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falneou17 · 4 years

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May 2015 - May 2020

No, this is not announcing my retirement or whatever. It’s just that after doing anything for a couple years, there will come a time when you start to look back and see how far you have come in those years. All the highs and lows, all the milestones and all the achievements.

And I kind of wanted to do something like this for a while; this is not the first time that I looked back at the time I have been writing fanfiction (and I am sure it won’t be the last), but I still want to, you know... document this. Share it in case there are people out there who are interested to see my perspective on this.

I am actually going to start to the time before I was writing fanfiction, because fanfiction was actually not my first experience with writing fiction; I actually wrote a collab original story with my good childhood friend Blue-san back in late-2012/early-2013. I can’t quite remember the date and Blue-san has since closed down her website she hosted it on, but it was in that era.

Shortly after that, in early-mid 2013 I wrote my own original story. I think I might still have it saved somewhere. As a matter of fact, actually, Falneou17′s name comes from that story. Well, the Falneou part anyway; seventeen’s just one of my fave numbers, both back then and right now.

Late-2013 and the year 2014 were both really busy and really weird for me, so I kind of pulled away from writing. That was until early 2015 (around February if I remember correctly) when I was feeling nostalgic and I looked up Pokemon fanfiction. Okay, to be fair, at the time I was looking for Pokemon fanworks in general, but it quickly gravitated towards fanfiction in particular. More specifically, Pokemon Special fanfiction, which was also the time when I read the stories of the six fanfiction writers who inspired me to write fanfiction. Of these six, only 1358456 is still writing, and while I will freely admit that I haven’t been reading her fics since I left the Pokemon Special fandom, I can wholeheartedly recommend her fics!

And that was pretty much how it began, I opened a fanfiction.net account in May 2015 and published my very first fanfiction (for Pokemon Special), Specialventure Academy which was my attempt at a high school AU for this franchise in the early days of the following month. Did it age well? No way XD but it did give me a lot of experience that helped me not only grow but also start out as a writer.

Like, most notably I think, it showed me the error in trying to incorporate everybody at the time (as BW2 wasn’t finished when I wrote that fanfiction and wouldn’t be for years to come, it would “only” have up to BW cast... which, as it included Lyra, Wally, Cherren, and Bianca, got the total to nineteen... yeah...). I think I realized this and tried to rectify my mistake in the second third of the story? Speaking of mistakes, another mistake I made with this story that really helped me grow was learning that my readers’ wishes and hopes did not mean I had to change my writing. Writing to make them happy was one thing, but I remember actively changing parts of my stories at the time to try and please everybody. Which, of course, is impossible (if you have readers who love Yellow and those who hate Yellow, for instance, how can you compromise to please everybody?).

This so far has only been about Specialventure, I haven’t even talked about the other fics in this era. For me, the three biggest fics in the 2015-2016 Pokemon Special era were, aside from Specialventure, Night of the Black Sun and Crimson Sunlight.

Black Sun was a really ambitious attempt for me at the time, not only because of what the story was trying to do but also because it would be my third multi-chapter fic I would be writing at the same time (alongside the other two fics I just mentioned). ‘Controversial’ is probably the wrong word, but Black Sun was definitely... polarizing. It’s also the only fanfiction of mine at the time (and only one of two to this day as of writing this) that received rude negative reviews. And because it was the first fic that received this... distinction... it hit quite hard, but I also feel like that made me realize not only the things that I did wrong but also that what I did had a big enough impact that it could affect other people that much. I think it is fair for me to say that the mistakes I made with Black Sun would not reappear in any of my other fanfictions after that... at least not to the same extent.

The third and final most memorable Pokemon Special fanfiction in this era, for me, was Crimson Sunlight. For the BanG Dream readers: no, this has nothing to do with either Scarlet Sunlight or Shining Sunlight, we’ll get to those soon enough. Looking back, from a writer’s perspective, Crimson definitely felt like it had a drop in quality, but at the same time it also felt the most... accomplished... of the three fanfiction. And Crimson basically taught me two things, I feel... it emphasized the importance of having a story’s plot planned out and it showcased how fluid the story could be if I were to focus on as few characters as possible (Crimson, being based on and inspired by konbu’s doujinshi titled How Far Are You?, focused on Red and Yellow and only Red and Yellow). And, out of the Pokemon fics in this first year era, Crimson is definitely the story I feel didn’t necessarily age the best but it is definitely the one I look back at the fondest.

