By way of introduction from the random stranger who just subscribed....
I'm here by way of a trail of breadcrumbs that led me from AO3 (I will head back there in a moment because I need to comment on the particular story) through Tumblr (on which I only tangentially exist) over here (where my fannish self mostly hangs out when it's not on AO3).
Anyhow: My fannish, or at least fanfictional, history is in part very similar to yours, in that I didn't formally jump into the fanfic community till very late, but had actually written it very, very early. (My grade school librarian had come across a way to build cardboard-bound storybooks, and some of the teachers then encouraged us to write stories which could then be 'published' and put into the school library. The very first one of these I wrote was a Wizard of Oz tale, but unfortunately that book and my memory of the details of the story have both vanished completely over time.)
The thing was, in my case I detoured into original work almost at once, and did well enough with it that by the time I found local fan communities, I also had a decent foothold on the professional side. Only then, even later than that, I discovered three things within the space of a year or two: (1) Kim Possible, (2) Yuletide, and (3) that there were, in fact, pro writers who had kept right on writing fanfic even after becoming successful pros. I had also, at around that same time, discovered crossovers, and promptly jumped into the deep end of that pool.
Cut to this morning, when I backtrailed from a comment on one of my Gargoyles stories through the commenter's bookmarks, where one of your Gargoyles stories caught my eye, and thence to Tumblr for the origin story....
And now I need to go back and write that comment I mentioned above.
no subject
By way of introduction from the random stranger who just subscribed....
I'm here by way of a trail of breadcrumbs that led me from AO3 (I will head back there in a moment because I need to comment on the particular story) through Tumblr (on which I only tangentially exist) over here (where my fannish self mostly hangs out when it's not on AO3).
Anyhow: My fannish, or at least fanfictional, history is in part very similar to yours, in that I didn't formally jump into the fanfic community till very late, but had actually written it very, very early. (My grade school librarian had come across a way to build cardboard-bound storybooks, and some of the teachers then encouraged us to write stories which could then be 'published' and put into the school library. The very first one of these I wrote was a Wizard of Oz tale, but unfortunately that book and my memory of the details of the story have both vanished completely over time.)
The thing was, in my case I detoured into original work almost at once, and did well enough with it that by the time I found local fan communities, I also had a decent foothold on the professional side. Only then, even later than that, I discovered three things within the space of a year or two: (1) Kim Possible, (2) Yuletide, and (3) that there were, in fact, pro writers who had kept right on writing fanfic even after becoming successful pros. I had also, at around that same time, discovered crossovers, and promptly jumped into the deep end of that pool.
Cut to this morning, when I backtrailed from a comment on one of my Gargoyles stories through the commenter's bookmarks, where one of your Gargoyles stories caught my eye, and thence to Tumblr for the origin story....
And now I need to go back and write that comment I mentioned above.