Cheese

Story of a Girl
2015-07-08 17:39:51 (UTC)

12 year old writing

One of the worst things on the internet is fanfiction written by a twelve year old.

I think I might have mentioned it, but I don't have a phone for now because the ones that I have are stuck on a permanent boot loop that I have no idea how to fix. The iPhone that I have doesn't have service, but I use it to play games and test coding/mods for myself and Fern. I was working on a mod for Fern and I made a pretty big mistake, which led to boot loop and some other problems--a friend of mine is fixing that though, but since he's fixing it for me for free, I'll have to wait until he's finished with everything else on his project list, and I'm not sure how long that's going to take. The android that I have is my main phone (with service) and I use it for social media/internet stuff/games, etc. I'd occasionally use it for mods, but I've only used it for mods twice and never had problems with them, unlike with my other phone. That was all back in the first month that I had my phone, too, so that all happened about a year ago. I have NO idea how my android got stuck on boot loop, but it did, and now I have to wait until I can get a new phone... I also don't know when that'll happen. My mom said she might buy me a new phone on Saturday or Sunday, but I HIGHLY doubt it... Unlike my biological father, she'll actually pay a little extra for my phone instead of waiting for 80% off sales, but since we had family over, I don't think it'll happen--they kind of spent their money on my cousins. I'll honestly wait an extra month for a phone, if they're willing to get me a new, BETTER one. The one that I had was the one my dad bought for me when the phones were on sale for 70% off, and the battery didn't even last long. After a few weeks, the battery would go down from 100% to 85% charged within 5 minutes and I hardly ever touched it back then.

ANYWAY, when my android got stuck on boot loop, I was only really concerned about a few apps. Kik had a few (a LOT) of important messages that I wasn't prepared to lose. One of my friends even told me, "Okay but why can't you just have the person send them again?" BUT IT'S NOT THAT EASY. The messages I had were from accounts that aren't active anymore (for other complicated reasons). They can't send them again because those accounts aren't active and don't have the messages saved, and now I don't have the messages saved either. So that kind of sucks for me. I also had an android-only note-taking app, which I'm not too worried about anymore because I synced it with my email. I used my mom's android phone to double check that all my writing was in there, and yeah, all my writing is still there, even the most recent works! That's a huge load of worry taken off my shoulders. There was also ONE other app that I won't get into detail about, but I desperately needed that app... I found out just yesterday that the same app was downloadable on ios, so I downloaded it on my dad's iPad and I thought my worries would go away--nope. I DID make an account for this app (I'll just call it Lay for now), and since I already had it downloaded, all I needed to do was log in and all my information would still be there. Yeah, except, I don't think I ever confirmed my email. Without the email being confirmed, I can't log in and access my account and the information stored. And this is where the fucking entry ACTUALLY starts!

So, yesterday, I spent the majority of my day looking for the confirmation from Lay in my email inbox. I use the same email for 90% of my accounts, and I make subtle changes to my passwords so that they're never quite the same, but they're all similar in one way and never majorly different. I tried every friggin' password/email combination to log into Lay... and NOTHING. A lot of my emails are password protected, or mobile phone protected. That is, I get a text sent to my phone with a password/code in case I (or someone else) want to access my emails... YEAH, WELL, I DON'T EXACTLY HAVE A PHONE. I found that I could log into my email accounts through the iPad without having to get a mobile confirmation. I was searching through one of my old email accounts, hopefully looking for the email confirmation for Lay, when I came across an interesting email. It was a notification from Fanfiction... Oh my lord. When I was younger, I used to read a lot of fanfiction, and it was something I dearly enjoyed. I joined Fanfiction.net way back in August of 2010, a few weeks after I had turned 11. ELEVEN. You had to be at least 13 to join the website, but c'mon, most people lied about their age when it came to that. My first fanfiction was published in December of 2011, so I was about 12, I think. At the time of its first chapter, it was pretty successful. Successful, as in my favorite author on that site left two reviews for it... That was basically my entire goal. It was only 3 chapters long, and I never finished that story because of writer's block, and I don't think I ever want to look back on that story because... I was 12. 12 year olds say embarrassing stuff. Anyway, my second fanfiction story was for a completely different fandom and I had published it in February of 2012; I was still 12 at the time. The fandom for my 2nd story was a little less known; when I say a little... compared to Naruto or Pokémon, this fandom was--still kind of is--basically nonexistent.

At the time, I knew that the story wouldn't get much attention, but I still wrote it out and published it on the site. After publishing that story, I went back to the fandom of my first fanfiction and I published my third and (final?) fanfiction, June 2012. (It was coincidentally posted on the same day as my 2nd story, the 26th.) But throughout all three stories, I was still 12 and in middle school... Yeah. I published the first chapter to my third story, and I was EAGER to finish it because there was so much I wanted to write about, but the computer I had saved all my stories to had broken down. I couldn't fix my computer, and that's when I lost interest in fanfiction, and I never returned to that site. I followed my favorite authors and stories on there, so I did still receive alerts from that site, but I changed my email so that I wouldn't have to see the name of that site. I wanted to ignore the fact that I still had stories to finish, and I wanted to believe that every piece of "work" that I had was nonexistent. That, and my favorite authors had started to grow up. A lot of my favorite authors were seniors in high school, college freshman, or they were just starting high school. A lot of them had gotten jobs or boy/girlfriends, and their works were starting to updated slower than usual; one of my favorite stories was never finished as the author had moved on to bigger things, and they had left the story with one last chapter left. They all had lives besides writing, and that's when I realized that they all had to leave the site one day. I guess I left that site along with them since I had already lost interest.

