#‘cc’s cousin writes cars fanfiction ??’

[keptoabysmal]

I have a friend who tells me about her friend who writes emotionally devastating cars fanfiction apparently. Anyways I’ve never met the cars fanfic author but a while back I learned she’s apparently the cousin of one of my longtime favorite ccs which is wild -

But anyways sometimes when I see something of that cc I get hit with this paralyzing wave of self awareness. Mortifying to read fanfic about someone’s cubito and then be struck with a reminder that I’ve seen like two of his family Christmas photos

[yutaya]

what was your first Conan fic?

Oh boy, storytime!

So there is a short answer and a LONG answer to this question. 

The Short Answer:

You didn’t ask this for the whole story, you asked because of what I mentioned in my tags: that the first DCMK fic I ever read had a scene where Conan lays out exactly how easy it would have been, after Kaito’s slip up referencing the great magician Kuroba Toichi while in disguise at the lodge on that one case, to just... look up Kuroba Toichi. With the filters from other things Conan had extrapolated, such as likely age range, combined with the kind of closeness to Toichi indicated by Kid’s bringing him up, it would have taken maybe half a day to narrow down the likely identity of the new Kaitou Kid. Conan knew that was all he had to do. And then... he didn’t. He purposefully never looked there, let it remain a mystery.

UNFORTUNATELY, I remembered wrong. My first DCMK fic, while the gateway to a whole new world for me, is not actually the fic that has this scene. :/

There was a little community of DCMK fics I was reading back in the livejournal days (ManyCasesOneTruth LJ community, whatup!!!) and it was one of those that had that scene, but I’m not sure which one. :( If someone reads this monster and happens to know, please tell me so I can reread it. Haha.

Anyway my first Conan fic was Windfall by Ysabet.

The Long Answer: (AKA how Detective Conan changed my life)

The year was 2004. I had finally started watching the Case Closed dub on Adult Swim - videotaping it because I couldn’t stay up to watch it at 1AM - after half a year of being too afraid because the commercials involved dead bodies and it looked scary.

That summer, my family was on vacation, and there was no way for me to watch the episodes that would be piling up on the VHS back at home. I had briefly ventured onto the ff.net page before, but found so many summaries centered around unfamiliar names that I assumed I had to watch more and meet all these fan favorite characters before I’d be able to make heads or tails of any of it. But - I was at ends, and so I decided to give it another shot. A google search brought me to a site called something like The Red Thread, and a list with winners of some fanfiction awards. Best overall for... whatever year it was - 2003? - was Windfall by Ysabet.

Now, the funny thing about Windfall is: not only does it use all the Japanese names that so confused me back then, not only does it center completely around characters I had not met yet and assume knowledge of events and backstory that I didn’t have - it’s also actually the fourth fic in a series. Not that I was aware of that. Character that isn’t in the canon? I assumed it was yet another canon character that I just hadn’t met yet. Everyone else was. Probably the only name I recognized in that fic was “Conan” and he ended up playing such a small part (though I extrapolated that “Ayumi” was “Amy” pretty easily). But it was so good, and I devoured it anyway.

Only 7 chapters of Windfall were posted on TheRedThread. I finished this fic about Kaito, who I didn’t know, and Aoko, who I didn’t know, and Ayumi, who I had seen trapped in a car trunk with a “severed head” in one CC episode but who I had not at all seen grow a friendship with a thief sheltering on her balcony, and I wanted more.

When I got home, I found the wait for Case Closed episodes to air more agonizing than ever. I took to google again, seeking out more information, and somehow, someway, stumbled through my first ever torrent download. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I didn’t know episodes of television could be available online. I couldn’t believe it when I saw a link titled “episodes 1-10″ and just blindly followed whatever instructions I could to see what it was. Downloading Bittorrent, downloading VLC... Imagine my surprise when I finally opened up the show I was looking for but.. in another language. With subtitles!

It all took off from there. I learned all about how most of the cartoons I liked were actually anime from Japan and that when they were dubbed in English the companies often also changed characters’ names and censored stuff and altered large swathes of dialogue to make things more palatable to American audiences. I learned about manga that I could buy in Waldenbooks and that most of them were flipped but some of them weren’t because the original artwork was meant to be read right to left. I learned about, basically, everything that I had been missing out on from the stories I liked, that had been diluted out of the original versions for my consumption.

I started following a Detective Conan fansubber and downloading their latest episodes as soon as they came out, and learned all about “Shinichi” and “Ran”.

I discovered that Windfall was actually part of an entire Wind series, and had a lot more than 7 chapters besides. Fanfiction was my entire introduction to Kaitou Kid and I used to draw fanart based entirely on descriptions in fic and then was super excited when the preview for the next Detective Conan episode  (76!) included Kaito! Kaito Kuroba, the main character in Windfall, my introduction to this entire world! (And my mental image of him from fanfic was a fair ways off - it was elating to see the actual character. I think I immediately drew like 8 different pictures based on that preview, since I had a reference.)

As I mentioned earlier, there was a very small community of Conan fics I was reading back then - probably about 5 or 6 core authors on a Conan fanworks livejournal community (Many Cases One Truth!) who wrote a number of fics that I recall fondly. There was the psychic detective Heiji series by KosagiNoLegion - I LOVED that one. The Shinichi and Kaito find out they’re actually identical cousins fic (Relative Truth, by Becky Tailweaver).  Ysabet‘s entire Wind series, obviously. The most notable BNF was probably Icka M. Chif, who I always remember was once described to “own 3/4 of the Magic Kaito fandom in fic.” To this day I will idly doodle fanart for Billie Jukes’ The Impossible Murder. I could go on for ages about all the now quite old DCMK fic from back in the livejournal days, but... that would take a lot of writing. Haha.

Anyway, the Detective Conan fandom and its explanations about dub names, etc. is the reason I found out about anime and manga and dubbing and censorship and rewrites and how very different the Digimon movies are from The Digimon Movie, and all about 4chan One Piece vs actual One Piece, and is the reason I now always try to watch foreign films in their original languages with subtitles and basically altered the trajectory of my entire life at 13 years old.

(Well, probably not. Probably I would have discovered all of these things anyway, and sooner rather than later. But I didn’t, and Detective Conan will always get the credit for my life.)