Hello, and welcome to my profile! My name is Ryan, or as I sometimes call myself, Padawan Ryan of the V'tosh Ka'tur. I have had this account on Fanfiction.net since I was about fifteen years old, at which time my goal in life was to become a writer and attend university for journalism. Toward the end of high school I changed my mind (having experienced the stress of writing fanfiction and meeting the demands of my readers, I did not want to do that for the rest of my life, even for money), and ended up attending college for a social work diploma, intending to help people. This was still not what I wanted to do, however, and I continued onto university to get my Bachelor's degree in history (as history is my passion). Having enjoyed that so much, I went onto a Master's degree in history, and am currently working on an interdisciplinary PhD in human studies. I consider myself to be a gender and sexuality historian, specializing in LGBTQ history (especially in regard to homosexuality), and I suppose that in some sense I have become the writer I have wanted to be since I was six years old -- perhaps I do not write fiction, as I had planned back then, but I write about my research, and that is satisfying.

I have technically been writing fanfiction since I was eleven years old, before I really understood what "fanfiction" was - I thought I was just writing stories about my favourite books/movies, I didn't realize it was a common thing or that there was a name for it - but I did not begin reading fanfiction until I was about thirteen. I have diary entries that talk about the first fanfics I read, all of which were slash, which at the time I thought to be both gross but intriguing -- I suppose it would come to no surprise that after reaching adulthood, I would realize I was totally and completely gay. I made this account a couple years later, having actually read fics on the site for those past couple years but not concerned about making an account until I had fanfiction that I wanted to post. Most of my early fanfiction is either incomplete or just...cheesy, but I suppose that's rather common for fifteen/sixteen year olds. I wrote most of my fanfiction while I was in college, working on my social work diploma, because I developed an obsession with an uncommon ship (Luke/Wedge) and suddenly needed more fics to exist about them. I stopped writing fanfiction regularly when I was about twenty-four and started my Bachelor's degree, and have been far too exhausted/busy throughout grad school to dedicate much time to writing anything besides academic work.

My life, outside of academia, is one of fandom obsessions and social justice activism. I spend much of my free time sitting around at home in my apartment - single, by the way, and not looking (because honestly, people are exhausting) - and reading fanfiction, as I have done for much of my life, while binge-watching TV shows, having movie marathons, and doing multiple rereads of my favourite book series. To aid the image of me as a geeky, fandom-obsessed individual, I have fifteen tattoos, thirteen of which are pop culture related. If I am not at home or at the university, I am often taking part in some sort of protest or rally, ranging anywhere from protesting decisions made by politicians, ideologies like Fascism, practices like animal testing, or rallying to promote various human rights (women's rights, LGBTQ rights, etc). I call myself a "social justice warrior" because quite honestly, I regularly go out there and fight the good fight for social justice.