Welcome to Fanfic's Hall of Fame, OlgaAcosta!!!

OlgaAcosta: To me, a fandom is a community where one is able to express an alternative universe through our imagination and being able to share this alternative universe with others who also follow the fandom. Fanfiction is how I began writing stories and, at the same time, got into reading more than before.

OlgaAcosta: Somewhere back in the years of 2006-2007 when I was in 7th grade, I began writing fanfictions about the anime series Naruto in some old, barely used notebook from the previous school year; at the time, I didn't know that what I was writing was considered fanfiction. And basically, these stories were written in script-style (sorry, my native language is Spanish), which included the full cast of Naruto and my OC.

I loved the anime and how different the plot was from western-styled animated cartoons where usually there were two different plots per episode, and the majority of the time it wouldn't connect with future or past episodes, like it is in the case of anime and manga. So, I would often try to imagine myself in the episodes alongside the characters, but this was limited to screentime only.

So, one day I chose to pick up an old notebook of mine that was barely used, ripped out the written pages from last year's classes, and used it to write a fanfiction about Naruto with my OC. Up to this day, I still use my OC's name for some of my online accounts!

OlgaAcosta: I do remember my first interactions with someone of the DC Universe side of the fandom.

OlgaAcosta: Fanfiction has helped me cope with depression, because it has served as a form of escaping the realities of not being socially accepted by my peers at school because of my interests in anime, manga, videogames, and music.

I live in the island of Puerto Rico, and back when I was in middle school (2006-2009) I was not considered weird because I had different hobbies and tastes in things that were not of the cultural and standard norm in my country, especially being a girl who was also into stuff that at the time in my island was considered boy stuff.

Aside from that, there were also the factors that I was not considered pretty and I'm biracial; these factors played a huge role when I got bullied in the 8th grade, and my depression started. If people, especially adults, ever found out about my Spaniard heritage, because of the bad things that the Coquistadors did back when they stumbled upon Puerto Rico, I would face a ton of racist remarks about that side of my heritage, despite being born over 500 centuries later.

I hated being mixed/biracial, I could never fit in one category or the other, I even hated my skin tone, my hair, and my mixed features: I hated myself for existing...to derail myself from all of the negative thoughts, I turned to drawing and writing fanfictions. My best friend and I would call each other everyday after school to roleplay Naruto over the phone, creating fictitious scenes with the original characters; until one day it hit me: what if I wrote my very own scenes but for myself with an original character who could represent me in the story?

And that's how my OC Mitsuki, a half Uchiha girl, came into existence. At first, I didn't let my best friend know about what I was doing until I had few chapters written down to then show her; and when I did show her, she loved the story so much that she also began writing her own Naruto fanfiction for me to read. This spark also ignited our creativity to push ourselves when it came to drawing, which is how we became friends in the first place. Why? Because we wanted to draw our main and secondary OC's as well as draw key-specific scenes from our fanfiction.

So, all of this became therapeutic for me, and helped me distract myself from the outside factors that had a negative impact in my life. Aside from this, writing has helped better my reading and writing skills in two languages and has made me a very creative person where I can express myself better through many forms of communication (though I'm still working on public speaking lol).

OlgaAcosta: My favorite part is that there are no rules to writing the story that you want to tell, and that you already have a world and list of characters that exist. You can alter parts of the original story and make it fit in to what you want to tell. You can also choose if to create original characters and make them fit in with the original plot. Or, if you don't want to create original stories, you can still create new stories with the already existing characters, change or add more content to specific scenes of the series. The possibilities are endless.

OlgaAcosta: I know that for a fact fanfiction will keep expanding on the web, and even into the market. A prime example is the media. When they make a sequel of an original movie or series by adding new characters, you can call it fanfiction, because they're already working with material that already existed and was created by another person, an example of this being the Netflix series of Wednesday; another being the Marvel Cinematic Universe: where they had to create another universe to explain certain events in the movies that are not in the comics while they Disney didn't have the full rights of all the original comic book Avengers.

As to my place in this? Well, if by some sort of good fortune I end up being famous because of my fanfiction, that would be a dream of mine, in a platonic level he, he, he.

OlgaAcosta:

a. I've had two big supporters: my sister Carmen, and my best friend Lilybeth

b. My moral compass is that as long as you're doing what makes you happy, that doesn't harm people or is of an anti-social behavior (from a criminology stand point, which is my Major), then you should do what makes you happy.

c. My partners-in-crime are my sister Carmen and my boyfriend Carlos who I made join Wattpad and is also creating a story.