#various fandoms including les mis yoi and miss fisher

[starberry-cupcake]

This is my entry for @whopooh‘s questions for fic writers! Thank you for developing this amazing questionnaire, it was very insightful and interesting to answer.  

I debated whether to answer these, but 2 out of 5 of my answers are Miss Fisher related and I have posted 1 Miss Fisher fic so far, so technically I’m good to answer these, according to the guidelines. Even if I do feel like I’m totally butting in, because I haven’t written for this fandom for as long as others and also I don’t tend to talk about my writing on tumblr much. Still, the questions were really good and I wanted to add my little contribution, so I hope that’s ok. It’s under “read more” because of length. Even if I probably don’t share all the fandoms included here with all of my followers, maybe some things are of interest and some of you, who also write (not only fanfiction, but anything at all) can relate to some of this. Sharing writing experiences is always interesting.   

1. Pick one fic that you’ve written and talk about what makes it important to you.

My Les Mis mutant AU The Downfall of the Juillet Institute is probably the most important I’ve written personally, even if it’s not my favorite. It was well received by readers, though, which is good for a fic that’s so personal. 

The main reason why it’s important to me is because it was there for me during some pretty heavy times, when a lot of things were happening and my life changed dramatically. In the middle of chaos, that fic was there. And I, the person who never writes chaptered fics because she thinks she’ll never finish them, had all the excuses to leave it unfinished. But I didn’t. I had a lot of encouragement and also very patient readers, and ultimately something very interesting happened. 

I started it with the intention of pushing myself to do in fic writing what I tend to do in personal writing. I don’t tend to use fic in the same way, I normally write fic to fulfill or add something I would have wanted to see in canon, but rarely I go as deep into it as I do in my personal writing, but not because I think it’s not worthy (it absolutely is! fanfiction is very important!). I had this idea that my fic writing and my personal writing were two completely separate things, with different reasons, motives and even languages (my original writing is in Spanish, my native language, and my fics tend to be in English, and I swear I feel my writing style is extremely different in both). I felt for a very long time that it had to be this way, because some things I had to “save” for one form of writing or the other, but in the end both are much more related than I thought and a lot of things I ended up including in my personal writing (I don’t want to call it “original” writing because there’s originality in fics as well) ended up being there because I integrated them first in my fics and worked through them there. 

With my mutant AU, though, I blurred the lines. I made an oath to push my fic writing to be more like my personal and create a story from the ground up with my own world-building in a complex setting (in sci fi, no less, which isn’t normally what I write), to include strong heavy emotional elements I don’t tend to include, and, to top it all off, to start posting it without having completely finished it. It was a gamble of massive proportions. 

I ended up learning more about my own writing process from this fic than I had with some of the creative writing workshops I’ve done. When all the issues started happening in my life, I found myself having to face this monster and some of the stuff I had set myself to include became triggering for me. So I had to find a way in which I could write it all and see it through. The fic helped me work through some heavy stuff and it ended up being an ideal place to project some of my issues and transform them into something new. 

I’m very grateful to that fic and very proud still today of having finished it. And even if some days I’m embarrassed of some of the ways in which I handled some stuff or some of the choices I made, I will always regard it with respect. 

2. Pick one of your older fics and say what about it you like most, and what you would do differently now.

I deleted every fic in my old fanfiction.net account and all traces of my young self in there, so I’m not linking it, but I had written once a ficlet in which I explored the different perspectives of the Black sisters from Harry Potter, Narcissa, Andromeda and Bellatrix. It was a bit lackluster, my English wasn’t the best (I hope it’s better now, who knows, not me), but the concept was rare for me at the time and I think it was a baby step towards my fascination with character archetypes and female representation in media. I had written plenty of HP fics before, but that one was a rarity and something that caught my attention at the time, how little we really knew of them individually and in comparison with each other. 

I think what I’d do differently now is a) fix the English grammar and b) go a bit deeper into each of them while also re-thinking my stance on some of my perceptions of them as women. I grew up and I see some things under a different light now, but I still feel strongly that it’s a worthy character analysis to do. I feel I was too tentative with it back then because I knew that it wasn’t really going to be meaningful for people, since it wasn’t a ship fic or had popular characters in it, but I think it was interesting and a bit of a prelude to something that’d be important for me in the future. 

3. Pick a fic and say something about why you wrote it – if there was a specific inspiration, perhaps from RL, fandom life, or a theme or a trope you felt needed to be written in a new way. 

I am not actively in the Yuri On ice fandom, in fact I wholeheartedly avoid it for different reasons. Still, last year I embarked on the task of writing a fic for it (A Revolutionary Act is its name) for one reason only: I wasn’t at all happy with how the fandom (and the show, for that matter) treated body image and Yuri’s body specifically. 

For those who don’t know me, I’m a plus size gal and have been my entire life.  Learning to accept and love my body is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done (I’m still not all the way there), and body positivity conversations are very important to me. 

For the longest time, I avoided writing fat female characters in the stuff I wrote, in my personal stuff and in fic, because I was scared that people would think I was self-inserting. I felt, for the longest time, that people saying “is that supposed to be you?” was an insult to my creativity. So I avoided it. And then, after years and years of not seeing myself represented in books often (let’s not even talk about the Latina aspect, that’s adds another layer to it all), I asked myself “why are there so many plus size ladies writing books with female protagonists but none of them are plus size?”. And then it hit me, maybe it was for the same reason I was avoiding it. I couldn’t blame others for the lack of representation if I myself wasn’t willing to do it. You know that quote from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie? “the unintended consequence was that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature”? something along those lines. 

