What It Meant To Me Will Eventually Be A Memory.
I've just hit a milestone birthday and I'm coming up on the fifteenth anniversary of my LJ's creation, so it might be interesting to look back at the many fandoms I've pranced through. I thought for each fandom I could name my favourite character and my favourite pairing, talk a bit about my experience with it and maybe dredge up a snippet of unfinished fanfiction.
I've written for about seventy fandoms, and going through every one of them would be a bit much, so I've limited this to my major fandoms, which I'm going to define as 'fandoms for which I have written at least ten thousand words across at least three fics'. This unfortunately leaves out Animorphs (which hugely influenced my writing style), Jak and Daxter (where I first formed real fandom friendships) and Life on Mars (which had a big impact on my fictional tastes), but I think it manages to catch most of the fandoms that have shaped me.
If you're curious, the breakdown:
- twelve videogame fandoms (I'm counting Pokémon as a videogame fandom)
- six television fandoms
- three real-person fandoms
- one film fandom
Pokémon
The fandom that introduced me to fanfiction! I used to get up enthusiastically to watch Pokémon before school, much like every other child in the nineties. My first online username was 'Mew'. I spent my early days on the Internet, when I was eleven or twelve, looking at all the billions of personal Pokémon websites there were at the time, and I came across a fic on one of them (the site was called 'Mewtwo's Dungeon', so of course I was never able to find it again amongst all the hundreds of Mewtwo's Dungeons). I don't remember any details, but I remember that it involved Mew and Mewtwo and I thought it was the most incredible thing I'd ever seen. A story! About Pokémon! Just sitting here on the Internet! I forced Joseph to read it and went ISN'T THIS AMAZING and he seemed rather less enthusiastic than I was. Then I discovered
zarla's Neglected Pokémon Lovers Unite and was inspired to attempt a fic of my own.
Favourite character: I've always been more into the Pokémon themselves than the characters, but probably James of Team Rocket. My favourite Pokémon is, of course, the best Pokémon, Bulbasaur. I didn't have a plan for which starter I'd choose when I first started up Pokémon Red, but the little Bulbasaur sprite was just so cute.
Favourite pairing: Again, this isn't what I'm into Pokémon for, but I've always had a sneaking fondness for Ash/Gary.
Number of words written: 51,804. Mainly crossovers. The first fic I seriously wrote was an unfinished, rambling multichaptered Pokémon journey fic about OCs (mine, which were transparently based on family and friends, and those of others; I asked people to submit their own characters, which on reflection seems a bit bizarre), but since then I've only written about Pokémon in crossover form.
Snippet: I'm actually struggling to find an unfinished Pokémon snippet! I've got a snippet of Finn and Puck from Glee training Pokémon, but those characters have far too many weird, sad, horrible associations surrounding them now. So instead here's a small Full Moon wo Sagashite/Pokémon snippet, based entirely on the fact that Negi Ramen have a Team Rocket-esque motto. (I originally outlined the idea for this fic over here. This is all I ever wrote of it, alas.)
Takuto lies on the grass, his hands behind his head, and stares up at the sky. It’s a beautiful day, the perfect temperature, a couple of wispy clouds drifting lazily across the expanse of brilliant blue, and he can’t enjoy it.
Four weeks. Four weeks without stealing a single Pokémon. It’s been a bad month in a bad six months in a bad year, and he doesn’t even want to think about the boss will do to them at their next evaluation.
“Um... excuse me?”
Takuto raises his head, blinking in confusion. A girl’s just come into their clearing, maybe twelve or thirteen. Her dark hair is done up carefully at the sides of her head, and her expression is bright and open, and hovering beside her...
Hovering beside her...
Takuto stares. He glances over at Meroko for an instant, just to check that she’s noticed, and then looks quickly back. He gets to his feet. He stares.
“Oh,” the girl says, laughing, “I like your hats!”
