When I was about ten years old, I started writing Percy Jackson self-insert fanfiction. To be specific, it was me x Leo Valdez from the Heroes of Olympus series. What can I say? Viria's art at the time had a death grip over me. I remember being on a camping trip, sitting on my sleeping bag, writing in my diary by hand. I remember writing out the lyrics to a song by hand, the lyrics for a camp sing-a-long.
Anyway, that was my first true introduction to the world of fanfiction. It also introduced me to shipping culture. Well, we could argue that my first introduction to the world of shipping was AppleDash, but we'll get to that later. It wasn't until a couple years later, when I entered middle school, that I picked up fanfiction once again. This time, I wrote phan-fiction, but never posted it.Then, many years later, as a freshman in high school, I wrote again. This time: VerKwan fanfiction. That's right, VerKwan. SolBoo. Vernon x Seungkwan from Seventeen. Again, never posted — but I spent a good few years fixating on them. But this fixation never really went away, so to speak. SVT is still my special interest, and so is k-pop.
Not until last year did I start posting my works. (unless you count that one DVR3 chatfic I deleted from the internet, but otherwise, everything else is from '23 beyond) A lot of my works have gotten lost through time, but I've tried to keep my WIPs and all the fics I write, even now. Even if I hate them. My google drive storage is horrendous, but it serves a purpose — to log all my fanfiction, as my memory cannot.
I've gone through many fixations and written many wips, orphaned many things, etc. etc. since I've started posting. I have lots of ideas floating around, and honestly? I'm just excited to share them with people who are excited to receive them. I've been so lucky to have received so much love for my works, and I can only hope to continue to share my ideas with people who will accept my works as graciously as they have before.
So, I guess this is my little thank you to fanfiction. Why I do what I do, even though I don't have to.