How I Accidentally Started Writing Fanfiction
I blame Paula Cole and that perfect, glorious song.
I … am a Fanfiction Writer.
Whew. That sentence was a doozy to write.
It’s not like writing fanfiction (or as it shall henceforth be called: fanfic) is shameful. Or weird. It’s another outlet to creativity. It isn’t embarrassing or weird, I swear.
In writing fanfic, one is simply answering the call a writer might feel after watching her favorite relation “ship” literally sail off into the sunset. What happens next?! I must wait months — if not years — to know more? I think not!
My journey to writing fanfic was long — it took me years to find my comfort in the craft and my confidence to match my beloved ship’s/show’s uneven plot and character arcs. In fact, my show’s inability to stay on-task was part of what drew me to writing fanfiction for it, decades later. What can I say? I’m a glutton for a punishment. I mean, I still call the actor who had my heart as a sixteen-year-old by his character’s name. It would be embarrassing if every millennial woman on the internet weren’t doing the same thing right now.
Particularly, what I was seeking to fix: my show’s determination to suck all the life and conviction out of the female characters. Back in the pilot era, these gals had teeth. They weren’t going to put up with shenanigans from the boys they claimed to be in love with, let alone the total toads that harassed them in the school lunch rooms. (If memory serves, one lame-o took a meal tray to the head.)
See, dear reader, back then, in the dark ages of the late nineties and early 2000s, girls were simply candy on an arm. We were to barely be seen for we were to weigh a buck ten, at most.
The teeth I alluded to —they were quickly pulled. One of the two main characters was quickly categorized as a harlot because she’d been sexually active before the hero of our story. The other main gal? While she was more than willing to kick a guy where the sun doesn’t shine, she couldn’t help but endlessly talk about how the sun shone out the hero’s ass, far, far, FARRR longer than his character deserved.
I rolled my eyes, a lot, as the years passed, but I never stopped watching. Even as the show turned meta in on itself, and jumped its shark in season 5 (while I’m sure, our beloved class clown used the phrase ‘jumped the shark’ — which reinforced my love for this silly show because who doesn’t love an aware king?)
The show ended in season 6. I graduated from high school a week later. I took the DVDs to college. We giggled as we watched in our dorm rooms, which were notably less glam than those on the box TV on my dresser. We moved out of the dorms. Eventually graduated from college. My DVDs fell lower into the moving boxes as the years passed. I married. My husband and I kept them handy for a while, and then streaming became a thing and now I can’t tell you where my DVDs are.
But I can tell you, still, what happened in Season 3, episode 19 when the forbidden couple gained their sea legs. I can quote the dialogue that matched my OTP’s first kiss that decimated all other first kisses for all time. I will tell you where I was when the actress who played our brazen blonde hussy was nominated for her first Oscar in real life. I can tell you what movie the brunette actor was featured in and how the writers explained his truly heinous blonde tips. My mother was invested when the show’s titular character was on Dancing with the Stars, and I got weekly updates.
And more than anything — I can tell you that when I think of dreamboats, I think of my first ship.
But the lingering sexism and dropped plots and secret half-children on speedboats and the time our heroine sang to her mugger, not to mention ALL of the partner-trading among the six main characters — it had to be fixed. It had to.
So I got to work.
My first piece was a canon-compliant, one-shot (a phrase I learned along the way) about the events that led up to and through the series finale. I crafted a more satisfying funeral. Added more dialogue to a scene on a picnic table between “soulmates” who needed confirmation that their door was padlocked shut. Of course, I wrote a conversation between our happily ever after-chasers who desperately deserved — as did their fans — an actual conclusion to their story.
I published it on Archive of Our Own and was gleeful when people commented… liking it.
To be candid, I’m a writer. Professionally, personally. I can spin a yarn when I feel like it. But the fandom of this particular show was, and is, protective because yes — it’s crazy. But it’s our crazy. Don’t come for our crazy. And I kinda went for the crazy, ironing out the wrinkles I’ve always hated.
I wrote another story. Then another. I fixed the time our brunette heroine was mugged (I axed the singing because what even.) Then I gave her a therapeutic post-mugging conversation with her one true love that did not occur in-canon. (Because he was dating her roommate. See: nuts. And so very obviously early oh-ohs.)
I brought one character back from the dead (the story was more interesting with her in it.) I gave another character the boyfriend the show played for jokes, and the fandom played for keeps. I turned an older sister and a grandmother into mentors and fairy godmothers because dammit, we need women running the show and I’m so tired of clueless dudes.
It provided a certain amount of satisfaction, those early months of publishing non-stop fanfic. It fed my need for attention and instant gratification (I am nothing if not a millennial on that front), and more importantly: it was fun. So much fun.
And fun is the whole point of this, right? I mean, I don’t wanna wait for my life to be over.
Lately, I’ve slowed on publishing fanfic, partly because I’ve focused on getting my original books out the door. But I still check in over at Ao3 from time to time to time. There are writers over there doing fantastic, exciting work, fixing our old heartaches and creating new ones with the lens of 20 years working in our favor.
As for me, my fanfic habit gave me the energy to run with my stories again. My sweet fanfics reminded me why I loved to write original stories as dreamy and fun and frustrating and accidentally hilarious and heartfelt as my beloved show was.