The time around the end of 2015 and the start of 2016 I remember there were a few big things happening to me. Let’s talk chronologically: the first big thing that happened (that has no direct effect on my fanfiction, but I never said this post was to only look back on the fanfiction-specific times in the last half decade) was that I got promoted to moderator on the forums of JB2448′s site (the forums has since been taken down in... mid-2017? Mid-2017 sounds about right...), but the actual site is still live for those who want to use it to read Pokemon manga. I think this is worth noting because it would really hammer the point that what I did and said had an impact and that I had to be mindful of what I said online as a result...

The other notable thing that happened was that I got introduced to RWBY by DaPokemonMadster. There may have been more people involved, but Mads was definitely the one whose efforts to drag me into RWBY is the vividest... most vivid? It’s the one I remember the most, let’s keep it at that. This moment was significant for multiple reasons, I feel; not only did it open the doors to a new fandom, but it also sparked the birth of not only my longest oneshot at the time, White Rose Valentine, but also the fanfiction that would turn writing fanfiction for me upside-down: Field of Tomorrow. More than any other multi-chapter fanfiction I have ever published, even more so than Black Sun and Specialventure, Field of Tomorrow has been the biggest turning point for me in terms of writing and in terms of where I can say my writing got a big jump in quality (as arrogant as it is to say that). Despite the fact that, you know... FoT got officially discontinued earlier this year...

The writing, the story, the characterization... FoT introduced me to the ease of writing of both Weiss Schnee and Blake Belladonna (who would later become the base for another very notable character for me) as well as Neo (who would later become the base for yet another very notable character for me), but FoT did something else as well: beta readers. Before this point in time I would either publish the chapter right away (which, if you are a new/aspiring writer: don’t do that) or try to edit it myself. But, as I am sure every single writer can attest to: there is only so much editing that a writer can do on their own. And FoT really showed the difference between a chapter that I would edit by myself and a chapter that had a beta reader look at. It was phenomenal and a really big eye opener and I cannot thank Namitaa776 and LightZephyr enough.

The final fanfic that I can remember really fondly in this first year (I can’t believe I have written this much down already and we haven’t passed the first year yet) would be my one-year anniversary oneshot A Silver Lining. The Pokemon fanfiction that I think aged the best and would be partly the base for a fanfiction I am well known for in the BanG Dream! fandom. Before this point, I did not have any fanfiction deal directly with death before. I had danced around it a couple of times, but this oneshot was the first one to actively explore the possibilities... and to truly open the door to the “Angst” genre of the site... as a matter of fact, if it wasn’t for A Silver Lining, I might never have delved as much in the Angst genre as I have. So... thank you, A Silver Lining, for that opportunity. Even if I really hate the ending, but oh well... I think I was afraid that people would hate it if I were to go all in with it which is why I ended the oneshot like I did. I learned my lesson as the BanG Dream! fandom can attest to...

The rest of 2016 (the calendar year anyway) proceeded relatively uneventfully fanfiction-wise. I continued my multi-chapter fanfics that were ongoing, wrapped up Specialventure in August of 2016 and decided to stay mainly in the RWBY fandom because I felt the RWBY fandom gave me better reader interactions and reviews and such than Pokemon did. Specialventure definitely got the advantage in terms of view count, but the number of views a RWBY chapter would get on the day it got uploaded always baffled me. Then and now... especially since I was never a really big RWBY writer to begin with...

The good reader interaction in RWBY was, of course, until I published the fanfiction that I so very often call the fanfiction that did the worst. My fourth-most favorited (41), my third-most followed (35), my fourth-most viewed fanfiction on the site at the time of writing... Frozen Tears got one review. That was really demoralizing--okay, no, let me rephrase that. It was nice to see the counters of viewership and faves and follows rise up, but FT was definitely the fanfiction that made me realize that an effectively high review counter is what I wanted and that I had to find a new fandom to write for. I am sure a lot of writers can agree with me here: we like it when our fanfics get views, we love it when people fave them, but we absolutely adore it when people leave reviews.

