rionaleonhart | Entries tagged with my fandom history

For each of my major fandoms, I do a short writeup talking about how it fits into my fandom history. A fandom qualifies as 'major' if I've written five fics for it, or ten thousand words across at least three fics.

Nemlei visual novels

'Riona, this is not a fandom. You can't just throw six different visual novels together and call them a fandom because they share a creator and some thematic and tonal similarities.'

I can and I will.

I first became aware of Nemlei's work in April 2023, when a friend recommended The Coffin of Andy and Leyley to me on Discord. 'If you like two siblings stuck in a house, this is ur game,' she said. I liked the look of the artwork, and 'two siblings stuck in a house' is exactly my sort of thing, so I really let myself down by not checking it out straight away!

Six months later, in October 2023,

cardboardpapercuts messaged me on Dreamwidth to say, 'I was wondering if you've played The Coffin of Andy and Leyley? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the game if you have, or if you do in the future!'

The fact that two people had now independently recommended this game to me really made it stick in my mind; it was now firmly on my 'I should probably check this out at some point' list. A year later,

cardboardpapercuts made the incredibly generous offer to buy me a copy; I declined the offer, but the fact that someone had gone 'I believe so strongly this is Riona's thing that I'd be willing to buy it for her' made me go 'okay, I am definitely going to check this out now.'

I played The Coffin of Andy and Leyley at the age of thirty-six and fell in love with it immediately. It's fucked-up, funny and fascinating in exactly the right balance. I started writing fanfiction when I was only an hour in. Perhaps I should be concerned that multiple people went 'I know exactly who needs to play this incest and cannibalism game!' and came straight to me, but I'm just grateful that they did.

I promptly tore my way through the rest of Nemlei's work and had a great time. An absolute treasure trove of dark comedy and messed-up character dynamics. The Coffin of Andy and Leyley remains my favourite, but I also really enjoyed Better Half.

Will I learn from this experience to check out recommendations earlier? Let's be honest: probably not. But I'm very glad I managed to get around to this one.

Favourite character: Oh, hmm, maybe Andrew? He's so interestingly broken in ways that might not be apparent at first glance, and his feelings about his sister are such a complicated, fascinating tangle.
Favourite pairing: Andrew/Ashley is a hideous, awful mess that I want to examine under a microscope. I really like the touch that, even in the midst of their absolute trainwreck of a relationship, they're very physically affectionate (perhaps too physically affectionate) and often make each other laugh. Thiu/Thiu is in second place. Nemlei's games are great for pairings that are a weird blend of cute and messed-up.
Number of words written: 9,634 across five fics: one for Better Half, one for Divilethion and three for The Coffin of Andy and Leyley.

Snippet: Here's a tiny Coffin of Andy and Leyley snippet I scribbled down on a train.

( Coffin of Andy and Leyley unfinished snippet, Ashley and Andrew, 2024. )

My notes after this snippet read '(cue some sort of sexy stabbing education, Andrew standing against her back and guiding her hands to cut someone's throat?? I probably won't actually write this.)'

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.

For each of my major fandoms, I do a short writeup talking about how it fits into my fandom history. A fandom qualifies as 'major' if I've written five fics for it, or ten thousand words across at least three fics.

I wasn't sure at first whether to count Final Fantasy XIII, as most of my wordcount for it comes from With These Signs Upon Our Souls, a Final Fantasy VIII/Final Fantasy XIII fusion that only actually features any XIII characters in the last couple of chapters. But I've just remembered that I did a writeup for Animorphs, which also qualified mainly based on fusions, so here we go!

I'm going to steal part of this writeup from the Final Fantasy XIII page I recently added to my Final Fantasy VIII website.

('There's a part of me going, Hey, if you added the Balamb Garden flight deck, you could let visitors fly to locations from other Final Fantasy games. Please stay calm, Riona; let's at least try to keep this project on a reasonable scale.'

rionaleonhart, 16 April 2024)

Final Fantasy XIII series

I was really excited by the early trailers for Final Fantasy XIII. It looked so gorgeous! Lightning seemed so cool!

Before the game came out, though, I read a scathing review of it, which deflated my enthusiasm. The news didn't get any better once the game was actually released; the fans seemed to hate it. It was a real shame, but the universal opinion seemed to be that this game was terrible. Maybe I wouldn't play this one.

Half a year later,

squeemu played Final Fantasy XIII and summed up their reaction as 'holy crap, possibly my new favorite Final Fantasy?'

I was surprised and intrigued. This didn't fit anything I'd heard about the game! By all accounts, Final Fantasy XIII had no redeeming features. But Squeem had enjoyed it, and I respected Squeem's opinion more than I respected a bunch of strangers on the Internet.

I first experienced Final Fantasy XIII at the age of twenty-two. I didn't have a PS3 at the time, so I watched a playthrough on YouTube.

I loved every moment of it. I loved the characters, the concept, the music, the visuals. I felt silly for letting other people's opinions discourage me; I love Final Fantasy VIII, after all, and that's a game that gets a lot of criticism as well!

My favourite aspect was the character dynamics. The game really takes the time to build up different relationships within the party. It's also fun to have negative dynamics within the party as well as positive ones; I haven't played many RPGs in which some party members outright hate others!

As soon as I got a PS3, I played Final Fantasy XIII myself, and I still loved it just as much with a controller in my hand. It's a game with a tightly limited scope; it's pretty much all battles and cutscenes. But they're great battles and they're great cutscenes, so I had a great time.

I don't love the sequels as much as the original, alas! Final Fantasy XIII-2 was fun, but I felt it did everything slightly worse than the original: the removal of stat caps made battles less strategic, the two-person party meant you couldn't have the fun variety of character dynamics, the non-linear story meant that relationships couldn't develop in a satisfying manner. I wasn't really a fan of Lightning Returns, which not only stripped away the party completely but made the protagonist dull by removing her emotions, although I did hugely enjoy how ridiculous the ending was.

Favourite character: Not an easy choice! Even if there are individual characters I love more from other titles, Final Fantasy XIII has my favourite overall cast of characters of any Final Fantasy. But I think it's probably Sazh. He's a nicely balanced character - warm-hearted with a cynical streak, funny without being reduced to comic relief - and his plotline with Vanille is one of my favourites in the game.
Favourite pairing: Serah/Hope, but only in Final Fantasy XIII-2. When Hope first sees Serah after she travels to the future, he's so excited, and then he gets embarrassed about his own excitement; it's pretty cute! I like the weirdness of Serah going from a world where Hope is younger than her into one where he's older, too, and it could be interesting to see her dealing with the complicated emotions of developing feelings for someone else while her fiancé is missing.
Number of words written: 30,547, technically, although most of those words don't actually feature any Final Fantasy XIII characters! If I count only the parts of my writing that include characters from the game, the wordcount comes to about 7,000.

Snippet: For a while, I toyed with the idea of writing a series of ficlets about Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy VIII characters interacting, set after With These Signs Upon Our Souls. I never got far, alas.

( Final Fantasy XIII unfinished snippet. FFVIII/FFXIII, Zell and Snow, 2018. )

For each of my major fandoms, I do a short writeup talking about how it fits into my fandom history. A fandom qualifies as 'major' if I've written five fics for it, or ten thousand words across at least three fics. Ten thousand words isn't a hard limit; I allow myself a little flexibility if, as in this case, I get within a stone's throw of it.

Severance has qualified with impressive speed!

Severance

Severance first caught my attention in November 2023, when I saw this Dreamwidth post by

sholio. It sounded like a really interesting concept! I think I'd heard the name before, but I hadn't really grasped that Severance and Succession were different shows. I didn't look into actually watching it, but it stuck in the back of my mind.

A couple of months later, in January 2024, some friends of mine on WhatsApp were discussing the all-pervasiveness of capitalism in modern life. I remembered the concept of Severance, although I couldn't remember the title. After refreshing my memory by Googling 'tv show where people lose their memories of work', I sent a message to the chat:

I've never seen Severance, but I recently learnt its concept (whenever you go to work for the day, your memories of your personal life are wiped, only to be restored when you leave, so while you're inside your workplace you remember nothing from outside it), and I'm sure employers are desperately trying to work out how to apply that in real life.

The chat in question included my housemates. Later that day, as I walked past the sitting room door, I overheard Tem and Rei discussing how interesting that concept was, and I poked my head in to agree. It was a shame it was only on Apple TV, so we couldn't actually watch it.

'We have Apple TV,' Rei said.

I watched Severance with my housemates at the age of thirty-five, and we all found ourselves absolutely gripped. It's rare for us to watch more than one episode of a drama in an evening, but we kept hitting the end of an episode and desperately needing to know what happened next!

Come to think of it, I recently posted a list of elements of my hypothetical perfect show, and Severance hits a lot of the points on that list.

