rionaleonhart | I'm Going To Kill You, Edgar.

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/527137.html

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I'm Going To Kill You, Edgar.

Once again, I find myself compelled to ramble about something nobody's heard of, just when my journal was in danger of becoming accessible. A seventeen-year-old fic should do it.

Ginger: Are you okay? You've spent a lot of today just lying in bed, staring at your phone.
Riona: I've been reading a fic I loved as a teenager! It's about a guy falling into a reluctant friendship with a serial killer while arguing with the dark reflection of himself who lives in his mind.
Ginger: ...yes, that does sound very you.

It's strange to go back to something you loved at a formative age and realise how much it influenced your tastes.

I've been rereading

zarla's Vargas, a Johnny the Homicidal Maniac fic I first read when I was fifteen. I have never read so much as a page of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac itself. But I read this fic, and I loved it intensely.

And, on this reread, I've noticed a lot of themes that I've been drawn to in fiction ever since. The self-loathing protagonist has an intense, unhealthy, antagonistic, sexually tinged relationship with a duplicate of himself who may or may not be imaginary; there are so many things I love in that one sentence! (Other fictional themes I love in here: intense relationships with a constant undercurrent of distrust or fear, massive levels of repression, a strangely thin line between love and murder.)

(Just as a heads-up if you're checking it out: the fic is long, violent and unfinished, and it was written between 2003 and 2015, so there's some of the natural development of style you'd expect from a fic written over the course of twelve years.)

Vargas really had an impact on me, I've come to realise. It didn't seem right that I'd never mentioned it here. So I thought I'd give it a quick salute in this entry. THANKS FOR SCREWING ME UP, ZARLA.

And now I've got to resist the temptation to write about Scriabin, because writing fanfiction about someone else's OC for a canon I've never consumed would be ridiculous.

I mean, yes, I technically have done that before. Shhh.

I'm curious now: what are the works of fiction you'd consider particularly influential in forming your tastes? In my case, apart from Vargas, the biggest ones are probably Animorphs, Life on Mars and Silent Hill 2. Animorphs also had a heavy impact on my writing style.

(I've asked the same thing over at

fictional_fans, a general fandom discussion community, if you'd prefer to answer there.)

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I've also been going back to my roots and reading fanfic that I last read as a teen. It's weird to look back on some of it, now being nearly 30. Some of the writing styles stand up, and some don't. I ofted used to themed read in a fandom - so I look back at my alerts, and I can see the themes I was on at the time. The theme I'm looking back on actually seems to mirror yours quite nicely: it's variations of Voldemort finding out that Harry is a Horcrux, or AUs wherein diary!Tom Riddle sticks about. I think this particular themed read at the time came from the rather famous Harry Potter fic, The Secret Diary, which was Ginny's correspondence with Tom Riddle in his diary. I remember finding that fascinating, because they had a perfect blend of "Well, I can see how Ginny read this benevolently" while a lot of what he says is actually quite ominous. Getting that dual meaning across is hard. (I've not got to that again on my reread yet - looking forward to it, but it was one of those fics where I couldn't read anything for a while after as I felt nothing would be as good. Don't want to burn out.)

I'm going to split your question into two:

What works were particularly influential on my writing style?

I don't write much these days, and for many, many years I had quite a dry writing style. I'd typically try and mirror a canon style where I could (probably why I did so much book fiction, easier to emulate) but I didn't really have a strong preference. And then along came Chuck Palahniuk's books. I was really fascinated by the way he used language. He frequently writes with repeated refrains that come to have meaning (as I recall, Lullaby has the "And I'm counting 1, counting 2, counting 3" to rein in the rage - it's a book whose protagonist is an accidental serial killer when he thinks certain words, Fight Club has the "You wake up in ____" which initially seems to be nods to the protagonist's insomnia, but takes on a different meaning later on). He sometimes does a random second person switch, as you see up there. And it was the first time I'd ever been into how something was written.

Other than that, Warchild by Karin Lowachee - my absolute favourite book series. I wonder where I'd be if I hadn't picked it up for a short lived online book club? I love, love, love her writing style. Despite everything being so impressively Karin, her different protagonists all sound quite different. She remains the only person I've ever seen to hold a sustained second person narrative (about 30-40 pages of it). This is definitely where I got my second person fondness, where I saw that if you use it well, it's bloody good. But when it's used badly, it's awful. I could wax lyrical about Karin for days.

