Snowflake Challenge-Day 5
My week is off to a good start, I have plans for my interview tomorrow and am about to buy some new luggage for my trip at the end of the month. Think good thoughts for me tomorrow at 1 pm. Today's question for 
snowflake_challenge is one that I find interesting.
Day 5
In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story. How did you come to fandom, why did you choose your fannish name, do you have more than one secret identity?
Fandom's always been there for me even though I didn't truly understand what it was that I was connecting to until college.
As a little girl, I fell in love with Paul Creswick's Robin Hood, the N.C. Wyeth illustrations pulled me into a different world. Robin Hood is still that touchstone story for me, I get annoyed at retellings I don't like, but love talking about what works and what doesn't. At the same time and earlier, I was reading through and having read to me the Narnia books. There was a day camp I went to where a part of every day was being read to. This wonderful man named King who had a deep voice and a beard read the Narnia books, that was where I learned the love of sharing books with others. Also at this same time, I was watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, which combined with Robin Hood inspired my first works of fanfic. Will Scarlett ending up on the Enterprise and being friends with Wesley Crusher through weird magic. I used to write in the back of my school notebooks, have the notebook open, flip to the back and write stories there then turn to the notes when I needed to take them. In a box, I still have these old school notebooks and later all the journals people gave me full of words.
At the age of twelve, I went to this wonderful summer program, Longacre where another world of interacting and creating opened up to me through playing Dungeons & Dragons. My first character and still the only one I've ever played in D&D was a half-elf bard and I made up a backstory for her that my GM liked so much, she started at level 5. That GM taught me that its possible to step into a world with words and that dice and all are beside the point, he also lent me R.A. Salvatore books to show me how rich the D&D world was. I was also taking theater classes and thinking about the importance of background, how even if you don't hear the details, every character has their backstory.
By the time I started doing LARPing and entered the World of Darkness, the idea of being able to write a history for my character was natural. The World of Darkness showed me a wider way of interacting as there were rulebooks, novels, pins, all this wonderful stuff that came along with this world. Then the internet was there and I could see other fans, I once even tried RPing in the offical Star Trek chatroom like set ups.
In college, I found Harry Potter and then an amazing friend showed me how to find fanfiction and I had that moment of oh, this is home. In the midst of writing papers, I would spend time on the Sugarquill while I ran my own Changeling: the Dreaming LARP and tabletop game. In my creative writing classes, I tried to slip the fantasy of Changeling: the Dreaming into my work. It only partly worked, Fangirl perfectly captured how some teachers don't get fantasy or fanfiction.
From that same friend after college, I was told about
milliways_bar and learned that I could actually roleplay my favorite fandom characters. I began with Will Scarlett and now play ten characters. Milliways brought me friends who shared where they wrote and suddenly I was sharing my own fanfiction, first on my LJ, then later on Ao3 and participating in Yuletide, Narnia Fic Exchange, Ineedmyfics and ficathons.
My user name ceitfianna was created my sophomore year of college, my partner at the time had an LJ invite code. I thought it might be a good way to keep in touch while studying abroad in Greece. Ceit is the Scots Gaelic spelling for my first name, Kate, and one of the few languages I've found where I can find my name as it is. I'm a plain Kate, where its not short for anything. Fianna is the name of a mythic tribe of warriors in Ancient Ireland and a werewolf tribe from Werewolf: the Apocalypse. I honestly don't recall exactly why I decided to combine them, but its stuck and is how I'm known on LJ, DW and Twitter.
On Archive of our Own, my name
FiKate is a reference to my AIM screenname which was the name of a character from a Werewolf: The Apocalypse game that only lasted one summer; Fiona. In Milliways, a huge amount of interaction happens in a chat room and since my screenname is Fiona, I was dubbed Fi. Yet there are Milliways' people who call me Kate and when I was creating my Archive of our Own name, I thought that I would combine them.
My Tumblr name on the other hand is something different as I didn't know how much it would connect to other areas of my life. Its
atthelamppost as I'm currently feeling at a crossroads while I try to figure out a way to do what I love and be paid for it. Its inspired by Narnia, which is one of my oldest fandoms and one that I'm still a bit weird about. I haven't read The Last Battle, because when I was about eleven or twelve, I decided I didn't want the series to end. I'm 33 and still haven't read even though a little while ago, my father read through the entire series for the first time. Maybe I will someday. I've also considered getting a tattoo of the lamppost as an iconic image for me.
The last name I have online is for my librarian/professional blog, that I really need to update which is called
nurturingstories. This is because I consider myself a storyteller and a good teacher and librarian is all about stories. We all have our own stories and children's stories need to be nurtured to allow them to grow.
