Fanfic

I've heard that fanfic is a less scrutinized kind of writing. There's a lot of very young people doing it, a lot of hobbyists and people that are doing it just to do it, so there's less pressure, as a writer, due to the lower quality expectations of the format.

I suppose that makes sense.

That's not the reason, but I did start writing a fanfic. For a long time, probably since I first watched the show as a kid, my favourite Avatar: The Last Airbender character has been Azula. I just love basically everything about her; not on an individual level, necessarily --- she's a violent murderer --- but as a character, she's awesome. However, I don't like seeing people suffer.

Azula really isn't a bad person, despite what I might've said before... She was just raised by a violent, imperialist murderer to be a violent, imperialist murderer. She certainly had some mean streak about her, but I like to believe that overwhelming talent and ambition is something that can be harnessed for good. Moreover, I like to imagine that, given the right circumstances, she could've been swayed to the good side and seen the error of her ways and led a good life, even after doing such terrible things.

I've had this concept in my head of a while of an ATLA AU where there's another character that does that for Azula. A character that plays the role of that kind heart that guides her to righteousness, without letting go of the fire that makes Azula herself. So, I decided to write it!

Wrote the first chapter already, and it was a lot of fun. I basically just sat down and BAM!, wrote all of it. Had to go over it a few times to fix some mistakes and inconsistencies, but it was actually pretty decent. Well, for someone like me that doesn't really write much beyond these posts... I do write other stuff occasionally, though. Meh, I don't think it matters. It's good practice regardless, and I'm letting myself believe that there's no pressure. It's only fanfic, after all!

I don't mean that to say fanfic is an inferior format, of course. It's not.

Actually, my little brother loves fanfic. We used to go on walks during the summer and he'd tell me all about what he had been reading, so I know the plot of a lot of popular fanfics without ever having read them. I'm... Oddly familiar with the genre, for someone so uninitiated. Mostly Harry Potter fics, that's what he likes to read. I believe he still does read them rather often, though he's also into light novels.

Anyway, I'm happy with what I wrote, and I'm excited to write more! I love that I have a firm idea for what I want to happen... I feel like a lot of the storied I come up with are very movie-esque, if that makes sense. I feel like they'd be much better movies than novels. Maybe I'm a very visual thinker. I don't know, I much prefer books than movies, personally, so I think that's kind of a weird thing... Then again, I love YT videos. I don't know.

I'm not sure I mentioned it before, but I started reading Shadow Slave a while ago.

That's it, for today.