#BehindTheScenes 57 - Fan Fiction Beginnings

I had an active imagination when I was younger...and this #BehindTheScenes is going to prove it.

Maybe.

But it was where I began writing long stories.

It was the mid 90s. Cable was all the rage and people talked about Friends, Seinfeld and Frasier. There were some Trekkies who liked DS9 and Voyager too. It was nothing we had ever seen before! The stories caught my imagination and made me wonder who, what, when, where and why.

My parents always controlled the TV, and I had to sneak in a lot of shows and movies that they would never watch. The Simpsons, South Park and much, much more were banned living with my parents. I never told anyone and always acted stupid when asked about it, even in front of my classmates. I was afraid one of my siblings would overhear and tell on me. But that's another story...

When I was six or seven years old, my family lived with my grandmother for a short time. It was a three bedroom place, and I briefly shared a small room with my siblings. I was on the bottom bunk, below my sister, while our brother had his own bed on the other side of the room.

I don't remember what my sister and I were talking about. But I do know that we talked about how we lost cable. Our parents did not have enough money again. We listed off shows we were going to miss. I mentioned The Power Rangers and how I liked the white ranger and how I dreamt up stories about him and the Pink Ranger. I was told I was being weird.

From that moment on, I kept all those ideas and stories inside of me. I never even told a soul in school, to the family, anybody. Everybody knew I wrote, though. I had diaries growing up and they saw me finding small spaces to write privately. My family never acknowledged this.

When I was in high school, everyone labeled me as the copycat. And I was. I was trying to find myself in a world that didn't understand autism, poverty, abandonment and trauma. Lonely for attention, I was really attracted to a guy who played games with women and I refused to let him go. And in the small town I lived in, the actions of a family member can haunt the other members for generations.

Between my siblings, it was solely my fault. I was making a fool out of myself, chasing an unavailable guy, and looking jealous over the couples. But they, and even me, did not understand that I had an image of safety, forever wishing for a man to save me so we could have a happily-ever-after. They saw the cry for help as a shame, and I was cornered into stopping.

Ok, so what does this have to do with fan fiction?

Everything.

Other than poetry, my sister and I were tackling a story my uncle and his co-workers made up one night - Trek Wars. By the title, you can instantly tell that it's about the the two main Star series. My uncle had given us the basic plotline. We added details and spiced it up, with the promise of a sequel that we never wrote.

Trauma makes you do strange things. It makes you look foolish chasing someone, or imagining impossible situations. And I looked for the perfect man that fit the bill. If I could not find it in real life, then fiction was it. My exposure to men was limited to individuals had been traumatized. It was comfortable, and for me, it was easy to spot the fictional characters that embody that.

Hawkeye Pierce from M*A*S*H and Colonel Hogan from Hogan's Heroes were the biggest examples. Men who could charm, drink and protect their women in different ways. Add some desirable skills my father had and his humor and strength.

Fan fiction made my imagination go wild. Outside of Trek Wars, I had other interests. I kept them to myself and pretended that I was disinterested. As an autistic person, it was difficult to keep my special interests secret, though. My father was frustrated once because I took out too many Star Trek books from the library and he actually punished me for it.

The internet was the only place I felt I could get honesty.

How naive I was in my teens!

I searched high and low for places to publish my fan fiction stories. There were a few websites I used, but none more than fanfiction.net. I would see traffic go through each chapter I published...but no reviews. Every review I received (which was few and far between) I personally messaged each person (not spam) and have made several friends, one of whom I still talk to nearly everyday.

A lot of people put fan fiction down. I don't. During the high school and college years, even after my son was born, it helped me work out the most difficult situations. It helped that my special interests grew, and my ideas for new characters and adventures boiled over into epic series that I have yet to finish. Isn't that familiar?

For writers of fan fiction, I want to say this: you ARE a writer. It does not matter if you are basing your story off something already written. Your imagination is endless. Write whatever you please.

Because it helped me.

Namaste, everyone! Have a great rest of your week!

#FanFiction #Beginnings #LifeRoles #HighSchool #SchoolMagazine #SpecialInterests #Autism