If A Girl Girlbosses Alone In The Woods...

When I was younger, the name I used in online spaces was variable. I think there was an era where, on one platform your friend's name is Phantom-Kitten95, and on another they might be TehCupcakes. Maybe things are still this way? I'm not entirely sure. This might be a case where I've changed, not the world.

After I wrote my fanfiction, I got used to having the same name in different places, and I enjoyed very much the feeling of being known, I think. I felt maybe a bit of celebrity?- maybe that feeling of, if someone searched my name, there would be that continuity of an online persona, a continuity of audience, of performance. Maybe I became convinced on staying in character. I did enjoy a feeling, a thought of, "When I am dead and gone, there will be a narrative and I will be known". I think that put me at ease.

But once upon a time, my experience online was simple, playful, and greedy. Some people still dwell here. We'd reach out, lanky children with long arms bulldozing across the web: give me knowledge for its own sake, because I want it: eating with both hands sank deeply into the sand, scooping mouthfuls of ore, golden veins fizzing like popping candy. Now we have seen the cameras. The computer can no longer extend our thoughts, it cannot be our confidant like the journal, our hunger, or the night; it is just another witness.

The larger trends of the past, no matter what they were, did not come from a world where production is paltry. That's what I think, but I know that's naive of me... the uniform glass bead has power. The needle has power.

Part of me rebels to see a past where only certain things were possible: colourfast fabrics, the clothes brighten, people rejoice. The world of today contends with plenty. And we're in doubt of everything. We expect nothing and feel miserably neutral about it. Novelty is still kicking, but she's amorphous, many-pronged, in fact, as she always has been. What am I doing, remaking the American Dream? Do I fear Manifest Destiny, whom has grown far taller, yet far thinner, her thin ribbon-body fluttering through the ocean-tip clouds? In some corners of the world, a house on a far away lane, someone may yet still sleep in silence, less privileged and enmeshed with this thinking doing network. But even so, billions of people now live with an unsatiable appetite.

Without the challenges of making, fashion is reskinned and printing in jelly-dong PVC (those aren't safe by the way). What does it mean? Nothing. How long will it last? A while. Forever.

There are so many intermediate hops between tomorrow and way back when.

Fanfiction

I am more privacy-aware these days, and I consider strongly what is mentioned on this website. Old names, places, and my writing. I dont believe I have mentioned it specifically until now...

I wrote fanfiction for many years. It was a big part of my life, and realistically it still is. It definitively dictated who I am today! I hesitate to disclose this because of how "interconnected" our online identities are.

Don't I deserve an interconnected online personality? Then again, when I was younger, I was content to tell friends screennames as needed. "I am Real," I'd say, and the conversation would end, conditions satisfied.

Now these ideas are unsatisfactory somehow. I oppose them, like my interconnectedness is my entitlement and right. Even if it just exposes me to more issues. Maybe I oppose it because I'm sitting here, tapping my foot, thinking, "I must be known", "Please know me", "If I'm not known, I never was".

I wrote fanfiction from about age 11 or so, for 18 years - with some consistency from about 2013-2020. Now that I am looking at those numbers, that's frightening, isn't it? How on earth did I do that?

I rarely thought about that part. I just did it because I loved it. Now, I write less, but I only write when I am possessed of a genuine passion to do so, which has its upsides and downsides. I am thinking of getting back to it. (I'm editing this post now, and I did get to it...).

My relationship with fanfiction started with Sailor Moon, on Fanfiction.net around 2007 or so. Never uploading, just inspired by what I read, I wrote fanfiction myself in an unending spiel in notebook after notebook; at outings and on sunny days I would fill tomes full of near-death woe-is-me drama, A.K.A. my favourite. In various old pictures of me, at 9 or 10, I pose for a photo with family with my pen pinched in my fingers. In one, the pen is a red biro; how very indiscriminate I once was! A pen was a pen, anything to write the thing down. Jamming spiral bound notebooks beneath the table, writing feverishly on my lap. My parents knew how to pacify me; I was always provided with a new notebook on long trips.

What possessed me to upload my fanfiction? I think for lack of contact with other fans who had seen Sailor Moon in real life, I ended up looking for a like-mind. I remember trying to introduce it to others unsuccessfully (except my younger sister). Maybe I thought that was "what you do"; some part of it was obviously self-expression. Writing fanfiction sustained me.

How strong I was. I poured into that skill, that outlet, this idol of strength and power, nourishment, and I reaped its rewards; all the while I told myself, this thing is keeping me alive; this thing is my balance, the weight that holds the primordial jelly of my spine in its place.

Nothing more exemplifies this for me than the reviews I have seen over the years. Why did I upload my fanfiction? Well, I liked the praise. I loved to write, but there's something very special when you share your writing with someone, and they react in this elated way, this interested way - they are hungry for your writing! Yours!

That feeling, once I'd had it, became everything to me. I felt like I was holding a high-alcohol bottle of perfume; desirable, but if spilled...

Because I had no idea how to be whatever it was people were so excited about! People read my writing with excitement. What were they excited about? I didn't understand. Was it my drama, my plots, or the way I articulated them? It really is too bad, praise is this thing that depends on the feelings of others. We have to learn how to praise ourselves.

I didn't feel comfortable sharing my writing with people in real life - I'd experienced teasing, disbelief. In the way we can perform on stage but struggle through the small talk of life, it was so for my fanfiction; I did not feel self conscious knowing that so many people were reading the work. Something about it was much less intimate.

Upon posting the fanfiction I was met with a kindly and lovely DM from an old friend of mine I won't name. We're just acquaintances now, but I met so many people because of that person, and I love them very dearly. It is a hard thing to let the past go. Fanfiction connected me to so many people!

I can't resent the connections I make just on account of privacy. I think at some point you have to draw the line and just admit defeat, and yeah, I'm defeated, I love to write! Even if an AI scrapes the hell out of what I do, even if it builds some profile of me... I can't really help that I love to be out there and writing. Passion is supposed to work like that - if only passion paid, then I'd be sacrificing all that privacy for something material!

Is that capitalist of me? Oops.

Last modified: July 29, 2026