A History of My Personal Fandom
Wow. It's been a while since I posted, hasn't it? *checks her archive* Coming up on one year. I didn't make a single post in all of 2006.
Well, this one's long enough.
I created this livejournal to keep track of my life. I posted a few life-related entries, and then I was pulled in by the Snarry. Life was quickly forgotten as I struggled to read my way through every single snarry-related entry that was ever posted. My time on livejournal was dedicated to reading back entries and catching up on what had been posted the previous night. At the time, I only had communities friended.
Then, on deviantart, one of my friends favorited a picture by loonylucifer. I don't remember which one it was, but it opened my eyes to the universe of Charlie/Wonka slash. I had been a pretty big fan of the movie and books, but it had never occurred to me to slash them together. The wonkaslash community welcomed me with open arms, even if I was just a quiet little lurker who only occasionally posted feedback and never anything of my own. I met some truly great people there, and I friended their personal ljs because I loved their fic and their personalities so much. This lead me to friend the personal journals of some of my favorite snarriers.
Somewhere along the way, I got involved in the Corpse Bride fandom. As small as the fandom is, there's some wonderful fic and even better people involved in it. I wrote my first fanfiction since the 5th grade about Corpse Bride, though I never really finished it and didn't post it.
At this point, my friendlist was still fairly small. I didn't really know anyone in fandom, and I could finish reading my friendlist in -20 entries. I read everything I could get my hands on, but I never commented. I never posted anything and was never truly involved in fandom.
Life was good and simple. Snarry was my one-pairing-to-rule-them-all, with Charlie/Wonka following close behind and Victor/Victoria meandering in their own smutless little world. I was truly happy in my isolated little fandom world.
And then one of my Snarry 'friends' posted a fic that was...not Snarry! I don't even remember which pairing it was or who it was by, but I was so shocked that, of course, I had to read it. Even more shocking than the fact that it was not Snarry was the fact that I actually liked it. I was completely beyond shocked by that fact. Snarry was my OTP! Everyone always said that your OTP was the be all end all of everything. How could I betray it? I still liked Snarry. In fact, I still loved Snarry. Was it actually...okay...to betray my OTP?
I found out that it most definitely was okay. I began reading fic and friending communities from all over the pairing spectrum. I could even stand to see my two favorite boys in pairings with other people! It was an amazing and enlightening experience for me. Though Snarry would always be my favorite HP pairing, I liked other ones too and that was okay.
I was not prepared for what happened next. Someone recced kessie's unfinished Snarry epic. I wandered over to her website and read it all in one day. After hitting the 'final' chapter, I had grown attached to her writing so much that I was willing read anything she had written just to pretend like it was the end of the Snarry story. This girl introduced me to narnia fiction (both incest and het) and Demon Diary (which I still have to finish reading), but more importantly, her stories introduced me to one of the best anime series ever produced.
THE PRINCE OF TENNIS.
I clicked on the Prince of Tennis section only after I had exhausted every other fandom that I recognized. It must have been pure luck that I stumbled upon a really good fic. The characters! The dialogue! The SEX! I had no idea who anyone was, but I made it my goal to watch this 'amazing' show. I googled it and found a place that has uploaded and subbed the episodes in five-episode packs. Coincidentally, this was also the start of my love/hate relationship with bittorrent and the anime you can obtain while using it. I downloaded the first five episodes and watched them.
All of a sudden, I was a woman obsessed. The characters! The japanese! The SUBTEXT! (even in the early episodes, I could pick out that something was going on.) Also: the amazing tennis shots! The cool colors! The pure AWESOMENESS of the Seigaku regulars! As soon as I finished watching the five episodes I had downloaded, I hurried back over to anime-otakus to download some more episodes so that I could see the conclusion of the Inui/Ryoma match. Instead of finding the seemingly never-ending list of episode packages, the website was nearly bare. Only a few lonely torrents were on the main page.
I went crazy trying to find the other episodes. There were over a hundred of them! Where could they have gone?! I found my answer while scouring the forums. Just a few hours after I had finished downloading my episodes, a company called Viz had announced that they had licensed Tenipuri. Anime-otakus has a strict policy involving licensed anime, and they pulled all of them off their website.
