snowflake, post 2
Slowly but surely...
snowflake_challenge Challenge #2: In your own space, talk about your fannish history.
I feel like I talk about this too much! Except for how I haven't posted regularly in like four years. So let's see if I can get this into some kind of order.
Around 1998, I discover fandom via an AOL chatroom dedicated to the X-Files. IT IS GREAT. Other people really want Mulder and Scully to kiss! There's a term for it -- shipping! THERE ARE SO MANY STORIES TO READ ABOUT IT. I never look back. Pretty early on, I write and post my first fic -- a character study of Agent Pendrell, of all the things -- and desperately pray that no one realizes how young I am (thirteen). They don't seem to. It's pretty cool. I continue loving the X-Files until the bitter end. (I still occasionally go trawling for my old fave MSR fics. They're...so dated in so many ways, but still wonderful.)
Somewhere in high school, my primary fannish obsession shifts to RENT. This is where I first knowingly encounter slash as a subsection of fandom, though I don't then get what the fuss is about, probably because RENT actually has canonical queer relationships so it was just, like, well of course you ship Collins/Angel, they are in fact in love. I do start understanding the Mulder/Krycek subset of XF fandom a bit better, though I still don't ship it.
In December 2001, Fellowship of the Rings hits fandom like a ton of bricks. I immediately dive into the hobbity corners of Yahoo Groups. A RL friend of mine who is even more LotR-obsessed than I am introduces me to the concept of RPS. I am SMITTEN. This will become my primary fandom for the next couple of years. Sometime that summer, LJ starts being a new base for fandom, and I get an invite code and jump right in. Some of my best and longest-lasting fandom friendships started in Lotrips.
The X-Men movies are also happening around the same time. X2 is pretty great. I start dabbling in that fandom as well. Somewhere in there, Yuletide is created, too, and I participate in the very first year of that. And then every year thereafter.
LotR starts tapering off post-RotK, and X-Men is fun but not my primary love. I've been reading the HP books for years, but never cared about it as a fandom, and the movies are cute but eh whatever. Then the movie version of Prisoner of Azkaban comes out and the Remus/Sirius is. It's just. How did I not. Oh, right, because I read the book when I was 14 and hadn't picked up on that, but BOY HOWDY am I picking up on it now!
...three years later, I emerge slowly from HP fandom and start sniffing around for a new obsession. History Boys is delightful, but small. House MD is a fun rebound relationship. I've just graduated college at this point, and RL is big and scary and kinda lonely. I need something new in my life.
Someone posts a link to a 30-second YouTube clip of Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones snogging the living daylights out of each other.
I find a way to download the first episode of the Doctor Who reboot within a week.
That's a few more years gone. I learn how to vid in the DW fandom, which is pretty great. I also dip into Merlin for a bit, thanks to
fiercynn, and Band of Brothers, thanks to
newredshoes. But mostly it's all Doctor Who / Torchwood, all the time. Inception pops hot for a minute in 2010 -- thanks,
tricksterquinn! -- and is looking like a good way to recover from the post-CoE heartbreak. And then, y'know, my old flame X-Men comes out with a pleasant little jaunt back to the origins of Xavier & Magneto's friendship.
It's a new X-Men movie, I tell myself. What a lovely throwback! Can't possibly be worse than X3 or Wolverine: Origins, and even if it is, I'll probably still enjoy it.
...so that's another three years of my life right there. And, I mean, still. I haven't liked anything post-XMFC as much, but man, that one dug its claws in DEEP. It's my comfort go-to fandom at this point. I've accepted this.
Winter Soldier happened in 2014 and hijacked my brain for a while. I tried so hard to convert myself to the MCU as a whole, but in hindsight, it was really just that one movie that hit my personal sweet spot. The rest are varying degrees of entertaining, I'm not trying to insult them, but really, it's all about TWS for me, fannishly. I've made my peace with that.
And then I just kind of...dropped out of fandom for three years. Because my brain operates on three-year fannish cycles, apparently, huh. And that was my null set. I did keep reading, though. Mostly by cycling through fandoms past. (There are a bunch of others I participate in primarily, if not exclusively, as a reader -- Star Trek, 007, Avatar: the Last Airbender. Etc.)
Last year I decided to force myself back in, so. I wrote a total of 111,419 words of posted fic in 2019. Coming from, like, a grand total of one 4k-word Yuletide fic making the sum total of my writing in 2018, that's, you know. Yay! Not sure what's next, but something, hopefully. ♥
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth. Comment wherever you'd like.
snowflake_challenge Challenge #2: In your own space, talk about your fannish history.