As it so happened, the summer of 2016 was huge for me in terms of finding new franchises to like and watch. Most notably out of these, I got into Railgun, Index, Accel World, and my first of a handful of idol franchises: Love Live. Accel World is the only franchise I just mentioned that I have not written anything for, but fans of the franchise should be able to find plenty of references I made to that show. With both Pokemon and RWBY effectively behind me, I now had options for my third fandom...

Then we arrive in the year 2017, which I think... yeah, in terms of calendar year it was definitely my most memorable year. Let’s start with the fanfiction, because 2017 had a bunch of really notable fics for me.

The first thing of 2017 I want to mention is the Saten Ruiko Day Countdown that I did in 2017: a series of oneshots that would lead up to Saten Ruiko Day (10 March). They weren’t just any oneshots; no, they were all oneshots for a different franchise dedicated to LightZephyr and beta read by Namitaa776 (for those wondering why I didn’t do anything like it for Nami: I did something else for her that I didn’t publish for the whole world to see). Looking back, the oneshots themselves would be... they would be okay... decent... ‘good’ at best, probably. But on top of everything, they would be like a trial run of sorts to test out the different fandoms. Giving me a chance to see how writing for each would go and how the fandoms would react to my writing. The one that did the “best”, so to say, is by far the one for Love Live, but (and this is what is interesting to me) the ones for RWBY and Pokemon were actually the ones I think did the worst (both only receiving a single review). You know... the two fandoms I had already written for... low blow, Pokemon and RWBY, low blow...

But the oneshot I wrote for Love Live isn’t the one that’s most memorable for me. This is because I would receive a certain PM a few months later from BigTAnderson. He wanted to do a fanfiction reading of one my fanfiction for this countdown (A Step Back In The Shadows). And I was really happy with this; not only did somebody else wanted to do something with/for something that I did, but this felt more memorable than an average review of “I LOVE IT!” to me. It was confirmation that I was doing something right. And, unless I am badly mistaken, I think this is the first time somebody would do something with one of my fanfics. I know Reiriniverse would go on to regularly make the cover art for my fanfictions, but I am pretty sure that this fanfiction reading would be the first work based on one of my fanfics that anyone has ever done for me. And that is something one won’t easily forget, so if you miraculously are reading this BigTAnderson: thank you :)

The next notable thing of 2017 is probably my most polarizing act since publishing Night of the Black Sun in 2015: officially moving away from Pokemon and officially joining BanG Dream (not in that order, admittedly). The BanG Dream fandom at the time was only a couple weeks old, but it really was a big contrast to my time in Pokemon Special. In Pokemon Special, as you would already know if you’ve read this far, I had role models. I had people I could follow and learn characterization and figure out story ideas and such by reading their stories. BanG Dream had nothing of the sort. As a matter of fact, I ended up becoming the writer of both the first English published BanG Dream fanfiction on the site (A Step Back, 2 April 2017) and the first published English multi-chapter BanG Dream fanfiction on the site (The Times We Lost, 10 April 2017) during a time period when we still didn’t know much about... I want to say at least a third of the characters at the time? Maybe even half now that I think about it... As a matter of fact, to put it into perspective: the first chapter of TTWL was published (not written, published) before the end of the second in-game event story on the Japanese server (because... we only had the Japanese server back then).

I am not going to be arrogant and say that I hope I can inspire an aspiring BanG Dream fanfiction writer as much as someone like 1358456 has inspired me, but... the realization that I would have to pave my own way in this fandom without having landmarks to aim for was a big deal at the time. Even today, this realization catches me off-guard every once in a while knowing that I am the only BanG Dream writer who published something in 2017 who still publishes on the site for this fandom to this day.

Another big thing that happened in 2017 was that I got admitted to the hospital and would have to spend half a year to recover from it, effectively making me miss out on an entire semester. ...oh yeah, I probably did not mention this before, but the entire period of writing fanfiction for me up to this point was done while I was a full-time university student. This semester off was honestly a blessing in disguise for me as it forced me into a position where I couldn’t do much... so to eat away at the time I needed to rest I would end up writing fanfiction. Which is part of the reason why The Times We Lost and The Times We Lost Collection could be updated and uploaded as fast as they did. And I definitely remember both very fondly, especially since I had to extrapolate a lot of the characters’ characterization as we did not have much to go on. Remember how I mentioned two very notable characters earlier back in FoT? Yeah... my experience with Weiss, Blake, and Neo in my FoT days definitely helped a lot with getting a base going for both Mitake Ran and Aoba Moca in the days before we had their first event story.

