simpleek

Back when Sailor Moon was widely popular during my junior high and into high school days, I was obsessed with the manga and anime. I would comb through the Internet to find images from the series to collect and post in a scrapbook I used to keep. The beautiful images were something my eyes would devour.

I remember during my searches how I stumbled upon what looked to be fanmade stories that took the characters from the anime/manga and made their own continuation of the Sailor Moon universe. Sometimes the stories wouldn’t be based off of what Naoko Takeuchi had already written. Some would just write what was called alternate universe/reality stories where the scouts and Tuxedo Mask were every day normal people with lives and problems just like us. This was my first introduction to fanfiction.

Fanfiction for series like Sailor Moon was very big back then. There were fanfiction websites devoted to fanmade stories about the beloved series. There were even general fanfiction sites like Fanfiction.net or Mediaminer.org that housed thousands of fanfics for different series varying from anime to video games. For the Sailor Moon fanfiction community, there were even well-known fanfic writers who gained acclaim and attention for their works. Obviously anyone who wrote fanfiction were not professional writers. The written stories weren’t all that original when you borrow characters or a universe created by someone else, but if you are a budding writer who loves a series so much that you don’t want to see it end, then you use fanfiction to keep the story alive.

A lot of the really good Sailor Moon devoted fanfic sites are either no longer active or long gone. As I grew older, so did the fanfic writers who used to consistently post new chapters or stories on a daily or weekly basis. Most of the time fanfic writers lose interest in writing for fun or their love for the series has cooled since then and they just disappear off the Internet. Real life sets in, and when you are an adult you don’t have time for too many leisure hobbies. There are careers to pursue, finances to be taken cared of, or families to focus on.

I really miss what I consider the hey day of the Sailor Moon fanfiction community. All of us geeks were able to fawn over and share our love for the fandom in a very large community. I made some good friends over the Internet because of it and I have lost touch with some too. The fandom brought everyone from around the world together because we had one thing in common, Sailor Moon was our geeky passion.

I used to write my own fanfics for the fandom, but I wasn’t as good as some of the ones I’ve read. I did get a decent amount of readers for my own work though back then. Occasionally, I do read some fanfics mainly on Fanfiction.net when I have the time. I still have some of my old unfinished works posted there, but I have since discontinued them. I find there aren’t too many great fanfiction for the Sailor Moon fandom these days, and I was glad I got into it back when it was widely popular to write about the other untold adventures Usagi and her scouts got into.

Fanfiction is really a great way to continue a long ago ended series if you ever found yourself wondering what your favorite characters are up to. It’s like visiting an old friend whenever you happen to be nearby. I think after I finish playing Dragon Age Origins, I may want to revisit them through the fanfic world.