On Inspiration and Being Incredible

WARNING: This post may get sappy and/or philosophical. Prepare yourselves accordingly before reading it.

Have you ever really thought about why you write? Not why you write now, but why you chose to do so way back when you started? Did the loved ones in your life always compliment you on your writing, or was it a skill that came later in life? To put it concisely, what made you want to write in the first place, possibly even before MLP was a blip in your eye?

Not a lot of people think about these things, but for me, tracing back to that first spark has always helped me find where I am as a creator. It may not be the same in everyone, but it's a pretty unmistakable feeling for a lot of people. People don't always start out as creators, so the first thing that makes them fire off their brain cells like that has got to be pretty deep. Something you're really passionate about, or in a lot of cases, a story that you never wanted to end.

Or, if you really want to skip past all these crazy meditations on the nature of writing (which, considering that I've barely been on FiMFiction for four years, is completely understandable), I'll just leave it at this: "excited" does not even begin to sum up how I feel about Incredibles 2.

People like to talk about their comfort movies, things that give them warm and fuzzy feelings just thinking about them, and the first Incredibles would probably have to be that for me. It's not the sort of movie you'd think would lend itself to those sorts of things, considering how many superheroes it kills off-screen, but I tend to see it as comforting in a different way. I remember the way my mother would tell me she was Elastigirl, and tiny me would sit and wonder if that meant I'd turn into Violet and have cool invisibility powers someday. I remember the way I would wait for years and years, wondering about a sequel. I remember the first time I learned that, as a teenager, I wasn't the only Pixar fan who felt that way. (It was actually a pretty popular demand on animation forums back in the day, actually.)

But somehow or another, I decided when I was about 10 or so that I didn't have to wait for this movie to come out with a sequel. And so I did something that, to a very small child such as myself, would have seemed almost impossible.

In the wake of that movie, I made all my dolls superheroes and, very occasionally, I would think about what the Incredibles sequel would be like. I never wrote it down like I did with my other stories back then. But the point remains the same.

The Incredibles was the first fandom I wrote fic for. I've never written a fic for it in a technical sense, but that's what I tell people who ask what inspired me to write fic. Heck, I even fell into common fanfiction tropes without realizing it. Focusing on a minor character who showed up for five seconds (Stratogale) instead of the heroes? Check. Having a character survive something that next to no (super)human being could? Check.

I like to think my writing's improved since then, even if I do still do that first one once in a while.

But what's important here is this--I'm actually working on a magical girl series right now, something so close to superhero fandom that I almost wonder if my Incredibles play actually helped me come up with it before I even realized it. And, on top of that, I'm writing fanfic for real, putting my story rewriting skills into full use. I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling my 10-year-old self would be proud.

Anyway, I'd like to challenge all of you to think about the things that impacted you in childhood, fandom or otherwise. You never know what an impact they had on your life. Also, if you think about them for too long and start to get nostalgic, watch the thing. Read the thing. Listen to that old song you loved. No one's stopping you. Or, at least, I'm certainly not.

...I'm too busy hyping myself up for the real Incredibles sequel to police your maturity.

Comments

[Albi]

Me and my friends roleplayed as our favorite characters from our favorite games since we were six. I remember we would play Super Smash Bros., then go outside and act as the characters and what they did when they werem't fighting.

But I think it was Pokemon that really inspired me to try and write something, even if it was just a page. I wanted to use the trainers we had made and send them to an academy where they learned how to be Pokemon masters (I may or may not have been influenced by Yu-Gi-Oh GX). I had whole story arcs planned, what Pokemon we would all catch, when and how they would evolve. I never got past the first chapter because I was scared of my own writing abilities, and because we had one computer and I didn't want anyone else to find the story file.

But, I think about that story often. That really was kinda the impetus for me writing fan-fiction and eventually, original fiction. It's been quite a journey.