Severance doesn't seem to have an especially lively fandom on the ficwriting front. In the last fortnight, only four Severance fics have been posted to AO3, and three of them were by me. But I'm just happy to be here; this is a show full of fascinating concepts, and I'm having a great time exploring them.

Favourite character: Mark is a self-loathing, traumatised wreck with memory issues. He's basically well-meaning but lacks self-control and hasn't made a good decision in years. I don't know why the creators of Severance decided to target my tastes specifically when developing their protagonist, but they've done a great job and I appreciate it. (Specifically, my favourite character is Mark S, the office-based Mark, rather than Mark Scout. I like both versions of Mark, but Mark S has an extra layer of isolation and naïveté that appeals to me.)
Favourite pairing: It's either Mark/Helly specifically or the Macrodata Refinement OT4 of Mark/Helly/Dylan/Irving. I'm a big fan of characters going through intense, weird and/or traumatic experiences together while isolated from the outside world. They're not made for each other; they're just people who ended up trapped in hell together and don't have anything else, and I find that a really interesting relationship dynamic.
Number of words written: 9,839

Snippet: Here's a brief exchange I ended up cutting from my Mark/Helly fic Across the Threshold; I may or may not end up trying to work it into a different fic. NB: this snippet contains mentions of suicide.

( Severance unfinished snippet. Mark and Helly, 2024. )

For each of my major fandoms, I do a short writeup talking about how it fits into my fandom history. A fandom qualifies as 'major' if I've written five fics for it, or ten thousand words across at least three fics.

It's only just occurred to me that Red Dwarf technically qualifies. It's the only fandom in which I've permanently lost all copies of a fic I wrote, so I only have four surviving Red Dwarf fics, but I have written and posted five Red Dwarf fics in total.

Red Dwarf

Red Dwarf is the first television series I remember really enjoying. To be clear, I loved Red Dwarf even before I loved Pokémon. I'm pretty sure I first watched it when my age was in single figures.

In some respects, I was too young for Red Dwarf. Most of the jokes probably went over my head, and I remember that the episode 'Demons and Angels' really disturbed and upset me. Lister being forced to kill the angelic versions of the crew was horrifying. Trying to warn them, trying to apologise, but being unable to control his body!

My other main recollection from watching Red Dwarf as a tiny child is how much I enjoyed 'Mr Flibble's very cross.'

The first series came out on DVD when I was fourteen, and I had a blast revisiting it. I watched the episodes over and over again. I watched the cast commentaries over and over again. At one point I apparently attempted to handwrite a transcript of an episode for unclear reasons, a project I was confused to rediscover twelve years later.

Still at the age of fourteen, I wrote a short Lister/Rimmer fic - my first fic for a live-action TV fandom - and posted it to fanfiction.net. Princess Lauren E Scavenger, who I believe was one of the group's founders, left an encouraging comment with a link to a Yahoo! group called the Red Dwarf Slash Society, which I joined.

This group was where I posted my lost fic, Me³, a Rimmer/Rimmer selfcest fic set during the Rimmer-duplication episode 'Me²'. It was my first ever attempt at writing sex; I think one of the Rimmers gave the other a vaguely implied handjob. I suspect it was probably dubcon.

The feedback for my Rimmer/Rimmer fic wasn't in any way unkind, but it was as lukewarm as you'd expect from people trying to be polite about the fact that it was clearly written by a fourteen-year-old with zero sexual knowledge or experience. I was a little embarrassed, which is probably why I made no effort to keep the fic backed up.

My second ever attempt at writing sex, incidentally, was also selfcest with consent issues. Come to think of it, I also wrote a dubcon selfcest fic this year, two decades after my first. Start as you mean to go on?

Favourite character: Rimmer is terrible and petty in a way that makes him a lot of fun. Possibly the first entertainingly terrible character I ever developed a fondness for.
Favourite pairing: Lister/Rimmer, one of my earliest ships. They have such an interesting 'we drive each other mad, we know each other more intimately than anyone else could, we're isolated together in unfathomably deep space' dynamic.
Number of words written: I don't actually know! I have 8,270 surviving words of Red Dwarf fanfiction, across four fics, and I suspect the lost fic was under a thousand words long; most of my fics at that age were very short. About 9,000 words, I suppose.

And here's the final instalment of these posts listing my ten favourite characters, in no particular order!

For anyone who missed them, here are the previous instalments: one (Elena Fisher, Joshua Kiryu, Squall Leonhart, Light Yagami), two (Ellie of The Last of Us, James Sunderland, Jeff Winger).

Hajime Hinata, Danganronpa 2

Who is this character and why do you love them? A lot of my favourite characters are ordinary people struggling to cope with a bizarre and terrible situation, and Hajime Hinata is a great example. He's a very normal person in the midst of a colourful cast, but his relative groundedness means he interacts well with everyone else, without those interactions becoming overwhelming. He could easily have felt bland, but I don't think he does at all. Hinata has enough personality to feel real and present; he's compassionate, he's sarcastic, he's insecure but unafraid to speak his mind. He genuinely likes and cares about most of the people he's trapped with, but he's naturally struggling with the paranoia of the situation, which is a fun internal conflict. He also seems like he has a mild crush on everyone he interacts with, which is a trait that always delights me.
Do you ship this character with anyone? I ship Hinata with pretty much everyone, but particularly Komaeda, Koizumi and Kuzuryuu. Hinata and Koizumi, both strong-willed and relatively level-headed, would probably have the occasional argument, but I think they could ultimately work out well and be very cute. Kuzuryuu is short-tempered and clashes with everyone else at first, but he and Hinata build a mutual respect over the course of the game, which I think could form a strong foundation for a relationship. Hinata and Komaeda would work absolutely terribly, but that's the fun of it. Komaeda adores Hinata and expresses it in horrifying ways; Hinata, appropriately horrified, spends every second he's forced to be around Komaeda wishing he were anywhere else. It's great.
What's your favourite fic you've written about this character? Probably Humanity's Hope, an AU inspired by The Last of Us. Hinata has to deal with zombies and Komaeda, and frankly Komaeda might be worse. Their dynamic is always a lot of fun to write; I love the way Hinata finds Komaeda simultaneously repellent and fascinating.
Are there any similar characters you love? Danganronpa protagonists tend to come from a similar mould, and I love all of them. I've also generally got a weakness for ordinary, good-hearted, slightly sarcastic teenage boys who love their friends and go through absolutely horrific experiences. Bonus points if they cry. Other examples include Sean Diaz of Life Is Strange 2 and Keiichi Maebara of Higurashi: When They Cry.
Anything else you'd like to say about this character? Some of the characters on my favourites list are more-or-less unique characters who won me over as individuals; some are just great examples of character types I have a particular weakness for, and Hinata falls into the latter category. He'd be slightly wounded to hear that, given that he has a lot of issues about being ordinary and not really standing out. Sorry, Hinata. You're still a standout character in my heart; you don't have to be unique for me to like you enormously. I realise that this probably isn't making you feel any better.

Patrick Jane, The Mentalist

Who is this character and why do you love them? Patrick Jane is a cheerful, playful, affable façade stretched thinly over a terrifying void. Sometimes he's brightly arranging a picnic. Sometimes he buries a man alive. Sometimes he's just being cheerfully obnoxious. Sometimes he kills someone in cold blood. He sleeps in the room where his family was murdered, under the calling card of the murderer, drawn in their blood, which he's never had cleaned off the wall. He's fucked up. I think he's fascinating.
Do you ship this character with anyone? I firmly believe that Jane is in love with his entire team - Lisbon, Cho, Rigsby, Van Pelt - and also with Hightower, for good measure. But he'll never admit it to himself. If he accepts that he's in love with them, that also means he's forced to face the fact that Red John could hurt him by taking them away.
What's your favourite fic you've written about this character? Compass Points, a fic exploring my conviction that Jane is in love with all of his colleagues. This fic still gets a handful of kudos every month, even five years later; I was pleased to realise there are a lot of Jane/everyone fans out there!
Are there any similar characters you love? The Ninth Doctor of Doctor Who. Externally playful and cheerful, deeply traumatised, scarily ruthless, kind of dead inside. Develops very intense attachments to specific people and is prepared to go to alarming lengths for them.
Anything else you'd like to say about this character? I think Patrick Jane was a more interesting character than The Mentalist was prepared to handle. I ended up dropping The Mentalist at the end of season six, when it became clear to me that the show was set on maintaining the tone 'oh, Patrick Jane, what a scamp' and I wanted 'oh, Patrick Jane, what an absolutely horrifying man'.

