11-14-18

I'm back!

Hello everyone, I am SOOO sorry for the long hiatus. It's been... *checks notes* Holy shit! It's been two years?!

A lot has changed since then. My final semester in university as a Creative Writing Major was about to start when I stopped writing last, since I wanted to focus all my creative effort on that. It turned out to be the best semester of my entire creative writing major. I learned more in one class, each class, than I had after four years of taking creative writing classes beforehand.

My "Modern British Lit" required class (that I'd put off till the last second since I hate modern lit classes) also made me realize how much I'd internalized. Without meaning to, I'd internalized that only Literature by the proverbial "Old Dead Straight White Men" (Shakespeare, Dickens, Melville, etc) was any "good," and I had to emulate their style to be any good. I also only read Victorian literature for fun, so it bled into my writing. I always felt like my writing had to be long and verbose to be any "good." Boy was I wrong!

You all probably noticed that some of my earlier fics - Alucard and Integra of Neverland, Alucard, etc were copy/pasted from Public Domain literature and I just swapped the characters' names and a few sentences around. (The rest were just scene-for-scene re-tellings of works I'd seen before - Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Sweeney Todd, Repo! The Genetic Opera, Phantom of the Opera, etc.) It worked, but it was dishonest. I'd internalized that my writing was so horrible, the only thing I was good for was combining pre-existing works other people had already made. I'm done with that now.

After university, I was SOOOO burned out I couldn't stand to read or write one word for over six months. My parents cut me off by that point, so I had to go to work, learn to support myself, pay off my student loans. By the time I crawled out of that funk, I'd moved on to other fandoms - Dragon Age, Pillars of Eternity, Star Wars: The Old Republic. I retain a fondness for crossovers and combining fandoms, but not to the degree as before.

Looking back, you've all been such great readers. I look back at all the love, support, patience, feedback, encouragement, and understanding you all gave, and I'm so grateful for it! I literally would never have gotten this far without you. Your love and support succeeded where my confidence failed.

Looking back, you all helped shape my confidence.

Looking back, you all gave way more positive feedback to my few original story ideas rather than my "adaptations of ideas."

My final semester of university was one for ground-breaking epiphanies. "Literature written by old dead straight white dudes isn't inherently better than modern, living, queer, PoC, and/or women writers." "More words are not always better." "Longer is not always better." "I don't need to emulate Victorian literature to be any good." "Both my readers on love my original Blood Innocence fic and my classmates love my original story ideas that I submitted as filler between my 'Real' senior seminar final story better. Maybe my original story ideas are better than I thought?" "Drawing inspiration from pre-existing ideas is fun, copying them wholesale isn't."

Seems obvious now, but never underestimate the power of internalized self-hatred and low confidence.

I can't thank you all enough for all this. Due to your all's love and support, I'm going to try to finish all my WIP's. You all deserve that. _

7-5-16

Good God, it's been years since I first started writing Hellsing fics. I think I was in high school, and now I'm six years into university and feeling burned out over it. I'll admit my enthusiasm for Hellsing has finally burned out too (it only took about eight years), but I still love the characters. Pip x Seras is still one of my all-time favorite fictional couples, and I still enjoy "what if?" Alternate Universe situations where Seras and Dark Walter could end up together.

One thing that's changed is that I'm an avid Dragon Age fan. I've wanted to write several Dragon Age fics for years (at least since summer 2011), but felt it wasn't right starting new DA fics when I still had several Hellsing fan fics waiting in the wings. That's my problem though: I start tons of fics, but I'm not as good about finishing them. Before I start writing, I always have these grand ideas on how it'll go, but once I've actually started I don't like doing the work, plus I feel pressured to make it "perfect," thus the pressure makes writing unfun and thus I don't want to do it. Ugh, I'm so bad about that.

Good news: I fully intend to complete The Little Mermaid: Hellsing Style and Blood Innocence.

Favorite Hellsing Pairings:

Seras x Pip: A thoroughly interesting and tragically unexplored pairing since they're so different and yet so similar. They're naturally good, loyal people, but they have such different upbringings and reactions to those upbringings. She's the daughter of a police officer, he's the son of a mercenary. Her life fell apart when she saw her family get murdered, his view of himself as a good person fell apart when his grandfather revealed he was from a mercenary family. She held onto her morals despite living through one of the worst tragedies imaginable, and he basically resigned himself to being the "scum of the earth" because he took his news of his heritage as a prophecy. And yet, despite it all...

I think Pip x Seras is one of those few examples of "opposites attract" done right. On the surface, they're very different. She's a prude, he's a womanizer. She's high-strung, he's laid-back. She's rather prim and proper while he's rather scruffy and casual. She's shy and submissive while he's very charismatic and assertive. She's... honestly a bit simple (I LOVE her, but she is) while he's damn clever. She's English, he's French. I can go on. But underneath it all, she also has that bit of tomboyish scruffiness while he can also be gentlemanly and charming, so they have some common ground. They have similar core values. At their core, they believe it's wrong to murder innocent people, they will defend and avenge those unjustly targeted (like the victims of Millennium), and they will loyally stand beside and risk their lives for those they love. Also? They just bring out the best in each other. As others have pointed out, Seras brings out Pip's hidden heart of gold, while he brings out her hidden backbone.

Seras x Dark Walter: Second favorite pairing. I'll admit this doesn't stem from much, other than they look really good together and share a tender moment in volume/OVA 9. I think it's worth exploring though because they also have a subtle "opposites attract" theme that doesn't clash too much. She's sweet, warm, caring, rather uncultured and of course a bit of a tomboy. He seems cold, distant, taciturn, but also very cultured and refined. I think it's fun to explore because they were both such spitfires when they were kids, and clearly bring out good qualities in each other when he's "Dark Walter." She brings out his deeply buried kindness and the kind Walter she remembers compels her to try to reach out to him by wishing him good luck. And he doesn't bite her head off for trying the way Alucard does. It's worth exploring in an AU.

I've lost motivation for the others. While I like Seras x Captain in theory, I haven't been able to think of a proper story that doesn't feel forced or contrived. I don't like Integra x Alucard enough to write about them (plus, they have PLENTY of talented authors to explore their relationship), nor pretty much any of the other characters. Sorry everyone.