(Sorry for the delay in posting this, I got hit by burnout real hard the first week of November. But I’m back to feeling more like myself now!)
When I joined the 118 Discord, I discovered a group of strong and passionate fanfiction writers in the 9-1-1 community, all banded together to help produce some of the best fics in the fandom. They are great to encourage everyone to write and to team up when ever you get stuck. Besides just working on our own projects, they encourage some major community events.
The latest one was a Halloween fic crawl! If you don’t know what a fic crawl is, that’s okay, because I had to have it explained to me day one. A fic crawl is when a group of fics are all written under a similar theme, usually 1-3k words. They are uploaded to a community on AO3, and released anonymously on AO3 on the specific date every 15-20 minutes. People take part by writing fics, but also commenting and kudoing every fic. After all the fics are released, people guess who wrote what fic.
The turnout in both writers and commenters was amazing. I was one of 15 writers, and I think there were at least that many people taking part in the reading/commenting/kudoing aspect as well. It was an amazing experience that I cannot wait to do again.
My Halloween-inspired fic was made to be fluffy and hilarious. I actually wrote the bulk of it when we were watching MindGamers on Discord. The basic premise is that Buck and Eddie are left to come up with a costume for Halloween after Christopher decides to come up with a costume to surprise them. Eddie goes with generic hip-hop dancer (Sean from Step Up Revolution, played by Ryan Guzman, who plays Eddie), Buck goes a different route. The reactions of the 118 were hilarious tor write. I also threw in some other references, such as Christopher dressed as Arthur from Merlin and Chimney as a Dodger player.
The reaction to the fic was great! I got a lot of comments (though not a lot of kudos, but that’s the AO3 algorithm’s fault). On discord, the thread for the fic was a blast. When it came time to reveal, no one knew it was me, and I was met with surprised laughter and screaming for the fic (especially because of the mental imagery of a well-built Oliver Stark dressed as Dylan from MindGamers, when he was less built…). I’m still proud.
I’m really happy that I decided almost at the last minute to take part and complete my fic. It ended up being a great experience from the beginning of the event to the end. If you ever have the opportunity to take part in something like this, go for it!
(And now I have to work on my holiday exchange fic, which I haven’t outlined yet and I really really need to…)
Until next time!