Yuna, Final Fantasy X

Who is this character and why do you love them? Yuna is one of the few characters on this list who isn't a complete psychological disaster, although she's on a quest to sacrifice herself for the good of the world, so she's still got a fair few issues to deal with. I'm often drawn to weakness in characters, but I really admire Yuna's strength. She's a little awkward, but she's brave; she's determined; she's prepared to fight against everything she believed in when she finds that it was founded on false principles. She wavers sometimes (which is a good thing; wavering is interesting!), but she's always prepared to grit her teeth and push past her doubt and her fear. And, below all the impossibly heavy responsibilities, she's just a teenager; she wants to have fun, she wants to spend time with her friends, she wants to live. She's been my default icon on here for fourteen years.
Do you ship this character with anyone? I like Tidus/Yuna a solid amount - I think they work well together - but I wouldn't say I actively ship them. The character I ship Yuna with most might actually be Squall Leonhart of Final Fantasy VIII; I once saw someone mention that Noel of Final Fantasy XIII-2 looked like he could be Squall and Yuna's kid, and I found the idea deeply intriguing. They aren't from the same world, of course, but I think Squall and Yuna would interact interestingly. Squall's afraid of relying on others because he thinks it's a weakness; Yuna, who travels with guardians and fights by summoning, has always viewed others as her strength.
What's your favourite fic you've written about this character? Binding Contract, a Final Fantasy VIII/Final Fantasy X crossover in which Squall is Yuna's guardian-for-hire.
Are there any similar characters you love? Possibly Utena Tenjou of Revolutionary Girl Utena? They're different in demeanour, but they're both compassionate and brave and unshakeably determined; they both have a tendency to take more responsibility upon themselves than they should; they're both prepared to throw themselves away for the sake of others.
Anything else you'd like to say about this character? Of all the characters on this list, Yuna's the only one who didn't establish herself as my favourite the first time I experienced the canon. At first, my favourite Final Fantasy X character was Auron, but I came to appreciate Yuna more and more on later playthroughs.

And that's it! My ten favourite characters of all time, or at least the closest I've ever managed to get to a definitive list. I've enjoyed talking about them!

A couple of people have asked if they can borrow this format to talk about their own favourite characters. Borrowing this format is welcome and encouraged! I'd love to hear other people talk about characters they love.

Here's the second of three entries running through my ten favourite characters of all the time! Caveats: I'm only including characters I've loved for at least ten years, and I've almost certainly forgotten someone essential. I'm going to kick myself when I remember them.

In case you missed it and you're curious, here's the first entry, featuring Elena Fisher, Joshua Kiryu, Squall Leonhart and Light Yagami.

Ellie, The Last of Us

Who is this character and why do you love them? 'Angry disaster' has always been one of my favourite character types. Ellie is an angry, traumatised mess. She's prickly and struggles with letting people get close, but she loves hard when someone slips past her defences. She makes terrible decisions and even worse puns. I became so attached to her while escorting her in The Last of Us; her curiosity, determination and rebellious streak were such a bright spot in a world full of people who'd given up.
Do you ship this character with anyone? I don't think I passionately ship Ellie with anyone, but Ellie/Riley is very cute, Ellie/Abby has interesting potential, and I like the idea of Ellie, Dina and Jesse working out some sort of tentative, awkward polyamorous arrangement.
What's your favourite fic you've written about this character? Huh, hard to decide! I've written a lot about Ellie. Maybe In Fainter Ink, in which Ellie, Dina and Jesse struggle to settle into a V-shaped polyamorous relationship. A lot of the commenters hated this fic, but it was a fic I wanted to exist; I'm glad I wrote it, even if it wasn't for everyone. I don't know if it's the best fic I've ever written about Ellie, but the negative reactions made me strangely protective of it.
Are there any similar characters you love? Ellie and Abby are very much presented as two sides of the same coin in The Last of Us, Part II, and I'm fond of Abby as well. I could list all the angry disasters I love, but we'd be here all day!
Anything else you'd like to say about this character? I remember being really nervous that The Last of Us, Part II might damage my love of Ellie! I'm pleased to report that I absolutely still love her after playing it. She makes some truly atrocious decisions and does a lot of murdering, but, let's be honest, that's not the sort of thing that's ever made me like a character less.

James Sunderland, Silent Hill 2

Who is this character and why do you love them? I spoiled myself pretty thoroughly for Silent Hill 2 before I actually played it. I read analyses, transcripts, fanfiction. None of it told me how fond of James Sunderland I'd end up becoming. But, when I was playing the game myself - when I was personally trapped and terrified in the town - the character I was playing as felt like my only ally. James and I went through Silent Hill together, and it turns out that that's a pretty intense bonding experience! It helps that the inside of his head is an absolute mess in ways I find really interesting. (I've just remembered that Silent Hill 2 is being remade! I have no idea how to feel about that! Maybe I should at least check it out.)
Do you ship this character with anyone? The relationship between James and his wife Mary is unbearably tragic and makes me very emotional. It was one of the first pairings I ever passionately shipped.
What's your favourite fic you've written about this character? I've written a ludicrous number of ficlets about James Sunderland, but most of them were written when I was sixteen, so, I'll be honest, they're not my best work. I'm going to say my favourite fic about James is like nails in my feet, one of my more recent Silent Hill 2 fics, in which I attempted to express all my intense feelings about James and Mary.
Are there any similar characters you love? Silent Hill 2 was a very formative game for me, and I think a lot of my favourite character types can be traced back to James Sunderland. I love characters who make terrible mistakes and are overcome by self-loathing; I love characters who are trying to atone for things that can't ever be undone; I love characters who undergo horrible experiences they'll never recover from or be believed about; I love characters who can't trust their own perception of reality. Mike Munroe of Until Dawn is very different from James in demeanour, but he hits three of these four points. Macbeth of the BBC ShakespeaRe-Told adaptation I got weirdly obsessed with in my teens, in which Macbeth is a chef who murders his way into restaurant ownership, also has a lot of overlap.
Anything else you'd like to say about this character? In a surprising parallel to Light Yagami, who is otherwise a very different character, James Sunderland is a person who fucked up unbelievably, couldn't handle it, and ended up rewriting his own reality to create a world in which he hadn't actually fucked up. As they're both on this list of my favourites, that's apparently what I'm into in a character! Denial remains a theme I'm interested in to this day, and it crops up in a lot of my fanfiction.

Jeff Winger, Community

Who is this character and why do you love them? Jeff is charming, cocky, sarcastic, self-obsessed, soft-hearted, low in self-control and an absolute psychological disaster, and it's an extremely fun combination. He wants to be a cool, selfish, uncaring loner, and I love watching that desire clash against his conscience, his fear of abandonment and his intense love for everyone in his study group.
Do you ship this character with anyone? 'It's called chemistry; I have it with everyone,' Jeff said once, and he's right. I ship Jeff with pretty much everyone in the study group, himself included. But I have a particular weakness for Jeff/Annie; the two of them have absolutely ludicrous chemistry. The pairing hadn't occurred to me until 'Debate 109' raised the possibility of them kissing, and suddenly I had never wanted anything more.
What's your favourite fic you've written about this character? Maybe Despair 101, an incredibly ill-advised Community/Danganronpa crossover. I really enjoyed writing Jeff's reaction when Annie tried to stab him. Sorry, Jeff.
Are there any similar characters you love? I said once that Jeff Winger is the character Jack Shephard of Lost would be if Jack had been written for a sitcom, and I stand by that. They're both a mess of father issues and bad decisions. They both have intense feelings for the people they've somehow ended up a leader to, and they don't entirely know how to deal with those feelings. I'm... not going to write Jack Shephard/Annie Edison, but I'm forced to admit that it crossed my mind while I was thinking about this.
Anything else you'd like to say about this character? I mentioned previously that only one character on this list of my ten favourites had never intentionally killed anyone. If you were wondering, it's Jeff. He's not the most moral character on the list, but he's definitely the character with the lowest bodycount.

A few times over the years, I've tried to pin down my ten favourite fictional characters and have quickly given it up as an impossible exercise. I love so many characters! How can I possibly narrow it down?

At long last, though, I've actually managed to put a list together! The key was imposing a rule on myself: characters only qualify if I've loved them for at least ten years, so I can be sure that this is a long-lasting affection and I haven't just been blinded by something new and shiny. Sorry, Jack Shephard; you might have been a contender if I'd watched Lost when it first came out.

Fun fact: only one character on the final list has never intentionally killed anyone, and half the characters on the list are outright murderers, which I'm going to define as 'have intentionally killed someone who posed no immediate danger to them'. (Possibly more than half. There's one weird borderline case.)

I'm going to post a little writeup for each of the characters on my 'favourite characters' list, probably in three parts: one post with four characters, two posts with three. Here's the first set!

I'm not posting these in order of preference (I could not possibly pin down an order of preference); the four characters in this post are just the four whose writeups I finished first, and I've listed them in alphabetical order within the post itself.

