Writing fanfiction is a lot like playing with dolls. It hits a lot of the same areas in the brain, and feels more socially acceptable when you're a teenager. My parents didn't care, I was at least doing something more productive than watching TV.
Yet, despite it all, I have to give myself a little bit of leeway: I was only 13-14 when I wrote it. Like many other fanfiction authors at the time, I didn't really have a story structure for it. The “story” (if you can call it that), was 8000 words of shameless self-indulgent fantasies that I used to escape from my real-world problems.
At the time, I felt trapped in a very toxic friendship where my “friend” was low-key bullying me. He’d pick me apart, always told me I was worthless and stupid, never stopped reminding me that he feared me “trading him for new friends” to elicit sympathy from me.
On top of that, I was being bullied excessively by boys in my class. Being frequently told “it’s because they like you” has led me down a darker path I don't wish to divulge in. I spent many years after displaying the same toxic traits that I picked up, offline and online. It’s taken years for me to unlearn a lot of it. Some I’m still trying to unlearn.
It all affected me academically, and aside from a couple of friends at school who were genuinely nice to me, my social life was next to non-existent. I was at an age where my weekends were spent watching over my siblings, so I was even more limited.
And so, fanfiction and online communities surrounding it were all I had for socializing back then. Writing fanfiction was a conversation starter. For every “please update soon” comment I got on there, there'd be one person leaving lengthy comments saying they liked my story. Some of these led to years long friendships that ended with the death of MSN.
The “story” itself has less than 200 views on the only other platform I posted to, which is a good thing. I can’t imagine how badly my mental health would have been affected if a bunch of people spent years clowning on me over this bad fic.
Take this paragraph for example:
My saving grace at the time was the fact that Inuyasha was starting to dwindle in popularity. I don't think I would have handled being disparaged, dunked on and bullied the same way many other infamous fanfiction writers were.
Maybe it’s because I kept a low profile and never argued with critics. Or, maybe some readers who intended to troll me back then realized how young I was didn't go after me.
Regardless, I ended up privating the story and decided to save it into a word document for safekeeping. It may have been terrible, but there is some sentimental value to it.
I like that even when I was starting out, I tried to give lesser characters a backstory (of some kind). The entire chapter is just a long ass info dump.
You might be asking why I decided to private the story instead of letting the public read?
Aside from it containing older handles, I don't see the point in allowing it to exist outside of personal archives. I originally wrote it for myself, first and foremost. By having it exist in that capacity, I'm able to see how much I've improved since then.
So, why not delete it completely?
It’s just in case I change my mind someday. There’s a chance it could be archived, somewhere.
The other reason is, quite simply, I am keeping it for myself.
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