I'll link 2 short vignettes as an example, in 2 totally different styles: https://warchilduniverse.tumblr.com/post/55589890218/vignette-2

https://warchilduniverse.tumblr.com/post/57037024818/vignette-3

So with all that, I built up a writing style preference. I love language, and I'm more interested in how I'm telling a story than the story I'm telling sometimes.

What works of fiction were particularly influential in forming my tastes?

This is an interesting one. Maybe I need to go back where I picked up some themes from?

The Mediator was a big formative piece of fiction for me. I think it's where my love of the supernatural comes from, it was also one of my first forays into fanfiction, though I deleted quite a lot of it a long time ago - still some remains, however.

Maybe I should put Warchild on here again, for the interest in trauma, and people affected by trauma?

I'm also very fond of urban fantasy now - that came from the Demon's Lexicon series. I originally picked it up as the writer used to write HP fanfic, and their narrative/writing ability was really much better than the normal fare. Then I fell in love with the story. I think this is also where my like for unreliable narrators comes from.

Trying to work out where my time travel love came from. Possibly Quantum Leap, though it's not like most time travel narratives? Or maybe a consequence of growing up on Doctor Who reruns!

I'm sure there's more I'm just not thinking of in the moment, so may come back with more.

-timydamonkey

Fight Club is the only Palahniuk book I've read, but I really loved the narrative style; I thought it was absolutely stunning. Good writer to have as an influence!

Second person really is tough. I've only attempted second-person fanfiction five times, I think, in nearly twenty years of writing. There was a span of about fourteen years, between 2004 and 2018, where I didn't write anything in the second person at all, and then I got a Deltarune fic idea and nothing but second person felt right. I felt very selfconscious about writing it.

and I'm more interested in how I'm telling a story than the story I'm telling sometimes.

This is a really interesting approach.

I also investigated The Demon's Lexicon because of the author's Harry Potter fanfiction! It's been a long time, but I do remember that it had interesting ideas.

I think with second person it can very easily outstay its welcome, and you have to treat it very differently to how you'd write regular narrative. I think that, with purpose for it being there, it can be good.

To use two examples: So, like I said, Karin wrote about 30-40 pages of second person. That is part 1 of the first book of Warchild. It is entirely second person except for the last line: "That was all that I remembered about Falcone. It was enough." (Is it bad when I can do all of these quotes without looking them up?) It gives a very purposeful distance to a story of a boy who experiences all the adults he knows dying, all the kids getting kidnapped, and his time there, as well as his escape. He's about eight years old at this point, as I recall. Even when you get out of the second person later, there is a clear reluctance to speak about any of it and a need to totally distance himself from that past. So it works very, very well because second person creates that distance, and a kind of dream-like quality.

I wrote a second person story for uni, as well - it's the highest mark I received for any of my creative pieces. What I was doing at the time was playing about with the complaints about second person fiction: that need to fight, say, "You got up? No, I didn't". So I wrote about a person who was being possessed and experiencing that degree of their body being puppeteered against their will; so in that sense, the second person aligned the reader along with the narrator quite nicely. Was really good fun, but very hard to sustain.

Weirdly, my Deltarune fic was also about the protagonist's body being puppeteered against their will! I suppose it really is a good theme for second person. The idea of using it for distancing is also interesting; I can see how that would work.

In terms of how to tell a story being more important than what story I'm telling sometimes, I bring to you this evidence of me looking back at some old story plans. Now my definition of a story plan is not most people's; it's like an insane looking ramble. Heavy Rain was one of my big fandoms back in the day, so here you go:

"“Positive” hallucinations, and then talk about enhancing reality. Before or after the insidious line? Maybe start with an “It’s addictive”, before after this we get to “It’s insidious” – possible syntactic parallelism with first line, “There’s an even lesser known fact…”.

It’s insidious. It snakes its way into the mind and wraps itself around so subtly that it’s hard to notice at first… until it constricts. (May need revising.)

Sacrifices (sanity?) for the greater good.

Not about downgrading symptoms/side effects, it’s simply… (Tripto).

Bleeding off one addiction with another. Triptocaine, ARI.

Taint/stains on the Earth (ARI evidence)."

-

I like to think anyone looking up my fic notes ever would just be like "....?????". What's the plot of this fic? Something to do with addiction. But first, let's look at how we will get across some concepts in a literary way! I don't know where I wanted to go with this, but I can see the dream-like quality I wanted to write it in.

Oh, this is fascinating! I've occasionally made notes of the points a fic's plot needs to address, but I don't think I've ever made notes about stylistic details beyond, say, considering which perspective to write in.

