Portrait of a Life in Fandom
I know some authors who have taken down their first stories out of the feeling that it's no longer representative of their ability or out of shame *g* but my whole online career can be found on my site, even my very first fic, "A Tangled String of Blood and Entropy." It's X-Files and pre-slash since I was still feeling my way around writing this whole m/m thing. In its original version on the MKRA site it had so many formatting errors from my ignorance of posting that it turned the site archivist rabidly against me. She also publicly complained that I was too prolific. ::shrug:: Though at one point I was writing one fic a week.
I wouldn't want to take this stuff down. I've made some missteps, and some stories later had me asking myself what the hell I'd been thinking, but this is my history, my blood. Here's my first fandom, X-Files, slash and gen, and my original writing style. I was fandom monogamous for a whole year and never have been again. Here's the story that a friend angrily thought was about her but wasn't. Here's the story that sparked a seven-hour blitzkrieg flame war over Stockholm Syndrome on an e-mail list. Yes, really. It occurred from midnight through 7:30 a.m. one Saturday morning. I didn't go to bed until 8 a.m. because I kept trying to put out the fire. Here's the story that used the alien black oil as lube, and the story in which I compared Mulder and Krycek to Pinky and the Brain. Here's my second fandom, Once a Thief. Then my first fandom of one person, me, in which I had no idea if anyone would want to read my work: Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place. It wasn't my last one. Back then, when mailing lists required more effort and experience to create, rare meant rare, and you didn't have a good chance of finding an audience for it unless they knew you from a more widespread fandom.
Over time, my writing style started to change, becoming a little less narrative driven and a lot more dialogue driven. I ended my writer's block. I've written enough in some fandoms that I've seen a few of my ideas become fanon, which still makes me surprised and proud. It also makes me cackle evilly as I think of them spreading, virus-like, but I cackle quietly.
Ray Kowalski of due South became my favorite character to avatar through for a while, which I thought meant that I'd become mentally healthier than I'd been during my Mulder as avatar days. That I now write mainly through a belligerent (though cute) and disenfranchised snark machine who has a slight sociopathic edge and through assassins means either that I've either taken a huge step back in terms of my mental health or that I was completely mistaken about what my choice of avatars signified. I'll have to get back to you on that, because I don't know.
In the meantime, I've learned keyboard tricks and increased typing speed in Microsoft Word that have been a big help in my jobs and picked up HTML, which enabled me to create a site for my band. The Photoshop skills I learned while working on my fic site helped me get my current job.
Through e-mail correspondence, I've met people from all over the world and went to see some of them in places I wouldn't have gone to otherwise: Toronto, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Santa Barbara, Vancouver, and Seattle. I traveled on an airplane less than a month after 9/11 to go to Minneapolis. Through sheer luck, visiting a friend in Seattle gave me the opportunity to see Concrete Blonde live for the second time in two months, which is two more times than I'd seen them play previously. This is far more socializing than I would do otherwise.
I've watched more weird Canadian TV shows and movies than probably some Canadians have. Nice people have sent me tapes as gifts or attempts to entice me into writing their fandom. *g* (Thank you! I love them!)
I wouldn't want to get rid of any of it.
I wouldn't want to take this stuff down. I've made some missteps, and some stories later had me asking myself what the hell I'd been thinking, but this is my history, my blood. Here's my first fandom, X-Files, slash and gen, and my original writing style. I was fandom monogamous for a whole year and never have been again. Here's the story that a friend angrily thought was about her but wasn't. Here's the story that sparked a seven-hour blitzkrieg flame war over Stockholm Syndrome on an e-mail list. Yes, really. It occurred from midnight through 7:30 a.m. one Saturday morning. I didn't go to bed until 8 a.m. because I kept trying to put out the fire. Here's the story that used the alien black oil as lube, and the story in which I compared Mulder and Krycek to Pinky and the Brain. Here's my second fandom, Once a Thief. Then my first fandom of one person, me, in which I had no idea if anyone would want to read my work: Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place. It wasn't my last one. Back then, when mailing lists required more effort and experience to create, rare meant rare, and you didn't have a good chance of finding an audience for it unless they knew you from a more widespread fandom.
Over time, my writing style started to change, becoming a little less narrative driven and a lot more dialogue driven. I ended my writer's block. I've written enough in some fandoms that I've seen a few of my ideas become fanon, which still makes me surprised and proud. It also makes me cackle evilly as I think of them spreading, virus-like, but I cackle quietly.
Ray Kowalski of due South became my favorite character to avatar through for a while, which I thought meant that I'd become mentally healthier than I'd been during my Mulder as avatar days. That I now write mainly through a belligerent (though cute) and disenfranchised snark machine who has a slight sociopathic edge and through assassins means either that I've either taken a huge step back in terms of my mental health or that I was completely mistaken about what my choice of avatars signified. I'll have to get back to you on that, because I don't know.
In the meantime, I've learned keyboard tricks and increased typing speed in Microsoft Word that have been a big help in my jobs and picked up HTML, which enabled me to create a site for my band. The Photoshop skills I learned while working on my fic site helped me get my current job.
Through e-mail correspondence, I've met people from all over the world and went to see some of them in places I wouldn't have gone to otherwise: Toronto, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Santa Barbara, Vancouver, and Seattle. I traveled on an airplane less than a month after 9/11 to go to Minneapolis. Through sheer luck, visiting a friend in Seattle gave me the opportunity to see Concrete Blonde live for the second time in two months, which is two more times than I'd seen them play previously. This is far more socializing than I would do otherwise.
I've watched more weird Canadian TV shows and movies than probably some Canadians have. Nice people have sent me tapes as gifts or attempts to entice me into writing their fandom. *g* (Thank you! I love them!)
I wouldn't want to get rid of any of it.