Elena Fisher, Uncharted

Who is this character and why do you love them? It's strange to think back on it now that Nate and Sully have won me over, but, back when I played the first Uncharted game, I wasn't really a fan of any of the characters. I liked Elena a reasonable amount; I disliked Sully; I was uninterested in Nate. But then Elena kicked her kidnapper out of a helicopter, and I went from 'I like you okay' to 'I think you're wonderful'. And, having won my heart, she made me like everyone else through her interactions with them. She's bold, she's adventurous, she's playful, she refuses to take any shit, and she elevates any other character she's around. She reminds me a little of my sister-in-law, actually.
Do you ship this character with anyone? Elena/Nate is one of my absolute favourite pairings of all time. When I try to think of pairings I ship, my mind will usually go to them first. They play so well off each other, they have fun with each other, and I love how much Nate admires her. I really like that the games allow Nate to show vulnerability around Elena, too.
What's your favourite fic you've written about this character? Familiar and Strange. I enjoyed Uncharted 4, but I was hoping it'd focus more on the established characters rather than newcomer Sam. This fic envisions how Uncharted 4 might have played out if Elena had been more involved from the start.
Are there any similar characters you love? Teresa Lisbon of The Mentalist is very like Elena, I think. I was actually half-debating whether to put Lisbon or Elena on this list, but another character from The Mentalist was on the list already, and I thought it made sense to keep it to one character per canon. (Yes, I'm talking about Patrick Jane. I don't know why I'm trying to play coy. Of course I'm talking about Patrick Jane.)
Anything else you'd like to say about this character? Elena poking fun at you while you play Crash Bandicoot is my favourite moment in the entire Uncharted series, and I think Naughty Dog should come out with a full-length Elena Fisher Mocks Your Videogame Skills Simulator. I can tell you right now that it would be the best game ever made.

Joshua Kiryu, The World Ends with You

Who is this character and why do you love them? Joshua Kiryu is an obnoxious little shit who causes problems on purpose. When I first met him, I hated him; I just wanted Shiki back! But Joshua was just so unapologetically and gleefully awful that somehow he ended up winning me over. He's so much fun!
Do you ship this character with anyone? I'm a big fan of Neku/Joshua in which Joshua spends the entire time driving Neku up the wall. Neku's feelings for Joshua are so complicated and interesting.
What's your favourite fic you've written about this character? Select Player Two, in which Joshua drags Neku into another round of the Reapers' Game. It is a blast to write Joshua being as annoying as possible at all times.
Are there any similar characters you love? Like Joshua, Beatrice of Umineko: When They Cry gleefully launches herself into ensuring everyone has a terrible time. There's also Nagito Komaeda of Danganronpa 2; Komaeda isn't quite as intentionally awful as Joshua, but he definitely inspires similar 'holy shit, why are you like this and why do I have to put up with you?' feelings in the people around him.
Anything else you'd like to say about this character? My current laptop is named Joshua, after Joshua Kiryu, because it's tiny and silver and pissed me off the moment I met it. It made me jump through so many hoops if I wanted to save files onto the hard drive by default instead of onto the cloud!

Squall Leonhart, Final Fantasy VIII

Who is this character and why do you love them? Squall Leonhart was the first character I ever really connected with. As a deeply socially awkward thirteen-year-old, I was shocked to discover this character whose inner thoughts were just like mine; he didn't want to hurt other people, but he didn't know how to talk to them. I felt that this game understood me, and I wasn't used to feeling understood.
Do you ship this character with anyone? Squall/Zell was the first pairing I ever wrote fanfiction for, at the age of thirteen, and I'm fond of it to this day. There are echoes of Squall/Zell in Ryuji/Joker, Yu/Yosuke and Prompto/Noctis, all of which I ship enormously. Apparently I have a weakness for pairing the quiet protagonist up with his energetic, loyal, compassionate friend who very openly admires him.
What's your favourite fic you've written about this character? With These Signs Upon Our Souls, a Final Fantasy VIII/Final Fantasy XIII crossover, in which the characters of Final Fantasy VIII become l'Cie. It's the longest continuous story I've ever written, and I'm proud of myself for finishing it. (It's 26,000 words, which I know isn't actually that long in the grand scheme of things, but it's long for me!)
Are there any similar characters you love? Other characters who are socially inept in a way I find relatable include Noctis Lucis Caelum of Final Fantasy XV and Mark Corrigan of Peep Show. I also love Lightning of Final Fantasy XIII; I find her brand of social ineptitude less personally relatable, but I do think she's generally very similar to Squall.
Anything else you'd like to say about this character? If you were planning to erase my memories of every fictional character I'd ever loved and you were only letting me keep one, that would be a weird thing to do, but I'd keep Squall. I don't think I'd consider him my favourite character of all time, but he's definitely the character who's most important to me.

Light Yagami, Death Note

Who is this character and why do you love them? Light is a terrible kid who discovered an untraceable murder method and decided to kill off all the criminals to make the world worship him, and somehow I find everything about him enchanting. I love watching him come up with convoluted plots that screw over everyone around him, himself occasionally included. I love watching him firmly convince himself that he's totally, totally justified in the terrible things he does. I love that his ego will never let him resist a challenge or an opportunity to rub his victory in someone's face. I love the tiny hints of warmth that we occasionally catch glimpses of - his love for his family, his fondness for Ryuk - and I love that, even if that softer side exists, it's not enough to stop him from going too far; he's absolutely prepared to bury it if he has to.
Do you ship this character with anyone? I ship Light Yagami with himself, hard, in every possible variant. Light interacting with another version of himself in dreams or visions? Perfect. Light encountering an actual duplicate of himself, and the two of him attempting to seduce and murder each other, because they can't both be gods of the new world but they can't just write 'Light Yagami' in the Death Note? Magnificent. Light just masturbating while thinking about how great he is? Beautiful. I apologise for posting yet another entry about Light Yagami masturbating.
What's your favourite fic you've written about this character? Shackles, in which Light and L are toxic soulmates. 'They're both in love with each other, but they will not hesitate to destroy each other' turned out to be a fun dynamic to work with! I'm pleasantly surprised by how enthusiastically this fic was received, too; the Death Note fandom is remarkably active, considering that the canon ended over a decade ago.
Are there any similar characters you love? It's actually hard to think of anyone like Light. Light's not the sort of character you usually see committing atrocities. He's not an outcast, he hasn't had a hard life; he's a golden boy. He's smart, he's polite, he's popular; he's used to being praised and admired. He works hard, but he knows he'd still beat everyone without really trying. And, because he's gone through life without ever truly being challenged, he assumes he can murder thousands of people and get away with it. (EDIT: Wait, Akechi! Goro Akechi from Persona 5, particularly the expanded Royal edition, is very Light in both appearance and personality.)
Anything else you'd like to say about this character? It can be tricky to talk about liking Light Yagami, because some parts of the fandom can interpret 'Light is my favourite character' as 'I think Light was right'. No! Light was wrong! Everything he does is terrible! That's why I love him so much! I keep getting his musical song 'Where Is the Justice?' stuck in my head, because it's a banger, but it doesn't feel great when I catch myself singing 'where is the justice when the guilty all go free? why don't we lock them up and throw away the key?'

For each of my major fandoms, I do a short writeup talking about how it fits into my fandom history. A fandom qualifies as 'major' if I've written five fics for it, or ten thousand words across at least three fics.

With the toxic soulmates fic I posted yesterday, Death Note now qualifies on both fronts!

Death Note

My first experience of Death Note was reading a very bad fan translation of the manga online, around the age of nineteen. I don't remember exactly how far I got, but I definitely at least reached the Naomi conversation; the version I was reading mistranslated the iconic 'I am Kira' line as 'it's because of Kira', ruining the ending of that scene! I was so surprised when I experienced the official translation of that line.

Fortunately, although I didn't get that far with the fan translation, the translation issues didn't put me off Death Note entirely. When I was twenty, I watched the anime and hugely enjoyed it.

Although I loved Death Note from the start, I didn't actually write any fanfiction for it for over a decade, which is a little unusual for me. I first watched it in 2009; I revisited it in 2020, during lockdown, and that's when I started writing.

Because Light is by far my favourite character (a position he frankly does not deserve), my Death Note fanfiction disproportionately focuses on him. Of my five Death Note fics, Light is the viewpoint character in all of them and the only significant character in three.

I've mentioned this before, but it seems an appropriate detail to include when I'm talking about how Death Note fits into my fandom history: Death Note is a fandom that periodically sneaks up to surprise me. I can go for years without actively thinking about it, and then something will abruptly reawaken my love for the series in general and Light Yagami in particular.

The main spark for my latest Death Note period was seeing Death Note: The Musical on stage. There's no way this won't be terrible, I thought when I learnt that a Death Note musical existed, but it turns out that the musical is great. I've been singing the songs around the house for weeks.

Favourite character: It's always been Light Yagami, by a long way. Writing Shackles, I had cause to ask myself 'if Light were in love with L, would he still try to kill him?' The answer was immediately clear, and it was 'yes, absolutely, with zero hesitation'. There aren't many characters you could say that for. I love it. What a fascinating, terrible young man.
Favourite pairing: Light and L have a really interesting dynamic, and I like their potential for fanfiction, but my Death Note OTP is Light/himself, no question. Try as they might, nobody else could ever meet Light's standards. He's just so egotistic. I'm enchanted.
Number of words written: 10,856

For each of my major fandoms, I do a short writeup talking about how it fits into my fandom history. A fandom qualifies as 'major' if I've written five fics for it, or ten thousand words across at least three fics.

