My Life as a Fanfic Writer

Fanfiction is an integral part of me. Without it, I would be nothing. It's turned to an addiction but a healthy one at that. Fanfiction made me the writer that I am today, and I don't care if you think I'm shitty, BUGGER OFF. Not counting poetry, fanfiction comprises over half of my total works, so yeah, it's about time I spill the beans about my life as a fanfic writer.

There were three main factors which led to my discovery of fanfiction: first was the anime boom of 1999. I was in Grade 6 then, young, naive, easily taken by GMA7 and ABSCBN's marketing. My obsession with anime was helped by the second factor, the Internet. It was a relatively cheap source of information, waaaay cheaper than a trip to Japan or buying stuff from Comic Alley. Then we come to the third factor, which is the sudden death of our TV. With that loss, I became unable to get my daily dose of TV anime, and so had to depend more on the Internet.

It was on one of these Internet sessions that I discovered, quite accidentally, fanfiction. It happened so quickly; I didn't even realize I had clicked that bold, TNR word until the page of fanfiction appeared before me. Thank goodness it explained what fanfiction was, or gullible as I was then, I would have believed every single word fed to me. And believe it or not, the thought of two guys having sex simply did not occur to me.

I joined a fanfiction group on what was then Egroups. Only then did I learn the basic jargon of fanfiction writing, which was so fruity it was almost difficult to resist reading. At that time, I programmed myself to stay away from LIMEs and LEMONs, for fear of corrupting my then not-so-corrupted mind. This was rather easy, because fanfiction have to be marked to distinguish certain fics (specially limes and lemons) from the rest.

The twist is already hinted above, and it took the form of an unmarked lemon lying around in some website. The title was nice, so, trigger-happy pubertal idiot as I was, I read it.

And so my mind was devirginized. Quite literally. The feeling was like.......a virgin doing an orgy. It was so graphic, too graphic for a non-lemon reader like me. AND IT WAS BOY x BOY TOO, so do you get me now?

I was still in Grade 6 then.

A thousand shudders after the incident, I wrote my first fic, which was the closest I could to a boy x boy. And then I got my first reviews. I realized being praised and criticized felt exhilarating, because I was so lucky to receive such well-rounded reviews.

I continued writing fics. List-fics were the trend then, and I joined the fun. It was then that I learned to wield a sarcastic pen---er, keyboard. Then I stepped up a bit and became a judge in the first Takuhitsu Fanfiction Awards. I was twelve, and as you can see, I published my real effing name for the whole world to see. Nobody'd believe it was my real name anyway, just sounded like exotic gibberish from somewhere.

It was, I think, around this time that I got over my earlier experience with a lemon and started to consciously read them. And I started to appreciate them, love them, become obsessed with them. Until I stopped reading fics with hetero pairings. I became an exclusively shounen-ai reader. I was, I think between twelve and thirteen years old.

Then after Takuhitsu 2000, our ml died a natural death. Many members switched to lurking, so my fic supply thinned. There was a vain attempt to hold a Takuhitsu 2001, but it didn't push through. I was a freshman in high school when I joined the ranks of the lurkers.

I did not write anything for two years after that. Absolutely nothing, except for school. I became busy with other things: XGames and Takeshi Yasutoko, Pokebishies, acads (NOT!!!) and blahblahblah. Such was the state of things until I reached my third year in high school.

It was a renaissance for me: I discovered the beauty of Slam Dunk, got introduced to Jrock, rediscovered Fanfiction.net, restarted writing poetry. Around 2003, the summer before my senior year in high school, I took the biggest leap, I'd ever take till then: I wrote my first lemon. It happened that it was my first Slam Dunk fic too. I relished the reviews. Then I wrote milder fics. One of them is still an ongoing series. I also wrote for other series like Gravitation and Rurouni Kenshin. It was only then that I appreciated Fanfiction.net, even though they killed me once for a lemon that's not supposed to be there anymore. But I resurrected anyway, and more fruity than ever.

And then, shortly after I wrote the tenth chapter of my ongoing, OUR COMPUTER DIED after over five years of loyal service. I was on the second semester of my freshman year in college.

It was a big blow to me, because I had unfinished work stored in there, and several stories of which I had no spare copies of. I had also come to depend on it for encoding and data-gathering. I could not afford to spend on Internet cafes. I was so depressed and I didn't write anything again for two years.

It was my sister Puying that got me up and about again. She held me at knife-point (you all know it's a figure of speech, right?) and told me to continue my ongoing. She even printed out the ten uploaded chapters of the series so I can refresh my memory. That single act of kindness really got me out of my hiatus and I started writing again. I had learned many things in my absence, and one of them was the use of other writing media besides the computer. I learned to trust my pen and paper again.

And here I am now.

The point of all this is the amount of risks and surprises I had to take to become the fanfic writer I am today. I know I'm not the best there is, and hopefully I'm not one of the worst, but in the process I realized it was not as easy as it looks, and it took a lot of determination, pain, and love to keep up with it. And it's not just fanfiction, it is everything else.

