I hated most of the H/G stories I read, but I quite liked the idea of Harry and Ginny together, and on the theory that the best way to critique a badly handled theme is to handle it correctly oneself, I wrote Five Years Is an Awful Lot of Later. Things spiraled on from there.

As for what pulled me in: First, when I am in a blue funk (or, gods forbid, a full-fledged depressive episode again), one of the ways I try to latch onto the world outside my head is by obsessive reading. Fanfiction offers a lot of ready reading material, much of which is the literary equivalent of comfort food; some is also seriously awesome. Second, I was completely stalled on my original writing at the time and fanfiction was an arena where I could write without getting run over by my own perfectionism. I could get outside myself and play a little. Third, and this relates back to the depression and to my overall introversion, it is often easier to interact with people via the internet instead of face to face -- it is less emotionally draining, and I didn't feel a need to put on my "company face" online the way I did when dealing with family and friends in real life.

Later on, I also got interested in meta and stuff, but fundamentally I am still here for the stories, the writing-as-play, and the community.

...If you mean, what was it about Harry Potter in particular that pulled me in, then I suppose the answer is something like this: It's a world that has the edge of the fantastic that I like, while still grounded enough to feel lived-in. It also has a lot of badly mitered corners, uninstalled windows, and unexplored rooms, so to speak, which gave me room to knock about tidying up and making maps. J. K. Rowling's world-building was sloppy and she left weird plot holes and characterization glitches lying around, for which I am eternally grateful. Those weak points let me turn my need to make things right outward onto Rowling instead of inward onto myself, which was a much more productive and less self-destructive way of being. (Remember, I was dealing with intermittent clinical depression and a tangle of maladaptive habits and thought-patterns. Anything that got me out of myself was a godsend.)

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2 – Name the fandoms you've written in, and how much you've written in each fandom, and if you still write in them.

Oh god...

Major fandoms: Harry Potter (68), Naruto (33), Angel Sanctuary (31), Chronicles of Narnia (25-26, depending, though one isn't posted yet). Aside from finishing a few WIPs, I have left HP. I am still actively writing in the others.

Minor fandoms: BtVS/A:tS (6), Ranma 1/2 (3), Labyrinth (3), X-Men (2), Gormenghast (1), Death Note (1), Final Fantasy 7 [but only in icedark_elf's Mercverse AU] (5), Saiyuki (4), Enchanted Forest Chronicles (8-11, depending), The Homeward Bounders (2), Star Trek (10), The Darkangel (5), The Dark Is Rising (2), American Gods (1), Seaward (2), the Bible (1), Yu-Gi-Oh! (1), Code Geass (2), Hexwood (2), and Inception (3).

Only in crossovers: Gundam Wing (1), Indiana Jones (1), Avatar: The Last Airbender (6-9, depending), Lucifer (2), Hikaru no Go (1), and Anita Blake (1).

Generally speaking, I am trying to do one or two specific things when in a minor fandom. Once I have done them, I move on. If I am still writing in these fandoms, it's because of WIPs or, in the case of Inception, because it is my new shiny fascination. :-)

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3 – For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to write?

I am only going to answer this for fandoms in which I have written more than a handful of stories.

For Harry Potter, my favorites to write were Ginny Weasley, Petunia Dursley, and Hermione Granger. Ginny was my every-person character, though I also used her as a warped mirror to work out some of my own issues, mostly relating to depression and social isolation/awkwardness. Petunia and Hermione were my mouthpiece characters; I used them to criticize some of Rowling's world-building and implicit ethical framework. Tom Riddle was scarily easy to write, but I can't say that I like him. And I liked writing Harry, though I rarely used him as a POV character.

For Naruto, my favorites are Umino Iruka and Haruno Sakura. (Also Ayakawa Yukiko and Tonoike Naga, but since they are my OCs, I don't think they count.) In all cases, the reason is the same -- they stand slightly outside of the usual ninja mindset for one reason or another, which gives me room to comment on it. Sasuke is fun when I want an unreliable narrator, and I do love to try fixing him, but his POV gets claustrophobic after a while.

For the Chronicles of Narnia, my favorite to write is Jadis, though she is not my favorite character in general. (That would be Edmund.) Jadis's POV is wonderfully sharp and direct, very clean and yet with unexamined depths. Again, I use her to criticize Lewis. I often use Susan for a similar reason, and because I like that Susan is the only character who survives the series and thus has open possibilities before her.

For Angel Sanctuary, my favorite is Kira Sakuya. He writes himself. I like Setsuna and Sara nearly as well and for similar reasons. All three of them have very distinct voices and personalities in my head, and I love how they play off one another. I also like Belial, who again has a very distinctive voice and personality.

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More tomorrow-ish...

In other news, I am back to working on "Weregild," but the next piece is going a bit slowly because A) I am out of the swing of the story, and B) I have to talk about guns from Arthur's POV, and I know fuck-all about guns. If the finished section sounds even vaguely believable, it will be entirely thanks to CyanideBreathmint's invaluable four-part guide to guns, judiciously supplemented by Wikipedia and Google. (Gnrgh, research. *grumble grumble pfah*)

And in other other news, fics are going up over on narniaexchange, one per day. I am trying to make a point of commenting on each one -- partly because I know how much it sucks to not get feedback on a purpose-written story, and partly because I am terrible about giving feedback and am having a temporary fit of conscience over that and trying to improve. These fits never last, but now and then I do try. :-/

Comments

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

1) I am so excited to be reading about your fanfic writing experinces.
2) I knew you'd written for a ton but somehow forgot/didn't know you'd written Enchanted Forest! Cool!
3) Its interesting to see wht you "use" different characters in HP for.
4) I love Edmund too.
5) Good luck with writing.

[edenfalling]

2) I wrote one straight-up Enchanted Forest Chronicles story for Femgenficathon a few years ago -- it's about how Morwen first met Kazul. The others are fic snippets from the Avatar: The Last Airbender/Enchanted Forest fusion that I am determinedly not writing, plus a tiny little fusion with Hikaru no Go in which Cimorene and Mendanbar take the roles of Shindou Hikaru and Touya Akira, respectively.

3) I think Ginny, Hermione, and Petunia turned up a lot both because I found them useful and because they became very three-dimensional to me, so it was easier to imagine them in many different situations. Other characters were also interesting, but I generally only had a few things to say about them; once I'd made my point, I was done. Tom, on the other hand, was not useful. He was just fascinating, in a highly disturbing way. And Harry, of course, is the main character and so I love him. I tend to like main characters mostly because their stories are about them -- if I didn't like a story (and therefore its main character), I would probably not be reading it, let alone writing fanfiction for it. :-)

5) Thank you!

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

I tend to like main characters mostly because their stories are about them -- if I didn't like a story (and therefore its main character), I would probably not be reading it, let alone writing fanfiction for it. :-

See, this is me too. It always surprises me when people actively don't like a main character but are interested enough in something about the story to be in fandom, but to each their own, I guess.