I'll be honest: technically, The Quarry doesn't qualify. My three fics for it add up to 9,830 words. But that's so close to ten thousand that I caught myself thinking 'hey, I could write a "my fandom history" post for this if I added another couple of hundred words to this fic' when I was wrapping up Tooth and Claw.

I don't want to start artificially inflating the length of my fics; it's silly to potentially reduce the quality of my fanfiction just so I get to ramble about the fandom on Dreamwidth! So I'm going to allow myself a little flexibility on rambling.

(EDIT: As of Burning, I'm at 13,820 words for The Quarry and this writeup becomes legitimate!)

The Quarry

I have an intense love-hate relationship with Supermassive's horror games. They do such interesting things with choices and consequences! They're so good if you enjoy stories about a bunch of people going through traumatic experiences together! They absolutely scare the crap out of me.

I experienced The Quarry at the age of thirty-four. When it was announced as a spiritual successor to Until Dawn, I was deeply intrigued. I ended up watching a Let's Play of The Quarry rather than playing it myself, having learnt from experience that I find playing Supermassive games unbearably stressful, but I enjoyed it a lot; it was visually stunning and definitely delivered on its promise of traumatising a load of characters.

Two of those characters, Travis and Laura, had a deeply intriguing and weird dynamic. Partway through the game, I checked AO3 to see what fanfiction people were writing about The Quarry, and I was surprised and curious to find that Travis/Laura was the second-most-popular pairing. At that point, I'd only seen them interacting in the prologue, and the ship hadn't occurred to me at all then. I suppose perhaps that primed me to pay attention to their interactions later.

I've mainly been hanging around in the Travis/Laura section of the fandom, which has been extremely friendly and welcoming. Given that the characters have an age gap of thirty-plus years and Travis abducts and imprisons Laura, the pairing is, er, divisive, as you could probably guess. It's one of those ships where the shippers wall themselves off from the rest of fandom and have a party while everyone else throws them sidelong glances. Being on the partying side is a lot more fun than being on the judging side.

I was surprised that I fell so hard into The Quarry fandom! The Let's Play left me going 'well, that was fun, but I doubt I'm going to get fannishly into it,' and then something in me snapped and I started writing fic after fic. I can pinpoint the moment I dropped into The Quarry fandom hell, and it's the moment I watched the potential outcome in which Travis locks Laura up again; I'm so curious about what happens next!

Favourite character: Travis the Creepy Cop was a huge surprise for me. I watched the demo of the prologue long before watching a full Let's Play of The Quarry, so for a long time my strongest feeling about this game was 'the cop is REALLY CREEPY and I want to be extremely far away from him at all times'. But, goddammit, I ended up really enjoying him.
Favourite pairing: I reblogged a Travis/Laura comic by

deadlilmoon and tagged it with 'i don't know if i'd say i ship these two' and then wrote three Travis/Laura fics, so, uh, I probably ship these two. I don't know who I was trying to fool; when he creepily woke her up by stroking her face in canon, I rewound to rewatch it three times.
Number of words written: 9,830

For each of my major fandoms, I do a short writeup talking about how it fits into my fandom history. A fandom qualifies as 'major' if I've written five fics for it, or ten thousand words across at least three fics.

You'll never guess the latest fandom to qualify. (It's Lost. I'm talking about Lost.)

If you've been following my journal over the past couple of months, you may have a good idea of my history with Lost already, but I might as well record it here for posterity.

Lost

Lost was a huge cultural phenomenon when I was a teenager, but I never watched it while it was airing. I didn't really watch drama back when it started, and, as a nervous flier, I wasn't sure I'd want to watch a show about a plane crash.

As I got older, though, I realised I had a taste for stories about strangers finding themselves isolated together and being forced to bond under high pressure. I occasionally glanced over at Lost and wondered if I'd have enjoyed it.

I finally actually watched Lost when I was thirty-four (the same age as Jack Shephard at the start, as it happens!). I'd just devoured Person of Interest and had a great time. A couple of people had mentioned Lost in response to my Dreamwidth entries about Person of Interest, as another JJ Abrams show starring Michael Emerson. Maybe it was time to give it a try at last?

It was absolutely time to give Lost a try. I reserved judgement for the first few episodes (it's not a bad opening at all; I just missed Person of Interest!), but before long I fell for it hard. I ended up tearing through all six seasons in about seven weeks.

Lost can be a bit meandering, but overall it's a bizarre and brilliant experience. It blew my mind on a regular basis. I've never seen anything quite like it, and I've felt slightly adrift in the fortnight or so since finishing. (I've felt slightly lost, you could say oh God I'm so sorry please don't feed me to the smoke monster.) I've been thinking about it a lot, if you hadn't guessed from the absolutely stupid amount I've been talking about it.

Favourite character: You know who it is. I know who it is. Some of you knew who it was before I knew who it was, because I am extremely predictable. My favourite Lost character is Jack Shephard, the absolute goddamn disaster. I wrote an entire thousand-word entry solely dedicated to lovingly describing what a mess he is.
Favourite pairing: EVERYONE/EVERYONE. I enthusiastically ship all the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 in a big poly mess. If you asked me to pick a single pairing, though, it might be Jack/Kate, which I find much more compelling than I initially thought I would. They're so dysfunctional and they have such intense feelings about each other! I can't believe I went from 'obviously I'm not going to ship Jack/Kate, the show is trying too hard to make me do it' to getting emotional because I'm listening to a song that reminds me of them.
Number of words written: 11,837

Snippet: I do have a small snippet of unfinished Lost fanfiction to share! Heads up: it's Shannon/Boone (who, if you're unfamiliar with Lost, are stepsiblings).

( Lost unfinished snippet, Shannon/Boone, 2023. )

Hey, it's time for an entry that isn't about Person of Interest! (Even if Person of Interest is indirectly responsible for it.)

For each of my major fandoms, I do a little writeup talking about how it fits into my fandom history. A fandom qualifies as 'major' if I've written five fics for it, or ten thousand words across at least three fics.

The latest fandom to qualify was a bit of a surprise for me! I've never thought of Spider-Man as an active fandom of mine, even if I've enjoyed a fair amount of Spider-Man media. But I've now written three fics for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and my Person of Interest/Spider-Man crossover narrowly pushes my Spider-Man wordcount across the ten thousand word mark!

(Technically, I haven't quite written ten thousand words of Spider-Man fanfiction, because one of those fics was cowritten with

th_esaurus. But I've published ten thousand words of Spider-Man fanfiction, and I'm going to say that still counts.)

Spider-Man

All the Spider-Man fics I've written are for Into the Spider-Verse, but I think it makes sense to consider Spider-Man in general a fandom for the purposes of this writeup.

I must have been aware of Spider-Man as a superhero before the film came out, but my first real introduction to the character was the first Tobey Maguire film, released in 2002. It's been a while since then, so I can't remember whether I saw it in the cinema, but I think I did? It's not something I'd have decided to see on my own, but my dad grew up with superhero comics, so he might have taken me to see it. I was probably around fourteen.

The first film was good fun! But Spider-Man 2 was where it was really at. The train rescue! The tension between Peter and Harry! I never wrote fanfiction for the Tobey Maguire films, but I did read a smattering.

I never saw any of the Garfield films, but I've seen Holland's Spider-Man: Homecoming. I've vaguely wondered about investigating the films I haven't seen, but, as much as I like Spider-Man, there are too many Spider-Man films, and Holland's era is particularly intimidating because it's interlinked with a bunch of other films in the MCU.

My favourite pieces of Spider-Man media, by a long way, are Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and the 2018 Spider-Man for the PS4. They're not just my favourite Spider-Man film and game; they're among my favourite films and games of all time.

Spider-Man has always been my favourite superhero, and retains a place in my affections even though I'm a little tired of superheroes in general. I like that he's fairly small-scale as superheroes go, more about helping individuals than about saving the world; I think his powers are neat; I love that almost every version of Peter Parker is a psychological catastrophe. He's just fun!

Favourite character: Peter Parker, living disaster. Of the incarnations I'm familiar with, my favourites are Peter B Parker from Into the Spider-Verse and Peter Parker from Insomniac's Spider-Man games. (But he has to have his original PS4 face! I don't approve of the PS5 redesign.)
Favourite pairing: After all these years, I think it's still Maguire's Peter Parker and Franco's Harry Osborn in Spider-Man 2. The way they were simultaneously friends and enemies! That intense scene where Harry discovers Spider-Man's identity! Maybe I should rewatch that film.
Number of words published: 10,084

Two more 'my fandom history' writeups!

