A belated 2-year faniversary to me
Hello all of you out there in LJ land. It occurred to me today that the month of March marks my second year in fandom. March 8th, 2007 (to be exact) was the date of my first LJ entry. Some of you may remember it because it featured my first Spuffy fic, The Heart of Her. This past year was eventful, often in difficult and unpleasant ways. As I browsed back through old entries, I felt both a sense of relief and regret that school and my own personal obstacles got in the way of immersing myself as fully in fandom as I had in 2007-2008. My marked absence these last few months from the LJ scene are also a testament to a life of greater responsibility, altered priorities, and more focus.
For me, this fandom year was overshadowed by my grandmother's illness and death, my thesis woes, fears about graduation and my future, the joys of taking off across the country for five weeks, testing the waters of adulthood with a full time work schedule, worrying about expenses and insurance, finally (finally!) putting my physical health first and dedicating myself to going to the gym (which I've been loving the last two months), vacationing in beautiful Mexico, and then winding up in a similar state of uncertainty about what I'd like to do with my life. For those of you past your twenties, maybe this all sounds familiar.
I won't say that I've checked out of fandom for good, but the draw isn't the same for me as it was. I'm at work longs hours, followed by the gym 3-4 evenings a week. I get home. I don't want to be on the computer. I don't make the time for reading stories or posting or being on LJ like I used to. But, I do miss it, sometimes. Hearing about your lives, reading your fic, looking at your manips. You're a great group of people, and I wish I could be more present and write something for you. But my spark to write is gone for the time being. It's not that there aren't stories to tell or my muse has dried up. I'm just tired and with only so much energy to spare, I can't put it toward this creative outlet. It feels weird to say it. It feels weird to not be writing anything at all these days. Not journalism, news, or fanfic. I write nothing, and that's a damn shame because I know it's something I'm meant to do.
I wanted to make a quick recap of my fandom year, but instead this has turned into a slightly emo post about me. To get back on topic, here are a few of my accomplishments that I thought I'd mention:
-- I wrote 16 fics of varying length this past year. In total, I tackled 9 different pairings and 6 that were completely new to me, including Xander/Faith, Xander/Dawn, Wes/Lilah, Fred/Gunn, Faith/Buffy, and Buffy/Angel.
-- Of the 16 fics, 7 were out and out smut fics, 6 were written for communities, 4 were written as gifts, and 3 as responses to requests in my journal. My two favorite stories of the year are Acts of Contrition and Off Route 17.
I had a few firsts with in terms of genre, length and pairing.
-- First Fluff Fic: How Many Blonds Does it Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?
-- First Humor Fic/Girl on Guy Rimming Scene: Learning Curve
-- First Gen Fic: The Hard Choices
-- First Fic Written in the 2nd Person: Wool Over My Eyes
-- First Femmeslash Fic: Severed and Sewn
-- First Spaiku: School Hard Spaiku
-- Longest Fic to Date: Off Route 17
-- I took a crack at some thoughtful meta on kink, which generated fantastic discussion at The Appeal of Slash, and Kink in Fanfiction posts.
-- My ignorance about Twilight shown brightly when I naively asked What's Twilight? and then laughed for the next two hours as I found out.
-- Gus and I put our smutty brains together and collaborated to create some truly porntastic Spuffy artwork
And, like in my 2008 post (which can be read HERE), my top two fandom moments of the year were:
-- Dressing up as Buffy & Spike, which you can view HERE & HERE. I love putting on costumes and making an ass of myself, and I think you all really enjoyed it too. The response about my likeness to Buffy in particular was fun and highly entertaining. And of all the Buffy outfits I could have assembled, who would of guessed that Get it Done would have been the winner?
-- Seeing only_passenger, sevendeadlyfun and hello_spikey on my return trip to NYC during my roadtrip this past summer. Some of the best fandom moments (for me) are when you get to meet your fellow fans (and friends) face to face after months or years of talking online, over email and on the phone. I had the great fortune of staying with Pass, her son and family on the 4th of July. We watched fireworks and generally squeed over each other, went swimming in a local lake, and played superheroes. Again, with the dressing up. I very cleverly decided that my bra and underwear had to go on over my clothing to pull this particular game off. Seven and I sat at her dining room table and perved out, as we're want to do, on all things fandom and kink. I also got to see her tattoos, watch lego characters recite Eddie Izzard routines on youtube courtesy of her sons, play with doggie, and have a rollicking old afternoon. Spikey was also a complete doll and took the time to meet me over her lunchbreak. She has a fantastic sense of style, is witty, and fun. If WriterCon is still in my future this summer, I hope I get to meet many more of you to add to the memories.
I'm not sure what this fannish year will bring me, but I look forward to it, whatever it may be.