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aurordarkSnagged this from kalloway even though it's almost over- I'm just gonna start at the beginning and do one of these whenever I get really bored. Be afraid of the spam posts, guys. :)
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?
I started writing fanfic before the internet was a thing for me, in- I want to say 1993? Yeesh, it's been a while. Back then I'd never heard the term 'fanfic', this story writing thing was just something my best friend and I did when we were bored- which was often, honestly. Back then I think we both honestly thought we would write all of these stories into novels, and they'd be published...
My first fandom was Star Trek: The Next Generation. I think I wrote for that fandom because it was the only one I was really into at the time. I used to watch it with my parents every week. When things got really crazy in my life, fandom was my safe space, so I liked spending time there.
By 7th grade it was clear to me (and my friends) that The Powers That Be were never going to get off their collective asses and actually hook up Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher, so I was going to have to do it myself. I actually found the few pages of that fic that ever got written, years ago when I was packing for my last move. I thought about saving it for posterity- it was The First Fanfic after all- but in the end it was too cringe-worthy, so I fed it to my paper shredder. It was basically about all the random guest star chicks Picard ever hooked up with being brought to the Enterprise by Q so I could debunk those relationships in favor of the One True Pairing. Yeah. I was twelve, I thought it'd be funny.
I still remember, though, sitting with my VHS tapes of TNG episodes recorded from the TV, analyzing every scene both characters were in for subtext, evidence that romance was going on between episodes...
I was the cutest little 'shipper. I was the fangirl you see in the convention scene in "Galaxy Quest" asking Sigourney Weaver, "I got the feeling in [Episode] that you and the Commander kind of had a thing, did you?" Except I knew they had a thing.
The other thing I wrote, or tried to write back then, was the inevitable self-insert. Mine came with a side of crossover- TNG and my second major fannish obsession, seaQuest DSV. 'My' character was a medical intern on the Enterprise who took occasional trips to the seaQuest to hang out with her boyfriend, Lucas Wolenczak. (And it's been so long, I actually had to Google how to spell that.) Her name was Cassie. Cassie was either a stray orphan taken in by the Enterprise crew or an orphan who got dumped on a relative on the seaQuest after her parents died, or... hell, I dunno. I was a teenager, I didn't want to write about her parents.
Ah, those stray orphans taken in by the command staffs of starships and submarines... As one does, you know. They're like stray cats, people often scoop them up off the streets and take them in, you see. *nodnod* ;)
I was still writing fic by the time I finally connected with the internet in 1997. It was this revelation to me, that other people out there were doing what I was doing. Suddenly my friends and I weren't the only ones putting fictional characters into relationships, or plotting out what might happen if these people who never met in canon got stuck in an elevator together. I remember reading a lot of fic- Star Trek, seaQuest, X-Files... I got really into Star Wars during that time, so I read a lot of SW fic, wrote some more crappy self-inserts...
Message boards were really big back then, and I'd hang out on a few of those and talk with people about our ships and our pet theories and what we thought the writers were smoking in the last episodes, or in the latest novel for Star Wars.
I had my first exposure to slash around then, too. I was... this is so embarrassing, but I was shocked and a little squicked out. Of course, in the stuff I was reading at the time, everyone was gay. Literally everyone. I never thought I would ship a slash pairing, and write it? Forget it.
I was very naive. Now I have fandoms where the only pairings I have are slash. I'm still not totally sold on Garak/Bashir from ST:DS9, but that may be residual from the truly, appallingly bad fics I read with them in the '90's. Those euphemisms for male body parts that make us laugh hysterically? They used them. All. The. Time.
These days I write a little bit of everything, though I never did write that Picard/Crusher story. I keep wanting to, though. Like every time I read one of the Trek profic novels, because while they finally got them together, the prose has been.. not spectacular. By which I mean I still think I can do better. :)
kalloway even though it's almost over- I'm just gonna start at the beginning and do one of these whenever I get really bored. Be afraid of the spam posts, guys. :)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?
I started writing fanfic before the internet was a thing for me, in- I want to say 1993? Yeesh, it's been a while. Back then I'd never heard the term 'fanfic', this story writing thing was just something my best friend and I did when we were bored- which was often, honestly. Back then I think we both honestly thought we would write all of these stories into novels, and they'd be published...
My first fandom was Star Trek: The Next Generation. I think I wrote for that fandom because it was the only one I was really into at the time. I used to watch it with my parents every week. When things got really crazy in my life, fandom was my safe space, so I liked spending time there.
By 7th grade it was clear to me (and my friends) that The Powers That Be were never going to get off their collective asses and actually hook up Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher, so I was going to have to do it myself. I actually found the few pages of that fic that ever got written, years ago when I was packing for my last move. I thought about saving it for posterity- it was The First Fanfic after all- but in the end it was too cringe-worthy, so I fed it to my paper shredder. It was basically about all the random guest star chicks Picard ever hooked up with being brought to the Enterprise by Q so I could debunk those relationships in favor of the One True Pairing. Yeah. I was twelve, I thought it'd be funny.
I still remember, though, sitting with my VHS tapes of TNG episodes recorded from the TV, analyzing every scene both characters were in for subtext, evidence that romance was going on between episodes...
I was the cutest little 'shipper. I was the fangirl you see in the convention scene in "Galaxy Quest" asking Sigourney Weaver, "I got the feeling in [Episode] that you and the Commander kind of had a thing, did you?" Except I knew they had a thing.
The other thing I wrote, or tried to write back then, was the inevitable self-insert. Mine came with a side of crossover- TNG and my second major fannish obsession, seaQuest DSV. 'My' character was a medical intern on the Enterprise who took occasional trips to the seaQuest to hang out with her boyfriend, Lucas Wolenczak. (And it's been so long, I actually had to Google how to spell that.) Her name was Cassie. Cassie was either a stray orphan taken in by the Enterprise crew or an orphan who got dumped on a relative on the seaQuest after her parents died, or... hell, I dunno. I was a teenager, I didn't want to write about her parents.
Ah, those stray orphans taken in by the command staffs of starships and submarines... As one does, you know. They're like stray cats, people often scoop them up off the streets and take them in, you see. *nodnod* ;)
I was still writing fic by the time I finally connected with the internet in 1997. It was this revelation to me, that other people out there were doing what I was doing. Suddenly my friends and I weren't the only ones putting fictional characters into relationships, or plotting out what might happen if these people who never met in canon got stuck in an elevator together. I remember reading a lot of fic- Star Trek, seaQuest, X-Files... I got really into Star Wars during that time, so I read a lot of SW fic, wrote some more crappy self-inserts...
Message boards were really big back then, and I'd hang out on a few of those and talk with people about our ships and our pet theories and what we thought the writers were smoking in the last episodes, or in the latest novel for Star Wars.
I had my first exposure to slash around then, too. I was... this is so embarrassing, but I was shocked and a little squicked out. Of course, in the stuff I was reading at the time, everyone was gay. Literally everyone. I never thought I would ship a slash pairing, and write it? Forget it.
I was very naive. Now I have fandoms where the only pairings I have are slash. I'm still not totally sold on Garak/Bashir from ST:DS9, but that may be residual from the truly, appallingly bad fics I read with them in the '90's. Those euphemisms for male body parts that make us laugh hysterically? They used them. All. The. Time.
These days I write a little bit of everything, though I never did write that Picard/Crusher story. I keep wanting to, though. Like every time I read one of the Trek profic novels, because while they finally got them together, the prose has been.. not spectacular. By which I mean I still think I can do better. :)