But, thanks to that site, I grew to love writing. Writing became one of my favorite pastimes. Though I love writing, my passion for it has declined over the past few years, and this year has proven that I'm slowly losing interest. I still occasionally write, like here for example, but I can never write for fun like I did for that site. Honestly, because of this entire personal project that I've YET to start, writing has become more of a chore than a pastime and I brought that upon myself. I don't really know how to change that, though. I like to write down what happens every day for this project because when I look back, I'll be able to see all the little memories that I've come close to forgetting about. Like, when I'm 50, I'll probably remember the time I accomplished my biggest fear but I'll most likely forget about the time in 4th period when Guy said there was a paper in his hole. Though it might not mean anything to me then, it'd be kind of nice to remember that I never let him live that down... I don't know if that makes sense. I guess I just want to say that I'd like to relive the smaller memories that people forget about. I'm not sure if that made any sense either.

I'M GETTING OFF TOPIC.

Okay... so I had forgotten about that email address, and I saw that I actually had a bunch of the automatic notifications from fanfiction. Most of the notifications were about updated/new stories, but a few of them were notifications for my stories. A bunch of them were newly gained followers or alerts of people who had favourited the story/me as an author. Oh, and alerts of reviews that people were kind enough to leave! The last review for that story was in December of last year... And the latest person followed the story on March 27 of THIS year. DAMN. It makes me feel kind of warm inside, knowing that even after a couple of years, there are still people out there reading that crappy piece of writing. I was twelve years old when I started writing and posting on that site, and here I am, turning sixteen in less than 2 weeks. Time really goes by, doesn't it? What's sad is that I wrote better as a twelve year old than I do as a FIFTEEN year old... Like, 12 year old me would say something like, "Jesse scavenged the pantry for something to quench his undying thirst." and present me would say something along the lines of, "Jesse searched the pantry for something to drink." The first one sounds SO much better than the second. I could get into so much detail, but now, adding details is something I've grown to be uncomfortable with... I actually logged back in to my old fanfiction account. Now that I know how to log in, I'm probably gonna go back into that story and "touch it up" a bit. I don't want to make any major changes, but I DO want to make it seem like a 16 year old wrote it rather than a 12 year old. I'm listening to "Tut Tut Child - I Can't" and I'm honestly feeling inspired as fuck! I want to write more silly stories and show the world that I've still got writing juices in my body.

I remember I had an idea for a story about a haunted high school--graduating from that school was impossible because something tragic would happen your junior year that would prevent you from going onto senior year, thus graduating. The story would follow a rich girl whose parents didn't graduate from that same school because they got knocked up with her, and she would be the first to break the "curse". I didn't really have much of a thought-out plot for it, but I DO remember that towards the end, her best friend's car is hanging off a cliff, the triplets are missing, the pyromaniac is setting himself on fire, and there are two complete strangers in the backseat who are possibly trying to murder them... I've still got the mind of a 12 year old because that story gives me the feeling that it'll sell. Wishful thinking though, right?

Noooow, I kind of want to bring back the whole email topic back. AFTER I read through all the fanfiction notification emails, I went onto another email. When I first registered on this site, I was using Ellíe's email (long story) because I was having trouble with all of my emails (even longer story), and she was kind of enough to let me use hers for a while (EVEN longer story). She was doing me a favor, but I was doing her a favor in return; I could use hers as long as I helped her with a mod AND I'd clean up her inbox from spam. Since this site has the feature where you could change email addresses, I told her I'd only use it for a short time until I could fix my email problem. At the time, there was also the feedback system, and I still wasn't sure how to "use" it--or how it all functioned. I had quite a couple of feedback messages from people, and I replied to most (if not) all of them... what I DIDN'T know was that they replied, and I never got notified for it. I also sent new members a welcoming message, but I never knew that they had seen and replied to my feedback. So, while checking Ellíe's inbox to see if I had the Lay email in there, I saw a bunch of emails from this website with the feedback I had no idea was sent to me... ALL THIS TIME, SINCE THE DAY I GOT MY FIRST FEEDBACK MESSAGE, I thought the feedback system was all one way--they sent the feedback, and I could reply, but they could never reply back to the message I sent them. I feel like such an ass for not knowing I had feedback. I'm probably overthinking this, but what if the people who sent feedback got mad that I never replied back? What if the people who I sent feedback to got creeped out that I had sent them a welcoming message and I scared them off? I honestly never got notified for it, and it didn't show up on my screen whenever I logged in. I HONESTLY thought that they just thought I was awkward and didn't want to message back... I never-not message back. I can be really awkward to talk to and I don't know how to hold conversations, but I love talking and I'll probably do my best to reply with something decent! Or, sometimes I know that I take a really long time to reply, but even if it's a year later, I'LL PROBABLY REPLY BECAUSE I FEEL BAD. Sometimes I don't realize that I have messages to reply to. I'm a bad person when it comes to replying, I'm awkward, BUT HEY, IGNORE MY AWKWARDNESS AND WE'LL GET ALONG GREAT. I'm kind of conflicted of whether I should reply back or not, now that I have the little handy link. I COULD reply, but wouldn't it be weird to reply to a message after almost 8 months of the message being sent? I've replied to messages years after they've been sent, but... I don't really want to weird anyone out on this site.

So if anyone ever sent me feedback and never heard from me... hiimreallysorryididntknowhellonicetomeetyou. ;u;

And now I'm gonna go clean up my old fanfiction work. Since it's a one-shot and less than 3,000 words, I'll finish up quickly--before I lose all my motivation. I'd finish my other two incomplete works, but I honestly don't think it'd be appropriate to give them both a proper closure... Laziness.

I might just rewatch the movie that it's based off, too.

EDIT: According to the author's note that I left at the end of the story, there were only 21 stories written for that fandom. As of today, July 8th, 2015, there are now 27 stories. Fuck yeah. Baby steps, baby steps, but we'll eventually catch up to Pokémon. B)




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