When I was a teenager, I began to write stories. Some were Tolkien-wannabe invented worlds, some were my attempts at The Great American Novel. My first OC Tyler was "born" in 1995. But before the 90s were over, my mother threw out all my notebooks, called my writing "garbage" and told me to "stop wasting my time" because I would "never make any money from it". She also threw out sketchbooks of doodles.
I had writer's block for many years thereafter; in my thirties it finally let up some, with bits and pieces of drawerfic. In 2016, I signed up for Ao3 and began trying my hand at Star Wars fanfic, most of which no longer survives save for a few stories. One of them I now count more as o-fic - Don't Threaten Me With A Good Time, written in 2018, which I mark as the beginning of the Flameborn multiverse. When I was disgusted enough with the toxicity of SW fandom surrounding the sequel trilogy enough to want to distance myself from SW, I took my very AU version of Dooku with me and he evolved into his own character. And then I rediscovered my love of Tolkien, which had first captured my imagination in the early 90s.
Two years later, I was bullied in Tolkien fandom. Between seeing how many bad actors are out there, and being old enough to see many sites decline or outright die - Geocities, LiveJournal - I remembered when my mom threw out years of writing in the 90s. So I decided it was probably safer to not have all my eggs in one basket as far as archiving my creative work; thus, this site was born.
This site houses not just my writing but my art - something I dabbled in as a teenager and got into in a big way after my 2002 suicide attempt, doing painting and ceramics, then switching to digital art in the 2010s due to constraints of financial resources and chronic pain/hypermobility. Art literally saved my life in the early 00s, so I will always need to do it in some form.
Though I archive for my own mental health, I nonetheless hope you enjoy the things I share.