Takuto touches the Meowth ears of his hat, suddenly feeling selfconscious. “Uh,” he says, “thanks.” He doesn’t take his eyes off the Pokémon.
“Do you know much about Pokémon?” the girl asks. “Because I found this one. Well, it found me, really. I want to know what it is. I tried a Pokédex, but it couldn’t tell me anything.”
For a moment Takuto almost loses his mind and tells her what she’s found. He’s only silenced by Meroko shooting him a glare so intense it somehow breaks through the strange trance he seems to be in.
Final Fantasy VIII
First played at the age of thirteen. Probably the single work of fiction that's most important to me. It helped bewildered, isolated teenage Riona to understand other people. It also introduced me to some online friends I've now known for half my life (hi,
thebaconfat,
squeemu,
kadrin,
magistrate!), and they introduced me to Livejournal, so I probably wouldn't have met most of you without it. And one of the people I met through Livejournal was th_esaurus, who's now a close real-life friend of mine and with whom I lived for several years, so it was a genuinely life-changing moment when the GAME employee accidentally sold me Final Fantasy VIII instead of Final Fantasy VII.
Favourite character: Squall Leonhart means a lot to me. I'd never identified with a character before! People were an incomprehensible mystery to thirteen-year-old me, but I could understand Squall's thought processes, which gave me a foothold in starting to understand other people. (If you're curious, my use of his surname in 'rionaleonhart' was born of my similarity to Squall Leonhart; it never crossed my mind that it could suggest I wanted to be married to Squall Leonhart.)
Favourite pairing: Squall/Zell was the first pairing I really 'shipped and the first one I wrote fanfiction for, and I still look back on it fondly. It was hard to find Squall/Zell fanfiction that didn't bash Rinoa, though!
Number of words written: 31,201. This includes With These Signs Upon Our Souls, the longest continuous story I've ever written.
Snippet: Final Fantasy VIII/Final Fantasy X, Squall is Yuna's guardian.
“You’re not going to eat with us?” Yuna asks.
Squall braces himself. This won’t be an enjoyable conversation - not that he typically expects conversations to be enjoyable - but it’s best to get it out of the way now. He needs to keep clients at a distance; it’s true when his failure to protect them will mean their death, and it’s doubly true when his success will mean exactly the same thing. He can’t act as if they’re friends when he’s going to have to watch her die.
“I’m a SeeD,” he says. “I’ll protect you as your guardian because it’s in my contract, but you need to understand that this is a professional relationship.”
Yuna looks a little taken aback. But then she begins to smile, very slightly. “SeeDs don’t need to eat?”
Squall hesitates. What does she want him to say?
“You know,” Yuna says, “it says in your contract that I should provide you with food expenses for the pilgrimage. It’ll probably be easiest if you eat with us.”
Final Fantasy X series
First played X at the age of thirteen, X-2 at the age of fifteen. I wasn't sure whether to count this; neither Final Fantasy X nor Final Fantasy X-2 qualifies if I consider them alone. But I suppose they're technically part of the same fandom. I don't know why I'm so bad at thinking of these two games as taking place in the same universe.
...I was going to say 'it's strange that I only wrote one fic for Final Fantasy X itself when I loved the game so much,' and then I realised I'd blocked my self-insert fic out of my mind. Whoops.
Favourite character: Yuna! Yuna, in all her stubborn, playful, self-sacrificing determination.
Favourite pairing: Auron/Jecht/Braska, probably. (I realise this is not technically a 'pairing'.) But the pairing I wrote the most for was Gippal/Baralai. I had a lot of fun with it, but, looking back, I'm not sure how I got into that pairing! I barely remember any of their canonical interactions. Maybe I read other people's Gippal/Baralai fics and enjoyed them?
Number of words written: 14,061.
Snippet: More of the FFVIII/FFX crossover from above.
“Yuna is going to ask your opinion on whether she should marry Maester Seymour.”
What? “Why would she ask me?”
