Tippetarius

Hello! This journal is where I ramble about things like my Skyrim fanfic, journaling, books, games, or whatever else my brain decides to fixate on at the moment. I like sharing things that seem fun or cool or potentially helpful.

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Last revised: February 1, 2023

Challenge #2

In your own space, talk about your fannish history.

Sonic the Hedgehog was my first obsession. Well, the first obsession that led to fannish activity. I played the Sonic games for the Sega Genesis, bought Archie Comics' issues of Sonic the Hedgehog, watched the Sonic Saturday morning cartoon (Sonic SatAM), and created my own little Sonic website on GeoCities. Sonic is basically the reason I learned HTML.

There were other fandoms over the years, but mostly I lurked. I remember something of LiveJournal's heyday in the early and mid 2000s, because that was the place to go if you wanted to read Lord of the Rings fanfic.

About five years ago, my husband bought a copy of Morrowind for me. I like playing old games sometimes, and he thought I would enjoy Morrowind not only because of the fantasy setting, but also because you can "mod" it. I had never before played a game that you can overhaul to your liking, and I was hooked. I downloaded a bunch of other people's mods to make Morrowind a little prettier and more fun to play, but the best was Kateri's Julan Ashlander companion mod. Julan's story is woven into the main quest in a way that feels natural, and over time he changes and grows as a person. Julan isn't optional for me; if he isn't in my game, then Morrowind is missing a piece of its soul.

Then I moved on to Skyrim. While I think Morrowind has a better story and atmosphere, Skyrim is my go-to Elder Scrolls game. It's fun, it doesn't demand much from my brain, and there are tons of mods for it. There's a lot about Skyrim I can criticize, but the flaws are probably part of what compelled me to write fanfic about it in the first place. I almost look at fanfic as a form of modding, which is all about making the game more what YOU want it to be.

One of my must-have mods for Skyrim is Kris Takahashi's Interesting NPCs (also called 3DNPCs). It adds tons of voiced NPCs to the world, although I mostly keep it installed for a handful of characters like Rumarin. I like having him around, and he has a lot of fun lines. But the thing about Rumarin is that he's almost never serious, and his constant humor starts feeling like a front for something he doesn't want you to know. It's like you never truly get to know him. I wanted to get to the bottom of this and find out who this guy really is, and the only way I could do that was by writing a story about him. That's how The White Phial came to be, the first in a Skyrim fanfic series that I've been working on since 2016. I'm a very slow writer, unfortunately... but so far I'm persistent.

That brings us to now. I'm still trying to finish writing that series, and my husband beta reads my work. Proofreading and catching typos is the least of what he does; I rely on his feedback on whether the characters feel authentic, whether the situations make sense, and whether the story is headed in a good direction. The final results carry a lot of his influence.

I have to say that certain fandoms have helped shape me into who I am today. And that's likely to continue.