I’ve never considered myself original.
After all, creative work is inherently derivative — a natural consequence of the human experience. When I was younger, I learned to draw by copying images I would find online. Since my family lived in a rural area, the process would take hours from start to finish while my dial-up connection struggled to load the album of images I would flip through on Photobucket. After several years of copying these images, I gradually learned to create my own.
Writing was a similar process for me. I loved watching anime as a child. Back when Toonami used to play on Cartoon Network in the daytime, I would spend hours with my cousin watching Yu Yu Hakusho and Dragon Ball. I found the stories fascinating. Like most kids, I often imagined myself in the scenarios portrayed on the screens. It was my first foray into storytelling.
The more I got into the sphere, the more content I wanted to consume. Finding manga was like a holy grail for me. I already spent considerable time reading. Being able to do it with pictures was the ultimate bonus. Posting myself in a Borders became a regular Saturday occurrence. I still miss the slightly uncomfortable squish chairs they would put in the manga corner. They knew their audience.
As my internet improved (marginally, mind you), I shifted to RPG and fanfiction forums for an outlet. I wanted more out of the stories I was consuming. Sure, I connected with the characters, and the action scenes were well choreographed, but the female characters were…lacking, to be generous. Adding more YA books to my roster did little to quell my dissatisfaction. They were overwhelmingly written to reflect the same character – the misunderstood, pretty white girl doesn’t know her own strength until she’s forced into an impossible situation. They weren’t original either, but they didn’t need to be since they were meant to be entertaining.
I appreciated them for that, but I didn’t connect with them. I wanted competent characters that understood the complexities of the world. I wanted color and diversity to shape the experience. If I couldn’t find them in books, then I decided I would make them myself. I wasn’t alone in that feeling, as evidenced by the membership that used to populate these forums in the past.
Akina and Miki started as an idea on these sites, truthfully. They’ve come a long way from where they were, but they were shaped by my experiences with other teens and young adults looking for a creative outlet and a connection with others that shared their interests. In a way, I wrote Lightning and Ember to reconnect with that time of my life. I hope my work (and this blog) can serve as the medium for others to relive some of those experiences.
So, I invite you to tell me your stories and share the journey with me. I hope that my work, and, to an extent, this blog, bring the same sense of comradery I felt as a child.