Squall may not be an expert in reading people, but he knows enough of Lulu to know there’s no warmth in her smile. “As much as I hate to interrupt youthful daydreams, it’s nothing to do with you in particular. She is consulting all her guardians.”
“I won’t be able to give her good advice.”
“It doesn’t especially matter,” Lulu says. “Yuna has already made her decision.”
Squall looks at her for a moment, frowning. “Then why is she asking?”
“She hasn’t yet realised that she’s decided,” Lulu says. “And she wants to give us a chance to speak. But I know Yuna.”
“What is she going to do?” Squall asks.
Lulu raises her eyebrows. “Are you capable of taking an interest in other people after all?”
Every conversation with Lulu feels like picking his way through knives. “I’ll need to know.”
“Of course. Taking a detour for a wedding would extend your contract.” Lulu tosses her braids back. “Your services will be required for a little longer, I suspect. But you’ll have your money, and of course that’s the important thing.”
-
Yuna draws Squall aside at the travel agency.
“I wanted to ask,” she says. “What would you think of me if I married Maester Seymour?”
From what Lulu said to him, Squall was expecting to be asked whether he thought Yuna should accept the proposal. What would he think of her? That’s a different question.
“It’s your decision,” he says. “It wouldn’t be any of my business.”
“You wouldn’t have any opinion?”
Squall shrugs. What is he supposed to say? “If I did, it wouldn’t matter.”
“It would matter to me,” Yuna says.
Squall hesitates. “Why?”
“You’re my guardian,” Yuna says. “Is it really... so strange to you, that someone might value your opinion?”
He’d be comfortable giving his opinion on a battle, or a tactical operation. But a political decision? Or a romantic decision? He’s not even sure which one this would be.
“Are you in love with him?” he asks.
“Would it be... shameful of me, do you think?” Yuna asks. “To marry someone I’m not in love with? Would I be deceiving everyone?”
“You’d be doing it to make people happy, wouldn’t you?” He doesn’t really understand it, but people seem really excited by the prospect of a wedding.
Yuna nods. “You’re right. That’s the important thing. I need to remember.”
He... doesn’t know how to express this, exactly. He doesn’t think there’s anything shameful about it, if she’s the only one she’d be hurting with her decision. But he doesn’t see why she thinks she has to hurt herself.
He can’t find the words, and it goes unsaid.
Silent Hill
The town called to me when I was sixteen, and I developed a weird obsession with Silent Hill 2 without having played it; I was reading the game script, I was reading symbolism analysis, I was reading fanfiction. I was extremely bad with horror, but eventually I gave in and bought a copy. It messed up my fictional tastes permanently.
Favourite character: James Sunderland! What a formative character. He's an awful selfish delusional guilt-ridden mess and I love him. I once signed up to write a hundred fics about him, although sadly I only managed forty-nine. (Surprisingly, my other fanfic100 claim, Macbeth from the BBC's ShakespeaRe-Told adaptation, didn't make it to 10,000 words and therefore doesn't qualify for this exercise, even though I wrote forty-one fics.)
Favourite pairing: James/Mary. An awful doomed trainwreck of a pairing and, again, pretty formative. My most-written pairing in terms of number of fics, although most of my Silent Hill 2 fics are very short.
Number of words written: 52,547. This is another fandom I've written a lot of crossovers for, although I've written more non-crossover fanfiction for Silent Hill 2 than I have for Pokémon.
Snippet: The Mentalist/Silent Hill, Patrick Jane visits the town.
He’s talked to his wife in his mind for years, ever since it happened: talking about cases, about their life together; asking her advice (and then mostly ignoring it). It’s a lie, he knows, but it’s a comforting one.
It’s kind of creepy, right? he asks her, as he stands in the middle of the deserted street, and she doesn’t answer. He tries to think of what she’d say, but it won’t come to him. Anything he thinks sounds forced, wrong, like he’s pitched his voice higher in a parody of hers.
He’s lost her voice, and he can feel her absence like a macabre smile painted on the inside of his head.
