writing stories like fanfic

i did an interview with kamoyanagi housoukyoku where i got to just ramble a lot on a bunch of different things, & it kind of made my mind wander towards why i write stories & why i share them through games.

i swear this is not a complete tangent, but i have this habit of reading fanfiction for fandoms that i am not familiar with at all. (i also read a lot of fic for series i love but that's normal i think haha.) sometimes i end up starting series because i love the fic i read for it so much too. fanfiction is great.

there's something incredibly satisfying that i experience specifically from fanfiction that i don't from other stuff i read. i don't know that i can explain it exactly, but to me, fic always feels like it's written specifically because somebody really really had to. fic is what happens when somebody gets a brainworm & either they write it out or it eats itself out of their skull.

then when it's ready to be released into the world, it is just published. sure you can have a beta reader or two, but there aren't the hoops you'd expect from more traditional publishing. you don't need an editor's approval, you don't need a publisher's ok, you don't need to send out review copies to get people's interest.

i'm currently a full-time indie dev who makes visual novels, so you can say i create stories for a living. but i got my love of writing through fanfic. i remember filling up so many notebooks with stories of characters who existed in a different world that i couldn't get enough of. the first time i found out about fanfiction just existing online was honestly a revelation. pre-fanfic me & post-fanfic me are two different people. fanfic was the first time i'd made friends outside of just other kids i knew at school. fanfic gave me a tool to talk to other people - something that we had in common. i don't even sadly wish happy birthday once a year through facebook to anybody i was at school with anymore, but friends i made online on a fanfic forum came to my wedding.

i don't think i ever really wanted to be a writer though. i don't know for sure that i even actually like writing! i think i wrote fic because i had to - because a scenario didn't play out the way i wanted it to in an episode & i needed it to be real, because two characters absolutely had to be together & if i could make it happen i would - & being able to share this visceral need with other people who understood was incredible.

i don't remember exactly when i stopped writing fic as much - i think life kind of just got in the way. then at some point i fell into making games & creating stories for my games kind of filled the same itch, if not quite. (i also draw a line in my head for stuff that is canon vs headcanon even for my own stories... i feel like there's stuff that i can make 'canon' as such since it's my own stories but also stuff i want to keep to myself & play around around with without confirming as canon. i have never done a poll or anything but i feel like this must be common between other writers that started with fanfic 😆)

but writing for games & publishing them is a lot more of a process than writing fic. for one thing, i release my games as products people can purchase & people pay money to buy them. the relationship between somebody who sells something & the person who buys it is very different than the one between somebody who writes fic & the person who reads it. there are different expectations, which is fair.

for the more 'product' side of my games i'm generally happy to respond as required, because it's what i signed up for. i try to make sure my games aren't buggy. i keep my games updated on different platforms. sometimes i'll make demos so people can try before they buy.

but in general, i don't really change my stories based on criticism &c. not because the criticism wouldn't be valid - there are tons of ways i could be a better writer or story crafter or whatever. but at the heart of things, i don't write because i want to become a better writer. i write all of my stories like i would write fanfic - because i need to. i share these stories because it might be nice to have other people who also might feel the same way, but in the end, i write them for me & not for anyone else. i'm happy to fix typos in text or whatever but i'm generally not looking to make my stories 'better', because that's not why i write. to be more poetic about it, i could quote shelley's fading coal analogy (if you haven't read it, you should - it's one of my favourite essays ever on creating art), but because this blog is my space to write what i want when i want in all its unedited glory - no beta we die like _____.

(also this is an open invitation to send me your favourite fics - any fandom welcome 🙏)