@->->- So, Who the Hell is Cori? (And Why the Hell Does Anybody Care? +P) "This is my unauthorized autobiography. (I'm gonna sue myself once it's published!)" @->->- Hello! My name is Cori, and I run this site! On this page, I'm gonna talk a little bit about how I became a Team Rocket fan and about my stories. About the Author Let's see...where do I begin? Howzabout at the beginning? I first started watching Pokemon in early 1999. I'd been playing the game for a couple of months and enjoying it immensely, and my brother said the show was really cool, too. So, since I was never home when the show was on, I got him to start taping it for me...and boy, am I glad I did! The first episode I ever saw was "Case of the K-9 Caper." I remember rolling my eyes at the annoying kid with the Pikachu, and the other two kids didn't catch my fancy, either...but then, three lovely, charming "villains" appeared on the scene and absolutely cracked me up! Yes, it was love at first sight. Jessie was beautiful, James was handsome, and Meowth was adorable! I loved their motto, I loved the fact that they speak in rhymes and make puns all the time...and I thought that Jessie and James made a pretty damned cute couple! Yes, I was a Rocketshipper from the start, too. As I continued to watch the eps that my brother taped for me while I was at work, I saw the way Jessie and James were constantly touching, the way they seemed to flirt with each other, etc. And when I saw the way they hugged each other in "Attack of the Prehistoric Pokemon," it made me sure that it was more than just friendship between these two. Then, I saw "Holy Matrimony!" for the first time, and I was vindicated! This episode proved that Jessie and James aren't related to each other, that James isn't gay, that the two of them need to be together...and that they WILL be together forever! It was a dream come true! *.* I've been hopelessly hooked on Team Rocket and Rocketshipping ever since! Sadly, as I kept watching Pokemon and became familiar with the story arc, I noticed a pattern -- the stupid, boring, annoying, bratty kids that I can't stand always "win," and the characters that I love always get pushed aside and screwed-over. >_< Not one to take this lying down, I decided to turn to the internet and fanfiction in order to satisfy my Team Rocket fix. Most of the sites I came across at first were general Pokemon sites that took an anti-Team Rocket stance, shoving them aside, and only giving me a little blurb about how "stupid," "evil," and "incompetent" they are. >P Fortunately, I found that when I narrowed the scope of my search, there was no shortage of sites devoted solely to Team Rocket. And when I found the Team Rocket sites, I also discovered the term "Rocketshipper" and learned that there was a name for what I am! I really liked some of the Team Rocket sites I found -- getting to see fan art, more in-depth info on TR, screen-shots, other people sharing their Rocketshippy views, etc. was an extremely refreshing change of pace from the show. Unfortunately, net surfing wasn't without a downside. A lot of the Team Rocket sites that I found didn't sound much different from the twerp-centric sites and general Pokemon sites -- they'd say a bunch of crap about how shallow and heartless Jessie is, how dumb and wimpy James is, they'd say mean stuff about Meowth and J & J's pokemon, etc. And seeing that garbage on a Team Rocket site is even worse than seeing it on a twerp site -- I expect such crap from the twerp fans, but the person running the TR site is supposed to like these characters! I'll never be able to fathom how somebody can say they like something and then proceed to treat it with disrespect -- that's just wrong. X_x And just like the websites, the fanfics had an upside and a downside, too. Some authors wrote cute and shippy stories that I enjoyed. But for every good fic I read, there were at least fifty bad ones -- I damn near had a heart attack when I found out that some people actually write fics where TR gets raped, killed, needlessly tortured, etc.! I'll never be able to fathom that one, either. How the f***ing f*** can people claim to like these characters and then write fics where they die or have other terrible things happen to them?! Words can't do justice to how much that upsets me! 8_8 Don't get me wrong, I've got no beef whatsoever with fics that contain drama, suspense, or themes about facing and overcoming challenges (a lot of my own stories are like that), but too many people just make the characters suffer for the sake of suffering, or they write about things that are so horrible that there's not