It took me a week to find the rest of the episodes. This week involved many tears, screams of frustration and things thrown at the computer screen in an effort to get Google to give me something I could use. The week was not wasted, however, and I eventually found an out-of-the-way website offering the episodes in pakcs of 50. My poor 25 kb/sec DSL connection cringed and started to cry, but I happily began the process of downloading a 6 gigabyte chunk of anime. My father has still not discovered that I have 20 gigs of anime hidden in a folder on my account of his computer. If he did, I'm sure that my love affair with Tenipuri would be cut painfully short. The DVD drive on this computer is STILL not working and I cannot begin to get rid of all of this anime until I can put it on a disc. *hopes that he does not discover the anime until I have a chance to get it off the computer*
Anyway, I downloaded the first fifty episodes and watched them all as quickly as I could. Thankfully, school ended and I had an extra 8 hours in my day to devote to fandom. I friended PoT communities and began to read fic and form opinions on the various ships. That's the wonderful thing about Tenipuri. It's not possible to have a ship war. EVERYTHING WORKS. You want to pair Tezuka with Ryoma? Great, there's three active communities for that. Tezuka with Fuji? Got that too. Tezuka with Ryoma AND Fuji? Yup. There's communities for that, too. You can pair anyone with anything and it works so well that you just love the pairing. All of the talented authors in the PoT fandom are so great at making you love every single pairing that they write about.
Now I'm slowly involving myself in the world of Tenimyu - the Prince of Tennis musicals. I would be involving myself in it faster, but my internet connection can only download things so quickly. *sighs and pats the little black box* So far I've only watched Dream Live 1 and some various clips of others on youtube, but Hyotei in Winter is nearly done downloading. I'll watch that tomorrow.
Anyway, I'm not sure what the point of this entry is. Perhaps to apologize to all of those wonderful authors who have friended me in return for me friending them but have never heard from me? To begin a new phase in my livejournal life; one where I journal about my life and comment about other people's lives? Or is it just to avoid doing the laundry?
Only time will tell. Hopefully, I can break my lurky-lurky habit and become more active in the fandom community. Knowing me, I'll revert back to lurkdom within the week. But maybe I'll gain something from that week.
Well, this one's long enough.
I created this livejournal to keep track of my life. I posted a few life-related entries, and then I was pulled in by the Snarry. Life was quickly forgotten as I struggled to read my way through every single snarry-related entry that was ever posted. My time on livejournal was dedicated to reading back entries and catching up on what had been posted the previous night. At the time, I only had communities friended.
Then, on deviantart, one of my friends favorited a picture by loonylucifer. I don't remember which one it was, but it opened my eyes to the universe of Charlie/Wonka slash. I had been a pretty big fan of the movie and books, but it had never occurred to me to slash them together. The wonkaslash community welcomed me with open arms, even if I was just a quiet little lurker who only occasionally posted feedback and never anything of my own. I met some truly great people there, and I friended their personal ljs because I loved their fic and their personalities so much. This lead me to friend the personal journals of some of my favorite snarriers.
Somewhere along the way, I got involved in the Corpse Bride fandom. As small as the fandom is, there's some wonderful fic and even better people involved in it. I wrote my first fanfiction since the 5th grade about Corpse Bride, though I never really finished it and didn't post it.
At this point, my friendlist was still fairly small. I didn't really know anyone in fandom, and I could finish reading my friendlist in -20 entries. I read everything I could get my hands on, but I never commented. I never posted anything and was never truly involved in fandom.
Life was good and simple. Snarry was my one-pairing-to-rule-them-all, with Charlie/Wonka following close behind and Victor/Victoria meandering in their own smutless little world. I was truly happy in my isolated little fandom world.
And then one of my Snarry 'friends' posted a fic that was...not Snarry! I don't even remember which pairing it was or who it was by, but I was so shocked that, of course, I had to read it. Even more shocking than the fact that it was not Snarry was the fact that I actually liked it. I was completely beyond shocked by that fact. Snarry was my OTP! Everyone always said that your OTP was the be all end all of everything. How could I betray it? I still liked Snarry. In fact, I still loved Snarry. Was it actually...okay...to betray my OTP?
