fandomania

I started reading fan fiction for the first time in my life about a month ago. First I played a lot of one game (Fire Emblem: Three Houses, well over 200 hours worth, have just now started my sixth playthrough), then I found myself wanting more of the game than even the game could provide, and then I found myself on Twitter fan accounts and then Tumblr and finally AO3, which I now spend at least an hour perusing before bed nearly every night.

This is deeply embarrassing, obviously, because it's all so corny and horny in equal measure, because some of the writing is terrible and some of it is so heartbreakingly earnest it gives me a toothache. It's certainly time I could spend reading other things, like, idk, books. 

 

But mostly it makes me so happy. I love these characters so much — these students at magic war school just trying to figure out how to be — and I love that there's a group of enterprising teens 'n' twentysomethings who have taken them as raw material and build a whole network of worlds for them to populate. Obviously we talk all the time about video games as escapism, which, sure, fine, now more than ever et cetera, but also I like the fine, urgent film they cast over my day to day life. I like that this a way for that feeling to linger even when I don't have my Switch clutched in my hot little hands.

And a lot of it is actually quite well-written! I have to read the internet all day for work and plenty of well-compensated adults are not nearly as good as putting a sentence together as some of these diligent, unpaid, unrecognized writers. Everyone is funny. Everyone cares. It's just so fun to have fun. 

I'm already starting to run kind of low on my preferred material (I have ships now, you guys! Sylvix / Dimimari / Claudeleth hive WYA) and I'm dreading the day when I navigate to the site and find that there's nothing much left for me to uncover. Maybe the move is just writing some myself? Watch this space. I will make everyone rue the day they gave me the login!!!