30 Day Fic Meme | Day 1
The main meme post can be found here.
Day 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 ever wrote for is also the first fandom I ever participated in: The Phantom of the Opera. The intensity of my love for this musical led me to typing Phantom of the Opera into Google, and this directed me to the Phantom of the Opera forums; it was a world I had never experienced before, a wonderful world of new people, new terminology ('phans', 'fandom', 'canon' - all words I use so readily now, but had no knowledge of before I entered this fandom) and, most amazingly for me, a whole new world of fiction based upon this thing that I adored. I spent a lot of time reading fanfiction, getting my head around this new phenomenon that I had never encountered before - but, eventually, when I was thirteen, the creative side of me decided to fuse with the fandom part of me, and my first fanfiction was created. It was a multi-part, incredibly clichéd, painfully Mary-Suish and not particularly well written, but it was a foundation upon which I could build.
The reason I was so completely consumed by POTO was, I think, because I felt a deep connection to the pathetic creature that Erik, the Phantom, was. Yes, he was murderous and cruel, but there were so many textured layers to him - he had been on the receiving end of people’s prejudices since birth, and the warped, twisted, obsessive nature of his love for Christine managed to be beautiful and terrifying at the same time. It was the layers of the character that drew me in; sympathy for his plight, for the sorry life that he had lived and the evil that had been done to him by mankind (stemming from my own experiences with bullying for not being ‘normal’) kept me delving into it. I wanted to understand, to peel back the layers, and to explore - that’s what pulled me into the fandom and, ultimately, it’s what pulled me into fanfiction.
Day 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 ever wrote for is also the first fandom I ever participated in: The Phantom of the Opera. The intensity of my love for this musical led me to typing Phantom of the Opera into Google, and this directed me to the Phantom of the Opera forums; it was a world I had never experienced before, a wonderful world of new people, new terminology ('phans', 'fandom', 'canon' - all words I use so readily now, but had no knowledge of before I entered this fandom) and, most amazingly for me, a whole new world of fiction based upon this thing that I adored. I spent a lot of time reading fanfiction, getting my head around this new phenomenon that I had never encountered before - but, eventually, when I was thirteen, the creative side of me decided to fuse with the fandom part of me, and my first fanfiction was created. It was a multi-part, incredibly clichéd, painfully Mary-Suish and not particularly well written, but it was a foundation upon which I could build.
The reason I was so completely consumed by POTO was, I think, because I felt a deep connection to the pathetic creature that Erik, the Phantom, was. Yes, he was murderous and cruel, but there were so many textured layers to him - he had been on the receiving end of people’s prejudices since birth, and the warped, twisted, obsessive nature of his love for Christine managed to be beautiful and terrifying at the same time. It was the layers of the character that drew me in; sympathy for his plight, for the sorry life that he had lived and the evil that had been done to him by mankind (stemming from my own experiences with bullying for not being ‘normal’) kept me delving into it. I wanted to understand, to peel back the layers, and to explore - that’s what pulled me into the fandom and, ultimately, it’s what pulled me into fanfiction.