Introduction

I’m an aspiring author. So far I write fanfiction and post it to sites like Archive of Our Own, Dreamwidth, and Pillowfort. And I suppose that I could just continue to post there, but I’ve recently found myself needing a place to post everything. General rants, bits of writing, random shower thoughts … So, I figured that this could be that place. And who knows? Maybe if I ever actually make it (yeah right!) it’ll be nice to come back here and find the whole journey.

I’ve been writing bits and pieces my whole life, but I never thought that my work was very good. Part of that was my own general and crippling self-doubt, but I think that a larger part of that was a lack of approval or actual discouragement from my peers. I still remember being told flat out by my roommate that my work was nowhere near as good as hers and that she had been really published (as opposed to a piece of mine being bound and distributed among our fellow classmen).

Things plodded along. I dreamed of one day writing something real instead of the plagiarism I was writing – and by plagiarism I mean drawing inspiration from other people’s works and playing in their sandboxes. And then I learned that my plodding was not plagiarism. It was fanfiction. And yes, I know that a lot of published authors consider fanfiction plagiarism, but given that George R.R. Martin is basically writing Tolkien AU and Gary Gygax fanfiction and Anne Rice is writing Bram Stoker and Bible fanfiction, neither of them have much of a leg to stand on.

I next discovered the Transformers fandom and I was completely enamoured by them. See, I had grown up watching Transformers and the A-Team and Knight Rider and MASK and Battle of the Planets (some of you may know that one as G Force or Gatchaman). All of my favourite shows were “boy” shows and I had always been discouraged from liking them. I was supposed to like She Ra and My Little Pony and Jem and the Holograms. Those shows were all fine but I wanted giant robots and explosions and sapient cars! But then, after university when I discovered the Transformers fandom online and learned that they were overwhelmingly female … well that just changed everything!

I started writing fanfiction. I would post it to fanfiction.net (aka The Pit of Voles) and to various livejournal communities. But then both groups capitulated to the “Think of the children!” crowd and people found themselves struck through or banned or had their works just removed. We all slowly moved over to AO3 and Dreamwidth but the community got quieter. I found that no matter how engaged I was, my stories were generally ignored – sometimes they were even missed by the aggregator groups. And it became clear that the fandom was moving forward and I was falling behind. I didn’t write for the popular pairings and my interpretations of the characters didn’t mesh with the rest of the community. Nowadays I’m lucky if I get 100 hits and five likes. There are rarely comments. Basically my works are met with a resounding Meh.

And I was really letting it get to me. I found that my desire to write was disappearing and when I managed to get anything done I was terrified of posting it. Honestly, I was tempted to just start pulling everything because there was no way that anyone was going to miss it anyways. I eventually got over myself and after about a year of dealing with it and going on antidepressants (turns out I was depressed! Who knew?) and work becoming slightly less stressful, I found my creativity starting to return.

I’d like to say that I no longer care about the lack of reaction and that I’m writing for the joy of writing, but the fact is that’s not in any way true. I still find myself going back to posting sites desperately looking to see if anyone has liked what I’ve done. Or even better if they’ve commented. Positive. Negative. Honestly, I don’t care. Either reaction would mean that the reader didn’t immediately back out of the story. But I am getting better about it. My work is niche. I write dark stories with rare characters and even rarer pairings. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea and I’m just going to have to accept that. Because I can’t bring myself to write the happy fics with popular pairings that everyone wants.

I love dark. I love dismal. I love stories that make your skin crawl and make you question my sanity for writing it. I’m coming to accept that. Finally.

So, yeah. That’s me. That’s what you’ll find here. Well, that and a few general rants about life, politics, health, family, and mental health.

My fandoms are Transformers (generally G1), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage comics and the 2003 series), Fallout 4, and a handful of others as the muse strikes. And my nonfiction writings are inspired by Poe and Lovecraft, Gygax and Gaiman.