I said I’d work out some more formative fandoms I’d forgotten about, and I have! This time, it’s a fanfic author: Silver Pard.

Silver Pard is one of my absolutely favourite fanfic writers. They’re one of those people whose stuff is just always on point, no matter what fandom they’re writing in.

I think part of my love for the introspective, for odd point of views, and definitely some writing style in particular comes from Eidolon, which remains one of the most fascinating and original pieces of Final Fantasy 7 fanfic I’ve ever seen. It’s primarily narrated by a dead Zack, from the life stream, and it’s a mix of his commentary on what’s become of the living characters, memories of what’s been before, and some interaction between him and several other dead people in the lifestream. It was pre-Crisis Core, when we really no characterisation for Zack, and while he’s bitter, he’s very, very real. I love the way the narrative is crafted.

Other noteworthy stories are insurgere, a one-shot where Tom Riddle is the most terrifying Hufflepuff of all time (it’s a concept that should not work, but really, really does), and Redivivus, which is a Death Note AU where after the events of the original series, Light has to go back in time (right back to being a baby, but with full awareness of the first time) and save as many lives as he killed the first time around. Again, this concept really shouldn’t work, but it does because Light is still very, very much Light. I also really appreciate the look at Sachiko that it gives. And Rewrite, which I love despite not even liking Batman, because the Joker POV is amazing (also a one-shot). I think some of it is, again, that admiration for being able to write totally different narrative styles and from many different POVs: compare Eidolon, to Redivivus, to Rewrite, and it’s hard to see it’s the same author.

I really admire Karin Lowachee's prose – I'm not usually that interested in style (or maybe that just says something about the style I prefer), but I feel like her writing manages to be very evocative without sacrificing directness.

Yes! This, definitely!

Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar was a big one for me. It was the first time I'd encountered a gay character (or one I realized was gay, at least, I was a dense, sheltered, oblivious little squirt in my youth, so I'm sure many just went over my head. I literally thought, the first time I read The Last Herald Mage, that guys who love guys were as much a part of the fantasy/fictional world as the magic horses were.) and just everything about the blend of high fantasy and interpersonal relationship drama, characters reacting in ways that felt pragmatic and sensible, having real conversations about feelings, and not always getting their happily ever afters, even if of course the stories always ended satisfactorily... That was all hugely influential. But mostly the gay guys and the magic horses. :D

I laughed aloud at 'But mostly the gay guys and the magic horses.' I can respect that!

P.S. I should read Vargas. I love Zarla's storytelling through comics, and I was super into JTHM when I was in my edgy goth phase. I bet I'd like it.

Zarla's fanfiction and fanart and comics have been a presence for pretty much my entire online life; her Pokémon fanfiction was actually the reason I first started writing, back in 2000, so I've been following her work for about twenty years now. I'm so glad she's still in fandom.

I hope you enjoy it, if you do read it! I wonder how different the experience is if you're familiar with JTHM.

I think that both Discworld and David Eddings' Mallorean have influenced in my tastes in that I definitely prefer things that do not take themselves too seriously.

I think that's a preference I share, actually. I like things that are simultaneously dark and ridiculous; it's harder (but not impossible) to make me warm to things that are dark and straight-faced.

I mean, if I'm going to read scatching socio-economic critique I want some jokes to go with it.

I've been rereading zarla's Vargas, a Johnny the Homicidal Maniac fic I first read when I was fifteen. I have never read so much as a page of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac itself. But I read this fic, and I loved it intensely.

Ooh, I read that! It's a good fic! I didn't realize it was started that long ago!

I'm curious now: what are the works of fiction you'd consider particularly influential in forming your tastes? In my case, apart from Vargas, the biggest ones are probably Animorphs, Life on Mars and Silent Hill 2. Animorphs also had a heavy impact on my writing style.

The Lord of the Rings and Aeon Flux. Probably also Twin Peaks. I read a lot of Harlan Ellison short stories when I was in high school, and that gave me a whole new understanding of what written fiction could do.

I had no idea you'd read Vargas! But it makes sense; it's definitely dark and awful and fascinating in a way that seems like it might appeal to you.

I've never seen Twin Peaks, but I've always vaguely felt that I should have. I know it influenced Silent Hill 2.

I think you'd enjoy it! If there's a good way to watch Twin Peaks, definitely check it out.