(...)
“I had a daughter once,” he says, “and if I’d known she was wandering around a place like this I would’ve been terrified.”
“What’s her name?” Laura asks.
He draws breath - and then stops.
Laura snorts. “Guess you can’t’ve loved her very much.”
It hurts. “You’re wrong. I loved her more than anything.”
“Then what’s her name?”
He can’t have forgotten. He can’t. Her and his wife, they were everything to him. Their memories are all he has now; he’s not about to lose them.
“Like I said,” Laura says, kicking her heels against the wall. “You don’t really care about her, do you?”
(...)
All he wants is something of his wife back. This town has crept inside his head and killed her all over again, and without her he feels like he’s losing his mind.
(...)
He stumbles onto the dock, so exhausted he barely registers the way the boards creak dangerously under his feet, and limps through the fog to the hotel.
There’s a red smiling face on the door. He thinks that might have meant something, once.
(...)
“I thought you’d died.”
“Don’t be stupid. I know this place. I’m not five.”
“I’m so sorry, Laura.” He drops to his knees and hugs her.
Laura doesn’t hug him back. “You’re weird.” She wriggles her shoulders. “Let go of me.”
(...)
“Jane,” Lisbon says, “that is not your daughter.”
Doctor Who
I'd written a fic here and there for Red Dwarf and Friends (my Red Dwarf fics are the only fics I've ever written that have been permanently lost), but this is the first live-action fandom I wrote a substantial amount for. I got into Doctor Who when I was sixteen, with the Ninth Doctor's run; my parents were watching 'Aliens of London', and I happened to be in the room, and I was fascinated by the opening, where Rose discovers she's been missing for a year. Apparently the subsequent 'farting aliens' storyline was not enough to put me off.
Favourite character: Donna Noble. Stubborn and outspoken and good-hearted and fun. This is a slightly weird case where, although I've written a fair bit of Doctor Who fanfiction, I've never written my favourite character; Donna came along when I was past my writing phase for it.
Favourite pairing: The Doctor/Rose Tyler; I don't think I'd ever 'shipped anything so intensely before. Very specifically the Ninth Doctor; the dynamic between Rose and the Tenth Doctor didn't work for me at all. I also love Doctor/Jack/Rose.
Number of words written: 42,543. This is another fandom I've crossed over a lot. For some reason I'm particularly drawn to crossing it over with Silent Hill.
Snippet: Some sort of weird antagonistic Jack/Ten fic? I don't remember the idea behind this at all. Why were you flipping wildly back and forth between using and avoiding contractions in the narrative, seventeen-year-old Riona?
He stands for a moment like that, facing the wall. There are no sounds from behind him, and he thinks that perhaps the Doctor has gone, has given him some time alone to think this whole insane affair over - but he does not turn around, because if he does see the Doctor standing there he isn’t sure what he will do.
And then there are quiet footsteps, and he tenses at the realisation that he is not alone a second before warm arms are slipped around him from behind and a soft voice whispers something that he cannot make out over the too-loud pounding of his heart.
He stands there, the Doctor’s arms around him and the Doctor’s body pressed warm against his own and the Doctor’s hair tickling his cheek, and he thinks fuck you, he thinks I can’t believe you’re still doing this to me.
(...)
“I wish I hated you,” he whispers shakily, as he fumbles with the fastenings of his coat.
“I’m not doing this to hurt you,” the Doctor says quietly. “I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do. I’m not proud of this, you know,” and Jack wishes he wouldn’t sound so sincere.
“Shut up,” he hisses, gripping his shoulders as hard as he can - the Doctor doesn’t react, but Jack likes to think that he’s caused some pain, at least, something, some small way of avenging himself - and kisses him again.
(...)
“I hate you,” he says, because he loves him, and then he collapses against him, drawing in shaking breaths.
I thought this exercise might freak me out about time passing, but actually I'm enjoying it! It's reminding me of the fun I've had in all these fandoms.