One of these is a fandom I forgot about when I introduced the 'fandoms automatically qualify for a writeup if I've written at least five fics' rule. One is a fandom that newly qualifies. I bet you'll never guess what it is. Surely not the fandom I've been rambling about for the past week.

The 100

I first became aware of The 100 when I caught a trailer for it on television, shortly before it came to the UK. What I got from the trailer was 'a bunch of teenagers raised in space are dumped alone on Earth and try to survive', which combines teenage suffering and a fish-out-of-water narrative and is therefore a near-perfect concept for me (but not quite perfect, because I'm terrified of space). I didn't actually watch it at the time - I don't think I had access to the right channel - but it stayed in the back of my mind.

Four years later, at the age of thirty, I got a month-long Amazon Prime trial and desperately tore through the four available seasons of The 100 before the trial expired.

My memories of The 100 are a little hazy because I watched it at such a hectic pace; if you watch nearly sixty episodes of something in the space of thirty days, it all blurs together slightly! But I was there for characters suffering and making bad decisions, and it delivered magnificently on that.

Favourite character: I was extremely confused to realise that Marcus Kane had at some point become my favourite character, given that I'd spent the entire first season calling him Councillor Dickface.
Favourite pairing: I got intensely, wildly invested in Kane/Abby. They had so much shared guilt and so much chemistry!
Number of words written: 6,722, across five fics.

Snippet: I thought at first I might not have any unfinished The 100 fanfiction lying around, but I do have something!

( The 100 unfinished snippet. Clarke and Murphy, 2018. )

The Book of Mormon

I should clarify that this is the stage musical, rather than the religious text.

th_esaurus invited me to a showing when I was thirty-one. I thought it would just be a fun evening; I wasn't prepared to get invested!

The Book of Mormon is the only theatre production I've ever counted amongst my major fandoms, and I'm not sure how to handle being fannishly into it. I'm so used to being able to replay or rewatch the things I love freely! You're telling me I have to buy theatre tickets every time I want to watch Kevin Price's catastrophic psychological collapse? This is not financially sustainable, given that that's exactly what I want to watch at all times.

Here are some things I've Googled recently:

- book of mormon text
- how do mormons pray
- "the prophet smith"
- how did joseph smith travel west
- how far did the first mormons travel
- mormon missionary rules

It can be hard to tell the difference between fic research and planning to convert.

Favourite character: Surprise: it's Kevin Price, the character I've been absolutely unable to shut up about for a solid week. Something about the combination of 'he's convinced the sun shines out of his own arse' and 'he would be horrified if he ever hurt anyone' just captivates me. I've seen a lot of arrogant arseholes in fiction, and they can be fun! But it's an interesting change of pace to have a character who's both arrogant and kind. Plus he suffers extremely well, and Dom Simpson's portrayal of him is absolutely stellar; I don't know if I'll ever be able to watch another actor in the role. (My favourite thing I've seen anyone say about Elder Price, from

broadwayrecyclingbin: If I was that perfect I would also be that narcissistic.)
Favourite pairing: I'm actually not a big shipper for The Book of Mormon, but Price/McKinley has some potential that's interesting to explore, and I do enjoy McKinley's catastrophic crush on Price. Unrequited Kevin Price/God is where it's really at, though.
Number of words written: 11,026

For a while now, I've been making entries talking about how each of my major fandoms fits into my fandom history. I considered a fandom 'major' if I'd written at least ten thousand words for it across at least three fics.

I'm starting to wonder if those criteria are too strict, though. Persona 5 falls short on wordcount; I've written just over nine thousand words for it. But I've written five Persona 5 fics. That's enough for me to feel it has a real presence in my fandom life.

So I'm going to say that, if I've written at least five fics for something, it counts as one of my major fandoms, regardless of wordcount. This also reinstates a couple of my older fandoms I've always felt should have made the list.

This means it's time for some 'my fandom history' writeups!

Jak and Daxter

I'm glad I found an excuse to add this to the 'major fandom' list; it always felt wrong that it didn't qualify!

I must have first played Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy when I was thirteen; it was positively reviewed in Official PlayStation 2 Magazine, which my brother and I used to buy every month. I didn't actually start writing for it until I was fifteen, though, when Jak II came out.

Jak and Daxter was a colourful, cartoony platformer. Jak II was a dark action shooter set in a dystopian future. Jak had been tortured and traumatised and now he was bent on revenge! It was an incredibly jarring tonal shift, but it matched my teenage tastes perfectly.

The Jak fandom is particularly significant for me because it's the first fandom where I felt I really had a presence as a writer. Previously, I'd write a fic or two for a canon and then move on. But I stuck around for a while in the Jak fandom, and it's where I met

eva_kasumi, who I think was probably the first fandom friend I ever made.

The earliest surviving fic I wrote involving sex was for Jak II, although it wasn't explicit (none of my sex scenes are explicit; it's not an area of writing I've ever been confident in). It was noncon selfcest. I feel I sort of jumped in at the deep end there. (It's possible I included sex in a now-lost earlier Red Dwarf fic, but I strongly suspect that that was also noncon selfcest.)

Favourite character: I'm surprised to realise I've never really thought about my favourite character in the Jak series. Maybe Torn? He's very grumpy, which I enjoy.
Favourite pairing: Jak/Torn. It's a ship with a lot of anger in it, and what more do you need, particularly when you're fifteen years old?
Number of words written: 9,659, across nine fics.

Snippet: I actually have managed to hang on to a snippet of unfinished Jak and Daxter fanfiction, which is impressive, because I must have written this in... what, 2005? Somewhere between 2004 and 2006, at any rate. I've kept my writing obsessively backed up for a long time!

This was saved in a document called 'stupidest jakfic opening ever.doc'.

( Jak and Daxter unfinished snippet. Some sort of Daxter pairing, circa 2005. )

ShakespeaRe-Told Macbeth

At the age of seventeen, I had a brief but intense love affair with the BBC's ShakespeaRe-Told modern-day adaptation of Macbeth, set in a restaurant and starring James McAvoy. I was absolutely obsessed.

This adaptation didn't have a fandom, but I was determined to be a fandom all by myself. I signed up to write a hundred fics and managed forty-one. In light of this, it's sort of surprising that this didn't hit the 'ten thousand words' threshold! But everything I wrote for Macbeth was extremely short, falling between 100 and 400 words.

In 2020, fourteen years later, I was struck by nostalgia and checked whether AO3 had a section for ShakespeaRe-Told. It did! I left a comment on a Macbeth/Banquo fic by

speakertone, mentioning my solitary fannish history with the adaptation and how pleased I was to find that someone else had written for it, and I was delighted by their response:

I just have to say something because this is so amazing to me that it's almost hilarious - I'm pretty sure I've read all forty-one of the ficlets you posted back-to-back-to-back and I loved them! They were the reason I figured it wouldn't be so out of nowhere for me to post this fic online, so I'm really really ridiculously happy that you found this and you enjoyed my writing. Thank you so much!!

I'm ecstatic that my terrible teenage fanfiction could encourage someone to post their own fic for this nonexistent fandom, all those years later.

Favourite character: I mean, obviously it's Macbeth himself, just as it is in the original play. The entire adaptation is ninety minutes of Macbeth making terrible decisions and hating himself and having a guilty paranoid trembling breakdown. I was inevitably going to love him.
Favourite pairing: Equally predictably, it's Joe Macbeth/Billy Banquo. It wasn't the first pairing I'd shipped where one half murdered the other, and it absolutely would not be the last. I was obsessed with the scene where Macbeth strokes Banquo's face and kisses his hand just before arranging his death.
Number of words written: 8,505, across forty-one (very short) fics.

Snippet: I've got a few tiny scraps of incomplete fic scattered around from my

fanfic100 attempt. Interesting to look at them again; it's been such a long time! Here's a snippet.

( ShakespeaRe-Told Macbeth unfinished snippet, circa 2005. )

Persona 5

Persona 5 was my first encounter with the Persona series, at the age of thirty-two. Scrolling through a sale of Japanese games on the PlayStation Store, I spotted it for £10 and thought I might as well try it out.

What I'd heard about the Persona games sounded daunting; they seemed very long and complicated, and I wasn't sure what they were really about. But it was the autumn of 2020 and the country was in and out of lockdown; there wasn't much else to do. If I was going to get into a hundred-hour JRPG, now was the time.

What a great decision. The Persona series has been incredibly valuable to me throughout the pandemic, constantly keeping me engaged in a restricted time. It has its flaws, but I love its characters; I love the emphasis it places on friendship; I love its strange blend of normal school life and fighting symbolic monsters in parallel universes. I've hugely enjoyed both playing and writing for these games.

(Here's an alarming statistic: I've spent over 500 hours playing Persona games since I discovered the series in September 2020. This means I have spent nearly 3% of the last two years playing Persona.

Honestly, I'm struggling to regret this. A substantial proportion of it was during lockdown, and I've had such a great time with this series. A worthy use of approximately one in every 33 hours.)

