So why am I doing this?
Wow we’re here! Very first blog post after working through my thoughts and considering blogging for over a year now. Whoop whoop! And while I do have some particularly juicy content lined up in the future, I figured that it would be a good idea to properly sit down and explain why I chose to do this, as well as elaborating on some of my own personal hopes and dreams to properly impart onto you, the reader! If you’re looking for informative and/or entertaining content, maaaybe don’t start with this one. But it might give you some background context for all posts going forwards. And I like being honest with folks, so might as well.
Let’s go ahead and ask the question already. Why did I decide to start a blog, something that is incredibly time consuming, and not only that but make it about a strange mix of fanfiction, fandom, and just straight video games? Since let’s be honest here, I’m not exactly being very algorithm friendly if I want to make a career out of this haha I wish! Short answer is: because I love all of that stuff! Both video games and fanfiction mean so much to me that I genuinely couldn’t imagine my life without them, and by engaging with fanfiction and further fan interactions I found myself fascinated by fan culture. Particularly the way fans directly impact and affect the way media is now produced. The longer answer for why I did this is…. well… much longer! And very personal to me. Some of which I haven’t ever properly articulated before, so here goes nothing!
Even though I encountered video games first, all the way back when I was a child watching my older half siblings playing Bugdom, Advance Wars, and watching YouTube playthroughs that child me got confused about if they were actually playing or not, it was fanfiction that made the first noticeable impact on my life. I say noticeable, since video games were part of my lifeblood at that point and I wouldn’t go a day without playing something on a console I owned, which looking back might have been a sign. I saw them as entertainment rather than something interesting. In all honesty, I got hit with a one-two punch of fanfiction then video game appreciation, but one thing at a time.
My teens weren’t a great time for me. I was fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on how you look at it I guess) enough to be a girl who was good at both maths and physics. So I was immediately hit with wave upon wave of ‘girls in STEM’ based content, so much so that I almost felt like I wanted to work in STEM because I had to work in STEM. To do that, I went to a very prestigious Sixth Form for my A Levels and I just… floundered. All of a sudden I felt as though I was surrounded by all these amazingly proficient people who knew what they wanted to do and… I didn’t. I still don’t, if I’m being honest here. I understood physics, and I found some of the topics cool (I did a project on quantum entanglement which was awesome), but I found that I didn’t want to pursue any of that stuff further.
At that time I was heavily indoctrinated into anime. And I mean HEAVILY. I watched at least a few episodes each day if I could. Animated features have and will always hold my attention more than live action media ever could, and anime in particular was a particular style that constantly seemed to hold me rapt. And the one show that I was the most obsessed with? One Piece. Yes that ‘One Piece’ which has over 1,000 chapters and episodes and has been going on for longer than I have been alive. That one. I won’t go into all my feelings about the show right now (since this isn’t a One Piece blog. Yet. Gimme a bit and we’ll see.) but I just adored the way the world was created to be so freeing and separate from the main cast. It felt as if you could honestly zoom in on different areas and be able to create and understand real actual people just going around living their lives.
So that is exactly what I did.
It started off as daydreams at first. The dissociating sort, where I desperately wished and hoped to be sucked into that world and hold enough power and charisma for me to be happy. Which I knew full well was unhealthy. I knew that creating this ideal world in my head would just make me want to detach from the real world more and more each day, and I was already not in a great place. And so, I decided that I needed an outlet.
Missy was the first proper fanfiction I’ve ever written. I’d written some before, collabing with friends or other writers online, but this was the first idea that was entirely mine. It’s in second person, which I know is controversial, but it was at least in a small bit so I could feel as if I was writing the fic for me. Missy herself was never given a physical description. She wasn’t even given a name. All so the readers and I could project absolutely anything we wanted onto her. I made her powerful, almost overpowered, but with very serious side effects. All because I wanted to show myself that power wasn’t everything, and that there would always be a price.
And I never really went back.
So yeah. Fanfiction is a massive thing for me, both therapeutically and creatively, and I genuinely don’t think I would’ve been able to deal with Sixth Form without it. That alongside video games. This happened at around 2016… during which year a very influential game released for me. Persona 5. Now I have no idea how I discovered it was coming out, since I was definitely not an Atlus, Persona, or Shin Megumi Tensei fan, but even the bits of promotional material I saw was enough to draw me in. And when I played it?
Wow. Just wow.
If you have never seen any of Persona 5’s footage or heard the soundtrack, stop right now and go look it up. It is a masterpiece in UI and general game design. As many people have noted, you know you’ve done something right if people have cosplayed your menu system! I wasn’t a big fan of JRPGs before, I’d played a few on my DS but turn based combat never really appealed to me. Until Persona 5. The graphics and sound design of that game was genuinely so engrossing that it made me look back with newfound appreciation onto how games were designed that I’d never really had before. I was well and truly hooked. To the extent that my brother got annoyed by how much time I was spending on his PS4. From there I started doing more deep dives into games, looking at analysis videos and how things were made- Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released the very next year and I absolutely adored that as well- and I simply found them fascinating. I could go on, but that’s for another post I think!
From there my life took a turn. I gave up on studying Physics at university and instead went for a course on Interactive Media, which is literally the study of media… that is interactive. Very descriptive, I know. That course really taught me a lot, both about the subject and myself. Mostly because it allowed me to look into the humanities behind a lot of technology, which I found more interesting than the actual process of making it. I’m planning on posting a few of the essays I did there at some point (most of them of various quality, just warning you), since I personally believe some of the topics are interesting; such as an essay on how Netflix handles (or used to handle) data, or one about the framing devices of certain video games. Although we’ll see closer to the time if I’m up for posting those things or not!
It was at university that my love of fan culture and fan experiences grew. I wanted to create a project to try and show how much fanfiction meant to me, and as a part of the process I found that I was genuinely hooked. I was investigating toxic fandom, copyright issues, and even researching into crack fanfic. It was awesome! Some parts were genuinely scary at times (any deep dive into the internet is never stomach wrenching) but I found that I was passionate about the topic. And I really wanted to share it with other people.
And so here we are!
So the TL;DR: Video games and fanfiction helped me out massively when I was a teen, than I went further into fan studies at uni and decided to write a blog. That’s basically it.
As I said at the top, it took a lot for me to actually go out and publish this thing. Lots of planning, and far more me trying to bolster up my courage enough to press the post button. But I’m here now. And I’m not going to stop at only one post. Some of it will be academic, especially my older studies, but I really want to keep some of this light, conversational, and most importantly COLLABORATIVE! Fanfiction and fan culture is a collaborative process, and I want to keep that open relationship here for this blog.
Please feel free to reach out about any thoughts you might have, or topics you want to discuss. This is a broad and wonderful world and there are so many different experiences to hear about. There are so many video games I will have never heard of, or areas of fandom I don’t ever see, and any information in the slightest would be greatly appreciated! Come and post any immediate thoughts you might have in the comments, or send an email via my contact form that you can find here. I’d love to hear from you all!
Welp, that’s all from me for now! Thank you for reading and I hope to see you in the next update.