Five down; seventeen to go. I might need to visit my parents' place and hunt down some old notebooks for some of these. I've definitely got some unfinished Scrubs fanfiction somewhere, but it's not on my laptop!
I've written for about seventy fandoms, and going through every one of them would be a bit much, so I've limited this to my major fandoms, which I'm going to define as 'fandoms for which I have written at least ten thousand words across at least three fics'. This unfortunately leaves out Animorphs (which hugely influenced my writing style), Jak and Daxter (where I first formed real fandom friendships) and Life on Mars (which had a big impact on my fictional tastes), but I think it manages to catch most of the fandoms that have shaped me.
If you're curious, the breakdown:
- twelve videogame fandoms (I'm counting Pokémon as a videogame fandom)
- six television fandoms
- three real-person fandoms
- one film fandom
Pokémon
The fandom that introduced me to fanfiction! I used to get up enthusiastically to watch Pokémon before school, much like every other child in the nineties. My first online username was 'Mew'. I spent my early days on the Internet, when I was eleven or twelve, looking at all the billions of personal Pokémon websites there were at the time, and I came across a fic on one of them (the site was called 'Mewtwo's Dungeon', so of course I was never able to find it again amongst all the hundreds of Mewtwo's Dungeons). I don't remember any details, but I remember that it involved Mew and Mewtwo and I thought it was the most incredible thing I'd ever seen. A story! About Pokémon! Just sitting here on the Internet! I forced Joseph to read it and went ISN'T THIS AMAZING and he seemed rather less enthusiastic than I was. Then I discovered
zarla's Neglected Pokémon Lovers Unite and was inspired to attempt a fic of my own.
Favourite character: I've always been more into the Pokémon themselves than the characters, but probably James of Team Rocket. My favourite Pokémon is, of course, the best Pokémon, Bulbasaur. I didn't have a plan for which starter I'd choose when I first started up Pokémon Red, but the little Bulbasaur sprite was just so cute.
Favourite pairing: Again, this isn't what I'm into Pokémon for, but I've always had a sneaking fondness for Ash/Gary.
Number of words written: 51,804. Mainly crossovers. The first fic I seriously wrote was an unfinished, rambling multichaptered Pokémon journey fic about OCs (mine, which were transparently based on family and friends, and those of others; I asked people to submit their own characters, which on reflection seems a bit bizarre), but since then I've only written about Pokémon in crossover form.
Snippet: I'm actually struggling to find an unfinished Pokémon snippet! I've got a snippet of Finn and Puck from Glee training Pokémon, but those characters have far too many weird, sad, horrible associations surrounding them now. So instead here's a small Full Moon wo Sagashite/Pokémon snippet, based entirely on the fact that Negi Ramen have a Team Rocket-esque motto. (I originally outlined the idea for this fic over here. This is all I ever wrote of it, alas.)
Takuto lies on the grass, his hands behind his head, and stares up at the sky. It’s a beautiful day, the perfect temperature, a couple of wispy clouds drifting lazily across the expanse of brilliant blue, and he can’t enjoy it.
Four weeks. Four weeks without stealing a single Pokémon. It’s been a bad month in a bad six months in a bad year, and he doesn’t even want to think about the boss will do to them at their next evaluation.
“Um... excuse me?”
Takuto raises his head, blinking in confusion. A girl’s just come into their clearing, maybe twelve or thirteen. Her dark hair is done up carefully at the sides of her head, and her expression is bright and open, and hovering beside her...
Hovering beside her...
Takuto stares. He glances over at Meroko for an instant, just to check that she’s noticed, and then looks quickly back. He gets to his feet. He stares.
“Oh,” the girl says, laughing, “I like your hats!”
Takuto touches the Meowth ears of his hat, suddenly feeling selfconscious. “Uh,” he says, “thanks.” He doesn’t take his eyes off the Pokémon.
“Do you know much about Pokémon?” the girl asks. “Because I found this one. Well, it found me, really. I want to know what it is. I tried a Pokédex, but it couldn’t tell me anything.”
