25 years ago this week, the first episode of CSI aired. I wouldn’t start watching it until towards the end of season 3, so a few years later, but it still hit me today when I read that it was 25 years old.
Because CSI was *my life* when I was twenty years old.
It wasn’t my first fandom, it wasn’t even my first foray into the world of reading fanfiction, but it was the first time I had watched a show, every week, wishing, hoping, praying to catch just a glimpse of my favorite ship. Waiting for *that* moment…you know the one. If you’re reading this–it’s Elizabeth finally saying she’s in love with Nathan and the kisses that follow.
For Grissom and Sara fans, that moment was at the end of season 6. I fell to the floor of the house I was renting with friends when Sara walked out of a bathroom in a satin robe and knelt on the floor in front of Grissom lying on a bed. Yep. Ded. (For the record, these are the moments my husband *lives for* and when N&E were gonna have their moment, he watched *me* from the dining room).
It would be another year before the rest of the team found out (one year of a clandestine relationship was brilliant) and then Sara left the show in season 8 after they had decided to get married–this would also be the moment of their first kiss. Grissom followed in season 9, to be with her, but she returned in season 11, married, but long-distance. I believe it was season 14 when it was revealed they were divorced, but the season finale brought them back together again and they literally sailed off into the sunset. In the reboot, CSI: Vegas, they return, happily married once and for all.
Rollercoaster.
One of my favorite quotes ever is from a CSI fanfic:
"Love is like the ultimate roller coaster. Yeah, there are some slower parts and some low parts, but most of the ride is exhilarating. We've finished that long, slow climb up the first big hump. We're at the summit now. Do you want to go on over and start the ride of your life? Or do you want to roll back down to the platform and wait until you figure out if it will be worth it?"
- Sara Sidle in Inadmissible Evidence, by Burked.
Oh how relatable, huh?
CSI was also the fandom that I dipped my toes into writing fanfic. I (and this cracks me up because of who my current co-author is) was not a writer. I was a twenty-ish year old college kid majoring in marine biology and took my last writing class in high school. I had never wanted to write creatively, it wasn’t even remotely on the radar.
But I did it. I wrote over 25 stories for CSI–most similar to the ones I commonly write now. One-shots. The ones that find a moment in time and explore that. I’ve gone back and read some, and while they weren’t bad I think, they definitely needed some polish. But I wrote and posted and some people read them. For the most part, I was content to read other people’s fanfics…and would continue reading fanfics for any number of other fandoms over the years. I would only drop a couple one-shots into the Castle fandom over a couple of years after that.
Then Nathan and Elizabeth caught my attention. Thirteen years passed and I hadn’t written a word creatively–I did however write a 235 page doctoral dissertation in there somewhere, so that has to count for something (hahaha, Six Months in Regina is so many more pages…). And what was glaringly missing in the fandom was someone, anyone, writing open-door romance fanfic.
Of course, this makes sense. WCTH and its source material do not naturally lend themselves to the genre. But that’s the whole point of fanfiction–to blow those doors wide open and explore the possibilities.
But I had barely written a single bedroom scene, many many years before.
So I whined to my husband about it.
And the words he said, in jest, actually are some that I’ve internalized through this journey and now really intentionally live by: Be the change you want to see in the world.
Now, yes, he was being pithy, but honestly, the man knows me and was probably setting me up, knowing I can’t back down from a challenge. Then I found a friend in the space starting to poke at the same boundaries as I, rounded up some cheerleaders, and posted my first open-door fanfic.
One of my favorite Reylo fanfic authors, Ali Hazelwood, published her thirteenth traditionally published book today–a werewolf romance. It would have been so easy for her to write it under a pseudonym and keep her werewolf romances underground. She’s sold enough of her other books and has a fan base large enough to support her for quite some time, I would suspect.
But there is something so deliciously beautiful about writing something you *love* that some people are going to read and actively dislike, putting it out in the world, and saying “Fuck it. I own this. This brings me joy, and I want to share it with you.”
That’s how I feel about Six Months in Regina, affectionately abbreviated SMiR.
Notawriter and I spent ages worrying about what the reception of this fic would be. But we shouldn’t have. There’s usually always *someone* willing to read something. And our people found us.
I don’t really care about the people who think it’s trash. Because, if you’ve read it, it’s not. But writing spice comes with that challenge. Everyone has their line, their set of morals and values they aren’t willing to compromise, and that’s their prerogative. But that doesn’t have to stop *me.*
It’s been a delight to share something that was SO fun to create, something that has taught me, and keeps teaching me about what it means to be a writer and how to tell a story. A good story. One that might have the most boundary-pushing open-door content I’ve written to date, but that also makes you feel and want to come back to know what happens next, not just to read the next spicy scene.
I mean, we accidentally wrote a whole novel. Which still cracks me up. Oh, the fun we’ve had.
Check that. The fun we are still having.😉
But most of all, it’s really fun to see the joy that other people experience from consuming something that brings me joy. The joy that joy begets. This anniversary of a silly tv show has made me sentimental, but the SMiR chat ladies will forever be etched in my mind–we just have FUN and laugh, oh how we laugh. (That is until we make you cry…👀).
So I guess that’s the point of all this rambling. It took me a long time to accept that doing the thing, making the reel, writing the story and doing it because *you* love it, gives you only about half of the joy as sharing it out into the world and experiencing first-hand the joy others have because of it.
Be the change. Do it. Own it. Fill the world with joy.
And celebrate the silly things–like the 25th anniversary of a show you once loved.
P.S. As a full grown, married adult: Grissom and Sara are toxic as fuck. Still love them, but what the actual hell was going through my twenty-year old brain. Luckily, fanfic was there to “fix” the toxic parts of what was on screen. Lots of lessons learned in those early fanfic reading days, how to write “fix-it” romance while also keeping fanfic itself non-toxic.
