I've had to devote an entire entry to this particular question from this fandom question meme, because I somehow ended up going on an entire journey in my attempt to answer it.

How did you first get into fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote fic for?

I got on the Internet around the turn of the millennium, when I was eleven or so. As an enthusiastic Pokémon fan, I spent a lot of time looking through Pokémon websites created by fellow fans, learning cool new things like why particular episodes were banned from broadcast outside Japan.

One day, I was browsing a site called Mewtwo's Dungeon. (A lot of Pokémon websites were called Mewtwo's Dungeon! I tried to find the site again later, but I was never able to dig it up in the sea of Mewtwo's Dungeons.) The site included a work of Pokémon fanfiction. I don't remember any of the details; I just remember that it was about Mew and Mewtwo, and that discovering it was the most mindblowingly exciting thing that had ever happened to me.

I dragged my younger brother to the computer and went YOU HAVE TO READ THIS. I don't think he quite understood why I was so excited! But my entire life had changed.

For a little context, I read obsessively when I was a kid. When we stopped at places with racks of leaflets on car journeys, I would grab one of every leaflet just to have something to read. I remember being disturbed when I first learnt that my mum had been calling for me from the next room, and I hadn't heard her at all because I'd been so absorbed in the book I was reading; I hadn't known that was possible.

I had a passionate love for Pokémon, and I would have killed for novels about it. I'd read the novelisation of Pokémon: The First Movie, but I'd found it a little underwhelming, perhaps because I'd seen the film already; I wanted something new.

But there was a story here! About Pokémon, one of my favourite things! Focusing on Mew, one of my favourite Pokémon! Just sitting here on the Internet, and I could read it for free; I didn't even have to go to the library to check it out!

And it turned out that there were hundreds of these things! There were whole sites dedicated to hosting people's Pokémon fanfiction! I could just keep reading Pokémon stories, and it wouldn't cost me anything, and I'd never run out!

Unsurprisingly, Pokémon was also the first fandom I wrote fanfiction for. I was a member of the Pokémorphs forum, a community for fans of a Pokémon/Animorphs crossover written by rache01. By following a banner in someone's forum signature, I came across Neglected Pokémon Lovers Unite!, zarla's Pokémon website. Her fic Howl of a Growlithe made me think, Hey, maybe I could write my own story about a Pokémon journey?

And I did! And that's how we ended up here.

Holy shit, there's a Fanlore page for Pokémorphs, with a Wayback Machine link to the original site. This is an absolutely insane blast from the past. It's the first fandom community I was ever really a part of!

HOLY SHIT, the Wayback Machine has preserved my forum bio from when I was eleven.


In January 2001 I made a second account called 'Evil Mew Of Darkness', because now I was twelve and cool. I didn't fill in a bio for that account, but I have managed to unearth my very cool userpic and forum signature:


I am the last of the Mew. The great race has risen and fallen, once the rulers of the galaxy, now but a myth. But I still remain. I alone stand amongst the ruins of the great Mew empire. But I am not like the others. I am the shadow of darkness. I am the father of evil. I- AM- DARKMEW!

HOLY SHIT HOLD ON I COULD MAKE AN ICON OF DARKMEW FOR DREAMWIDTH

Done! I hope my twelve-year-old self is proud of me.