really any way for the characters to recover from it, and I DO have a problem with that...a BIG problem. And for the record, I DON'T consider fics where Jessie gets over James's death, James kills a guy who rapes Jessie, and the like to be of the "triumph over adversity" genre -- fics like that just make me sick, and there ain't no way around it! Sorry if my hard-line views on fanfic offend anybody, but that's my opinion, and I'm entitled to it. You see, a big reason I feel so strongly about this issue is because back when I used to accept fanfic submissions, I had guidelines where I stated in no uncertain terms what kind of fics I liked and didn't like, and what kind of fics I was and wasn't going to post. However, nobody ever followed my rules, and people insisted on sending me fics which I'd clearly stated that I considered unacceptable. I found this to be extremely offensive, not only because people wrote fics where they killed and/or needlessly abused TR, but because they expected me to read, enjoy, and post such fics (and got pretty damned nasty with me when I didn't). >_< When the pro-death people got pushy about the issue, I had no choice but to push back. If they hadn't "forced" me to read these kind of fics in the first place, then I wouldn't have complained about it so much. Another reason I find death-fics about characters that I like to be so objectionable is because I've had to deal with death plenty of times IRL. I'm perfectly aware that death is a part of life...and it happens to be a part of life that I'm none too fond of. That's why death and suffering aren't things I want to read about in fanfic -- when I'm trying to pursue a hobby and do something that I enjoy, I don't want to have to deal with stuff that upsets me. About My Stories Okay, this is getting to be a touchy subject. I'll calm down now and talk about my stories! I've been writing stories all my life, but I never thought they were any good, and I always ended up feeding them to the paper shredder. However, Team Rocket really turned things around for me. Jessie, James, and Meowth move me so deeply that they inspired me to finally get my ideas out of my head and onto paper (or in this case, the computer screen) and share them with other people. I primarily started writing fanfics because I truly love Jessie, James, and Meowth, and I think they get MORE than their share of suffering on the show! My philosophy is that fandom and fanfiction are first and foremost an expression of love for the characters (and a way to fix all of the stuff that series canon screws up)...and that's exactly what I feel my fanfics are -- I write them because I want to make J, J & M happy and give them the positive outcomes that they deserve. I have never, nor will I ever, write a story where any of the main characters die, get raped, or have any other overly-traumatic things like that happen to them. All of my stories have happy endings...but I also like to think that I still provide a sufficient amount of drama and a solid plot. Basically, I write four different kinds of fanfics -- regular stories, WYDS, WRH, and therapy pieces. (And needless to say, EVERYTHING I write is Rocketshippy!) Also, with the exception of Broken Souls and Forever, which are alternate-realities that I wrote as continuations to fics by other authors, all of my stories (be they regular, WYDS, or WRH) follow the same timeline and form a continuing arc. This gives my stories a degree of consistency and allows me to more fully explore the relationships between Jessie, James, Meowth, and their pokemon and how these relationships develop over time. My stories, when read in chronological order, show how Jessie and James progress from best friends, to lovers, to a married couple with children (or at least, my vision of how it happens! ^_~) Regular stories speak for themselves -- these are...for lack of a better word, regular Team Rocket fanfics. I haven't written too many of these, but the few that I have written are experiments in all different kinds of genres (except tragedy). At the Crossroads is a combination of hurt/comfort, character origin, and drama; To Wish, Perchance to Dream is a combination of drama, adventure, alternate reality, and dream exploration; The Facts in the Case of "Woodson vs. Ketchum", What the BLANK?!, The Fellowship of the Rocket and Their Fu King Adventure, and Misadventures in Babysitting are comedies; "All I Want for Christmas....": The Ekans and Koffing Story and The Greatest Gifts of All are holiday pieces; and The Portrait is a conceptual piece (and a tribute to Toshihiro Ono.) "What You Didn't See" (WYDS) stories, however, are