On Cosplay

I'll make this short, quick, and hopefully painless. That last one goes for me especially, as I'm probably gonna be flamed by some people.

While I do respect cosplayers, and it is true that there are many good cosplayer out there, I do not believe that cosplay will reach a believable level. The best imitations we can produce are only believable (at most) on the surface level: costume, hairstyles, surface mannerisms. That, I believe, is the peak, if we can perfectly personify a character physically. And I do salute the very few who can make this happen.

What makes character successful in anime in particular is that they are made to be perfect. Those who are not conventionally perfect have the storyline to make up for what they lack. The story then makes the character perfect, because revolving the storyline around the character is like spoon-feeding: one only waits for the character to react to it.

The funny thing about all of this--and this is what I'm really trying to say--is that humans try to 'imitate' the 'imitations'. Writers, intentionally or not, make their characters as human-like as perfection allows to relate to the audience, but it is those which are most 'non-human' that people imitate, and it's funny. Come on, what's the challenge in cosplaying, say, Hideki of Chobits? We see people like him everyday, so we don't need to pretend to be him. He wears the clothes that an average teen does, has genetically-possible hair color, blah blah. It is the thrill of being, for a moment, close to perfection that gives cosplay its allure. It is sort of escapist and real at the same time, because I believe that we all strive to be more than human, even for a short while.

What, am I HORUS or something?

Why is it always my left eye that is plagued with irritating...irritations? Always itching, always wet...oh, crap, now it sounds like I'm promoting vagina or something. -.-

Sometimes I feel like ripping it right out. Maybe some Egyptian deity named Thoth would give me another fantastic eye, one that wouldn't riddle me with eternal itchiness.

Some things you might not know about me. Or might not care to.

Yeah, bullcrap time!

1.) I don't like being watched while eating, especially if you're not family or an UPAFSchooler '07. Honestly, anything that involves insertion of foreign objects into a bodily orifice should be done in private. For example, eating, picking your nose, putting on contact lenses (and taking them off), stabbing, sex, blahblahblah should all be done when nobody's looking.

2.) I have to brush my teeth before I take a bath. That way, I don't have to worry about toothpaste stains and washed-off moisturizer (wow, Sachi, you actually use effing moisturizer now?).

3.) When I take a bath, I wash my face first, then dry it. Then I wash my neck, ears, right arm, left arm, shoulders, back, front, right leg, left leg, left foot and then my right foot. Then I wash my hands. Then between the legs. Then I wash my hands again. Then I rinse. Then I wash my hands again. Then I shampoo my hair and rinse. This is my general bathroom routing. It gets more complicated when I use conditioner. (wow, Sachi, you actually use effing conditioner now?)

4.) I don't like it when sunlight creeps into my eyes in the morning.

5.) I have a "Last-Person-In-The-House Paranoia". When I lock up, I have to check if I turned everything off, locked everything. Then in transit, I suddenly get this paranoid feeling that I've left out something, but just as suddenly, I remember I haven't.

What in the world am I doing?

I'd like to share why I'm spending four hours in an Internet Cafe when there's no papers to do or fics to post or whatever shit I usually do online.

First, I was supposed to go home early for the first time in my [recent] life so that I can take care of some things that had needed to be taken care of a long effing time ago. So happy was I when at 5 pm I arrived at the red gate. BUT IT WAS EFFING LOCKED AND THE KEY WASN'T WHERE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE, AND I CAN'T CLIMB THROUGH OUR SIDE OF THE GATE BECAUSE IT HAD BEEN SCREENED

AND I HATE IT. I WAS NEVER THIS PISSED EXCEPT YESTERDAY, WHEN THE BUS GOT ME OFF AT THE CHURCH, WHICH WAS SOOOOO EFFING FAR FROM MY HOUSE

AND I HATE IT.

Zero-point-five (because this should have been the first, but it would totally ruin the mood), I lost one of my recently bought Soubi butterfly earrings AND I HAD SO MUCH TROUBLE FINDING THAT PARTICULAR DESIGN AT THE SILVER SHOPS AND IT'S JUST ONE EFFING WEEK OLD

AND I HATE IT.

So, I'm killing time at an Internet cafe when suddenly MY YAHOO MESSENGER GOT HIT BY THIS SHITTY VIRUS THAT STARTED SENDING SHIT IN VIETNAMESE TO EVERYONE ON MY LIST AND DID IT NOT ONLY ONCE BUT FOUR TIMES AT LEAST

AND I HATE IT.

Thank goodness it's payday and Hahar has given me my photos or I'm dead.

Or not. What a pathetic way to die.

Poety installment AGAIN, sorry for bothering you all with my shitty ramble.

State of Paranoia

Listen to me
But why behind my back?
I'll tell it to you
IN YOUR FACE

Throw at me
Such colorful accusations
Why do you fear me so?

You think I am the wolf
You believe I am the Devil
It's your funeral, not mine
I pity you
You don't know what is true anymore