Curiously enough, I think mine is probably also a fanfiction, because the OFUM had a huge impact on the way I think about stories. While looking back it seems ridiculous that I should owe so much credit to a story that was built around shitting on other people's fun, it was the first time I stopped and looked at the stories I was creating as stories, rather than just me pretending things in my head. I already liked writing and knew I wanted to be a writer, but even with the things I literally wrote down I never thought of it as a story or something to be properly constructed.

(The first story I tried to write, at eleven, was just a cooler, wittier version of me, two sock puppets of people I knew, and my self insert's twin brother who was a little closer to who I actually was, though I didn't know it at the time. "My female wish-fulfillment self-insert's male counterpart who is a lot more like me" would be a theme I'd carry with me for a very long time*. The monster characters, because this was a blatant Digimon ripoff, were all based on toys I had, and my self-insert's monster partner was both the most generic cartoon animal sidekick character ever, and the only monster partner I bothered to develop.)

*I stopped doing the more accurate male counterparts when I 1, realized I was in fact my own male counterpart, and b, realized self inserts are more fun when they're absolutely ridiculous. The only wish-fulfillment I make self-inserts for now is for pretend boyfriend smooching, though with those I run the risk of accidentally developing him to proper oc levels and then making a new oc based on said pretend boyfriend and moving them into my original work.

Oh, wow, I haven't thought about the OFUM in so long! It's true that it came out of a culture of 'no, you're having fun wrong', but I do remember it being a fun thing in itself.

I just checked my review history on fanfiction.net, and I found the VERY EMBARRASSING review I left on it when I was fourteen:

How can I write a review that would do this work of genius justice? This is, quite simply, the most brilliantly funny thing I have ever read. I... I... *tries to think of something appropriately complimentary to say* There isn't a word for how incredible this is, so I'll just say - it's better than setting your own army of Mini-Balrogs on the person you hate the most. VIVA LA OFUM! ^_^

oh nooooooooo

The first story I tried to write, at eleven, was just a cooler, wittier version of me, two sock puppets of people I knew, and my self insert's twin brother who was a little closer to who I actually was, though I didn't know it at the time.

This is delightful. I really hope they were actual sock puppets.

Unfortunately, fandom hasn't changed much, just now they couch it in moral debates instead of getting uppity about the source content.

Oh no, that's delightful! Fortunately I didn't have an account on ffn until after the ofum had ended so I never actually left a review, but if I had mine would have been just as ridiculous.

I was not cool or self aware enough to write literal sock puppets into my stories. I don't know if adult me would do that either; it'd be so far into self aware that it was in danger of swinging back around to meet itself going. (I would, however, have literal sock puppet characters, if I thought I could do something fun with it.)

The first story I tried to write, at I think eight or nine, was a lady with an incredibly fancy name just getting into endless dramatic traps that she had to escape by doing action things. It started with her rescuing a unicorn in a net, and then a pit trap, and spikes, and snakes, and ninjas, and all kinds of things.

About a page in, I ran into the problem of having no actual plot and ran out of ideas.

Why are everyone else's "my first story" stories so much more interesting than mine? I would love to see a series of escalation anecdotes of a fancy lady having dramatic, over the top shenanigans!

I feel like with a good sense of humor and some actual description, rather than rushing from one event to the next, it could be good!

That sounds kind of amazing.

My first story was about a girl who drew pictures that came to life. It was called Staff of Cyreme. What exactly is the Staff of Cyreme? Your guess is as good as mine, I don't think I ever got that far. It might have been set in a world called Cyreme? I dunno.

I remember showing it to my dad. Years later, if I admit to writing anything, he always asks, "How many people died this time?", lol.

Good title, though!

hmm, that’s a good question. the two that immediately spring to mind are the Bartimaeus Trilogy, by Jonathan Stroud, and Homestuck.

i read the Bartimaeus books in... elementary or middle school (i should reread them sometime.) the thing i have since credited them with is potentially influencing my interest in bodysharing. (emphasis on sharing — i’m less interested in standard possession.) i’m not like, totally sure it was the Bartimaeus series that gave me this inclination, but it is a pretty major thing in book 3 (Ptolemy’s Gate) and it’s the earliest fiction-i-liked i can think of that features it. i’ve since written more than a few fics featuring bodysharing (though only some of them wound up being posted); in fact, i believe my very first fic on ao3 has it.

this also may be related to my interest in mind-melding, or really any telepathic contact where the boundaries between Mind A and Mind B are fuzzy in some way. delicious.