So I used fic to try that out and warm myself into writing characters more like me. I headcanoned my Cosette from Les Mis as a plus size Latina and projected that into her and left it for the world to judge. Surprisingly, people responded amazingly well to that. I wrote a fic for a friend in which I explored Cosette’s and Éponine’s relationships with their bodies using myself and my friend as inspiration for both points of view, no matter how shameless a projection that was (My Body Is Home was its name, because the Mary Lambert quotes are a thing with me). And some people thanked me for talking about it, some people needed to hear those things as much as I did, to see themselves in their favorite characters. 

Years passed and I came across the YOI situation. YOI is one of those kinds of “idol animes” in which the guys are represented as aesthetically pleasing for social standards of Japanese culture (mainly for women’s perception of male aesthetic archetypes in anime characters, that’s a whole analysis for some other time), and the fandom responded in the very same way. Yuri’s weight was a matter of mockery, of denigration and treated as an issue. Yuri’s “best” was when he was thin, Yuri’s “worst” was when he was fat. His fatness was associated with his lack of passion, his self-loathing, his loneliness. His thinness was associated with his triumph, his activity, his sex appeal. Both in the show and in most of fandom conversation/artwork/fanfiction. 

So, before embarking on a redeeming fic for that situation, I investigated about plus size figure skaters. I wanted to know how much of a “problem” weight was for competitive figure skaters and if there were plus size figure skaters anywhere at all. I found a lot of them, actually, and some of them competing professionally. And I also found the amount of awful comments they got, the bullying, people actively telling them in the comments of a video where they were pulling off amazing stuff, that they weren’t supposed to pull off that amazing stuff, because of their weight. 

I went ahead and wrote the fic. I had a lot of help for the Russian and Japanese cultural aspects, thanks to my amazing friends Anita and Aya, and I wrote what I knew would be my first and last YOI fic. My sole purpose was to put my grain of salt to fix a problem I felt the fandom was having, as someone who liked the show. It was the least I could do, if I felt something was wrong, to try to change it from the inside. 

The result was actually very good. My fic isn’t by any means as popular as most fics on that fandom, it may not be an epitome of modern storytelling by any means whatsoever, but I received comments from people who had no idea a perspective like that could exist in this narrative. At first I found it strange, because I surround myself with body positive people and vibes and inspirations, but I understood how it could feel for someone who doesn’t have the same influences, who was born in fandoms where aesthetically accepted social standards are conceptualized to sell and market character archetypes that propel fantasies that don’t necessarily associate with reality. 

All in all, it was somewhat out of character for me to write a YOI fic in the first place, because it isn’t the kind of fandom I tend to get involved with, but the results were positive for me and others and I feel I addressed a problem that I personally felt that had to be addressed. I did what I wish authors had done more of when I was a teenager reading fics, and I feel that’s a good use of my writing and time. 

4. Is there something you wrote in a fic that was read differently than you intended, and that made you see your own fic in another light?

Alright so here comes my first (and hopefully not last) Miss Fisher fic, In the Land of Lethe. This fic was a bit of an impulsive thing, which is a lot to say for me because I don’t do anything impulsive ever. I had seen and loved the show, I was (am) obsessed with it and I wanted to write something. I think I wrote it in like 3 days or so, I hadn’t been that inspired with a fic in so long. 

The truth is that I had been writing fic for fandoms where I either knew I didn’t belong, where I am not active but I create things for because I like the thing or where I didn’t form any strong bonds with people. 

So in I go to write a fic for a thing I just finish devouring, in a bit of an impulse, and it just came out so naturally and fast I was surprised. I had been writing a lot of original stuff but my fic work had been dwindling in the past years. I had no idea what to expect upon posting it, especially since I took a leeway with some things, (like focusing on Mac and Phryne’s friendship more than it was maybe originally intended, or being presumptuous enough to attempt to delve into Phryne’s thoughts and ideas of her own identity, when I’m totally new in the fandom). I decided to not question myself as I often do and post it anyway, and be it what it may. 

I am still shocked of how good people was to me. I got the nicest comments and the very things I was most worried about where the things people enjoyed the most. I realized that I had spent too much time writing fics for fandoms that were very critical and specific with the stuff included and that I was constantly trying to please, in a way, rather than please myself. And this impulsive fic I had done in a couple of days, with all the love for the show in my heart, was immediately welcomed among people who write amazing things. 

5. Is there a fic by another writer that has inspired you? 

In the Miss Fisher fandom once again, I have an interesting story with @firesign23‘s Snips and Snails and Squirrelly Tales, mostly with Fear Not The Bugle. 

I actually came across the last installment of the series first (Fear Not The Beagle) and, for some reason, didn’t see it was a last installment of a longer thing. So in I get into this narrative with absolutely no context whatsoever and I read that Phryne and Jack are married and have a kid. Cue my utmost confusion. I was not sold on the idea initially, to say the least, and when I discovered it was a series, I thought I’d do the right thing and start from the beginning (revolutionary idea, I know). 

And, holy crap, it was amazing. It was unexpected and absolutely in character and it introduced those unlikely things, that most people would normally feel at least a bit uneasy about, in a way that was so organic and true to their characters that you had no option but to give in and get this perspective. 

And I loved getting into that series/fic that way, from the back door kind of, because I got to appreciate the amount of work it was to develop these characters in a situation that left you no choice but to accept this reality and actually feel delighted by it. You need to know your characters, know your audience and know the absolute heck out of your social/historical context to pull a stunt like that fic. 

I don’t know this author personally, only through fic, but all my respect and admiration to the amount of work that was. A favorite, absolutely.