emmagrant01 | My Fan Fiction Cherry (Reply)

I've seen this meme going around in the last week and meant to do it, but now I have no idea where I saw it. At any rate, it went something like this:

What was the first piece of slash fan fiction you ever read? How did you react to it?

I actually wrote a lot of fanfic as a kid, and I didn't know other people did it. I thought it was just me! As an adult, I started a lot of Star Wars EU fics (mostly Luke/Mara) that never went anywhere, but I was compelled to write them, just as I felt compelled to write Misty of Chincoteague when I was 8 and Duran Duran fanfic when I was 13. During a particularly difficult month in college, I became obsessed with the Clan of the Cave Bear series and wrote some fic for that as well.

In May of 2002, I had just defended my dissertation and was literally drifting, needing something to occupy my mind. The afternoon of my defense, my husband took me to see Attack of the Clones, and the Star Wars fanfic bug bit me again. I hated it, because going through fanfic phases had always been negative for me. I turned inside myself when I did it and felt very alone, even depressed. I really had no idea fandom was out there.

So one day about a week later, hovering between a newly discovered QAF obsession and Star Wars, I was was at a bookstore looking for something to keep me sane -- some SW book I hadn't yet read maybe. I picked up a copy of the SW Insider and flipped through it, and in one of the letters in the back, someone mentioned something about fan fiction on the internet. I was stunned! Other people did that? And then they shared it with each other? Really??

I went straight home and googled "Star Wars fan fiction". And Oh. My. God. How had I not known about this? It was amazing! There were so many archives, so many stories, and I didn't know where to begin. I read through some Luke/Mara stuff with great delight, thrilled that other people's stuff was as porny as mine. It felt like a whole world had been opened up, one with tons of possibilities. I no longer had to wait around for the next book to come out! I could read all this other amazing stuff -- and it was much more interesting, besides.

And I kept seeing this term in the headers: slash. Usually in the context of "no slash", as if it were a bad thing. I was intrigued, so I googled "Star Wars slash fan fiction", and one of the first things on the list was the Master-Apprentice archive.

And I think my jaw hit the floor. I couldn't believe it! People wrote that? Of course, I had just spent a week watching the first season of QAF, and had come to the conclusion that boys having sex was something I liked to think about. So I scanned some titles and picked something almost at random.

I don't remember the title or the author, but the fic was about Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon going to some planet to visit Obi-Wan's parents. Obi-Wan wanted to tell them he and Qui were getting married, and they were horribly homophobic and reacted badly. Obi left their house, distraught, and found Qui waiting for him back in their hotel room.

And this is what I remember: Qui was kneeling on the floor, completely naked except for some sort of kinky leather strappy thing, and on a towel next to him were a butt plug, a tube of lube, a riding crop, and a cock ring.

And dude, I closed that window faster than you can imagine. I blushed, even though I was by myself. I got up and walked around the room a few times, thinking, "What the fuck?" I didn't know what to think! But I wasn't ready to give up. I went back through the archive and read some other, tamer fics, working my way up to (what I then considered, heh) the kinky stuff. And a week later, I started writing The Moonflower Festival.

I have to say that it's wonderful to be here now, three years on, because my own fannishness is no longer a source of pain for me. It's something I will never again feel alone in, and I am so, so thankful for that. :-)

Feel free to add your own story in comments, if you like!

And on an unrelated note:
*hugs* to