So, hey guys....Is it still cool to write fanfiction?
lawl.
I've had snippets of an epic (in scope, not necessarily awesomeness) Sailor Moon Silver Millennium fic in my head recently. Like lying awake in bed, unable to drift off to sleep, because pieces of conversation, images from scenes, and potiential lols keep popping in to say hi, in my head.
I should just decide to do it. As soon as I pick up pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard? So much less poetic) the voices in my head go silent.
SAD FACE.
And then with this particular project there is another issue. Unlike the dizzy childish fantasies of fame, fortune, publication that go along with every other drabble that spirals through my mind, fanfiction is in a category all its own for time wasted.
I miss the good ole days.
When the internet was rife with literary creativity and there were more fic authors than grains of sand inexplicably itching their way against your skin after a day at the beach.
When even really talented people wrote pages and pages of delicious fan service. (Big Wish, First Truths, Final Truths....Lilac Summers, m'dear, you were a huuuge part of that time in my life.)
When I was 12/13, back in those heady early days of the internet, the days of geocities, aol homepages, the frames/no frames entrance questionnaire, "professional looking" sites of black background, colored text, and looots of sparkling or animated gifs and icons, in those days I used to have at least 12 different sites memorized, just for first season Sailor Moon fanfiction.
There was so much fiction you could find a dozen sites dedicated to every subset of SM possible.
A dozen here just for the Scouts + Generals.
A dozen more there just for alternate pairings (barrrrfffffffff) ("I cried when I put the colored contacts in your eyes, ChibiUsa...to hide your violet eyes...to hide that you were my [Sailor Mars] child"....or even worse when it's Pluto. >:| Grrrrrrr)
12 more just for Crystal Tokyo (unless you're in love with the little pink haired devil or her counterpart, the incestuous Black Lady, almost all of these were to be avoided)
A baker's dozen of delicious delicious breakup arc angst (and also one hilarious fic wherein Mamrou/Darien gets irradiated by a youma at some point and is infertile, so the future Neo Queen Serenity has to travel back in time to get*it*onnnn with a Mamrou from a time before in order to conceive the little pink sugar heart attack. So in this version, the explanation for Mamrou's temporary breakup with Usagi?....He was cheating on her.....with herself....from the future.)
Now, I don't believe there are 12 sites all together on the entirety of the net that still dedicate themselves to collecting SM fiction.
And the couple sites that are still around, the quality really, truly, objectively is far below the average standard of the day.
Also, Alternate Universe (and a million other things) should be up there, too. Al and I always disagreed over those. I ravenously tore through them and defended them to the utmost, provided the characters were, well, in character, and Allie thought they may as well be wholly original since they bore so little resemblance to the standard SM Universe.
I thought that was part of the charm, but knew that she was also right.
Sadly, almost all of the best authors, from every genre, agreed with that prescription and left to pursue original fic (or real life undertakings).
Thus marked the beginning of the end of the magic.
Whenever I think about fic, there are still a couple unfinished sagas that come to mind and bring along the nostalgic mourning.
The golden age of fanfiction.
You will be forever cherished and missed.