a little different from regular stories. WYDS are based on canonical Pokemon stories, be they episodes from the show, the movies, the manga, books, etc. These kind of stories elaborate on the Pokemon canon and show the reader "what you didn't see." The WYDS can be a prequal to an episode, showing the events that lead up to what was seen on TV; a continuation of the episode, showing what happened to Team Rocket after they blasted off; never-before-seen footage of the episode, showing what Team Rocket was doing during all of those boring twerp scenes; or a combination of the three. As you can see from my Library, WYDS are my most common stories. Whenever an episode of Pokemon seems more unfair to our heroes than usual, whenever I think TR was woefully underused in an ep and that they'd have an interesting tale to tell, or whenever I just want to elaborate on an episode, I get the uncontrollable urge to WYDS it. I also like to put different spins on what was seen in the episode and add new twists. To me, it's more than just "what you didn't see" -- it's what's beneath the surface! Some of my WYDS have so many plot twists, they end up having absolutely nothing to do with the episode they're based on! For example, Family Matters, my WYDS of "The Pokemon Water War" is about teen pregnancy, Heroic Hearts, my WYDS of "The Superhero Secret" is a Rocketshippy political satire (don't ask me how that one happened -- it just did! O_o), and Where Angels Dare to Tread, my WYDS of "Control Freak!" is a mystical fantasy quest! But then, that's what's so great about Jessie, James, and Meowth -- when I think about their characters, virtually anything is possible for them! ^_^ "What Really Happened" (WRH) stories are the genre that my WYDS evolved into after my timeline split from the canon of the show. WRH stories follow the same principle that WYDS do, only instead of being an elaboration on the episode, it's a rewrite of the episode to show the reader "what really happened." Most of the stuff that's happening on the show these days is so inane (or downright disturbing) that the only way to fix it is to completely scrap what the scriptwriters gave us and come up with a story that's more logical and satisfying! I find it's easier to just start from scratch with my own version of the episode than spend a bunch of time explaining away or correcting everything the "professional" writers screw up, so all of my episode-based stories that take place post-canon split are of this genre. And finally, therapy pieces are stories I write as continuations or responses to depressing fics that people have sent to me against my wishes. I write therapy fics in order to turn the sadness around and make something positive out of all the negatives. (I'm probably the most sensitive reader in existence -- I still cry about death fics that I read years ago, and I've even had a few nervous breakdowns because I can't bear the thought of J, J & M dying or being without each other! 8_8 Fics about rape, human experiments, and other disturbing things still give me nightmares, too! *shudder*) In effect, the therapy fic is what I write to save J, J & M from the tragic fate that the other author condemned them to and cheer myself up in the process...and as an added bonus, it keeps me off the Prozac and out of the looney-bin! Broken Souls is my continuation of a fic where James commits suicide -- Jessie saves him before it's too late, and Meowth gets them together in my story. My other therapy fic, A Warm Place, is just a generic anti-death piece. There's a whole genre of "Rocketshippy" fics about James dying young and Jessie being reunited with him in Heaven when she dies of old age many years later, and I don't see anything beautiful or romantic about it! It's just depressing (and disturbing)! >_< A Warm Place is my response to this genre of death fics, showing that neither Jessie nor James is going to die young and that they'll always be together. I don't think I can ever really "get over" a fic that truly upsets me, but therapy pieces like these give me a chance to vent...and they also give me a little peace of mind because I can always look at my story and remind myself of what "really" happened when I get to thinking about an upsetting fic. Well, that's just a basic run-down of the kind of stories that I write and my motivations for writing them. About Time to Wrap Things Up.... And that does it for my bio page! I hope your visit has been an entertaining and informative one. (You now know what a whacko I am! XP) @->->- Lemme outta this furshlugginer place! @->->- Music is Lucky Lucky by Kojiro.