AMATEURS [Tenya Iida x OC]

Extra Content/Inspiration

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Now that the Wattys are over, I wanted to post a little something about my lingering thoughts regarding AMATEURS.

This story was very self indulgent. It was the first real fanfic to pull me out of a deep depression I'd been in for years, and I hadn't written much of anything since college. One of my majors was creative writing in undergrad, but I didn't get into our school's prestigious creative writing thesis program, and it really punched me right in the self-esteem. I didn't think my stories were worth sharing anymore. But my quote of the year for 2020 was: I am someone whose voice matters.

So, I forced myself back into writing.

Peri started as a doodle of myself as a hero after watching S1 of My Hero, and spiraled out from there. I wanted to encapsulate that crushing pressure that high school can carry (not just from teachers and society, but from parents, especially), and how hard it is to juggle friends, family, and figuring out who you are. Personally, I struggled a lot with parental pressure in high school (to the point that my parents forced me into my first major at college, which I changed without their permission at my first chance), so this was kind of therapeutic in a way. Peri's force fields literally keep people away from her and are physical manifestations of the walls she tries so desperately to keep up, even though all she wants is for a couple people to care enough to break them down.

Tenya is a little ooc (out of character) in this at times, I'll admit. I'm going to chalk that up to my rusty writing skills. But man, his character is so great. Maybe it's just me... but a buff, smart, hot guy with integrity? He's too cute for his own damn good. Sign me up. Plus, let's be honest, the boy's just super underrated.

And it probably doesn't help that Tenya reminds me a bit of my spouse in the way he's written.

A fair bit of the story's inspiration came from the song Amateurs by Sleepy Tom feat. Lights, which was my #3 top song in 2020 (according to my Spotify wrap-up). If you listen carefully, there's a line in there about playing Diablo (which I play with my husband every season and have platinum-ed), and it inspired Peri's obsession with the game. I also saw something online about how a man taught himself English by playing Diablo, and that was always kind of my thought with Peri and her brother... they were just obsessed with the game, and that's how they got so good at English; sure, they visited the US to see family and their dad was a native speaker, but they really knew their shit.

Also, I'm hella sorry to any native French speakers. My French has only gotten worse because I don't speak it fluently/consistently anymore, so I often had to rely on google translate to double-check my work/translations, and I tried to stick to short phrases I was pretty sure were decent.

If anyone's curious, I literally saw one picture that persuaded me to give Peri and Tenya twins and this was that picture: 

I couldn't handle it. 

Finally, the other major inspiration for this story was a post about writing winter fluff that I found on Pinterest but is obviously a screengrab from tumblr... so idk who the original poster is. Some of the ideas I borrowed from the prompt list were: making traditional holiday foods (like Peri's buche de Noel), "your family sucks so you're kinda meh on the holidays but let's make some fun new traditions together!", and "would you like some hot chocolate with your mountain of marshmallows or are you trying to put yourself into a sugar coma????". Obviously I fluffed it up with some of my own stuff, but those holiday chapters were *chef's kiss* SO CUTE.

All in all, I think this story was not too bad for my first foray back into fanfiction.

I think that's all of my bonus content for AMATEURS...

Thank you again for reading, and I hope you enjoyed Peri and Tenya's story.

☆

"Avoir elle est avoir les étoiles."

To have her is to have the stars.