Favourite character: In the original Persona 5, it's probably Ryuji. He can be inconsistently written in a way I find frustrating, but I love how passionate he is and how openly he admires people; he just thinks all his friends are really cool! In Royal... God help me, but it might be Akechi, who was the party member I liked least in the original game. It turns out that, when you scratch his smug surface, you discover an angry disaster, and I've never been able to resist one of those.
Favourite pairing: Protagonist/Ryuji. Let me kiss him, you cowards! He's clearly in love with me; why can't I reciprocate?
Number of words written: 9,497, across five fics. Unusually, I've never written from the same Persona 5 character's perspective twice; I've got one fic from the protagonist's perspective, one from Ryuji's, one from Makoto's, one from Akechi's, and one that pings between various non-party confidants.

I don't think I have any unfinished Persona 5 snippets to include here! I've somehow managed to finish every Persona 5 fic I've ever started.

If I've written at least ten thousand words of fanfiction for a particular canon, across at least three fics, I'll write an entry talking about how that canon fits into my fandom history. With the completion of Vessels (I'm both thrilled and terrified by the amount of engagement this fic got; Deltarune fandom is huge!), Undertale... sort of qualifies?

Undertale...?

I first became aware of Undertale when

zarla made a post about it, two weeks after its release. I'd heard of Toby Fox previously, but to me he was just one of the lead composers for Homestuck. I had no idea what to expect from him as a game developer, beyond 'extremely good music'.

Still,

zarla's description sounded interesting! I checked out the demo, which intrigued me enough to buy the full game.

I played Undertale at the age of twenty-seven and had an extremely good time! It's a fun, charming game with a fascinating battle system and an undercurrent of interesting darkness.

Why am I so uncertain about whether Undertale actually counts as one of my main fandoms? Well, I've sort of written four Undertale fics. I have also sort of never written an actual Undertale fic. Two of my fics are for

zarla's incredible Handplates AU fancomic. Two of them are for Deltarune, another game by Undertale's creator, which features Undertale characters but is not a prequel or a sequel; its relationship to the original game is extremely unclear.

Does any of that count as Undertale fanfiction? Who knows? But I'm giving it a 'my fandom history' writeup anyway.

I suppose I should talk about my experience with Deltarune here as well! I played the first chapter of Deltarune at the age of thirty and fell in love with it as soon as I'd stopped being terrified by it; the opening is extremely unsettling! I love the interaction the introduction of party members adds, and I'm considerably more interested in Deltarune's protagonist than I was in Undertale's; Kris, despite being just as quiet, feels much less like a blank slate.

I'm a lot more active about looking for Deltarune fan content than I ever was with Undertale. Playing Undertale was a fairly self-contained experience for me; Deltarune is the game that dragged me into the actual fandom. I'm looking forward to the next instalment, although I don't imagine we'll be seeing it for a while!

Favourite character: Probably Susie of Deltarune. She's refreshingly straightforward in a game full of mysteries, and everything she says is hilarious. I hope one day you get unbanned from free ham sandwich day, Susie. (Bonus 'that doesn't really count' answer: Gaster from

zarla's Handplates AU, who is an incredible self-destructive mess who makes the worst possible decision at every turn while furiously telling himself he doesn't feel bad about it. He's awful. I love him.)
Favourite pairing: I don't ship anything very hard in the Undertale universe, but possibly Kris/Noelle, which has interestingly horrifying potential. It's certainly the only Undertale/Deltarune ship I've actually gone looking for fanart of. (Look at this gorgeous Utena-inspired piece by

krismastree!) (Bonus 'that doesn't really count' answer: Gaster/Alphys from Handplates is extremely cute and sad.)
Number of words written: 10,341

Snippet: I didn't think I had any unfinished Undertale fanfiction to share here, but I've just remembered this little snippet, which I actually wrote before any of the Undertale fics I've finished. It's... it's for Handplates, so I still haven't actually written anything for Undertale canon. Whoops.

( Undertale (Handplates AU) unfinished snippet. Gaster and Sans, 2017. )

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/569557.html

If I've written at least ten thousand words of fanfiction for a particular canon, across at least three fics, I'll write an entry talking about how that canon fits into my fandom history. Clean Slate narrowly pushed Persona 4 across the threshold, so here we go!

(I mean, all right, Clean Slate is technically a Persona Q fic, but I'm counting it for Persona 4. It's about Persona 4 characters. It qualifies.)

Persona 4

I picked up Persona 5 out of idle curiosity in September 2020, when I saw it for £10 in a sale of Japanese games. All I really knew about the Persona series was that the games sounded intimidatingly long and complicated, but, hey, there was a pandemic raging and I had time to spare.

I absolutely loved it. I was left curious about the rest of the series, but Persona 4 seemed difficult to obtain in the UK. I'd only be able to get it on PC, and my laptop probably wouldn't be able to run it.

Then my laptop stopped working properly, and I had to get a new one. At least there was one upside!

I played Persona 4 Golden at the age of thirty-two, in the midst of lockdown. It saw me admirably through eighty hours of a period when there was very little to do. I was afraid it'd inevitably be a disappointment after Persona 5, but if anything I loved it more.

A large part of that love is due to Yosuke, who somehow hurtled straight into my heart, flaws and all. All my fanfiction is devoted to either embarrassing him or forcing him into a full-on psychological breakdown, because that's what I do when you're my favourite character.

Favourite character: Yosuke Hanamura! A well-meaning but flawed mess of a character whose foot lives perpetually in his mouth. A strange mixture of thoughtless and considerate. Wildly in love with the protagonist, but has far too many issues to consciously realise that. I love him an unreasonable amount and I am compelled to destroy him.
Favourite pairing: Yosuke/protagonist. I don't usually get invested in pairings involving silent protagonists, but Persona is an exception! Yosuke's just so in love, and I want him to get what he wants (and then flip out because he doesn't understand his own desires and he's terrified of what he wants).
Number of words written: 10,144

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/563666.html

If I've written at least ten thousand words of fanfiction for a particular canon, across at least three fics, I'll write an entry talking about how that canon fits into my fandom history. Your Turn to Die qualified with the Silent Hill crossover I posted a couple of days ago, so here's the 'my fandom history' writeup!

Your Turn to Die

Riona: FUTURESOON WHY WOULD YOU GET ME INTO ANOTHER DEATH GAME
futuresoon: ahahaha YOU WERE EXACTLY WHO I WAS HOPING TO GET INTO IT

Just after my thirty-first birthday, I saw

futuresoon posting about a game called Your Turn to Die. I collect weird videogames about murder, and this sounded promising from the title alone, so I was compelled to investigate.

Your Turn to Die turned out to be a) great and b) free, so I felt good about this decision. I'd recommend it to anyone who's into Danganronpa or Zero Escape. (There are some minigames that require a bit of dexterity, but the 'Minigame Auto-Click' option makes them easier.)

My experience with the Your Turn to Die fandom has been an odd one. The Keiji/Sara part of the fandom has been incredibly warm and supportive, and I've received a lot of very long, kind, thoughtful comments from them on my fanfiction! But there's also a very vocal part of the fandom that loathes both Keiji/Sara and Keiji/Sara shippers. It's a fandom at war, and it can be a bit exhausting sometimes.

Favourite character: Keiji Shinogi is guilt-ridden, self-loathing and fascinating. I love that his motives are never entirely clear. I love that he deflects by flirting. I love that he conceals things from Sara, that he'll unhesitatingly lie to her face, and yet he never actually acts to harm her. He genuinely does seem to be on her side, but she can't trust a word he says.
Favourite pairing: Even if I hadn't already written a load of Keiji/Sara-tinged fanfiction, you'd probably be able to deduce it from my 'favourite character' answer. The constant tension between trust and distrust really drew me to the Keiji/Sara pairing. Keiji's shifty as hell and will manipulate Sara for his own ends, but he also genuinely seems to like and respect her. Sara doesn't know whether Keiji can be trusted, but she knows that he's important to her. It's a really fascinating dynamic with some great potential for darkness, and it's hard to think of any other relationship like it.
Number of words written: 13,069

Snippet: This is where I generally include a snippet of unfinished fanfiction, but I have almost nothing for Your Turn to Die, alas! These few lines were all I could find. I think the concept was supposed to be 'Sara wakes up in a world where the death game never happened and tries to track Keiji down'.

Nobody’s answering the door.

The address isn’t right. Of course it’s not right; Keiji’s one of the biggest liars Sara has ever met, and it’s only Sou keeping him from taking the top spot. He probably lied to the force about where he lives. She’s never going to find him.

It’s weird to think of him as ‘one of the biggest liars she’s ever met’ when she’s never technically met him.

