Meet Hannah! Known as ‘Oncethrown,’ she is a 30-year-old fanfiction author from the U.S.A.
How long have you been writing?
I have been writing since they taught us to make letters. My cousin and I used to write stories about girls in an orphanage surrounded by alligators that always made daring escapes. I have been writing fanfic for 12 years. I started out in the Boy Meets World fandom. Yeah…BOY Meets World.
How did you get involved in the Shadowhunters fandom?
I used to have this shitty job with a 50-minute bus commute and a second weekend job downtown, so I was on the bus like 14 hours a week, and I was reading like three books a week. I happened to have a Barnes and Nobles coupon one day and City of Bones was on one of those ‘suggested reading’ tables. They were the perfect thing to read on the bus. I read the whole series in three weeks and loved it, even though I understood the books had problems. I convinced a bunch of friends to go to the movie with me (after brunch with bottomless mimosas) and I was genuinely disappointed that the movie was so awful, even though I knew the books weren’t very good.
I didn’t even know they were making a show until my boyfriend told me about it and we watched the first two episodes on Hulu. I honestly didn’t like it very much, so I didn’t continue to watch it, but when they named an episode ‘Malec,’ I decided to give it another shot and fell in love with the fun of it, especially Harry, who I thought was perfect for Magnus. I followed a bunch of Shadowhunters blogs on Tumblr and fell back into fandom really hard because I had moved into an even worse job – a job so bad that I went into a deep burnout, depression-like funk and ended up having to get a series of rabies shots due to stress-induced-poor-decision-making. I wrote all of ‘5 Times Alec Lightwood Almost Lost His Virginity’ during that stress/depression/rabies period. (I have a way better job now, and I’m immune to rabies for 10 years, sooooo…net gain.)
What is the appeal of fanfiction to you?
Everything; I love the community of people who love to agonize over the storylines, and character interactions, and motivations. I love seeing other people headcanon things that are outside of my experience that I wouldn’t necessarily have thought about (example: autistic Alec). I like the way it’s become sort of a home base for me over the last decade. I tend to write epic crap-tons of fic when I’m stressed about other things. Mostly, I like the freedom of being able to sit with a character or a situation that means something to you but that wouldn’t necessarily make good TV, or that you know you can’t trust a room of TV writers to get right, and draw the idea out the way you need to see it, and then be able to share it with other people, who also needed to see it.
What emotion do you most like to write?
Frustration; I like when a character knows they want somethin but can’t figure out exactly what it is or how to get it, or when characters know exactly what they want but can’t justify it or find a way to get it, or a way to keep it if they do get it. I especially enjoy this with characters who are mostly in their own way (Dean Winchester, Alec Lightwood, Shawn Hunter).
What is your favorite fanfiction trope?
I love 5+1’s and sex pollen fics.
What ships do you ship and why do you love them so much?
Alec/Magnus. Every aspect of them is fun to write. Alec overcoming his society’s prejudices, acknowledging his own, dealing with his mother’s bigotry. Alec sort of waking up to the possibility of sex, and love, and romance is fun for me, too, because I starting really dating much later than is typical, and I had to have that ‘How many people?’ conversation with someone and it went just about as well as it did for Magnus and Alec, and I really loved Alec for that. And Magnus is so complex and has so much history and so much power. He could have literally anyone, and for some reason, this big, gentle dork with the social baggage is who it has to be. I also love just how healthy the show makes their relationship. They talk! They listen! They have lives outside of each other! Amazing.
What’s your favorite scene you’ve ever written?
I really can’t choose between Chapter 4 of ‘5 Times Alexander Lightwood Almost Lost His Virginity (And One Time He Learned Virginity Was Imaginary and Stupid),’ where Alec and a young love have this perfect slice of a romantic afternoon, and Max’s rune ceremony going terribly, horribly wrong in Chapter 10 of ‘How to Save a Family.’
Share with us an out of context line from one of your stories.
“I would destroy your sham marriage and push you into the arms of a hot wizard any day.”
What has been the best part of your fandom experience so far?
I have never gotten into a fandom as early as I got into Shadowhunters before, and it’s really fun to be involved in a nascent fandom for the first time and get to write fics based on only a handful of episodes instead of trying to take into account the accumulation of knowledge from over a hundred episodes while I’m writing.
Like what you see? You can read Oncethrown’s fanfiction on Archive of Our Own, or follow her on Tumblr. You can also check out her Animorph’s podcast on iTunes.
