Fic Retrospectives (2018)

[jajalala]

Was looking back at my old fic, and had some thoughts. I thought it'd be fun to start a sort-of series (more like a consistent tag) where I round-up everything I wrote for the year and write how I felt about them. Felt sad to only do it to my most recent year's work though, so I'm going back in time to the start of my "posting on AO3" to write out how I felt. I've decided to go with separate posts for each year, so it's consistent.

Miraculous Ladybug

Félix Comes to Paris
January 2016-July 2018
Oh darling... I'm sorry I abandoned you. This was my first work I posted on any site. Actually, I originally posted this on fanfiction-dot-net, all the way back in 2016. Though it wasn't on my AO3 for several years, at some point I added it and backdated it to give a more full and accurate reflection of my writing history.

This was written early in the Miraculous Ladybug hype times, and Félix wasn't even technically a canon character at the time (that was just the name given to the PV concept of Adrien). As I recall, I saw some cute Félix/Nino concept comics by edorazzi on tumblr, and the "messy casual boy with uptight haughty boy" dynamic spoke to me. Or perhaps it was my love of characters who never met in canon (or existed in canon) that made me ship it so hard. Either way, despite the comics where Edorazzi explored the concept, I craved more.

The writing style embarrasses me now. It's first person POV, and if I recall correctly I didn't do the best job at keeping the tenses consistent... Though I loathe leaving a fic incomplete, at this stage I do feel I've evolved too far past that writing style to ever go back and complete. That's why it's abandoned, though I still love it as a historical stepping stone so I could never delete it.


She-ra and the Princesses of Power

Another Infection
November 2018
I'd like to point out this was released less than a week after the first season of She-ra came out... it is accompanied with the retrospectively funny author's note: "Wtf there's like no content in this fandom... I'm gonna fix this one fic at a time."

This was the first fic I posted to AO3. I remembered feeling a little more mature than when I first posted to fanfiction-dot-net; I had been reading more fic by then and had started branching into this new weird website that was SO much easier to sort through than fanfiction-dot-net. From season number one there were hints to Catra/Adora, and I was determined to put out some more of that energy into the fandom, especially since there were only a few pages of works at the time... I was like "These two gals have PEAK childhood friends to enemies (to lovers?) energy, why isn't there more for them??". The actual content of this oneshot is mostly self-indulgent, basically making up an excuse to let these two gals makeout despite being enemies.

I actually read through this one today (the reason I was looking through old fics is bc of an activity I'm doing with some IRL friends... We decided to read each other's fanfiction, but I'm notoriously secretive with mine and do not like IRL friends knowing any details. Nevertheless, I figured this fic was a good short oneshot that wasn't porn and was for a media all those friends had seen, so even though it's old I decided to copy-paste it into a google doc for them to read). I was embarrassed to discover a couple of spelling/word-choice errors (though I edited a few of those today). Also the start of the story is labeled "chapter 1" even though it's ONLY one chapter... I think I wrote that at the top of the document I originally worked in because having those two words was less intimidating than a blank page.

Still I'm happy with it. It's a quick concept, but I enjoyed it, and reading back I kept laughing at the Entrapta bits. Even though I shipped Catra/Adora hard, I had to show love for another one of the great ladies of the show throughout. Reading it now with the knowledge that Catra/Adora actually became canon four seasons later makes me happy.


Overall 2018 (technically also 2016-17) was still me dipping my toes into writing fanfiction, I definitely made some basic grammar/spelling mistakes that ended up getting posted... But I'm still glad I posted, even if imperfect. My first multichapter was abandoned, but I still like leaving it up as a sign of my own growth (don't worry I did label it clearly "abandoned" in the description so hopeful readers don't get duped). And my first oneshot built my confidence, and got me set up to start writing more in the future.

Comments

[vriddy]

Oh, a retrospective is a really neat thing to do! It's super interesting to see your thoughts and adding your current perspective. I support keeping things around and not deleting, even if we'd make different choices now :D It's good to see growth.

[jajalala]

Yeah it's tempting to curate an account like "Oh I'll only let my best work show here", especially since I made the jump from fanfiction-dot-net to AO3 and AO3 felt "classier"... So I wanted only my best works to show! It actually delayed my adding my old work for awhile, bc I was afraid it would show up ABOVE my newer "better" work and mislead people... But then I learned about AO3 backdating!! What a wonderful tool, it made me feel a lot better about adding it.

Lots of value in keeping even embarrassing works up... It is archive of our own, after all, and who knows if there's some random rare person that particularly likes the work and would be sad to see it deleted?

[vriddy]

I tend to think that even if something isn't our proudest work anymore, it still brought us and maybe a few readers joy, so there shouldn't be any embarrassment in keeping it available.

I haven't been sharing on AO3 for all that long, though :) But I hope to stick with it. Even if I'd have written something differently now, it doesn't make the work mean any less.