I feel like I talk about this too much! Except for how I haven't posted regularly in like four years. So let's see if I can get this into some kind of order.
Around 1998, I discover fandom via an AOL chatroom dedicated to the X-Files. IT IS GREAT. Other people really want Mulder and Scully to kiss! There's a term for it -- shipping! THERE ARE SO MANY STORIES TO READ ABOUT IT. I never look back. Pretty early on, I write and post my first fic -- a character study of Agent Pendrell, of all the things -- and desperately pray that no one realizes how young I am (thirteen). They don't seem to. It's pretty cool. I continue loving the X-Files until the bitter end. (I still occasionally go trawling for my old fave MSR fics. They're...so dated in so many ways, but still wonderful.)
Somewhere in high school, my primary fannish obsession shifts to RENT. This is where I first knowingly encounter slash as a subsection of fandom, though I don't then get what the fuss is about, probably because RENT actually has canonical queer relationships so it was just, like, well of course you ship Collins/Angel, they are in fact in love. I do start understanding the Mulder/Krycek subset of XF fandom a bit better, though I still don't ship it.
In December 2001, Fellowship of the Rings hits fandom like a ton of bricks. I immediately dive into the hobbity corners of Yahoo Groups. A RL friend of mine who is even more LotR-obsessed than I am introduces me to the concept of RPS. I am SMITTEN. This will become my primary fandom for the next couple of years. Sometime that summer, LJ starts being a new base for fandom, and I get an invite code and jump right in. Some of my best and longest-lasting fandom friendships started in Lotrips.
The X-Men movies are also happening around the same time. X2 is pretty great. I start dabbling in that fandom as well. Somewhere in there, Yuletide is created, too, and I participate in the very first year of that. And then every year thereafter.
LotR starts tapering off post-RotK, and X-Men is fun but not my primary love. I've been reading the HP books for years, but never cared about it as a fandom, and the movies are cute but eh whatever. Then the movie version of Prisoner of Azkaban comes out and the Remus/Sirius is. It's just. How did I not. Oh, right, because I read the book when I was 14 and hadn't picked up on that, but BOY HOWDY am I picking up on it now!
...three years later, I emerge slowly from HP fandom and start sniffing around for a new obsession. History Boys is delightful, but small. House MD is a fun rebound relationship. I've just graduated college at this point, and RL is big and scary and kinda lonely. I need something new in my life.
Someone posts a link to a 30-second YouTube clip of Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones snogging the living daylights out of each other.
I find a way to download the first episode of the Doctor Who reboot within a week.
That's a few more years gone. I learn how to vid in the DW fandom, which is pretty great. I also dip into Merlin for a bit, thanks to
fiercynn, and Band of Brothers, thanks to
newredshoes. But mostly it's all Doctor Who / Torchwood, all the time. Inception pops hot for a minute in 2010 -- thanks,
tricksterquinn! -- and is looking like a good way to recover from the post-CoE heartbreak. And then, y'know, my old flame X-Men comes out with a pleasant little jaunt back to the origins of Xavier & Magneto's friendship.
It's a new X-Men movie, I tell myself. What a lovely throwback! Can't possibly be worse than X3 or Wolverine: Origins, and even if it is, I'll probably still enjoy it.
...so that's another three years of my life right there. And, I mean, still. I haven't liked anything post-XMFC as much, but man, that one dug its claws in DEEP. It's my comfort go-to fandom at this point. I've accepted this.
Winter Soldier happened in 2014 and hijacked my brain for a while. I tried so hard to convert myself to the MCU as a whole, but in hindsight, it was really just that one movie that hit my personal sweet spot. The rest are varying degrees of entertaining, I'm not trying to insult them, but really, it's all about TWS for me, fannishly. I've made my peace with that.
And then I just kind of...dropped out of fandom for three years. Because my brain operates on three-year fannish cycles, apparently, huh. And that was my null set. I did keep reading, though. Mostly by cycling through fandoms past. (There are a bunch of others I participate in primarily, if not exclusively, as a reader -- Star Trek, 007, Avatar: the Last Airbender. Etc.)
Last year I decided to force myself back in, so. I wrote a total of 111,419 words of posted fic in 2019. Coming from, like, a grand total of one 4k-word Yuletide fic making the sum total of my writing in 2018, that's, you know. Yay! Not sure what's next, but something, hopefully. ♥
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth. Comment wherever you'd like.