#sort turned into halfway a writer meme and halfway a 'listen to forest talk about her sad childhood' meme

[forestwater87]

A1 A5 A10 D10

READER MEME READER MEME READER MEME

A1: When did you start reading (and writing, because I got kinda off-track answering this question) fanfiction?

I was around 10 years old? I joined fanfiction.net in 2006 with the most awful thing ever written at around 13-14 yes the 87 in my username is a lie because I wanted to get on deviantart and had to lie about when I was born, but I’d been reading Legend of Zelda fanfic for a while before then, and writing it all down on an old Windows 95 laptop that didn’t have an internet connection, and a slightly-less-old Windows 98 laptop that didn’t have an internet connection. 

I had to save my fics to one of these guys in order to upload it to a computer with actual working internet:

(Those fics still exist; I haven’t had the heart to delete anything I’ve written since 10 years old, though I have gone back and edited some things . . . which, since so much time has passed, I’d probably want to go and reedit by now. They are tragic, but they make me smile for all their flaws. I wish I’d kept the unedited versions though, because yikes. Please, save all your cringiest stuff, because it’s so much fun to look back at.)

A5: Who was the first author you subscribed to?

That was probably Rose Zemlya, who wrote this . . . well, gosh, at the time it was this mind-blowingly excellent fanfic for LoZ: Ocarina of Time. (I’ve never successfully beaten those games nor am I all that interested in them anymore, but baby Forest’s romantic awakening came from a man in a green dress and tights, and so I devoured fanfic about them. Link/Zelda was the original OTP of my dreams. Since I didn’t play the games, I alternated between scouring wikis for canon accuracy and not caring because I was a tween and just wanted to share my dumb OCs.)

I don’t actually know if I’d still think the fics were particularly good or not, because I haven’t bothered to go back and reread them -- and I fell off the wagon when she got interrupted by college or grad school and stopped updating regularly -- but she was the first author who really made me feel something. 

I did just find out she’s still active on tumblr, though I don’t know if she’s still writing either for that fandom, or for fandom in general, or even at all. But I’m glad to see she’s still out there, because she was hugely formative to getting me to actually start writing. (Which means, Rose, it’s all your fault I’m like this. Apologize to the fanfic community for what you’ve done.)

A10: Who did you have your first fanfic-related conversation with? What was it about?

Oof, now we get mildly depressing. When I was a kid (as in, ages 4-16 years old), I had this . . . extremely codependent and borderline abusive relationship with the little girl who lived next door. She and I no longer speak, and there’s a lot of extremely negative feelings built up around what were in retrospect a pretty awful time in my life, but she was also the one who introduced me to fanfiction -- she actually played the Zelda games, and wrote fic for it herself and wanted a writing buddy; I kinda gave zero shits about the games beyond it being a nice convenient generic fantasy world with pretty characters. And while we were highly competitive in the not-fun way that still leaves me really fucked up over not being the Most Popular Author in Any Given Fandom because it triggers some horrible flashbacky feelings, I owe her a lot for being someone who showed me this entire culture existed, that it wasn’t weird or lame, and helped me get really excited about writing.

D10: What is one story idea you really want to read but no one has written yet?

God, I don’t know. I’m not really an “ideas” person -- eagle-eyed readers may notice that none of my fics really have plots to speak of -- but for Camp Camp at least, I do think some sort of immortal/groundhog day/time loop AU would be fun. The writers have said that the series is meant to be an endless summer that exists largely outside of time, right? So what if the entire camp, or the lake, or Sleepy Peak did as well?

I’m not sure exactly how this would work -- are the adults just random wandering immortals (vampires, what have you) who found a job somewhere where no one questions why they’re not getting older, and the campers are normal people who never stick around long enough to notice? Are we talking a Brigadoon-style situation where time stops for whoever’s in the camp but keeps going outside of it? Is there a dimensional rift? 

Fuck, I dunno. I’m not an ideas person. I’d just enjoy the fuck out of an “It’s All Been Done” situation, but fanfic. (And resemblances to two particular angels who keep meeting and falling in love over the course of forever and palling around in various fun historical moments are entirely coincidental.)