Snowflake Challenge - challenges 1 & 2
It's that time of year again! Oh, how time flies. Even though 2019 was intense and stressful and I'm glad for it to be over, I do have good memories of participating in the Snowflake Challenge last year. I'm looking forwards to seeing what this year will bring!
Challenge one: introduce yourself
Hello and welcome to my journal! My name is Antuhsa (pronounced like 'an-TOOG-sjah') and I'm a 25 year old woman living in western Europe. I work in a healthcare related field during the day, but in the evening I have a secret second life as a bookbinding student. I've just started a multi-year bookbinding programme and am enjoying it a lot so far!
As for fandoms, I'm a life-long Arthurian lore enthusiast. I read any King Arthur related book I could get my hands on as a child, and later went to uni to get a degree in Medieval literature, with a focus on the Arthurian side of it. King Arthur is pretty much the OG fandom when you think of it: it has been popular for centuries, we don't know who started it so there isn't much agreed upon canon, and if you write for it, you're allowed to publish your book as an original work. Isn't it great? :D
I was also a huge LOTR/the Hobbit fan in my teens and even went so far as to read The Silmarillion from cover to cover. I never really got into the fanfic, but I did make a few crappy fanvids for some LOTR inspired songs by this Russian band. One of those got hundreds of thousands of hits and even caught the attention of the band itself ^^. Those were the good times. I'm not that into LOTR anymore, but I still have fond memories of my time in that fandom.
Right now, I'm primarily involved in HP. I also read fanfics for Labyrinth, Jane Austen, Gentleman Jack and a few others, but I'm mainly in HP. I'm not the biggest fan of the books, but I do really like the fandom. It's so big that there's something here for everyone. I read almost any ship, but my favourite is Harry/Snape. Though I'm not sure if I can really say I ship them, because in most of my favourite fics they don't actually end up together at the end. What can I say? I prefer dark and angsty fics to romantic ones any day, especially for Snarry.
I'm more a consumer than a creator when it comes to fandom, but I do have a handful of works up on my AO3 page. I've written a few fics in the past and am now experimenting with combining fandom and bookbinding (inspired by last year's Snowflake Challenge!). It's a lot of fun and I'm looking forwards to making more fandom inspired books in the future. However, I also have a lot of stories in my head I still want to write. I haven't written these before because of fear or failure, but hopefully 2020 will be the year I finally push myself to go for it.
Challenge two: talk about your fannish history
Ha, I accidentally covered some of this in my introduction already, but I'll happily add a bit more to it. I think my fannish history started with Pippi Longstocking. I was a big fan of Astrid Lindgren's books as a child. My favourite was The Lionheart Brothers, because everybody died in it (I've always had a preference for angst), but Pippi Longstocking inspired me more. I had a lot of fun imagining myself as Pippi's best friend and we had many exciting adventures together in my head. I actually wrote one of those adventures down when I was about 9, which was my first attempt at writing fanfic.
When I was 11/12, I became more interested in historical stories, especially medieval ones. My brother and a good friend of mine did too, and together we devoured any King Arthur and Robin Hood related movie/tv show we could get our hands on. We were also huge fans of this Dutch tv show called De Legende van de Bokkerijders, based on the 18th century Dutch legend of the buckriders. When we finished those shows, we'd write plays based on them and perform them for our family. We did that for years and always had great fun with it. I'd do it still if the opportunity presented itself.
I read the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit when I was 11/12 and became a huge fan of those books, but I've already mentioned that in my introduction above.
I started reading Harry Potter when I was about 11 as well. At that time, OOTP had already been published, so I was quite late to the party and hardly had to wait for the next books to come out. I enjoyed HP and talked about it a lot with my friends, but I didn't do anything more with it, because I enjoyed LOTR a lot more.
When I was 19 and studying Medieval studies in uni, I was listening to a lecture about medieval English literature, when I spotted a girl in class reading from a website called Adult Fanfiction and was intrigued. I knew what fanfiction was, but had never had the urge to learn more about it. Until then. I went to that website as soon as I returned home and, well, fell down the rabbit hole hard.
I visited the LOTR/Hobbit section of the website first and read fics there for a few days, but none of them really caught my interest. I clicked on HP next, found my first Snarry by accident, and immediately knew what I'd been missing in the LOTR section. Something about HP fanfic in general, and Snarry in particular, just clicked and felt right, to the point that I'm still here 6 years later. In that time, I wrote about 20 fics to various stages of completion, published three, beta-read more than 300k words, bound two Snarry inspired books, and made a couple of lovely friends that I talk to regularly and hope to meet for real later in 2020. Even though I'm not the most active person here, fandom has definitely brought a lot to my life.
I must say that I'm long past the honeymoon phase when it comes to HP fanfic though. The all-consuming enthusiasm for it is gone. Instead it has become comfortable, sometimes even bordering on boring. I feel like I've already read it all. It's rare that a fic surprises me these days. I often wonder whether it isn't time to move on, and I seriously consider going on a long hiatus a few times a year. Yet there's always something that brings the spark of enthusiasm back. A wonderful new fic, an interesting conversation with a friend, inspiration for a fannish project. Right now I'm in one of my fandom fatigue phases again, but at the same time fandom still brings me joy. As long as that's the case, I'll be staying.
This entry was originally posted at https://antuhsa.dreamwidth.org/7119.html. Please comment there using OpenID.