Arctic Light

Ugghhhh, I have a cold and I feel TERRIBLE. It is just a cold (I can tell because, for one thing, I'm starving; I've been eating everything that isn't nailed down) but I will be glad when we get the feeling-lousy part of this process out of the way.

Since I can't concentrate on writing because I currently have the attention span of a distressed moth, I decided to do the "30 days of fanfic questions" meme that's been going around (recently seen at yalumesse, for example). It looked fun, and last winter when I did the December questions meme THAT I NEVER ANSWERED ANY OF BECAUSE I'M AN AWFUL HUMAN BEING, someone asked me how I got into fandom, and several of these questions address that, so you'll finally get your answer, person whose question I am so sorry I never answered!


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?

The first fandom I wrote for -- that I finished stories for, rather than just writing scraps here and there -- was the anime Trigun. The two things that drew me in were the worldbuilding (which was really lovely and fascinating, and set my imagination on fire) and the desire to fix certain aspects of the anime's ending.

I was quite a bit older than most people are when they start writing fanfic. I think I was around 24 or 25. I had run across the concept of it when I got online in college, and then I got interested in Stargate SG-1 and read a bunch of fanfic for that (this was circa 1999 or so), and when I moved to Illinois I was lonely and miserable and unemployed and ... watching a whole lot of anime. Which was how I got into Trigun, and got completely fascinated by this weird and wonderful post-apocalyptic desert planet, and interested in unraveling all the dangling mysteries that the anime never really resolved. So I ended up channeling most of my free time and homesickness into this massive long post-series AU with tons of OCs, basically ALL the dead characters resurrected in increasingly unlikely ways, kids of main characters, long-lost relatives ... it was huge and sprawling and cracktastic and amazing, glorious fun. I wrote it as a WiP, posted biweekly updates all the way to the end, and eventually spun off an illustrated version because people kept sending me fanart. The non-illustrated version is on AO3 if you're curious.

ETA: Although, thinking about it, that's just fanfic qua fanfic; I've always made up stories about the stuff I read or watched, just for fun, but never really thought of writing it down before the Internet, though I did write spec scripts occasionally in high school. I took it all very seriously! I was going to be an AUTHOR! (hahahaha, and look how that turned out, she says from just shy of 40. /bitterlaugh) But I would make up EXTENSIVE alternate seasons, sequel seasons of canceled shows, and so forth to entertain myself -- I had, for example, a whole sequel series for Quantum Leap that was all about Sam's daughter going back in time to look for him, and the adventures she had along the way.

( Full list of questions )