Genesis
The origins of my YYH timeline

When a sane ficwriter starts writing to new a fandom, he usually starts with one tentative fic, trying to get a hold of the characters and learn about the kind of fans that form that fandom, cautiously checking if he fits it. (Let's be honest here, I know many ficwriters that gave up on a fandom or on Fanfiction entirely after getting some nasty flames or too hard criticism right after a first fic.) If he feels comfortable enough, he'll write a second fic, which usually has little to do with the first -- same characters, possibly, but a completely new situation. And then, if this second fic is well received, if the ficwriter got hooked, there comes a third fic, and a fourth, and a fifth... All of them will be independent stories, and the ficwriter won't demand from the reader the knowledge of the rest of his work in order to understand one single fic.

Yeah, that's what sane ficwriters do. But this rambling isn't about sane ficwriters, ne? This rambling is about me, and Eien no Hakusho.

So what did crazy Morgan did when she joined the Yu Yu Hakusho fandom?

Around May 1999, I started a fic called Fond Memories, as a present for a former coworker that had an enthusiastic crush on Kurama. It was also a counter-argument to two fics, two classics of YYH Fanfiction: WhiteCat’s Name Game and Sandy Youko’s The Last Night at the Kubikukuri Hotel. (More about counter-argument fics in some other rambling.) It was my first attempt at writing more than 3 pages in English, and I found out I couldn't do it faster than 4 paragraphs per hour. I left my job, changed professions, lost contact with my friend then met her again, and still I couldn't finish that fic.

Did that humble me? Hah. By August of the same year I felt daring enough to start a Lemon fic involving four characters, filled with psychological speculations and literary challenges. The only concession I made to myself was writing it in Portuguese, my first language. The title was Conhaque. But to my surprise, my speed didn't improve any. Sure, now I didn't have to grab a dictionary at every eight words, but jeez, do you have any idea how hard it is to write a decent Lemon scene? No wonder so many of them seem rigorously the same, with only slight variations. And since I'm too arrogant to write what others had done already...

By the end of September, I was getting really frustrated. I was already an active member of the Shinyyh Mailing List, had contact with lots of great names of YYH Fanfiction, and I couldn't post a thing of my own!

That's when I read The Way Destiny Talks, Is The Way We Obey (A Triangle Love's Story), a delicious fic by Bulma Briefs aka Koorime Yukina. One particular scene called my attention... and I caught myself speculating about it over and over, comparing it to my self-experience... and eventually started comparing YYH with Real Life and with the huge amount of sappy fics I had read so far... *smirks* And suddenly I really had a counter-argument I HAD to post as fast as possible. That was the birth of my first posted fic, Seeds of Sadness.

I suppose I WAS acting like a sane ficwriter at that point. Seeds was a very tentative fic, as I was very worried about the reaction of the fandom. Would the sappy-lovers find it too angsty? Would the angst-lovers find it too realistic? Would the realism-lovers find it too prolix? Would the prolixity-lovers frown too much at my grammar?

(Curiously, I wasn't worried about non-yaoi-lovers at the time. I only knew a few of them then, and they were cool and friendly to yaoi-lovers too.)

To my delight, I got a bunch of thumbs-up mails for it, even from writers I deeply respect, such as Caithi'on, Sandy Youko and... *yippee!* ...Koorime Yukina herself! I felt more than comfortable in the fandom; I felt welcome and encouraged. There WERE ears to peculiar ideas such as mine! So when people told me, "please write more"...

... I did. *shrugs* Hey, you asked for it!

In November/December, Ryocutie's Fanfiction and Fanart Archive promoted a Christmas Contest, and one of the site managers, Ryoma, challenged the members of the Shinyyh ML to write YYH fics with a Christmas theme. At first I thought, "no way I can write that fast, let alone win a contest," but thirty minutes later I thought of a silly joke about goblins and wondered if I could make a short fic out of it. You know, just to participate.

This was how I found out that "short fic" means for me 10 pages in font size 10 (or 42 pages in font size 4 for html scripts). Because I couldn't simply tell the joke, could I? First I had to get the characters together in a Christmas party. Then I had to describe a little of the party before getting to the point. And to my dismay, I realized that my definition of a good party is good friends together in a cozy space, eating well and maybe drinking well too, while cheerfully rambling about both serious and nonsense topics. THAT took a while to describe...

