Snowflake challenge #2
I never thought of myself a joiner. I'm too much of an introvert; I don't circulate very well and I sure as hell suck at small talk. And then, the internet was born.
So it turns out I CAN join things from the comfort of my couch, hidden quite nicely behind a laptop with black tape over the camera lens. It started with...Law & Order fanfic. I was transfixed. "People write about other people's stuff?" And it turns out, I really, really liked it. L&O: The Mothership was one of those TV shows that didn't delve into the lives of its characters; it was all about the crime and prosecution. Except I really did want them to tell me more about these delicious characters: Jack McCoy, Lenny Briscoe, Ed Greene, Lt. Anita, Claire, Serena, and that curmudgeon for a D.A. (It's been over a decade; I can't remember all of them). There was that tantalizing fan-theory that Jack and Claire were sleeping together. I can count on one hand the number of episodes the producers allowed us to even form a thought about this under-story, but it was there. And I thought, "Huh. Cool."
Then I found the fanfiction. A writer named Karen wrote some delicious porny stories for Jack and Claire and I loved it. Her stories were well-written and so perfectly in canon. After Claire died, Karen created a whole new world for Jack McCoy (played by Sam Waterston, on whom I had a massive crush) and I ate it up. I printed it out (on a dot matrix printer), took her novel-length stories on a trip with me, and loved them. I lost them for a while, and found them again about 10 years later. Read them all over again. When I was clearing out the downstairs mom-cave I came across the printouts again; this time, I threw them out. Done read them. Time to move on.
Then in 1999, a kids' book called "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" came to America via a new online bookstore called Amazon, and of course, I ordered it. My eldest son was right at the age for this book and him being a rather indifferent reader, I started reading it to him. The youngest was too young and he'd promptly fall asleep. Sometimes, so did I. But for the next 6 years, we read to our boys every night, and most nights it was Harry Potter. And in 2002 I found HP for Grownups on Yahoo Groups, where I was moderating a fan-group for Bill Pullman. My email provider at the time was a friend who ran a server out of his house. He called one day to complain about my not keeping up with the emails from HP4GU; they were big and numerous. I finally had to leave that group because it was so damn active. I just couldn't keep up.
Then one day at work on a boring, quiet Saturday in an empty museum I found Fiction Alley. And that, as they say, was that. I read a LOT of fanfic in those days; joined a writing group, mostly as an editor, and then in 2003 I wrote my first fic. According to AO3 I have 62 stories in the Harry Potter universe; I know there are more lurking on my computer, including the first Big Bang I ever finished, a Harry/Ron story in which I put Ron through hell. I still need to edit that.
And then my friend Simons-Flower posted the first Star Trek fic I ever read, based off of the what we now call the Kelvin timeline film, the one I had just seen the night before. I don't think I've ever joined a fandom faster, mostly because I was already a fan, having inhaled The Next Generation since the late 1980s. Amazingly, I never really went looking for fanfiction for TNG. I guess I was satisfied with the level of storytelling and character development there. I still haven't ever written in that sandbox.
I've played in a few more fandoms since: "Almost Human", a pretty good sci-fi TV series that lasted one season and starred the ever-so delightful Karl Urban. I wrote fic for that show based on the pre-broadcast trailers. And I even got a Big Bang out of it. Wrote a few fics for "Sleepy Hollow" before it fell apart. Some crossovers; some real-person fic. A lot of stories that are still stored on Drive. Maybe one day I'll post them.
But what I've really gotten out of fandom is the friends. When I first joined that fan group for Bill Pullman, my husband jokingly said, "Better not go meet any of them; they might be an axe murderer." Well, I met some of those women and they turned out to be wonderful and dear people. Went to NYC, shared a hotel room with 2 of them and saw Bill in a play. I still have a couple of good friends from those days, including...Bill Pullman.
But the HP & ST fandoms. Wow, you all continue to be my dearest friends. We have shared the birth of children, serious illnesses, unemployment & re-employment, marriage & divorce, tragedy & triumph. I will never be able to express how much your friendship has meant to me--it's been everything. I mean, look, I have a good life, a loving husband, and a small, tight circle of RL friends. But y'all GOT me, you understood me. And you encouraged me to be creative and to write and that hadn't happened EVER.
And so here I am. On the verge of turning 60, and still a wonder-filled fan girl. I still watch the Potter & ST films, and now recall all the great discussions we had about them, meeting up to watch them, going to London to see Dan take it all off on stage, meeting you to watch other films of Dan's, Karl's, Chris's; having dear friends converge on me to see Bruce perform here. If I died tomorrow, I would go having had a great time in this life, and I wouldn't trade any of it for anything.
Thank you all, for this wonderfulness.