Homestuck i first got into in 8th grade, and it’s pretty clearly what got me so comfortable with 2nd person POV. i’ve written it a few times, and i like reading it, too. i also enjoy Homestuck’s hate-romance, though i think i liked rival-ships even before Homestuck.

hmm. what else? i first got into Danganronpa in, idk, 10th grade? not sure if that’s early enough to be considered formative, but i have certainly enjoyed other games that hit on similar themes (“characters forced into a death game:” Zero Escape, Your Turn To Die. “solve murder mysteries and prove people wrong:” Ace Attorney.)

oh, and i’m not entirely sure how formative Order of the Stick was for me (though it was the second fandom i ever wrote or read fanfic for, in 7th grade, so there are good odds), but at the very least, it featured the first genderqueer/nonbinary character i can remember encountering in fiction-i-liked (the androgynous, genderqueer elf Vaarsuvius.) i wouldn’t figure out i was trans for many years after, but Vaarsuvius was always my favorite. i wrote a few fics for the Genderqueer Fanfic Fest in 2013, including one about Vaarsuvius, still with no idea i was trans, come to think of it.

Bodysharing is something I love as well, and, again, it's something I think I might be able to credit the fic I'm rereading with! A lot of it focuses on the protagonist's weird relationship with a sarcastic, vicious, insecure entity who lives in his head, which is a concept I love an unreasonable amount. I can definitely see the influence in fics I've written, both recently and back when I originally read Vargas.

Homestuck is such a strange, interesting thing. It's hard for me to imagine reading it as young as you did; it's so wilfully convoluted! I read it in my twenties and I still couldn't really get my head around half of it, although I did love the character interaction.

bodysharing! so fun :D

well, with homestuck it probably helped that it wasn’t as convoluted back when i was in 8th grade, bc at that point it was only like, a year or so into the comic (i caught up near the beginning of Act 5 Act 2), so from then on complexity was added only gradually!

*ponders*

Simple question, but ... complicated answer. Many influences, different ones for each era of my reading and writing. The biggest overall is unquestionably Elfquest by Wendy and Richard Pini. I was probably a little too young to be reading that when I first found it, but it had everything I still hold as my gold standard: a full range of emotions, from anger to love to grief, all treated with respect; a willingness to have multi-layered characters and be unafraid to show both what was wonderful and what was ugly about all of them; an unwillingness to shy away from sensuality and intimacy. So many things.

Oh, and most of the cast was bisexual. That was lovely, too. :-D

Elfquest was a big one for me, too!

haha, i think i read elfquest (the first few volumes, anyway) around 5th grade. i def remember sitting in like, science class, secretly reading it under my desk because i had already read the textbook, and going "uhh... um. maybe i shouldn't have brought this to school. oh dear."

I've never read Elfquest, but 'a willingness to have multi-layered characters and be unafraid to show both what was wonderful and what was ugly about all of them' does sound wonderful.

I talked about exactly this during the fandom snowflake challenge :D in short: Princess Mononoke, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Final Fantasy VI, and 1984.

Specifically regarding fanfiction, I remember years ago finding this explicit fic about Garnet/Beatrix from FFIX. It was a smutty oneshot, but the author then wrote a multichapter sequel addressing Garnet's and Beatrix's relationship post-canon and dealing with things like Zidane and Steiner along with, you know, trying to rebuild Alexandria and keep doing their duties while maintaining their relationship. It was a fic I didn't know I needed and warmed my queer heart when I was struggling with my identity. Sadly, I think it's been deleted from the face of FFN, because I've made several dumpster dives trying to find it in the past years and no luck :(

But whoever wrote that? I hope they know those were my favorite fics of all time.

princess mononoke!!! princess mononoke is my favorite film, of all time. my dad first showed it to me when i was... idk, somewhere between 6 and 8? and i’ve loved it ever since. just listening to the soundtrack can make me cry.

SAME!!! Isn't it amazing?! :D When my mom rented it for me, I must've watched it twelve times before we returned it. So damn good!

Utena's a great thing to be inspired by! I'd love to rewatch it at some point, but nobody's ever licensed it for the UK, so there's no legal way I can do that, and my days as a pirate are behind me. Maybe one day it'll officially reach these shores.

It's always sad when something that resonated with you just vanishes from the Internet. I hope you're somehow reunited with those Garnet/Beatrix fics someday!

Another Utena fan! Yay! :D ugh, that really sucks about no license for it in the UK :( I also hope it officially reaches you! I rewatch try to rewatch the movie a couple times a year along with my favorite episodes from the series.

