The past is not how you remember it.
I was going through this journal trying to find a photograph I knew I'd taken of a birthday cake I'd made for my favorite Bleach character, and ended up going through all the entries in my Archive that had "Bleach" in the title. (This was before LJ had a tagging system, or at least before it became more of a convention on this platform.)
1) Going back through old journals is as embarrassing as it always is, especially when you think about the ways your language has changed. I wrote a lot more formally then, probably because I was like, barely a teenager and all the cool kids on the Internet were older. But also Internet slag has changed SOOOO much. I think the only thing that I've retained from the Internet's Shakespearean era is "XD" and I only use that here, or in anime/gaming contexts. I don't use it on Facebook or in text messages with people outside of those contexts. And beyond that, I write a lot more colloquially now than I did then. Firm believer in journaling/commenting the way you talk IRL, these days. XDD
2) It turns out I actually have written at least one Bleach fic, and simply have no memory of having done so???????? It was a comment fic, and certainly more purple than I'd typically go in for now. But the character POV is a fairly poetically inclined, purple kind of guy, so I don't begrudge myself that. I definitely have SPN fic that have been more embarrassing to read back than that was.
The even weirder part was, I somehow wrote it in February 2010? Which means that not only had I already bingewatched all of the SPN available to that point, I'd also already written an entire SPN Big Bang. I didn't realize I was even still reading Bleach by 2010.
It's kind of funny, though--there must have been some essence of summer I was trying really hard to capture to my satisfaction in the mid/late 00s, because this random Bleach fic I don't remember writing plus the first SPN fic I ever posted (and which I do remember writing) are both trying to capture that same sun-sharp, late afternoon-into-dusk feeling.
In Bleach, the main villain has a sword where, if you see its blade, you fall into his web of illusions. In my story, he's just begun to put his 100-year-long deception into play, and he's chosen to go back to his crappy boyhood village--for old times' sake, I guess. There, he crosses paths with the little girl who (in canon) will ultimately become his devoted lieutenant. In the course of his later deceptions, he'll groom her, and manipulate her, and subject her to levels of mindfuck from which she never truly recovers.
But in my story, their first meeting, she's just a little girl in a crappy village, wishing she had shoes. So he pulls out his sword (of illusions). And suddenly, she has shoes. She runs back to her hut to show off her shoes, only to discover when she arrives that she's lost them somehow, and her feet are painful with blisters.
1) Going back through old journals is as embarrassing as it always is, especially when you think about the ways your language has changed. I wrote a lot more formally then, probably because I was like, barely a teenager and all the cool kids on the Internet were older. But also Internet slag has changed SOOOO much. I think the only thing that I've retained from the Internet's Shakespearean era is "XD" and I only use that here, or in anime/gaming contexts. I don't use it on Facebook or in text messages with people outside of those contexts. And beyond that, I write a lot more colloquially now than I did then. Firm believer in journaling/commenting the way you talk IRL, these days. XDD
2) It turns out I actually have written at least one Bleach fic, and simply have no memory of having done so???????? It was a comment fic, and certainly more purple than I'd typically go in for now. But the character POV is a fairly poetically inclined, purple kind of guy, so I don't begrudge myself that. I definitely have SPN fic that have been more embarrassing to read back than that was.
The even weirder part was, I somehow wrote it in February 2010? Which means that not only had I already bingewatched all of the SPN available to that point, I'd also already written an entire SPN Big Bang. I didn't realize I was even still reading Bleach by 2010.
It's kind of funny, though--there must have been some essence of summer I was trying really hard to capture to my satisfaction in the mid/late 00s, because this random Bleach fic I don't remember writing plus the first SPN fic I ever posted (and which I do remember writing) are both trying to capture that same sun-sharp, late afternoon-into-dusk feeling.
In Bleach, the main villain has a sword where, if you see its blade, you fall into his web of illusions. In my story, he's just begun to put his 100-year-long deception into play, and he's chosen to go back to his crappy boyhood village--for old times' sake, I guess. There, he crosses paths with the little girl who (in canon) will ultimately become his devoted lieutenant. In the course of his later deceptions, he'll groom her, and manipulate her, and subject her to levels of mindfuck from which she never truly recovers.
But in my story, their first meeting, she's just a little girl in a crappy village, wishing she had shoes. So he pulls out his sword (of illusions). And suddenly, she has shoes. She runs back to her hut to show off her shoes, only to discover when she arrives that she's lost them somehow, and her feet are painful with blisters.