Oh well. Surprisingly, I finished the fic, and called it Coffee Time. I asked Lekanthir to beta-read it for me.

And Lekanthir didn't get the joke. I was frantic.

Anyway, I didn't have any more time, it was already the week before Christmas, so I sent my fic to Ryoma and Shinyyh.

I got tons of mails... everybody saying Coffee Time is great and very funny... and asking for more.

I felt sooooooooooo good!!!!

Okay, so two people wrote to tell me they didn't get the joke either. *sigh* Oh well...

Oh yes, and I won the Contest. Because I was the only one that participated. *sweatdrops*

But back to the Genesis rambling. After two posted fics, I was already considering myself a ficwriter (or a Very Nasty Thing, as Snapdragon defines us in her fic The Four Friends Who Really Liked to Blow Stuff Up and the Very Nasty Thing That Got Away), and spent the next months sowing plot seeds in my fertile, erratic mind. If you've followed my timelines for some time, you probably noticed that I have a big problem with keeping my focus on one story at a time. Well...

In January 2000, Ryocutie's Archive announced a Valentine's Contest, whose winner would be announced the February 14th (Valentine's Day in US). I tried, I really did, but I end up planning a fic with a dozen chapters, and there was no way I could finish it in time.

By February I started building the Solitude of a Falling Star site. Fond Memories and Earthquake - A Valentine's Tale were slowly progressing, and I had decided to write Conhaque in English after all, adding the title Brandy to the list.

And more or less at that point, I realized that I wasn't writing any of those stories independently. Why?

Well, let's say I always saw fanfiction timelines with a mix of awe, disbelieving and sheer envy. If you ever read (and you should) the work of writers like Larissa A. Williams, Utopian Trunks, Julie Farel, Katchan, Sandy Youko... Each one in her own style, they all have this remarkable skill of planning big and planning ahead. The kind of skill I always wanted to achieve somehow. The kind of skill I was very sure would be forever beyond my reach.

*smirks* For all I know, it still is. But in March 2000, just after my birthday, just after the inauguration of my site, just after months of being spoiled rotten by the Shinyyh members, just after the success of my little Coffee Time, I was feeling arrogant enough to turn my envy into ambition. Someone asked me, "Are your fics independent or what?" I stared hard at my files and drafts, made a quick math for dates and events, saw that the plots could be made to fit together in a single timeline, and replied, "Or what."

Of course, that single answer got me revising the posted fics to adjust some details, and rewriting lots of my drafts. And I had to wait until I finished some fics more to announce my project. *snorts* After all, two fics don't make a timeline.

I only got to post again in May, when I finished the prologue of Death of the Forbidden Child, then in the first weeks of June, with Eroding Colors and the prologue of Earthquake (just in time for Dia dos Namorados, the Brazilian version of Valentine's, at June 12th). The next month I was trying my luck with Whistle of the Far Off Yesterday, and in October I finally finished Fond Memories, seventeen months after writing its first words. With that I was ready to list these titles with a few others whose drafts I was working on, and tell the world I was crazy enough to build a fanfiction timeline.

Only thing missing was a title.

I wish I could remember how I got to decide for Eien no Hakusho. I remember always being fascinated by the word "eien" even before learning its meaning: I didn't (don't) know any other word in any of the languages I understand that have at the same time four letters and four syllables. Anyway, "eien no" means "eternal".

My Japanese sucks, and it sucked even more two years ago. I'm still not sure if this is grammatically correct, but at this point I won't change the title even if I find out it is wrong. With "Eternal Hakusho" I mean two things:

1 - "Hakusho" means white paper, or a report to be written. And yes, I'll be forever writing my reports on the YYH gang, or so is my genuine intention.

So... that's the story of Eien no Hakusho genesis. I only have two more points to state here:

First, I still can't plan that big or that ahead. The first and the last stories currently listed in the timeline page are just that: currently the first and the last of the timeline. I don't know where I'm going with all this. I just keep writing new plots to fit the ones I already have. Chaotic, I know. Welcome to my life.

Morgan D.
March 12th, 2002

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