Snowflake Challenge, Post Two, Day Eleven: Discuss a Creator

[kadytheredpanda]

Day 11

In your own space, talk about a creator. Show us why you think they are amazing. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

The moment I saw prompt I knew that I wanted to discuss someone in the InuYasha fandom. That's the fandom that I basically and totally popped my cherry with. First fic ever, first AU (also first fic ever, funnily enough), first crack, first kidfic, first fanart, first AMV, first rule 34... If not just about everything and the kitchen sink, then just about everything but the kitchen sink.

But who? There's always the chance that this prompt will return in 2018, and I could focus on someone else if I wanted to. But who? Resmiranda? That Nanda? Aiffe? Choices, choices...

Oh! I know who-

Kristine Batey. Even in the early to mid 2000s you'd still have the old timers in fandom. Being in my early to mid teens myself most of the older people I knew were in their late teens or early twenties. Occasionally someone in their thirties or older appeared on my radar. But Kristine was the first fiftysomething I came across online. She didn't see any reason to lie- she often quipped and made jokes about how she was an old lady and to not give her shit. Even online you could get the sense that she was a firecracker with a dry sense of humor.

She didn't write much actual fic, at least not that much on her Fanfiction.Net account that I linked above. But what I did read was enjoyable. I was particularly on a drabble kick in late middle school (partly because of me composing my own drabble collection, only for Monster Allergy), and I particularly enjoyed hers. To this day I still read them occasionally. The wonderful thing about drabble collections is that like any good anthology, there is a unifying theme of sorts, but otherwise anything goes. These contained the typical subjects of "will InuYasha and Sesshomaru ever get along?" and "what if InuYasha ends up with Kikyou?" and other, more creative ones. Kagome's cat and Mistress Centipede in cahoots to get Kagome into the well, for instance.

There were other drabbles that were sort of companion or related to her doujinshi A Hero of the 21st Century. (You can bet that I was astounded seeing that it was still online in 2017!) This was actually how I first found out about her. I used to frequent InuYasha webrings and top sites and this was a common page. Long before the series ended, fics where InuYasha either died at the end of the journey or turned human (or both) were as common as burgers on a fast food menu. This comic was a little different in that it had Hojo turning out to be InuYasha's reincarnation, being fully aware of it, and ran with it. Admittedly I didn't care much for the art even then, the formatting's generally atypical, and the comic itself's really silly. Which is on par with fandom, but you know what I mean. But Kristine's creativity and spark gave me incentive to carry on. It's not my favorite of her work, but it's a treat getting to look at it with an older lens.

Unfortunately the InuYasha fandom also gave me my first creator death, as she passed away in the mid 2000s (I think it was 2005?). I wasn't even aware that she had cancer. It took another fanwriter to write a short obituary on her profile for me to know. Around that time Fanfiction.Net introduced drafts that deleted after a period of time. I can't count how many times I pondered if she'd left any drafts the last time she logged on, whenever it was, and if they disappeared forever. I wondered if the comic was shutting down, like other sites I frequented in the early years, and never returned to it. When I get to the end of One Tenth of a Picture, listed as the most recently updated fic on her profile, it feels odd knowing that this was the end all of everything she ever wrote. the that's all for everyone. And considering how it's about a reincarnated too early InuYasha deciding to date Kagome's mother at the end, sensing a new possible romance and future for himself, it's practically, perfectly fitting. Unintentional or no, it's some sort of closure. Her mortal life is over, but she's very much alive on the internet after all these years. Thank you for the ride, Ms Batey. It was one I have never regretted going on.