I found out that it most definitely was okay. I began reading fic and friending communities from all over the pairing spectrum. I could even stand to see my two favorite boys in pairings with other people! It was an amazing and enlightening experience for me. Though Snarry would always be my favorite HP pairing, I liked other ones too and that was okay.
I was not prepared for what happened next. Someone recced kessie's unfinished Snarry epic. I wandered over to her website and read it all in one day. After hitting the 'final' chapter, I had grown attached to her writing so much that I was willing read anything she had written just to pretend like it was the end of the Snarry story. This girl introduced me to narnia fiction (both incest and het) and Demon Diary (which I still have to finish reading), but more importantly, her stories introduced me to one of the best anime series ever produced.
THE PRINCE OF TENNIS.
I clicked on the Prince of Tennis section only after I had exhausted every other fandom that I recognized. It must have been pure luck that I stumbled upon a really good fic. The characters! The dialogue! The SEX! I had no idea who anyone was, but I made it my goal to watch this 'amazing' show. I googled it and found a place that has uploaded and subbed the episodes in five-episode packs. Coincidentally, this was also the start of my love/hate relationship with bittorrent and the anime you can obtain while using it. I downloaded the first five episodes and watched them.
All of a sudden, I was a woman obsessed. The characters! The japanese! The SUBTEXT! (even in the early episodes, I could pick out that something was going on.) Also: the amazing tennis shots! The cool colors! The pure AWESOMENESS of the Seigaku regulars! As soon as I finished watching the five episodes I had downloaded, I hurried back over to anime-otakus to download some more episodes so that I could see the conclusion of the Inui/Ryoma match. Instead of finding the seemingly never-ending list of episode packages, the website was nearly bare. Only a few lonely torrents were on the main page.
I went crazy trying to find the other episodes. There were over a hundred of them! Where could they have gone?! I found my answer while scouring the forums. Just a few hours after I had finished downloading my episodes, a company called Viz had announced that they had licensed Tenipuri. Anime-otakus has a strict policy involving licensed anime, and they pulled all of them off their website.
It took me a week to find the rest of the episodes. This week involved many tears, screams of frustration and things thrown at the computer screen in an effort to get Google to give me something I could use. The week was not wasted, however, and I eventually found an out-of-the-way website offering the episodes in pakcs of 50. My poor 25 kb/sec DSL connection cringed and started to cry, but I happily began the process of downloading a 6 gigabyte chunk of anime. My father has still not discovered that I have 20 gigs of anime hidden in a folder on my account of his computer. If he did, I'm sure that my love affair with Tenipuri would be cut painfully short. The DVD drive on this computer is STILL not working and I cannot begin to get rid of all of this anime until I can put it on a disc. *hopes that he does not discover the anime until I have a chance to get it off the computer*
Anyway, I downloaded the first fifty episodes and watched them all as quickly as I could. Thankfully, school ended and I had an extra 8 hours in my day to devote to fandom. I friended PoT communities and began to read fic and form opinions on the various ships. That's the wonderful thing about Tenipuri. It's not possible to have a ship war. EVERYTHING WORKS. You want to pair Tezuka with Ryoma? Great, there's three active communities for that. Tezuka with Fuji? Got that too. Tezuka with Ryoma AND Fuji? Yup. There's communities for that, too. You can pair anyone with anything and it works so well that you just love the pairing. All of the talented authors in the PoT fandom are so great at making you love every single pairing that they write about.
Now I'm slowly involving myself in the world of Tenimyu - the Prince of Tennis musicals. I would be involving myself in it faster, but my internet connection can only download things so quickly. *sighs and pats the little black box* So far I've only watched Dream Live 1 and some various clips of others on youtube, but Hyotei in Winter is nearly done downloading. I'll watch that tomorrow.
Anyway, I'm not sure what the point of this entry is. Perhaps to apologize to all of those wonderful authors who have friended me in return for me friending them but have never heard from me? To begin a new phase in my livejournal life; one where I journal about my life and comment about other people's lives? Or is it just to avoid doing the laundry?
Only time will tell. Hopefully, I can break my lurky-lurky habit and become more active in the fandom community. Knowing me, I'll revert back to lurkdom within the week. But maybe I'll gain something from that week.