For a moment Takuto almost loses his mind and tells her what she’s found. He’s only silenced by Meroko shooting him a glare so intense it somehow breaks through the strange trance he seems to be in.
Final Fantasy VIII
First played at the age of thirteen. Probably the single work of fiction that's most important to me. It helped bewildered, isolated teenage Riona to understand other people. It also introduced me to some online friends I've now known for half my life (hi,
thebaconfat,
squeemu,
kadrin,
magistrate!), and they introduced me to Livejournal, so I probably wouldn't have met most of you without it. And one of the people I met through Livejournal was th_esaurus, who's now a close real-life friend of mine and with whom I lived for several years, so it was a genuinely life-changing moment when the GAME employee accidentally sold me Final Fantasy VIII instead of Final Fantasy VII.
Favourite character: Squall Leonhart means a lot to me. I'd never identified with a character before! People were an incomprehensible mystery to thirteen-year-old me, but I could understand Squall's thought processes, which gave me a foothold in starting to understand other people. (If you're curious, my use of his surname in 'rionaleonhart' was born of my similarity to Squall Leonhart; it never crossed my mind that it could suggest I wanted to be married to Squall Leonhart.)
Favourite pairing: Squall/Zell was the first pairing I really 'shipped and the first one I wrote fanfiction for, and I still look back on it fondly. It was hard to find Squall/Zell fanfiction that didn't bash Rinoa, though!
Number of words written: 31,201. This includes With These Signs Upon Our Souls, the longest continuous story I've ever written.
Snippet: Final Fantasy VIII/Final Fantasy X, Squall is Yuna's guardian.
“You’re not going to eat with us?” Yuna asks.
Squall braces himself. This won’t be an enjoyable conversation - not that he typically expects conversations to be enjoyable - but it’s best to get it out of the way now. He needs to keep clients at a distance; it’s true when his failure to protect them will mean their death, and it’s doubly true when his success will mean exactly the same thing. He can’t act as if they’re friends when he’s going to have to watch her die.
“I’m a SeeD,” he says. “I’ll protect you as your guardian because it’s in my contract, but you need to understand that this is a professional relationship.”
Yuna looks a little taken aback. But then she begins to smile, very slightly. “SeeDs don’t need to eat?”
Squall hesitates. What does she want him to say?
“You know,” Yuna says, “it says in your contract that I should provide you with food expenses for the pilgrimage. It’ll probably be easiest if you eat with us.”
Final Fantasy X series
First played X at the age of thirteen, X-2 at the age of fifteen. I wasn't sure whether to count this; neither Final Fantasy X nor Final Fantasy X-2 qualifies if I consider them alone. But I suppose they're technically part of the same fandom. I don't know why I'm so bad at thinking of these two games as taking place in the same universe.
...I was going to say 'it's strange that I only wrote one fic for Final Fantasy X itself when I loved the game so much,' and then I realised I'd blocked my self-insert fic out of my mind. Whoops.
Favourite character: Yuna! Yuna, in all her stubborn, playful, self-sacrificing determination.
Favourite pairing: Auron/Jecht/Braska, probably. (I realise this is not technically a 'pairing'.) But the pairing I wrote the most for was Gippal/Baralai. I had a lot of fun with it, but, looking back, I'm not sure how I got into that pairing! I barely remember any of their canonical interactions. Maybe I read other people's Gippal/Baralai fics and enjoyed them?
Number of words written: 14,061.
Snippet: More of the FFVIII/FFX crossover from above.
“Yuna is going to ask your opinion on whether she should marry Maester Seymour.”
What? “Why would she ask me?”
Squall may not be an expert in reading people, but he knows enough of Lulu to know there’s no warmth in her smile. “As much as I hate to interrupt youthful daydreams, it’s nothing to do with you in particular. She is consulting all her guardians.”
“I won’t be able to give her good advice.”
