One question I (surprisingly) get asked quite often is why I don’t write for *insert fandom I enjoy here*. It’s not necessarily that I don’t want to write for some other series, I just can’t. It’s just how my brain works. It takes a long time for me to get comfortable enough in writing any given fandom, and once I feel like I can write competent fic, I stick with it. Trying to take on two series at once? No way, it just doesn’t work for me. To be perfectly honest, I don’t feel comfortable enough to do so. I’ll constantly question characterization, or feel that I just haven’t done enough research on a particular character or don’t have a decent enough grasp on a character’s personality.
It’s not just the “oh, big scary new fandom!” thing – even fandoms I’ve been in for years and have seen or read the series numerous times and have done a lot of meta discussion on (Gundam Wing, for example), I don’t think I have a good grasp on the characters at all.
I’m a one-big-fandom at a time person (ie, I can only handle being super active in one fandom at a time, but might dabble in others). When I’m active in that one fandom, I cannot write for anything else that isn’t completely stupid and silly and intentionally disregards all characterization and such. The only problem I see with this is that I tend to stay in fandoms for a ridiculously long time (coming on my 7th Tenipuri anniversary, soon), which sort of kills off any inspiration to write for other fandoms – even ones I want to write for.
“But you draw for other series, it’s the same thing, isn’t it?” No, not really. I’m more of a visual learner. I can look at the character and say “Ok, this is what s/he is, there’s nothing more to it.” It’s hard to fuck up characterization when drawing. You don’t have to question whether this person would say that, or just how delicate the relationship between character A and character B is. You don’t have to worry about dub characterization versus sub characterization. You just do it and hopefully have fun doing it.
In essence, I don’t write for anything that isn’t second nature to me by now. You can give me just about any character in Tenipuri and I can write them. Actual plot and content might be a bit questionable, but the characters would be the characters. Give me Gundam Wing, a series I’ve adored since I was a little girl, and have previously written fic for? No way. I’d constantly be re-watching certain episodes, or checking various manga scenes, and questioning whether or not, say, Quatre (without the Zero System) would go tell someone to fuck off and die.
For me, I don’t care if people loved/hated some fic of mine. If I don’t like it, I think it’s complete shit. One of these days maybe I’ll get over my own insecurities. Until then, Tennis is my game.
And to make this post not completely pointless, downloads in the form of music. For all Dragonball GT sucked and/or was complete epic fail, it has some of the best music of the franchise. x3
[download#1]
[download#2]