The Pre-history of Lightning Speed

It all began with a big imagination...

I won't go through my entire life's story, as I know that would be really boring for you because, really, noting interesting has ever really happened to me. I do want to tell you a little bit about what went through my head most of the time when I was a little kid.
When I was about six years old (...possibly...it's hard for me to remember back that far) I created a little character I called “Wonder Girl” (or my own alternate superhero persona, if you will...). I used to draw Wonder Girl all the time back then and I believe I still have most every single one of those pictures. On every picture, though, I would always add the words “Coming Soon”. I knew from the start that I wanted to be known for making something that would entertain people, whether it be a story or, in the imagination of my child self, a movie or television show.
IL (or Illia, as I've started calling it now) was also a very big part of my childhood, only, back then, it wasn't known as “IL”. Really, “IL” is just shorthand for its real name: Invisible Land (I'm so very original when it comes to making worlds for my imaginary friends). At the time, its inhabitants were just a bunch of cartoon and video game characters.
At some period of my life, Wonder Girl and Invisible Land kind of took the backseat. I was growing up and my new main interest was music. It gave birth to an imaginary band I made up known as the “Fatal 5”. It involved myself and (regrettably enough) characters from the children's show, “The Little Einsteins”. Keep in mind that, at the time, I was already a preteen, about eleven or twelve. You see, I used to have this idea in my head that, if I liked a character, but not the media it came out of, I could, in essence, “rescue it”. I actually kept this philosophy for a long time before eventually abandoning it.
Anyway, eventually, I added Sonic the Hedgehog into the group to feed my growing addiction to the franchise. It was at about this time that I began my very first real fanfiction...for Pokemon. Again, I became the main character and I traveled around a brand-new region with a group of trainers...that were all gym leaders...There was Liza, a water-type specialist, Michael, a grass-type master, Rachael, a flying-type prodigy, and Dora, a normal-type...user...person...
It was about half a year later when I decided to ditch the ongoing adventures in whatever-the-region-was-called and move on to bigger and better things. I decided to bring back Wonder Girl. At the time, there was only one, so my supporting characters were actually the members of the Fatal 5, which had since expanded to include Brock from Pokemon. This began the Wonder Girl series that was absolutely essential to the birth of Lightning Speed.
Sometime into the Wonder Girl series, I made the decisions to add more Wonder Girls and, in effect, create the Wonder Girl Society. This was when the Wonder Girl series went into full throttle, with it taking up most all of my time. This wasn't to say I wasn't still making characters, but the most effort of all went into the Wonder Girl series.

One thing you need to know about the Wonder Girl series is that it gave rise to a lot of the background of Lightning Speed. It was in this series that I first coined the terms “IL”, “informed/uninformed” (as a term for describing who knew about IL and who didn't), and even “reverse”. That's right. Reverses were actually featured in the Wonder Girl series before LS even existed.
The series also gave rise to a lot of characters that make appearances in Lightning Speed as well. Besides the Wonder Girls, there was Isabella Monroe and Ardonhearst, the entirety of the “original” Villains' League (Goopy, Greevil and Vanna, and Miss Priss/Primrose), Kat and Ellie Vix, the Western Lizard (ssn13e1), Elizabeth Schaffer (ssn17e6) and even the Dark Evil (AKA, Anteus' father) and the girl that accompanied him in his first appearance, Brenda. There are also character appearances later in the series that coincide with the old Wonder girl series, including a woman named Nayala, a girl named Mallory, and a supervillain known as Elektricia.

You didn't come here to hear me talk about my old Wonder Girl series, though. You came here to find out about the origins of Lightning Speed. Before we talk about Lightning Speed, though, we have to take another trip back into my childhood. You see, understanding Lightning Speed means understanding a form of machinima I used to do when I was little (machinima being a story or video created using a video game that doesn't necessarily have to be fanfiction, but can be). When I was younger, I used to call them “game-games”, in which I'd use the game to sort of “act out” whatever kind of story was in my head. As a child, most of these used to be “horrible babysitter” situations (not unlike those in “The Fairly Oddparents”) acted out in Super Mario Sunshine.
At about 14, I decided I'd try to relive old times and do one of those old things using Sonic Adventure DX. This time, though, I wanted to do something I'd never done with one of my “game-games”: do it entirely with original characters. I decided to do one for every playable character in the game (sans Big because Big is stupid). I chose random names for each one, as I didn't plan on going any farther with them after that. Sonic became Jake, Tails became Cilla, Amy became Rose (BTW, once you know Rose's origins, her name doesn't really seem all that original, does it?), Knuckles became Mandi, and E-123 Gamma became Naomi.
If you're looking for locations from Lightning Speed in the game, I can tell you that Delmont Square is indeed Station Square, Iolana's jungle is the jungle in the Mystic Ruins, and Virtuala is actually the city part of the Speed Highway level. Even so, I did use more games than just one once I decided to do more than one story with my little gang. For example, I originally had a prison riot scene in ssn1e6 (“Cilla is Framed!”) that was done in “The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker”'s Forsaken Fortress and most of the very first workings of ssn1e4 (“Naomi Goes Bad”) were actually done in Super Mario Galaxy.
The very first episode of Lightning Speed I did entirely outside of a video game was actually ssn1e10 (“The Origin of Ardonhearst”). After that, I never did another episode inside of a video game again.

Even though Lightning Speed had finally taken a step out of the realm of video games, it still wasn't out of the shadow of the Wonder Girl series that was still going strong at the time. Production of Lightning Speed was slow at the time simply because of that. In fact, for about a year longer, the Wonder Girl series was still my main series.
The original Lightning Speed, much like the original Wonder Girl series, actually had a lot of crossover-fanfiction elements in it. An obvious one from LS is Leah and Emily actually originally being Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy, but there were many more that were taken out of the series before the series actually reached deviantART. It was around the advent of Lightning Speed ssn8 that I decided I wanted to get serious about making my stories completely original, so I cut out the fanfiction content (which also spanned into the Wonder Girl series too, meaning bye-bye Fatal 5...which, in actuality, were replaced with another group of original characters and renamed the Fatal 4). After that, Lightning Speed became what you know it to be today.