The Webmistress
asexual since 1995.
Valerie H. | |
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Personal Info | |
| Age: | 28 |
| Country: | Colombia |
| Pronouns | she/her |
| Birthday: | August 1 |
Profesional info | |
| Ocupation: | philology student
chronically online fanfic translator pseudo writer |
My name is Valerie, I'm a retired chill larrie, who's been lurking on the internet since 2009 when I learned what fanfiction was. I love cats, coffee, books, vampires, witches, rpf and one direction.
Right now, I'm mainly a fanfic translator and I've been working on getting my bachelors' degree in Hispanic Philology.
Table of Contents
Early years
I started reading fanfiction when I was 12, although at that age I didn't even know the term. The first stories I read were from Mexican soap operas that I loved and was obsessed with. At the same time, I read a lot of romance—stories that I definitely shouldn't have read because of my age.
I must have been about 14 years old when I came across fanfiction, already with the definition of the concept, when I was looking for information about a very specific literary series and from there my world changed completely. I started devouring everything there was, whether it was age appropriate or not.
Primary fandoms
My first fandom was Harry Potter, where I fell in love with Drarry, the dynamics that the different authors built around the couple and the expansion they made of the magical world. There I not only found a community but I had my first experience with translation processes—knowing that they existed and even practicing them. That said, even though I used to love the fandom and the universe very much, after the author's deplorable actions, I have no choice but to leave it behind. My ethical integrity prevents me from speaking about and enjoying an author who exploits her relevance as an opportunity for economic legitimization and uses that money to threaten the lives of young trans people. Trans lives are worth more than any materialistic or symbolic attachment to a book. I will always be grateful for the friendships I made there, but until J.K. Rowling dies, I don't plan to return to the fandom.
In 2014 I fell into the One Direction's rabbit hole. It was the community that helped me through a dark period in my life when I was so depressed that I ended up dropping out of college. There I also discovered my own sexuality and made a lot of friends in the process. I'm not very active anymore, although I love Louis Tomlinson and I'm currently following his career as a musician.
Over the years I've been jumping into different fandoms, in most of them I'm just a casual lurker. However, last year I stumbled into MXTX works and I'm now discovering the amazing world of danmeis and asian fiction and media. It has been a really great experience and I hope to be able to keep reading and watching its beautiful stories.
I forgot to mention, I'm a rpfer for life, I love pairing real people together, especially musicians, but I don't encourage people to harras them. Fandom spaces are for us fans, there we can do anything we want, but we cannot allow ourselves or others to cross the door to the real world to report on what we do, say and read in those spaces. That goes for artists too, fandom spaces are not for you. Don't wade into them if you don't feel comfortable with people deforming your art, or even you as a person. Let's keep a healthy barrier.
Work as a translator
My journey as a translator began in 2015 in the One Direction fandom, although now I have expanded to different ones. I started with one-shots and then slowly expanded to big stories. It has been a very enriching experience, which I have been able to complement with my undergraduate studies.
The work has been pretty much stagnant in the last couple of years due to college workload and probably burnout. Currently I'm slowly working in the The Sacrifices Arc, one of my favorite Harry Potter Canon-Divergence stories.
Useless info about me
I LOVE THE BEATLES!!!