If I ever find those Garnet/Beatrix fics, I'm going to scream with glee :D :D :D many thanks!

OOP WHAT A LOADED QUESTION.

I'll make it very short. Silent Hill 1 through 4 more or less formed my taste and gave me a concrete idea on HOW to write and build world. Everything has a meaning, even if it doesn't, you can make a meaning out of it. The effort put behind it is a baffling one. It's inspiring, and I think I always look at works that have that same amount of passion for art.

There's a fanfic I absolutely adored and got me back into writing. I don't remember what it was called, but I remember it was for the Kpop fandom and the story was lengthy but very concise and cohesive. It wasn't a super fantastical story, either, it was just simple but done with so much love. The very next day I finished reading it I remember the story got deleted, and I happened to find out that said author had passed away. I think the story was a great one, albeit mundane, but the author had a way of selling that story with such a charm that just changed the way I wrote and read from then on. A pity I could never thank the author personally.

It's kind of amusing how someone's writing can really shift you and how author's sometimes don't quite grasp the magnitude of that at times.

Silent Hill's worldbuilding really is fascinating. I used to read so much theorising about the symbolism of Silent Hill 2. I actually played it in the first place because I heard that the enemies symbolised the protagonist's issues and went 'wait, what, that's way more interesting than I expected; I thought these games were just "kill the scary things"!'

That's a heartbreaking story. I'm glad that, while they were here, that author was able to create something that had such an impact.

Oh man, what a good discussion topic!

Gargoyles - This show was what began my love affair with fantasy elements in a futuristic (or at least contemporary) settings. It spoiled me with longterm storytelling, well-rounded characters, compelling and likeable antagonists, a diverse cast, consequences, reasonable aesops, Shakespeare characters because why not... it was So Much for little me. It set a high standard of quality storytelling that I either expect everything I consume to reach or will happily rip it apart if it does not. You would think it would not be difficult to surpass a children's show with a twenty minute run time. However!

The love of fantasy elements in sci-fi settings has stayed with me to this day. A fantasy setting by itself needs a strong story or well-rounded characters to keep me invested; a fantasy setting that's actually post-apocalyptic sci-fi in disguise? Sign me up, I don't care if everything else about it completely falls apart (also known as Attack on Titan).

When I was a kid, I also read a lot of Lois Duncan and Christopher Pike (to the point where I knew of the latter as an author before a Star Trek character, and only learned a few years ago that his pen name was deliberately picked in reference) - and that shit was dark for a nine year-old. In fact, I remember showing some friends a passage in one particular Lois Duncan book concerning feminism in the seventies and they were scandalised--I didn't realise it at the time but it was basically a rape scene and involved some tongue gore. Christopher Pike, on the other hand, was very much bad end supernatural on a world-ending scale. It was all very bleak and hopeless and basically forced me to reconcile the insignificance of my own existence at a very young age. With all this in mind, I shouldn't wonder why I'm constantly searching for the most brutal horror and throw myself headlong into dark themes!

I'm sorry I took so long to respond to this!

It's interesting to hear about Gargoyles! I heard it mentioned a lot on the Internet when I was younger, but I never had a clear idea of what it was. (I just looked up pictures, and EVERYONE'S SO BUFF.)

I don't care if everything else about it completely falls apart (also known as Attack on Titan).

Ha! I watched the entire first series of Attack on Titan, always hoping it'd live up to the promise it had shown in the early episodes, and it never quite did. I did love Jean, though.

Late but I just love this prompt.

Kaikamahine is a dear friend and formative influence; I've known her since I was 14 and she's everything I want to be tbh re: telling stories about the mundane lives of people but, like, with Themes and Purpose, maaan.

The other big ones are probably all from when I was a kid: seconding K.A. Applegate only with Everworld and Remnants instead of Animorphs, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' Kiesha'ra books, and I'd be lying if I didn't include Persona 2: Eternal Punishment aka "Joke's on you, life doesn't make sense when you're a grown-up either."

For fic, I also learned a lot from augustbird, I love her sparse prose and emotional range, and hollycomb, who's great at plotty ensemble fic.

Hey, I also have fic-author friends who influenced me and who I've kept in touch with since I was fourteen! Maybe fourteen is just the age at which you meet your fanfiction influences. I'm always going to be grateful to the Internet for all the cool people it's introduced me to.

aka "Joke's on you, life doesn't make sense when you're a grown-up either."

I haven't played any Persona games, but this made me grin.

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I'm Going To Kill You, Edgar.

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