“It doesn’t especially matter,” Lulu says. “Yuna has already made her decision.”
Squall looks at her for a moment, frowning. “Then why is she asking?”
“She hasn’t yet realised that she’s decided,” Lulu says. “And she wants to give us a chance to speak. But I know Yuna.”
“What is she going to do?” Squall asks.
Lulu raises her eyebrows. “Are you capable of taking an interest in other people after all?”
Every conversation with Lulu feels like picking his way through knives. “I’ll need to know.”
“Of course. Taking a detour for a wedding would extend your contract.” Lulu tosses her braids back. “Your services will be required for a little longer, I suspect. But you’ll have your money, and of course that’s the important thing.”
-
Yuna draws Squall aside at the travel agency.
“I wanted to ask,” she says. “What would you think of me if I married Maester Seymour?”
From what Lulu said to him, Squall was expecting to be asked whether he thought Yuna should accept the proposal. What would he think of her? That’s a different question.
“It’s your decision,” he says. “It wouldn’t be any of my business.”
“You wouldn’t have any opinion?”
Squall shrugs. What is he supposed to say? “If I did, it wouldn’t matter.”
“It would matter to me,” Yuna says.
Squall hesitates. “Why?”
“You’re my guardian,” Yuna says. “Is it really... so strange to you, that someone might value your opinion?”
He’d be comfortable giving his opinion on a battle, or a tactical operation. But a political decision? Or a romantic decision? He’s not even sure which one this would be.
“Are you in love with him?” he asks.
“Would it be... shameful of me, do you think?” Yuna asks. “To marry someone I’m not in love with? Would I be deceiving everyone?”
“You’d be doing it to make people happy, wouldn’t you?” He doesn’t really understand it, but people seem really excited by the prospect of a wedding.
Yuna nods. “You’re right. That’s the important thing. I need to remember.”
He... doesn’t know how to express this, exactly. He doesn’t think there’s anything shameful about it, if she’s the only one she’d be hurting with her decision. But he doesn’t see why she thinks she has to hurt herself.
He can’t find the words, and it goes unsaid.
Silent Hill
The town called to me when I was sixteen, and I developed a weird obsession with Silent Hill 2 without having played it; I was reading the game script, I was reading symbolism analysis, I was reading fanfiction. I was extremely bad with horror, but eventually I gave in and bought a copy. It messed up my fictional tastes permanently.
Favourite character: James Sunderland! What a formative character. He's an awful selfish delusional guilt-ridden mess and I love him. I once signed up to write a hundred fics about him, although sadly I only managed forty-nine. (Surprisingly, my other fanfic100 claim, Macbeth from the BBC's ShakespeaRe-Told adaptation, didn't make it to 10,000 words and therefore doesn't qualify for this exercise, even though I wrote forty-one fics.)
Favourite pairing: James/Mary. An awful doomed trainwreck of a pairing and, again, pretty formative. My most-written pairing in terms of number of fics, although most of my Silent Hill 2 fics are very short.
Number of words written: 52,547. This is another fandom I've written a lot of crossovers for, although I've written more non-crossover fanfiction for Silent Hill 2 than I have for Pokémon.
Snippet: The Mentalist/Silent Hill, Patrick Jane visits the town.
He’s talked to his wife in his mind for years, ever since it happened: talking about cases, about their life together; asking her advice (and then mostly ignoring it). It’s a lie, he knows, but it’s a comforting one.
It’s kind of creepy, right? he asks her, as he stands in the middle of the deserted street, and she doesn’t answer. He tries to think of what she’d say, but it won’t come to him. Anything he thinks sounds forced, wrong, like he’s pitched his voice higher in a parody of hers.
He’s lost her voice, and he can feel her absence like a macabre smile painted on the inside of his head.
(...)
“I had a daughter once,” he says, “and if I’d known she was wandering around a place like this I would’ve been terrified.”
“What’s her name?” Laura asks.
He draws breath - and then stops.