As I mentioned earlier, TTWL and, by extension, TTWLC, will always have a big place in my heart. They’re technically an AU where I had to be very careful with how I wrote the characters... at the same time having a ton of freedom to do so as not a lot was confirmed/denied about them. A cute example would be the different hairstyle I had for one of the characters... which ended up becoming confirmed in canon (in a flashback, admittedly) a few months after she appeared with that hairstyle in my fanfiction. TTWL also set the stage, so to say, for my time here in the BanG Dream fandom and it carved my niche as an Afterglow-centric writer who is able to write both fluff and angst for the girls. Not to mention that TTWL was literally the first multi-chapter BanG Dream fanfiction we have on the site.

Collection ended up being written because TTWL had to extrapolate a lot. It had to make this new realm of reality with headcanons and theories and such that went into writing TTWL to try and make the characters feel alive. Some ended up becoming confirmed, some were debunked, but to allow future readers of TTWL to truly understand where I was going and why I wrote the characters the way I did, I knew I had to make a sort-of prequel to TTWL. Which is pretty much what Collection was: a collection of oneshots that were mainly set prior to the events of TTWL to try and explain all the headcanons and theories I ended up using in the TTWL. Most of these, by the way, still live on in other fanfictions of mine to this day.

Next up: 2017 was my first successful attempt at the NaNoWriMo. For people who don’t know, NaNoWriMo involves writing fifty-thousand words in thirty days (equating to an average of 1667 words each day). I wanted to do it for BanG Dream, I really did, but I wasn’t confident I knew enough about the BanG Dream characters at the time to succeed in NaNoWriMo. Instead, I decided to go with something Railgun-based and The Nighttime Terror of Academy City was born. It honestly was so much fun writing that I ended up writing well above the targeted average each day (although I probably will never be able to replicate that effort); writing seventeen hundred, eighteen hundred, at some point even surpassing the twenty-two hundred word count quite regularly, actually. And, while definitely not as bad as Black Sun received a year or two prior, Nighttime Terror also received a bunch of rude reviews. So much, even, that it prompted me to make every guest review have to be moderated first before they get published.

As if all of that wasn’t enough to make 2017 probably the most memorable year for me, the final notable fanfiction for me that got published in 2017... you know it, you were waiting for it to be said... every writer has that one fanfiction that they are more known for than any other fanfiction they have published, and for me... BanG Dream fandom definitely know me as the writer of The Final Glow of Afterglow. A oneshot that aimed to surpass A Silver Lining I published a year and a half ago... and, as the writer of both oneshots, I think it is fair for me to say that it definitely did that. The plot of the two stories are different (they do overlap noticeably), I feel like TFGOA not only left a bigger impact but also has better stats (most notably more reviews) despite being much newer and in a much smaller fandom. I am sure people will associate me most with TFGOA for a long time to come and, honestly... if there is only one of my fanfiction that can survive the tests of time, I sure hope it is TFGOA. TFGOA also stole the title of longest chapter that I published, previously held by RWBY’s White Rose Valentine (jumping from ~7k to ~11k words).

2018 was a lot slower for me mainly because it was my last year in university. I think this was best showcased in the quiet era in the end of 2018 and the fact I had to slow down my third BanG Dream multi-chapter story Scarlet Sunlight. Scarlet, by the way, has a lot of fond memories as well. It was the first time I could really let loose with BanG Dream (aside from TFGOA, of course), while also more or less acting as a FoT 2.0 in a way. It’s also the first multi-chapter fanfiction, since FoT I think, where I had a constant beta reader throughout the entire process. And I feel like that really helped Scarlet shape up into what it is. Am I claiming it is the best BanG Dream fanfiction out there? No, of course not, even Scarlet has its faults. But I think it definitely did well for itself, even compared to my other notable fanfiction I have mentioned already despite being so new. Scarlet managed to break past the coveted 100k word mark (being one of two BanG Dream fanfiction at the time of writing this to achieve this, the other being teawithmugi’s Reign of Silence). It is also my longest fanfiction at the time of writing this, in terms of number of chapters, in terms of word count, and in terms of how long I wrote the story from start to finish. Yeah, Scarlet will always be fondly remembered...

