My own dear old train wreck

I mentioned somewhere in comments, I did re-read some of the old Fushigi Yuugi altverse (not from the worst part at the very beginning, but still), and happily, it wasn't as painful as I expected it to be; I've actually been enjoying it. However, from my present vantage point... This stuff is terrible. It reads more like we were trying to script a cartoon than write prose fiction, the characters are mostly flat and poorly-drawn, we were keeping set-pieces from the original regardless of whether they made any sense, the romance feels superficially slathered on and lacks roots and spirit, at the time I wrote it I was still fast asleep when it came to gender politics and LGBT, it's just a mess. (As best I can remember, I wouldn't say it's necessarily worse than the original show, but coming from me, that's.... Yeah.)

But I don't feel bad about it. We were teenagers having a blast helping ourselves through some of the "crap quota", I've grown a lot as a writer since then (last I knew I'd say the same of Kati, but that's not any of my business anymore).

And despite it all, the temptation to go back and continue it is still there. I do lament that somewhere in that growing-as-a-writer process I forgot how to sit down and make crazy shit happen in an efficient manner the way I did back then, and there is the "it's not like I would make it worse," aspect. At the risk of sounding arrogant, trying to get out of writer's block, my Harry Potter 'fic has the problem that it's so good (in my own estimation) it intimidates me; what if I can't measure up to that now?? Fushigi Yuugi, MUCH lower bar. And the ideas that bubble up are still fascinating...

(Since it was originally in reference to FY, BTW, I still want that T-shirt: "I'm a Fanfic Writer, I don't have to take this!." Call it the "battle cry for the shark jump"...)