Diary of a reluctant fangirl
I'm going to write some actual fan fiction for you soon, but while I was trawling trough my hard drive I remembered this. I don't really talk much about myself online, and I wanted to tell you all a bit about how I became a writer in the first place.
See, I very nearly didn't discover fandom at all. It was all a big accident really.
The early years...
As a teenager, I thought fan girls only had crushes on guys in bands, who had posters on their walls, went to concerts to scream, get autographs and attempt to touch/collect a piece of clothing from their idols. Maybe it was because I spent most of those years in a music group of my own, getting dressed up and performing on a stage, but I was never that impressed by the pop idols of the eighties.
My first crush was actor Dirk Benedict. I expressed this crush by watching both his shows that were aired on British TV (A-Team, Galactica) and making up stories about the characters in my head.
Hey, wait a minute there, rewind that last comment. You made up stories? Uh huh. I never wrote them down, but the seeds of fan fiction had begun to germinate in my brain. There was no internet in the eighties, otherwise BSG or A-Team might have been my first fandom.
I went off to Uni where I studied a course that included both Chemistry and Geology. I picked it because I thought the subject material would be interesting, but I hadn't bargained for the field trips. Basically I was a geeky white girl stuck with 12 people who were outdoorsy types and struggling to keep up. There are times when I know exactly how Rodney feels off world.
In my early twenties I had a friend who listened to heavy metal and played guitar. He encouraged me to try and write original fiction (which I hope has since been deleted). I then left uni, found a job, met a guy, got married and had no time for crushes and fiction
(except for the bed time stories I made up for my son).
After my marriage broke up I retrained as a computer programmer, which is my current job. It was around that time I became a fan of Buffy the Vampire slayer. In a different time and place, that could have been my first fandom, but I was too busy with college, even if I had known about fan fiction. I would probably have shipped Buffy/Spike.
Finding Rodney ...
I finally discovered Stargate Atlantis just before I turned forty. I was stuck at home with my ankle in a cast and was trying to find something on TV to watch. I was watching some classic Trek and the next show was Atlantis, season 1, episode “38 Minutes”. I found out that Sky 1 were showing an SGA catch up of Seasons 1-3, two episodes a day, in the run up to airing season 4. With not much else to do with my leg in a cast, it wasn't long before I was hooked.
At first, Carson was my favorite, but somewhere in the middle of season one I fell for Rodney McKay and I've been hooked ever since.
Sky started showing season 4 in the autumn, and also ran a catch up for SG1 so I started watching those shows too. However, over the Christmas holidays tragedy struck. Sky took a break in the middle of Season 4, without warning me when it would be back. At the time I had no idea that this would be a turning point in my life. In my desperate struggle to find when I could get my next hit, I started lurking on various Stargate forums. Eventually I plucked up the courage and register on one of the smaller ones, ADB, which was the site David Hewlett had set up. Some of you may have met me there during the time I posted.
Once I was in contact with other fans, I found out about various fannish activities such as attending Cons and writing fan.fiction.
What about John Sheppard and the rest of the cast ...
John is one of my favorite characters in the show, although I also love Carson, Radek, Ronon, Teyla and Evan. I'm also fond of the SG1 team members, especially Jack. There are not many characters in Stargate I don't like. My favorite bad guy is Ba'al from SG1 although Todd comes a close second.
To slash or not to slash …
The first stories I was introduced to were mostly friendship/team dynamic stories, and any romance tended to be male/female pairing. I read various stories, but I tended to gravitate to the John and Rodney friendship stories. I didn't intend to become a writer myself, but there was an incident involving a lack of sleep and a rather bizarre conversation with some forum friends that somehow morphed into a story. It wasn't particularly good, but some friends saw enough potential to encourage me to write more. My friend Kass sent me a prompt which somehow morphed into the story I consider to be my first real fan fiction story, and my friends convinced me to post it on fanfiction.net.
Around the same time I started writing, someone linked me to a site with artwork that was also hosting some McShep fan fiction. I started reading out of curiosity really, but I got hooked. I'm not sure what exactly it was that lured me into the McShep, but it was probably a combination of things; the friendship between John and Rodney, the quality of writing in the fandom, the sense that John and Rodney are destined to be together like the great romantic lovers of classical fiction, the fact that there is so much subtext in the show that makes the relationship convincing, or possibly the fact that to an extent I identify with Rodney, although I can see aspects of John in my personality too. Also let's not forget that I'm a similar age to the guys and from my point of view they're both pretty hot.
At first I was nervous about writing slash stories. McShep is practically a fandom in it's own right, with some truly impressive authors and I was worried I wouldn't be able to add anything new or original to the fandom. Also I was worried that I would not be able to write the more adult content.