2018 was also the second year in which I did something for Saten Ruiko Day (and so far last year as I missed both 2019 and 2020). Same concept as 2017, effectively, but instead of switching the franchises I tried to do something... interesting (or what I thought was interesting anyway). I knew BanG Dream wasn’t very popular nor had it a lot of fanfiction, and there isn’t much worse than searching for fanworks of your favorite and not running into any. So what I would do was write a oneshot that had two randomly chosen BanG Dream girls, and I would fill up the countdown that way. I literally gave every girl a number and pulled a random number generator to assign each girl with in pairs for the sake of the oneshots. Sure it would still leave out a handful of girls of the franchise but it was the best I could do at the time. It also was a really good experience for me as a writer to try and write so many different characters (especially when, again, we didn’t know too much about them as of yet).

The other notable thing that happened in 2018, I feel, was that it was when I began writing more Shirokane Rinko. I think this is notable for several reasons... first of all, up to that point, I always struggled to write characters who were shy. I always excelled at loner-type characters (Silver of PokeSpe and Blake from RWBY were by far the easiest characters of their respective franchises whom I could write; and before RWBY fans come after me, this is the time before Blake really opened up to the rest of her team. We’re talking V2!Blake here). What I am trying to say is that Rinko was a challenge in and of itself to write, but she’s amongst the characters I am most comfortable writing today.

Secondly, and this is just stroking my own ego to be fair, is that Rinko’s introduction to my fanfics (or, better phrased, the fact that I wrote her more regularly now) came with a very amusing perk. What started as a playful and fun headcanon at the time quickly evolved into a ship that I managed to drag most if not all my regular reviewers into myself. It’s actually kind of amusing looking back on that.

The next year I would describe as “the year I return to the past”... in the sense that I would do things related to things I did in the past, in a way. I published a Pokemon Special oneshot in 2019, something I think a lot of people would have missed as it didn’t do nowhere near as well as l would have expected. I wrote two oneshots specifically to surpass TFGOA (Flying Through The Skies Above and Their First Date in two different “categories”), but neither made as big of an impact as TFGOA did.

Late-ish into 2019, at the end of August, I received a welcome surprise: a five-part ask that basically came down to someone telling me that I did the one thing I always wanted to do: inspire aspiring writers. This was a big moment for me, maybe even bigger than being asked if someone can do a reading of one of my fanfiction, because... it was concrete proof, actual evidence that what I did, that what I produced... it made a positive impact on other people’s lives, it helped make someone’s day brighter just by doing what I do on a daily basis. Flower anon, I have no other way to refer to you or even ask you how you are doing, but if you are reading this: I am honored to be able to inspire you.

The only other thing of note that happened in 2019 was the increase of anon hate I got and that I entered the Akuma no Riddle fandom for a few weeks. A few weeks because my experience with that part of that fandom was... let’s just say it was less than ideal and leave it at that, shall we?

And then, here we are, in 2020. I honestly don’t see myself publishing too many unique stories, but I will try to keep the train going with Shining Sunlight. I am taking a big risk with Shining as it is the first fanfiction since Black Sun where I am writing a multi-chapter story without having a very defined plot... and we all know how Black Sun went, right~? That being said, it’s half a decade later, I have learned so much in these last few years and I am feeling confident in Shining and what it can become.

I know I have focused more on the multi-chapter stories in this post than I have on the oneshots (with some notable exceptions), but the truth is... for me as the writer, there’s just so much that is being put in the multi-chapter stories that the oneshots are simply lacking. Which should speak volumes to oneshots like The Final Glow of Afterglow and A Step Back In The Shadows to remain so memorable and notable for me despite being “only” oneshots.

These last five years have been... amazing, really. The highs and lows, the ability and access to a platform to continue doing this. It’s been a lot of fun, it has really been life changing, and while I know I won’t be doing this forever... I sure as hell will make sure I will enjoy every second of time I am doing this!

#Falneou17

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