maplemood | Fandom Snowflake Challenge

Better three days late than never. Right?

Day 15

In your own space, write a love letter to Fandom in general, to a particular fandom, to a trope, a relationship, a character, or to your flist/circle/followers. Share your love and squee as loud as you want to.

Going with fandom in general for this one!

To start, I feel both very new to and completely steeped in fandom. Technically, I didn't get involved until last year, when I first posted on AO3, but I've loved stories--reading them, watching them, picking at them and playing with them--from the beginning. My sisters and I started telling each other stories based on LOTR (the books and the movies, though mostly the movies) when I was around eight years old. Maybe nine? The stories were all cracky to the extreme and full of snarky OCs; pretty soon we branched out to Star Wars, too, and, a little later, Harry Potter. This was when I wrote down my first real fics, though I didn't think of them like that. I don't remember having any idea of what fanfic really was at that point, let alone that they were other people who wrote it. I just loved living in the worlds of my favorite stories. I loved how close I felt to the characters, how writing down new adventures made them feel even more real to me. I loved imagining what Eowyn or Qui-Gon Jinn or Harry Potter would do in pretty much any situation (but the wackier the better). Whether I wrote down my stories, told them to my sisters, or kept them in my head, I think I mostly enjoyed feeling connected to my favorite characters.

I didn't ever completely stop telling those first wacky stories. I did eventually quit writing them down once I decided that I absolutely had to be one of those kids who publishes a novel before graduating high school (spoiler alert: I'm not). Lots of my attempted novels were basically still fanfic: Arthurian retellings, fairy tale retellings, Robin Hood retellings. Messing around with other people's worlds has always interested me at least as much as coming up with worlds of my own. Sometimes it's interested me much more. Last year, after trying and trying and trying to write the Great American YA or MG novel, I hit a wall. I couldn't write. When I tried to write, I could never finish what I started, I was miserable with myself and miserable with my stories, but because I'd connected so much of my self-worth to the idea of getting traditionally published, it took me a stupidly long time to admit I wasn't writing what I wanted to be writing.

When I did finally admit it, though, things began to get easier.

I was reading fanfic by then, first on Fanfiction.net, then on AO3. I'd started with LOTR and POTC fic, of course; by the time I bit the bullet and signed up for an AO3 account I was reading a lot of Daredevil fic. My first story didn't get a ton of comments and kudos, since it wasn't very good. I still loved writing it, and I loved what I did get, so I kept going. I wrote Daredevil fic and Guardians of the Galaxy fic. I got back to the all the wacky AUs I'd loved in the first place. And I started interacting with people who loved the same fandoms, the same wacky AUs. Best of all, I began to enjoy writing again. Not always my stories (I can still look over every one and point out tons of flaws), but the process of getting them down on paper.

So. If there's one thing I can thank fandom for, it's making writing a joyful experience again. Of course I've got tons more to be thankful for--I've already met so many wonderful, kind, and intelligent people thanks to shared fandoms and shared loves of fandom tropes. I've read so many lovely, funny, and heartbreaking stories. I've channeled so much stress away through reading fic, writing fic, and talking to people about fic. My life has become so much brighter thanks to all of this. Still. Each of these things contributes to my love of the process--I've never been part of a more encouraging and inspiring community. Without community, what's the point of writing?

So thank you. Thank you so very much, from the bottom of my heart. I hope I'll never leave.

There you go. Not sure how much sense this makes (it's late again and I'm tired again). I just hope it gets across at least some of my gratitude. Really, when it comes to writing, I've never had a better experience.