Eventually I decided I needed to bite the bullet and take a shot writing the sort of stories I actually wanted to read. I nearly wimped out at the last minute, but a couple of friends admitted they were mcshep fans too, and they all convinced me to give it a shot.
Live Journal and beyond?
I started out writing on fanfiction.net under a different name, but when I started posting slash stories one of my friends convinced me to split my work into to different pen names, because she had ended up regretting mixing her slash and her other stories. Looking back I'm not sure why I was so worried - practically everyone I ever came out to about writing slash has been accepting and some friends have even admitted to being secret slashers too.
When I signed up to LJ, I figured it was another place to post, like wraithbait. I never realized I was finding my new online home, complete with a whole new family from all over the world. Other shiny new websites catch my fancy, but I always seem to end up back here, with my flist, John and Rodney.
Danny and Steve
I love these guys, really I do, but Sky tends to show Hawaii-50 so far behind US that I have to be careful what I read to avoid spoilers. But one day I'm going to have a big catch up marathon and maybe even get round to writing the pairing.
Vincent and Brendan
I'm totally blaming melegan for this. I've read Hewligan stories before (stories featuring other actors played by Joe and David) but it was her prompting that convinced me to find out more about these two particular characters played by Joe.
I've actually written some stories already featuring Vincent, and have some stuff planned involving Brendan.
I've seen the movie Thoughtcrimes in which Joe plays agent Brendan Dean, but I never watched Dawson's Creek, the show in which he played Vincent. I've only watched some scenes posted on Youtube, but it was enough to get a feel for Vince's character and back story. I ended up building on this to create my own head-canon for how Vince might fit into the Stargate Atlantis storyline.
Vincent is a lighter character to write than John Sheppard which makes it possible to write different sorts of stories. He's younger, comes from a less privileged background and has had to work hard all his life, but he's also seen less pain, suffering and death and doesn't carry round a lot of guilt. He falls into relationships easily and often without stopping to think through the consequences.
Bren is older than Vince, but younger than John. He works for the FBI as a field agent so he's seen more of the dark side of life than Vince, but tracking down criminals isn't quite the same as fighting a war. He's more dorky/geeky than John and he's not as badass as he thinks he is. Bren is looking for romance, but doesn't have the same easy flirty nature as Vince. This entry was originally posted at http://mckaysmonkey.dreamwidth.org/5410.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
See, I very nearly didn't discover fandom at all. It was all a big accident really.
The early years...
As a teenager, I thought fan girls only had crushes on guys in bands, who had posters on their walls, went to concerts to scream, get autographs and attempt to touch/collect a piece of clothing from their idols. Maybe it was because I spent most of those years in a music group of my own, getting dressed up and performing on a stage, but I was never that impressed by the pop idols of the eighties.
My first crush was actor Dirk Benedict. I expressed this crush by watching both his shows that were aired on British TV (A-Team, Galactica) and making up stories about the characters in my head.
Hey, wait a minute there, rewind that last comment. You made up stories? Uh huh. I never wrote them down, but the seeds of fan fiction had begun to germinate in my brain. There was no internet in the eighties, otherwise BSG or A-Team might have been my first fandom.
I went off to Uni where I studied a course that included both Chemistry and Geology. I picked it because I thought the subject material would be interesting, but I hadn't bargained for the field trips. Basically I was a geeky white girl stuck with 12 people who were outdoorsy types and struggling to keep up. There are times when I know exactly how Rodney feels off world.
In my early twenties I had a friend who listened to heavy metal and played guitar. He encouraged me to try and write original fiction (which I hope has since been deleted). I then left uni, found a job, met a guy, got married and had no time for crushes and fiction
(except for the bed time stories I made up for my son).
After my marriage broke up I retrained as a computer programmer, which is my current job. It was around that time I became a fan of Buffy the Vampire slayer. In a different time and place, that could have been my first fandom, but I was too busy with college, even if I had known about fan fiction. I would probably have shipped Buffy/Spike.
Finding Rodney ...
I finally discovered Stargate Atlantis just before I turned forty. I was stuck at home with my ankle in a cast and was trying to find something on TV to watch. I was watching some classic Trek and the next show was Atlantis, season 1, episode “38 Minutes”. I found out that Sky 1 were showing an SGA catch up of Seasons 1-3, two episodes a day, in the run up to airing season 4. With not much else to do with my leg in a cast, it wasn't long before I was hooked.
At first, Carson was my favorite, but somewhere in the middle of season one I fell for Rodney McKay and I've been hooked ever since.