Laura snorts. “Guess you can’t’ve loved her very much.”
It hurts. “You’re wrong. I loved her more than anything.”
“Then what’s her name?”
He can’t have forgotten. He can’t. Her and his wife, they were everything to him. Their memories are all he has now; he’s not about to lose them.
“Like I said,” Laura says, kicking her heels against the wall. “You don’t really care about her, do you?”
(...)
All he wants is something of his wife back. This town has crept inside his head and killed her all over again, and without her he feels like he’s losing his mind.
(...)
He stumbles onto the dock, so exhausted he barely registers the way the boards creak dangerously under his feet, and limps through the fog to the hotel.
There’s a red smiling face on the door. He thinks that might have meant something, once.
(...)
“I thought you’d died.”
“Don’t be stupid. I know this place. I’m not five.”
“I’m so sorry, Laura.” He drops to his knees and hugs her.
Laura doesn’t hug him back. “You’re weird.” She wriggles her shoulders. “Let go of me.”
(...)
“Jane,” Lisbon says, “that is not your daughter.”
Doctor Who
I'd written a fic here and there for Red Dwarf and Friends (my Red Dwarf fics are the only fics I've ever written that have been permanently lost), but this is the first live-action fandom I wrote a substantial amount for. I got into Doctor Who when I was sixteen, with the Ninth Doctor's run; my parents were watching 'Aliens of London', and I happened to be in the room, and I was fascinated by the opening, where Rose discovers she's been missing for a year. Apparently the subsequent 'farting aliens' storyline was not enough to put me off.
Favourite character: Donna Noble. Stubborn and outspoken and good-hearted and fun. This is a slightly weird case where, although I've written a fair bit of Doctor Who fanfiction, I've never written my favourite character; Donna came along when I was past my writing phase for it.
Favourite pairing: The Doctor/Rose Tyler; I don't think I'd ever 'shipped anything so intensely before. Very specifically the Ninth Doctor; the dynamic between Rose and the Tenth Doctor didn't work for me at all. I also love Doctor/Jack/Rose.
Number of words written: 42,543. This is another fandom I've crossed over a lot. For some reason I'm particularly drawn to crossing it over with Silent Hill.
Snippet: Some sort of weird antagonistic Jack/Ten fic? I don't remember the idea behind this at all. Why were you flipping wildly back and forth between using and avoiding contractions in the narrative, seventeen-year-old Riona?
He stands for a moment like that, facing the wall. There are no sounds from behind him, and he thinks that perhaps the Doctor has gone, has given him some time alone to think this whole insane affair over - but he does not turn around, because if he does see the Doctor standing there he isn’t sure what he will do.
And then there are quiet footsteps, and he tenses at the realisation that he is not alone a second before warm arms are slipped around him from behind and a soft voice whispers something that he cannot make out over the too-loud pounding of his heart.
He stands there, the Doctor’s arms around him and the Doctor’s body pressed warm against his own and the Doctor’s hair tickling his cheek, and he thinks fuck you, he thinks I can’t believe you’re still doing this to me.
(...)
“I wish I hated you,” he whispers shakily, as he fumbles with the fastenings of his coat.
“I’m not doing this to hurt you,” the Doctor says quietly. “I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do. I’m not proud of this, you know,” and Jack wishes he wouldn’t sound so sincere.
“Shut up,” he hisses, gripping his shoulders as hard as he can - the Doctor doesn’t react, but Jack likes to think that he’s caused some pain, at least, something, some small way of avenging himself - and kisses him again.
(...)
“I hate you,” he says, because he loves him, and then he collapses against him, drawing in shaking breaths.
I thought this exercise might freak me out about time passing, but actually I'm enjoying it! It's reminding me of the fun I've had in all these fandoms.
Five down; seventeen to go. I might need to visit my parents' place and hunt down some old notebooks for some of these. I've definitely got some unfinished Scrubs fanfiction somewhere, but it's not on my laptop!