Apparently, zarla's Pokémon website, Neglected Pokémon Lovers Unite!, had its tenth anniversary a few days ago!

'What?' you may ask. 'You've never mentioned this website before. Is it important?'

You probably weren't actually asking that, but I am going to tell you anyway. It is important. It is so important.

There are two specific writers I can pick out as huge inspiring influences in my personal fannish development. thebaconfat is one; back in 2003, her Final Fantasy VIII fanfiction made me aware of how vastly inferior my writing was, and my aspirations to reach her level led (I hope) to a great improvement over a period of years.

Before that, zarla was the reason I began writing fanfiction in the first place. I fell in love with her original Pokémon characters and their relationships with each other and with their Pokémon, and Howl of a Growlithe made me realise how much I wanted to write my own tales of Pokémon journeys. (A note: this was written a very long time ago, as were most of the things on the NPLU. zarla has progressed a lot since then; she is an unquestionably brilliant writer now, and her work is a pleasure to read whether I know the fandom or not, but her older writing has some issues - largely punctuational - that I can overlook because these stories were the most amazing thing in the entire world when I was twelve and automatically induce massive amounts of love and joy in me.) I don't even personally know zarla, but without the NPLU I wouldn't have started writing, I wouldn't have become so immersed in fandom, and I probably wouldn't know any of you.

I am looking through the NPLU right now, and I could weep for nostalgia and love. My chiiiiiildhood. IT IS SO AMAZING.


Anyway, this anniversary has put me in a hugely nostalgic mood, and so I would like you all to share your stories of early fandom life. Here are mine:

- Prior to discovering fandom, my primary Internet activity was searching for Anti-Pokémon websites and writing stories about the website creators being attacked by Pokémon on their guestbooks.

THAT'S RIGHT: WHEN I DISCOVERED THE INTERNET, THE FIRST THING FOR WHICH I USED IT WAS BEING A TROLL. I am not proud of this.

- Nor am I proud of the first work of fanfiction I ever posted to fanfiction.net, an entirely directionless Pokémon-journey fic that reached twenty thousand words before I took it down in shame, asked for character submissions from reviewers and opened with the author's note 'Heya! ^_^ I'm Riona, a new author, and this is my FIRST EVER FICCY!' Oh, past self.

- My first fandom was Pokémon, obviously. The earliest work of fanfiction I remember reading - not the first I read, certainly, but one that lodged in my memory because it upset me so much - was one in which Ash committed suicide. That's right. Ash Ketchum. Ash Ketchum killed himself. This is the sort of thing I was reading when I was eleven, apparently. I have a very clear memory of Misty and Brock later seeing Pikachu apparently playing with someone who wasn't there. Little Riona (or 'Mew', as she called herself back then) found all of this most distressing.

- I am fairly certain that one of the first stories I read on fanfiction.net (earlier I had been using Pokémon fansites for my fanfiction needs), and possibly the first m/m story I ever read, was a vaguely written Legend of Dragoon fic in which Lloyd raped Dart in a public lavatory. I was probably thirteen. I did not know that this was what the story contained when I clicked on the link, and I was mildly perplexed. (Again, it was zarla's writing that was responsible for my later developing an active interest in slash and eventually writing it myself.) (EDIT: Thinking about timelines, I don't think it can have been the first slashfic I read; I discovered the NPLU before I played Legend of Dragoon! But it was certainly the first noncon fic I read, and I think it was also the first fic I read that involved on-page sex.)


So! Do you remember how you got into fandom? Do you remember the bizarre early things you read or wrote, the mistakes you made, the most amazing fanfiction in the world when you were ten? Who were the authors whose writing shaped yours? It is nostalgia time.