Sky started showing season 4 in the autumn, and also ran a catch up for SG1 so I started watching those shows too. However, over the Christmas holidays tragedy struck. Sky took a break in the middle of Season 4, without warning me when it would be back. At the time I had no idea that this would be a turning point in my life. In my desperate struggle to find when I could get my next hit, I started lurking on various Stargate forums. Eventually I plucked up the courage and register on one of the smaller ones, ADB, which was the site David Hewlett had set up. Some of you may have met me there during the time I posted.
Once I was in contact with other fans, I found out about various fannish activities such as attending Cons and writing fan.fiction.
What about John Sheppard and the rest of the cast ...
John is one of my favorite characters in the show, although I also love Carson, Radek, Ronon, Teyla and Evan. I'm also fond of the SG1 team members, especially Jack. There are not many characters in Stargate I don't like. My favorite bad guy is Ba'al from SG1 although Todd comes a close second.
To slash or not to slash …
The first stories I was introduced to were mostly friendship/team dynamic stories, and any romance tended to be male/female pairing. I read various stories, but I tended to gravitate to the John and Rodney friendship stories. I didn't intend to become a writer myself, but there was an incident involving a lack of sleep and a rather bizarre conversation with some forum friends that somehow morphed into a story. It wasn't particularly good, but some friends saw enough potential to encourage me to write more. My friend Kass sent me a prompt which somehow morphed into the story I consider to be my first real fan fiction story, and my friends convinced me to post it on fanfiction.net.
Around the same time I started writing, someone linked me to a site with artwork that was also hosting some McShep fan fiction. I started reading out of curiosity really, but I got hooked. I'm not sure what exactly it was that lured me into the McShep, but it was probably a combination of things; the friendship between John and Rodney, the quality of writing in the fandom, the sense that John and Rodney are destined to be together like the great romantic lovers of classical fiction, the fact that there is so much subtext in the show that makes the relationship convincing, or possibly the fact that to an extent I identify with Rodney, although I can see aspects of John in my personality too. Also let's not forget that I'm a similar age to the guys and from my point of view they're both pretty hot.
At first I was nervous about writing slash stories. McShep is practically a fandom in it's own right, with some truly impressive authors and I was worried I wouldn't be able to add anything new or original to the fandom. Also I was worried that I would not be able to write the more adult content.
Eventually I decided I needed to bite the bullet and take a shot writing the sort of stories I actually wanted to read. I nearly wimped out at the last minute, but a couple of friends admitted they were mcshep fans too, and they all convinced me to give it a shot.
Live Journal and beyond?
I started out writing on fanfiction.net under a different name, but when I started posting slash stories one of my friends convinced me to split my work into to different pen names, because she had ended up regretting mixing her slash and her other stories. Looking back I'm not sure why I was so worried - practically everyone I ever came out to about writing slash has been accepting and some friends have even admitted to being secret slashers too.
When I signed up to LJ, I figured it was another place to post, like wraithbait. I never realized I was finding my new online home, complete with a whole new family from all over the world. Other shiny new websites catch my fancy, but I always seem to end up back here, with my flist, John and Rodney.
Danny and Steve
I love these guys, really I do, but Sky tends to show Hawaii-50 so far behind US that I have to be careful what I read to avoid spoilers. But one day I'm going to have a big catch up marathon and maybe even get round to writing the pairing.
Vincent and Brendan
I'm totally blaming melegan for this. I've read Hewligan stories before (stories featuring other actors played by Joe and David) but it was her prompting that convinced me to find out more about these two particular characters played by Joe.
I've actually written some stories already featuring Vincent, and have some stuff planned involving Brendan.
I've seen the movie Thoughtcrimes in which Joe plays agent Brendan Dean, but I never watched Dawson's Creek, the show in which he played Vincent. I've only watched some scenes posted on Youtube, but it was enough to get a feel for Vince's character and back story. I ended up building on this to create my own head-canon for how Vince might fit into the Stargate Atlantis storyline.
Vincent is a lighter character to write than John Sheppard which makes it possible to write different sorts of stories. He's younger, comes from a less privileged background and has had to work hard all his life, but he's also seen less pain, suffering and death and doesn't carry round a lot of guilt. He falls into relationships easily and often without stopping to think through the consequences.
Bren is older than Vince, but younger than John. He works for the FBI as a field agent so he's seen more of the dark side of life than Vince, but tracking down criminals isn't quite the same as fighting a war. He's more dorky/geeky than John and he's not as badass as he thinks he is. Bren is looking for romance, but doesn't have the same easy flirty nature as Vince. This entry was originally posted at http://mckaysmonkey.dreamwidth.org/5410.html. Please comment there using OpenID.