The first story I remember telling was when I was in elementary school, sometime between kindergarten and first grade. I would sit in gym class with a girl, I think her name was Yasmeen. We spouted some nonsense about being with the Greek gods and having sex among them. I’m pretty sure there was also some Mummies Alive! lore in there, since the cartoon would air on television early mornings before school. I don’t know if Yasmeen was into the idea of sex as much as I was, but perhaps that was the first sign I was one day destined to create a blog entirely about naked anime figures.

It wasn’t until third grade where I wrote what people might consider fan fiction, and more specifically, “cross-fiction.” I wrote a story about aliens coming to blow up the planet, like they do in the movie Titan A.E. Humanity fights them off with some army of Pokemon, Digimon, and lightsabers. The world is eventually destroyed; we find a home on Saturn. I think my friends and I are on a spaceship that gets blown up, but our spirits use the Morphing Grid to come back as Power Rangers with Megazords or some shit, and we destroy the aliens once and for all. I remember writing all this on different colored sheets of construction paper. It was voted Best Story. I was very proud of it.

The entire tail end of elementary school was my Golden Age for fan fiction, you could say. In fifth grade, Toonami was the only thing on my mind. My friends and I were really into Gundam Wing, and would draw comics with irate bird-humanoids piloting Gundams and fighting. I don’t remember who they were fighting, but they were always pissed off about it. Other times, I would talk to my cousin and fantasize romantic lives with characters from Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, and Gundam Wing. She was in love with Duo Maxwell, pilot of Gundam Deathscythe; I thought he was really cool, too.

Entering middle school, I wrote stories about my friends and I fighting aliens in space (again). We had elemental powers, and wore armor resembling both The Guyver and Super Human Samurai Saber Squad (aka Gridman). It’s a project I’m still working on nearly twenty years later, though the lore is thankfully fleshed out enough so that I’m not sued by Saban, or whoever the fuck owns those properties. I’ll get those published someday under my real name and not my pseudonym, Goatius.

I wrote plenty of stories in high school, but a lot of it explored poetry and memoirs, girls and basketball. and not so much borrowing from other franchises.

I don’t know if “anime” or “manga” were concepts in my mind growing up; I just knew that they were a different style from the American comics industry. When I got to college, my roommate watched a lot of anime and read scanlations on his phone. I would watch anime with him on Netflix. Whenever I had free time, I would watch Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex on my own, since I’d caught it a few times on Adult Swim and was always intrigued. I don’t think my roommate was into it as much as I was.

This weekend, my mother brought up my old books from college. I had a few textbooks, a couple of sketchbooks, and a crapload of Ghost in the Shell novels and manga. I browsed though my sketchbooks to see pages of Motoko Kusanagi illustrations. During mu undergrad years, I was writing a story about me joining her anti-terrorism unit and being killed in the line of duty. I was a rookie who wanted her validation; she would keep a bracelet of mine after I passed away. I’ve already written a blog about Ryoko being my first waifu, but I think Motoko was the first character I loved as a self-aware otaku. I even owned a body pillow, though I used it for a classmate’s student film and haven’t seen it since.

Over the past month, I’ve toiled away at a Tenchi Muyo fan fiction. I honestly can’t explain why I want to write it, but it makes me very happy to do so. I sit for hours and write a couple thousand words per day after working a job I absolutely hate. I assume Ao3 or FanFiction.net is where I’ll ultimately publish it, but we’ll see. I certainly can’t profit from it without running afoul of copyright infringement that may or may not be legally enforced in a court of law, but I think I’m okay with that. Maybe I’ll share it with you all once I’m done.