Humility is for tomorrow, today I'm PROUD
Usually for International Be Proud of Your Creations and Share Them I would reblog a lot of different fics and pics and such, but I'mma do things a little different today =3
I've been writing and doodling since I was 8. An only child in a family where I was the only kid in my generation on one side, and didn't see the other side as much, I had to keep myself entertained a lot. This was before the internet and ipads and cell phones, and even the video game console boom, though it was a few short years away.
My grandpa had a job that found him in possession of scrap paper a LOT, and who better to put it to use, but a little kid with a crayon at the ready XD
I was, I don't know, 9 or 10 I think when I wrote 100 page story. Let's be fair, it was trash from any technical standpoint, but it was still quite the feat. And thus was idea that I'd be An Author when I grew up.
To make a LONG story Blissfully Short, let's just say that publishing is a harsh field, and I probably didn't research how to get into it as well as should've before I tried.
It ripped me to to pieces, and with a few other factors, I didn't really create for a solid 10-12 years.
Little stuff here there, stops and starts, trying to find what I lost, but it just wasn't happening. I had, for all intents and purposes, given up. I found joys and solace in other spaces and just... didn't try.
Then I started watching One Piece and was hungry for more of the world than the source material could give me. I was clawing my way through image searches, fan art sites, and - before I knew how trash it was/would become - Pintrest.
One of the pins was art for a reader insert story. Having been away from the proverbial scene for YEARS, I had no idea what this implied, but I was curious, and so I went to a site I knew nothing about called Wattpad, and read a reader insert/Doflamingo story called Costumes and Romances.
I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books back in the 80s/90s and I was a massive Visual Novel fan and now you're telling me there are fan fics that give the same vibes?!
I read another Doffy/Reader called Denying the Devil and realized I had found what I needed.
I love both of those stories a LOT, but there was something I wanted from them that I couldn't find, so I did the only thing I knew to do:
Family Ties (Wattpad / Ao3 ) was the wrecking ball that broke the decade-long dam that had stopped me from writing. A Doflamingo/Reader-Insert story where the reader wasn't good or bad, and while I tamed Doffy a bit for it (no devil fruits or haki) I had a lot of fun with it.
Fun Fact - it was originally in first person, but with the help of a friend I realized that second person made it land better.
After that I ended up making friends, @lyndsyh24 and @swampstew ended up being right on those front steps, right along with @writing-yarn-goblin and honestly a few people I'm sure I'm forgetting at the moment.
But this helped me step into the fandom, and for me that was a first. At 40-ish I'd never really been IN a fandom, so much as I'd just appreciated things and did some writing. But I wasn't in forums or groups or chats or tagging things, or anything like that.
Some Direction (Wattpad / Ao3) I wrote from start to finish in a single month. December 2022 - 8 months after I first started watching One Piece, and 1 month after Family Ties. Zoro/Reader and all I can say is that Lyn is at fault, because she let me play in her Government Mandated Marriage AU - the Matchbook, and I don't think I've ever written so much with such focus. I wrote, edited, and posted 3 chapters in one day.
And then I ended up on tumblr, January something 2023, and boy did things take off from there. I've met people, moved in and out of circles, made my own, accidentally ended up helping people when that wasn't even my intent. I'm glad for it, but I didn't expect that I'd end up being a source of safety and comfort for folks, I just wanted to share my insanity.
But really, instead of just being proud of my creations, I guess I wanted to be proud of how far I'd come.
