Let me tell you a tale of one of my REALLY old fanfics.

So, today I was on DeviantART and I stumbled across a fanart of Milo Thatch and Lisa McGrath from Atlantis. You may not know that in the A:TLE canon, although this was not mentioned in the movie itself (but it is brought up in several of the tie-in books and on the DVD), Milo was apparently involved with some girl named Lisa McGrath back in the day.

IKR? Milo had a girlfriend (besides Kida, that is). I can’t wrap my brain around it.

Anyway, waaaaaay back ten years ago, I was writing a fanfic called “Tales From Atlantis” that was about Milo and Kida before the movie, like the Tales From Agrabah book about Aladdin and Jasmine. I did actually write a Milo-got-his-heart-broken-in-college chapter, completely clueless that apparently that was also the case in canon (thus, the girl had a different name). Then a friend told me about the canon girl, and what her name was.

And I promptly went batshit crazy, because my name is Lisa. This was very distressing to me. How could I write about “Lisa” breaking Milo’s heart, that’s like writing about myself! I would never break Milo’s heart! I’d also never date him in the first place, but that’s not the point. I couldn’t do it.

Well, now ten years have passed, and I’m looking back thinking, “Geez, Lisa, you can’t screw with canon like that! Just get in there and change her freaking name!”

So that’s what I’m doing right now. But can I just say, writing a story where a character has your name but is not you is totally freaking bizarre?! I have never done it before. I don’t know how Jane Austen managed it. Every time I see it I’m like, “Wait, what? Me? What?”

It doesn’t help matters that my name is fairly uncommon. I’ve only met maybe two or three girls with the same name as me in my entire life. I was only actually friends with one of them. Likewise, I very rarely come across my name in fiction, either. So whenever I hear my name or see it in print, I’m like,

Nevertheless, I shall press on.