#fanniversary

Throughout these years I've found so much more than my favorite music artists, but also a community that has welcomed me with open arms. It taught me how to think critically, and form my own opinions instead of letting somebody else do it for me. It showed me that the world isn't always so black and white. Most importantly though, it is where I discovered my passion for law and human rights activism.

I stumbled upon this fandom when I was at my lowest, but you all were truly the stranger that came and took my hand.

Ähm kann mich mal bitte wer kneifen. Kann doch gar nicht sein!!! 20 Jahre?! 20 JAHRE! Verdammt ich bin sooo alt. Aber ja, heute vor 20 Jahren. Liebe auf den ersten Blick. Liebe, die immer noch hält, wenn auch mit ein paar Dellen, bei mir, bei ihnen, vielleicht auch bei euch.

I had tried to refrain from writing it.

I had a kid and a career and so many other things that I thought surely I couldn’t have time to be this active in fandom anymore.

My concerns may have been founded, because I’ll be honest. I just posted my 75th fic in the Loki fandom alone. (I’m also sitting on 32 WIPs.) I knew that if I started I might not be able to stop, and I was right.

In the past year, I’ve done so many things. I’ve improved my writing skills, I’ve gone far out of my initial comfort zone of PWPs (though there’s still a long way to go with me and plot 🙃), and I finished my first multi-chapter fic.

I don’t think I would have believed any of that was possible one year ago.

My house is a mess. Sometimes things don’t get done because I just need to write these next few lines and then it’s these and these and oops.

But I’ve accomplished a hell of a lot.

213,283 words later, I want to thank @ricresin who enabled me and held my hand throughout the entire process of me going back to writing fic, and all the new friends I’ve found along the way, in particular @ingridgradient @thehourglassmuse @chaos-monkeyy @playinggalaga and @dewdropreader , who are always willing to let me brainstorm and squee and rant and braindump and ask over and over “am I fucking crazy or…?” (The answer? Probably, but we’re all in good company.)

If anyone is interested, this is the fic that kicked it all off. (Sylki, NSFW)

In October 2016 I signed up to AO3 and started posting an Avengers fanfic, Unconditional. Since then I have posted nearly 900,000 words in 74 fics. I have even been 'recognised' in chat groups, it's surreal!

(A conversation that happened: N: Hold on wait!! OMG are you Lynds?? Me: Ahh yes I'm sorry! J: Lynds did you just... apologise for being you? Me: I PANICKED don't judge me)

Although I'm hoping to one day earn real actual money from my novels (and that’s looking more and more like a reality as the BSB publication date of Not Broken creeps closer!), I have no doubt that fic has helped my writing immensely. Not only have I met so many supportive, enthusiastic people who love stories and character development and a good dollop of hurt/comfort as much as I do, I've learned how to keep people in character, I've learned how to structure my paragraphs and entire stories. Thanks to the culture of positive feedback and cheerleading, I've learned what I do well, and it's helped me so much.

One of my most popular fanfics, Hidden Within, gave me the idea for a whole other story, Zero Degrees, which I self-published a couple of years ago. I recently took it down from Amazon because my screenwriting partner, Aloïs, and I were thinking of putting some of the content from that story into our animated series, Of Gods and Stories. That's taken a totally different route, as it happens, but rather than putting Zero Degrees back onto Amazon, I'm going to publish it chapter by chapter over on AO3 as an original fic. I know they're not very popular over there, but hey, it's not like I was taking the publishing world by storm anyway! And Zero Degrees has gods and dragons! AO3 is the perfect place for it lol!

I don't know if other people will see it this way but it sort of feels like a thank you to fanfic in a way, and also like a crossover between the two types of thing that I write. I'm hoping to make at least part of a living out of writing my own original stuff, but fanfic will always hold a special place in my heart - I'm certainly still writing it! So this feels like the tipping point, the junction between those two parts of my writing life. I hope you enjoy it if you choose to read it. 

1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY of being a Peaky fan! 😂 Yes yes I KNOW I am such a baby in this fandom. But I have NEVER been so inspired as I am by one Alfie Solomons and I'm so FOOKIN grateful for all of it.

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I’m late as always, but there was my second fanniversary a while ago!

To celebrate 2 years of being a fan of Steam Powered Giraffe I decided to redraw my very first fanart. You can see how I improved through this time and it makes me so proud :D I tried to keep the new one pretty similar to the original, but Hatchy’s pose was so dull I had to completely change it :P