This entry is also posted at http://ceitfianna.dreamwidth.org/431650.html. Please comment wherever you'd like.
snowflake_challenge is one that I find interesting.
Day 5
In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story. How did you come to fandom, why did you choose your fannish name, do you have more than one secret identity?
Fandom's always been there for me even though I didn't truly understand what it was that I was connecting to until college.
As a little girl, I fell in love with Paul Creswick's Robin Hood, the N.C. Wyeth illustrations pulled me into a different world. Robin Hood is still that touchstone story for me, I get annoyed at retellings I don't like, but love talking about what works and what doesn't. At the same time and earlier, I was reading through and having read to me the Narnia books. There was a day camp I went to where a part of every day was being read to. This wonderful man named King who had a deep voice and a beard read the Narnia books, that was where I learned the love of sharing books with others. Also at this same time, I was watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, which combined with Robin Hood inspired my first works of fanfic. Will Scarlett ending up on the Enterprise and being friends with Wesley Crusher through weird magic. I used to write in the back of my school notebooks, have the notebook open, flip to the back and write stories there then turn to the notes when I needed to take them. In a box, I still have these old school notebooks and later all the journals people gave me full of words.
At the age of twelve, I went to this wonderful summer program, Longacre where another world of interacting and creating opened up to me through playing Dungeons & Dragons. My first character and still the only one I've ever played in D&D was a half-elf bard and I made up a backstory for her that my GM liked so much, she started at level 5. That GM taught me that its possible to step into a world with words and that dice and all are beside the point, he also lent me R.A. Salvatore books to show me how rich the D&D world was. I was also taking theater classes and thinking about the importance of background, how even if you don't hear the details, every character has their backstory.
By the time I started doing LARPing and entered the World of Darkness, the idea of being able to write a history for my character was natural. The World of Darkness showed me a wider way of interacting as there were rulebooks, novels, pins, all this wonderful stuff that came along with this world. Then the internet was there and I could see other fans, I once even tried RPing in the offical Star Trek chatroom like set ups.
In college, I found Harry Potter and then an amazing friend showed me how to find fanfiction and I had that moment of oh, this is home. In the midst of writing papers, I would spend time on the Sugarquill while I ran my own Changeling: the Dreaming LARP and tabletop game. In my creative writing classes, I tried to slip the fantasy of Changeling: the Dreaming into my work. It only partly worked, Fangirl perfectly captured how some teachers don't get fantasy or fanfiction.
From that same friend after college, I was told about
milliways_bar and learned that I could actually roleplay my favorite fandom characters. I began with Will Scarlett and now play ten characters. Milliways brought me friends who shared where they wrote and suddenly I was sharing my own fanfiction, first on my LJ, then later on Ao3 and participating in Yuletide, Narnia Fic Exchange, Ineedmyfics and ficathons.
My user name ceitfianna was created my sophomore year of college, my partner at the time had an LJ invite code. I thought it might be a good way to keep in touch while studying abroad in Greece. Ceit is the Scots Gaelic spelling for my first name, Kate, and one of the few languages I've found where I can find my name as it is. I'm a plain Kate, where its not short for anything. Fianna is the name of a mythic tribe of warriors in Ancient Ireland and a werewolf tribe from Werewolf: the Apocalypse. I honestly don't recall exactly why I decided to combine them, but its stuck and is how I'm known on LJ, DW and Twitter.
On Archive of our Own, my name
FiKate is a reference to my AIM screenname which was the name of a character from a Werewolf: The Apocalypse game that only lasted one summer; Fiona. In Milliways, a huge amount of interaction happens in a chat room and since my screenname is Fiona, I was dubbed Fi. Yet there are Milliways' people who call me Kate and when I was creating my Archive of our Own name, I thought that I would combine them.
My Tumblr name on the other hand is something different as I didn't know how much it would connect to other areas of my life. Its
atthelamppost as I'm currently feeling at a crossroads while I try to figure out a way to do what I love and be paid for it. Its inspired by Narnia, which is one of my oldest fandoms and one that I'm still a bit weird about. I haven't read The Last Battle, because when I was about eleven or twelve, I decided I didn't want the series to end. I'm 33 and still haven't read even though a little while ago, my father read through the entire series for the first time. Maybe I will someday. I've also considered getting a tattoo of the lamppost as an iconic image for me.
The last name I have online is for my librarian/professional blog, that I really need to update which is called
nurturingstories. This is because I consider myself a storyteller and a good teacher and librarian is all about stories. We all have our own stories and children's stories need to be nurtured to allow them to grow.
This entry is also posted at http://ceitfianna.dreamwidth.org/431650.html. Please comment wherever you'd like.