U N D E R    C O N S T R U C T I O N

        Name: Kara
        Gender: Female
        Age: 17
        Location: Western Australia

FICTION/ORIGINAL WORKS

Reading
    Blah blah blah...

 

Writing
    Blah blah blah...

FANDOM

Reading
    I started to get into fan fiction when I was almost fourteen. I was searching Harry Potter quizzes on Google (because I was, y'know, very cool at that age) and I stumbled upon a fanfic called Draco Malfoy, the Amazing Bouncing...Rat? by a girl called Maya. It was probably the best way I could have been introduced to fan fiction. I do remember thinking that I didn't really want Draco to end up with Hermione, but it was just so *good* that I also half didn't care. I *still* recommend it regardless of the pairing. It wasn't until a little later that I got into fan fiction. I was still searching quizzes when I stumbled across the fic that *really* started to unravel the big, wooly ball of Meant To Be -- Underwater Light, again, by Maya of FictionAlley. This time it was Harry/Draco and I was overwhelmed. It was *perfect*. After that, I just knew I needed to read more of this wonderful new discovery. I found fanfiction.net and I was on my way. 
    I didn't read anything except Harry Potter fan fiction for a long time. I think it took me over two years to get out of that phase. The way I saw it was that it would be too hard to write fan fiction for a type of text beside the written, but, finally, upon discovering the ULTIMATE COOL that was One Piece, I spread my wings a little and realised it wasn't as bad as I'd thought -- in fact, some of it was damn amazing. So I spread a little more. Began to see more fandoms and slash pairings I'd like to read about. And it just kept going from there.

 
Writing
    Beginning to write wasn't anywhere near as pleasant. 
    I'd dabbled with Mary Sue's in the past -- before I'd even started reading fan fiction. I had few ideas, nothing all that solid, but there were three main ones. 
The first, one I tried to write about and post to fanfiction.net (I never did, mind you, because I didn't know *how*), was friends with Draco Malfoy. She wasn't exceptionally pretty or exceptionally *anything* really, but she did have a fairly tragic experience involving Lucius Malfoy and Polyjuice Potion which lead to her believing Draco tried to rape her. And the romance was *somehow* meant to evolve from there. But the fact that I couldn't post the story discouraged me a little and I ended up giving up on the idea anyway.
After that, I decided that the stories were my *personal* fantasies, not something to splash all over the internet, and kept them to myself for the nights I couldn't get to sleep. The second was in the Harry Potter fandom again. She was Draco's lost-lost twin and she *was* exceptionally pretty. I don't think she actually had a love interest though. Unless it was Zacharias Smith. It might have been. I do remember that she was a total bitch to *everyone*. 
The third was in the Lord of the Rings fandom, which still confuses me. I was never an avid fan. I had a very brief fling with Merry/Pippin, but I traipsed back to Harry Potter pretty damn quickly. Anyway, she was also exceptionally beautiful. Occasionally, I paired her with Aragorn, but most of the time she was an elusive half-elf with black and purple hair who rode around on a faithful steed comparable to Black Beauty and Did Good (Usually). 
    The first real fan fiction I started were all Harry/Draco. I still love the ideas I had for them, but the actual writing was...urgh. No. Yuck. Doesn't bare thinking. It was all "funny" dialogue and no descriptive writing or character development and what there was, was atrocious at best. I was writing mainly for humour back then; I didn't like angst because, God forbid, it made me *cry* and I just wasn't into serious stuff. Nowadays, of course, I'm a lot better about those kinds of things. I'm still touchy about reading angst when there are other people in the room because I remember being completely caught off guard by the sadest fan fiction *ever* and bawling my eyes out -- wasn't with company though; that could have been awkward. 
    When I realised how much I was growing to loathe what I'd written, I stopped. I deleted them. I stuck to just reading for a while. Then Blaise and Neville whisked their way under my nose with so much potential and so few fics and I got enthusiastic about writing again.

    Writing, though my enthusiasm waxes and wanes, is a passion of mine. I love the sound of the keys when I'm typing so fast I can barely keep up with my fingers, I love the way a finished piece looks, I love the smell of fresh ink on paper. I like to think that writing will be my future, that I'll be able to support myself eventually without needing another [steadier] income. In fact, come university next Autumn, I hope to be starting English at the University of Western Australia.

My Fandoms
    Unfortunately, many of the fandoms I love the most dearly  aren't bursting at the seams like my first. In fact, most are tiny, little fledglings  with hardly a decent fic to their names, but, while it's a little off-putting because I enjoy looking at others' interpretations of characters and pairings before I have a go at it myself, I can't give up on them.

Pairing/Shipping
    I grew up in a very different environment to most people I know and I think that's something that has really affected my opinions in real life and when I first entered fandom communities. I can't remember a single moment in my life where I was told expressedly what to believe in or how to act; my mother let me develop those opinions on my own and I adopted very open-minded ideas about most things. This means, when it comes to the types of stories I read and write, I have quite a large comfort zone. I am just as content to write a story depicting the romance between two men, two women, or a male with a female.