Challenge Seventeen

#WackyWednesday - weirdest thing I've ever experienced.

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You mean...Apart from myself?

Umm....

I think people are weird for not embracing weirdness.  Is it terrible that most of my wacky experiences involve me doing something weird?  Nah...that's legit normal.

Well...I guess I find jealousy weird? Or, in particular, competitive jealousy. 

I wrote a Lotr AU Thranduil Fanfic that hit One million views and thousands of followers on the FFN platform.  It's also won awards on Wattpad platform and others.  I am still weirded out by this every damn day, because I deliberately wrote an AU story to be against the grain of the "atypical" "acceptable" tropes for this area of Fanfiction.  I never wrote the story to be popular, I did not even imagine it had the ability to get the reach that it got in such a short period of time.  I wrote because I was in a dark place and the experience was cathartic.  What weirds me out though is the nasty ass attitude of other writers in the same category?  The awful rumours spread about me or others who may have befriended or supported me, and the clamber of writers trying to prove their ThranduilXOC is better, or their knowledge of Tolkien is superior? 

It's Fanfiction.  It's not real.  I was scratching a creative itch and exploring trauma and illness within the spiritual/human condition.   I never set out to prove my greatness.  I wrote a story and people listened.  It was a beautiful blessing for me to have helped so many people, and revitalise Tolkien for another generation who maybe struggled with the archaic structure of the traditional literature and acceptable Fanfiction.  I am, and will be forever grateful and adoring of all my readers for they gave a lot back to me.  However, what I'll never, ever, understand was becoming some kind of benchmark to beat or outdo. 

I was so saddened by the things I read about my works on other writers threads, profiles, and stories, that I don't read in the category anymore.  The only way I'll even touch an ElvenKing story is if it's recommended to me by a friend, or perhaps because I've been helping a long time reader take the scary step in publishing their own works.   Either way, it has been absolutely the weirdest experience of my writing life to date.

On a positive note - I still believe in the fandom and it's powerful principles.  Great friends, good company, unshakeable fellowship.  It gave me a handful of the greatest girlfriends I could ever ask for, and fuelled a writing career that is on fire! 

So, weird things, in my experience, generally lead to great things. Even if in the beginning they were a bit confusing and uncomfortable.