In the Beginning

God created the heavens and the earth. And on the earth, there was a little Asian girl in middle school who was bored. 

I found AFF when I was in middle school. I even remember exactly how it happened. I had discovered shipping on youtube through a fan video of 2NE1's Minzy and SHINee's Taemin. Being young and dumb, I immediately took the ship as law and assumed that they were actually in a relationship. Curious, I googled taeminzy to find more facts of their romance. Instead, I found AFF. 

Sometimes, I wonder if I was predestined for AFF or if my fanfic writing was simply a result of chance. Maybe a different person would not have clicked on the link to AFF. Maybe a different person would not have read the fanfiction. Maybe if my parents had loved me more, I wouldn't have started writing fanfics. 

At the time, my standards for what constituted "good writing" were embarrassingly low. If you could put a sentence together in English, you were a good writer. I was also very susceptible to plot cliches. Rich boy meets poor girl and buys her a mansion could whisk me away to faraway lands.

So I started writing fanfiction. I wrote for taeminzy exclusively. And I was elitist. I spent a number of months in lowkey hell. While my writing was average, I was also experiencing the deep emotional crisis of middle school. I hated my writing. And I loved it. And even worse, I pushed it onto other people. My first protagonist was cynical and nasty as hell but also a really sad loner. So you can tell I was not subtle.

I was so angsty you would have thought I spent my weekends smoking cigarettes in my friend's garage while we complained about all the phonies. The phonies!! I hated them. I hated myself. I wouldn't let people forget how conflicted and pained I was.

But when I wrote, I tried. I put in effort. I really wanted to make something new, something captivating, something that could change you. The one thing I never had scorn for was the value of writing. A well-crafted essay or story can really affect a person. You can come away crying or laughing or reflective. There's just something very human about reading and writing and communication in this form that sometimes makes it more genuine than actual face-to-face conversation. Authors don't try to lie to you or convince you of how great they are or the world is or how you should tell your grandmother hello. It is one of our best opportunities for sincere, unencumbered connection.

So I kept at it, and I loved it. 

Even though I was terrible and ppl only commented and subscribed out of pity lol.