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/525233.html

I've just realised that Animorphs technically qualifies as one of my major fandoms, by my 'at least ten thousand words across at least three fics' measure. This slightly feels like cheating, because I've only written one fic (my Animorphs/Hunger Games fic) that's actually about the Animorphs, and my other three Animorphs fics are fusions that don't include the Animorphs characters. But I'm going to do a 'my fandom history' writeup for it anyway. It's been very influential for me, after all.

Animorphs

Animorphs was the first work of fiction I ever got really, passionately into, around the age of nine, and it would probably have been my first fandom if I'd had Internet access when I first started reading the books (I started using the Internet when I was around eleven).

I was aware of the Animorphs series before I started reading it, but I didn't have any real interest in it. Somehow, though, I got my hands on a book of book previews - like a demo disc, but with snippets of children's books instead of game demos - and it contained an extract from the first Animorphs book; I believe it was the scene in which Jake turns into a lizard and, unable to control his newfound animal instincts, eats a live spider. Apparently this caught my attention! I got the first book out of the library, I suspect, and that was it; I fell hard into the series and started checking out ten books at a time, which I think was the maximum number the library would allow.

Even though I didn't write fanfiction about the characters until this year, Animorphs has been a presence in my writing from the start; my writing style in my early Pokémon fanfiction, at the age of twelve, was heavily and noticeably influenced by Animorphs. And that early style is what my current style grew out of, so my writing would probably look completely different if I'd never read this series.

Animorphs is also to blame for much of my dark taste in fiction. My love of guilt-ridden characters making horrible choices in impossible situations? My increasingly worrying collection of media about teenagers undergoing traumatic experiences? It all comes back to these horrifying, brilliant books I read in primary school.

Ginger linked me to this condensed version of every Animorphs book yesterday, and I shrieked with laughter. I sobbed with laughter. It's the most perfectly accurate thing I've ever seen.

Favourite character: It's between Marco (sarcastic, cynical little shit) and Rachel (fashionable, feminine and incredibly bloodthirsty). Rachel was my favourite when I was a kid, but in rereading the books as an adult I've developed a new appreciation for Marco.
Favourite pairing: I've never really done much shipping in Animorphs, but I've always had a small soft spot for Marco/Jake. My favourite character dynamic is Marco and Rachel; I love the way they're constantly sniping at each other.
Number of words written: 23,083

I usually include an unposted snippet of fanfiction in 'my fandom history' writeups, but I don't have any Animorphs snippets to offer, alas!

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/497034.html

Yesterday's fic put me over ten thousand words, so it's time for a 'my fandom history' writeup for Life Is Strange! (I do these for all of my major fandoms, which I define as 'fandoms for which I have written at least ten thousand words across at least three fics'.)

Maybe I should count Life Is Strange and Life Is Strange 2 as separate fandoms, as they have different stories and concern different characters. Neither game qualifies for a writeup, in that case. But I've decided I'm going to count them together; AO3 does, after all.

Life Is Strange

I generally keep an eye out for projects Square Enix is involved with, so I was aware of Life Is Strange when it first came out in 2015. I remember checking reactions on the Tumblr tag just after the first episode came out, wondering whether it would be worth investigating further. And then timydamonkey commented to say 'hey, I think you'd really enjoy Life Is Strange' some months later, so it stayed in the back of my mind.

In mid-2016, just after I turned twenty-eight, the first episode was made free across all platforms and I went, 'Well, I suppose I've got no excuse not to check it out now.'

So I played the first episode, and then I immediately bought the rest of the game. Something about it felt so compelling and nostalgic.

I enjoyed the first Life Is Strange a lot; it was a bit bleak sometimes and the dialogue could be awkward (I still haven't forgiven Max for the number of times she said 'wowser'), but there was still a warmth to it. I loved the character interactions, and the visual and musical style. And it was good to see a game that focused on relationships between women.

That said, I fell in love with Life Is Strange 2, immediately and passionately. It's a game about an emotionally compromised teenager on the run, trying to look after his younger brother! I love stories about siblings; I love stories about emotionally compromised teenagers; I love stories about people who bond when they're isolated from the world and thrown into adversity together. This game was made for me specifically. I loved the twenty-minute gameplay preview so much I bought the season pass without even trying out the first episode. No regrets.

Favourite character: I love Sean Diaz, this fucked-up kid who's trying so hard to be responsible but has no idea what he's doing. Sarcastic and bitter and wary and loving and vulnerable.
Favourite pairing: Ooh, hmm. Max/Chloe is simultaneously cute and a little fucked up, which is always good, but I think Rachel and Chloe might actually have more chemistry. Their dynamic is an interesting one, Rachel compelling and manipulative and dangerous, Chloe a little blinded by awe.
Number of words written: 11,700

Snippet: I didn't think I had any unfinished Life Is Strange ficsnippets, but, poking through notebooks, I've come across what appears to be an unposted snippet from Split, my fic where Max is torn between three universes. (This snippet is from the 'Max is trapped in a room with the villain' timeline and is therefore a bit unpleasant.)

( Life Is Strange unposted snippet, Max and [spoilers], 2016. )

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/485281.html

Oh, hey, The Mentalist now qualifies as one of my major fandoms by my 'at least ten thousand words across at least three fics' rule! I suppose I should give it a 'my fandom history' writeup.

The Mentalist

I got into The Mentalist at the age of twenty-one, as a direct result of being into Derren Brown. All I really knew about it was 'a Derren Brown ripoff solves crimes with the actress who plays Veronica in Prison Break'. I posted an entry going 'hey, should I watch The Mentalist?' and all the comments went 'NO, WATCH PSYCH INSTEAD' and I went 'well, I've got the pilot of The Mentalist right here, I'll just watch a couple of minutes.'

I fell in love instantly. I was fascinated from the moment Jane wandered into a crime scene to make himself a sandwich. It's easily the fastest a television series has ever captured my attention. And, although I could definitely see the Derren Brown inspiration in Jane, I was surprised by how quickly I started to love him on his own merits. (And demerits.)

The Mentalist never entirely went in the direction I wanted it to - it had some fascinatingly dark ideas it never really followed through on, and I dropped it at the end of season six when I realised it was probably never going to explore consequences in the way I hoped for - but it did do some really interesting things, and I love the characters so dearly. Both Patrick Jane and Teresa Lisbon are amongst my all-time top ten fictional characters; Jane might actually be my all-time favourite character, bar none.

Favourite character: No secrets here; it's Patrick Jane, the smug, charming, cowardly, petty, childish, playful, loving, guilt-ridden, horrifying, fucked-up moral disaster of a human being. Poor Teresa Lisbon would have been my favourite character in any other show, because I love her; she just has the misfortune to share screen space with my possible favourite character of all time.
Favourite pairing: 'Patrick Jane/the entire Serious Crimes unit plus Hightower in some weird asexual denial-ridden unspoken arrangement' is not technically a pairing, but I don't care; it's my answer. I wish more people wrote fanfiction for it, although I realise it's a fairly specific desire. I'm very pleased that I've been writing so much on the theme lately.
Number of words written: 15,636.

Snippet: The CBI team have a picnic, to make up for the TERRIBLE EPISODE where Jane goes 'let's have a picnic!' and they NEVER GET TO HAVE THEIR PICNIC because there's a murder. I always sort of wanted to expand this and post it properly, but I suppose there's only so much you can do with the concept 'everyone has a nice picnic'.

( The Mentalist unfinished snippet. Team picnic, 2009. )

The other unfinished Mentalist fics on my computer: the Silent Hill crossover, which I've already posted as my Silent Hill unfinished snippet, and the Final Fantasy XIII crossover where Jane's family turn into monsters and he just keeps them locked up in his house. It's a concept I like, but there's no market for a Mentalist/Final Fantasy XIII crossover, alas. FFXIII has such interesting ideas, but crossovers with it are so inaccessible; there's so much jargon involved (l'Cie, fal'Cie, Cie'th, Focus...). Actually, might as well post what little I have of that here as well.

( The Mentalist unfinished snippet. The Mentalist/FFXIII, 2012. )

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/465042.html

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Riona

AO3

Trabia Garden

Entries tagged with my fandom history

You Did Not Need To Be Told That.

Bring You Right Back Home.

I Think We All Knew I Wasn't Going To Keep The Project On A Reasonable Scale.

You're Easy To Pretend To Care About.

Who'd Clean Up The Mess?

Ten Favourite Characters, Part Three.

Ten Favourite Characters, Part Two.

Ten Favourite Characters, Part One.

Get Into His Head And Under His Skin.

Yeah, I've Heard Of Bears.

It's Called 'Monster Eats The Pilot'.

Look Out, Here Comes The Spider-Man.

Trying Not To Ramble For Thousands Of Words In The Latter 'Favourite Character' Field.

This Cat Said My Name.

You Can Carry Like 48 Items!!!

Wreck This Boy.

Because You're Cute.

At One Point Rachel Beats An Enemy With Her Own Severed Arm.

Give Me Your Love, Give Me Your Gun.

But There's Tacos There.

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