Dept. of Fandom Snowflake
Welcome - Let Me Talk About Myself!
This year I decided I'd take part in
snowflake_challenge , in part because I want to keep active in fandom, tell people how much I value them and, (probably more than) occasionally, talk about who I am and why I do what I do.
The first challenge asked me to introduce myself to people. So here goes, but I've put it under a cut because it goes on and on and on.
Hi! I'm
kaffyr , or as non-fannish life knows me, Kathy. I'm a 64-year-old cis bi white matronly type with poor eyesight, a pretty decent imagination, and ever leftward politics. I live in Chicago. I'm Canadian, born in Ottawa, Ont., and raised in Nova Scotia by my mother and maternal grandparents. I've always loved fantasy and science fiction; my first memories of reading were of reading and loving a book of fairy tales from my grandparents' shelves that I'm reasonably sure was illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley, even though I can find no evidence of that.
My mother never called my desire weird, possibly because she was a fan even when she didn't know it herself. She bought me the books I wanted, and the only books she didn't want me to read were Fanny Hill and My Secret Life. I did anyway, because they were in the house and why on earth she had them is not something I'm interested in investigating. Nonetheless, everything else she saved up scarce money and bought for me.
In short order, I discovered and loved Burroughs' Tarzan and John Carter of Mars (don't judge), then anything stfnal from the school book sales that came around each year, and then Theodore Sturgeon, who got in there with his "A Touch of Strange" collection of short stories and Cordwainer Smith, whose strange and wonderful stories and personal history are still fascinating, problematic, and beautiful to me.
Then I hungered for SFF on television. I saw Dr. Who in 1965 when the CBC bought the rights to it from the BBC, and oh, how I loved it. When the CBC stopped paying for it, around the time the Second Doctor arrived, it disappeared from my screen. I looked elsewhere and was rewarded with My Favorite Martian (I said DON'T JUDGE, OMG, I WAS A KID DESPERATE FOR SFF) and Star Trek. I promptly fell in love with Mr. Spock. Didn't everyone?
I discovered traditional SFF fandom in 1976, by reading about science fiction conventions in the back of Analog magazine. I went to my first one in 1977 - Suncon, the World Science Fiction Convention, because when you live in eastern Canada (New Brunswick by this time), it costs a lot to go anywhere else by air, so why not go to the biggest one? Within minutes of deplaning, I'd met other fans, and knew I'd found home.
So much so, in fact, that after four years of going to three or so cons a year, including all the worldcons between 1977 and 1982, I decided that all the friends I wanted to be closer to lived in the U.S. So I quit my job, emptied my retirement account, sold my furniture, and planned to go find a job in California while I stayed with one of those fannish friends. I stopped for three days to visit another fannish friend in Chicago. I met my husband. I never left. I remembered Dr. Who because Public Television in the states kept playing Four's and Three's and Five's adventures, cementing my love for Pertwee. I watched the movie with Eight, and would have continued watching Eight had the movie spawned a series.
I was online relatively early, in 1994-95, haunted rec.arts.sf.fandom, and used that as my fannish continuation, since relative poverty and parenthood had curtailed my in-person activities. Ah, gafiation when you didn't want to gafiate.
Then came 2003 and the revived Battlestar Galactica, and 2005/06 when the revived Dr. Who hit my screen. I loved both, went looking online for a community in which to discuss both, found Television Without Pity's Who and BSG boards, was introduced to the idea of fanfic, decided I could write some, because I'd tried writing original fiction and got enough personalized rejection notices to keep trying, before I somehow stopped doing it when I moved to the U.S. and the rest is history. Especially once I discovered LJ and Dreamwidth. And anime. Forgot that. And I shouldn't, because goodness, I love it.
Oh, and I was a reporter for decades (that started in Canada in 1975). And my editors used to tell me I wrote too long. And they were generally right, although my long writing won some awards. And I became active in my union. And I used to be a chick singer in an unsuccessful rock and roll band with my husband, our attorney, Dr. Gonzo, and others.
If you're interested in my fic, I have two master fic posts stickied up top. My profile also has a bit more about other interests of mine. If you'd like to friend me, feel free to, and I'd probably love to friend you back. Right now, though, I think I'd like to go and see other folks' introductions.
And there's an end to this extremely long intro, with too many sentences starting with either "then" or "and." Way too many starting with "and."
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