For my ljversary - a fannish timeline
purple_cube asked for my fannish timeline over the past ten years - which fandom I most associate with each year etc.
Picking one fandom for some years was really hard, because it turns out I’ve always been multifannish, which the nature of livejournal encouraged. But here goes!
1. up to and including 2004
X-Men (particularly Rogue/Wolverine) and Dark Angel (particularly season 2 and Max/Alec) got me into the fanactivity part of fandom and, as I said in my first post, I got a livejournal to motivate me into posting fic, which turned out to be mainly Dark Angel. I was also active on Nuns with Pens at this point and the Wolverine and Rogue Fan Archive was where Wolverine/Rogue fic was to be found.
But 2004 is also about Alias season 3. I’d watched and enjoyed the first two series (I keep meaning to rewatch this show), the second ended with a major reveal that the third was never going to deal with entirely satisfactorily. What got to me was that they’d broken up the main canonical couple of Sydney/Vaughn, or appeared to, and were teasing all manner of other romantic options for Sydney. I plumped for Sydney/Weiss, which is probably the fluffiest possible outcome, and threw myself into reading and writing fic. I mainly do associate my interaction with this fandom with lj, and the fact that the show aired first in the US meant that I had to learn spoiler management tactics that would be vital for the next decade.
2. 2005
Firefly/Serenity
I only started watching the show when it was repeated (possibly on the Sci Fi channel), so I was a latecomer. Before that, I had known that the show existed, but thought that Jayne was a female character. At the end of this year, because Serenity was coming, I bought the DVDs and watched the episodes as intended. I still remember the excitement of going to see Serenity IN THE CINEMA. How fast my geeky heart beat.
3. 2006
This is a cheat - Sky High came out in October 2005 and my review is in the middle of this post but it was in 2006, probably after I got the DVD, that I started writing and posting fic. And I don’t think I’m done yet. The premise is high school...for kids with superpowers. I love this film. It’s very funny and goofy and likeable. Plus there's Layla/Warren, which never quite happens in the film.
4 2007
ER stomped all over my Neela/Ray shippy heart, but really that’s a tale of the last two years also. I haven’t mentioned ‘meta’ as a fandom, either, and that was a big part of my first five years on lj, but I should say that 2007 is when I got into Strictly. It had been airing for a while, but I was a Pop Idol/The X-Factor viewer until circumstances conspired and I watched the end of Alesha’s year. From then on, winter would never lack sequins again.
5 2008
Harry Potter. I’d started reading the books after The Prisoner of Azkaban was published, but took my time to read Goblet of Fire and then bought the rest and watched the movie adaptations as quickly as I could. I dipped into the meta aspect of the fandom a little, reading others’ speculation, and being aware of shipwars, etc. But it was really after the publication of Deathly Hallows that I dived into fic, mainly het and gen. Because I started reading fic ‘late’ and there’s so much of it, I’m playing catch-up and HP will probably be a big part of my fannish experience for a while yet.
6 2009
Push - so, there’s this film about people with super abilities set in Hong Kong featuring a desperate young girl who is older than her years, partly because she sees visions of the future and the baddies have got her mother. But Cassie comes across Nick, a telekinetic who’s been on the run for most of his life. And he’s going to help her.
I came out of the cinema, thinking ‘I want to play’. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one who saw Cassie/Nick.
7 2010
The Mentalist - I got into it because of het_reccers. I’d only seen bits of the first season, and hadn’t been much impressed, but I read some recommended Lisbon/Jane fics and got genned up on what had happened in the first season, and started watching the show properly. Lisbon was my OTC, and some of the episodes were really very powerful. The law of diminishing returns and stupid take-backs have since applied. But it's a good-looking show that can be very entertaining and features some great actors. It's also lead to stellar meta over the years that I've enjoyed reading.
8 2011
Downton Abbey started this year, which was when I was not so frustrated with it and all yay!Sybil and Anna/Bates was a joy and there was ‘What is a weekend?’ Even then, I was trying to watch it at a remove - I think it makes a difference that I never fell head over heels into obsessing over a ship - but I’m probably more into it than I own. (I keep writing ficlets for the show without meaning to.)
9 2012
Avengers / Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’d faithfully gone to see all the Marvel movies (except The Hulk ones), but felt that everyone else was more fannish about them than I, but this year tipped me over. I started reading Darcy/Clint fics. I went to see Avengers Assemble and it was brilliant, as was Natasha. The number of pairings I read about grew exponentionally. I'm still just a reader, and I'm probably never going to get into the actual comics - I just like the movie adaptations (see also Batman and the X-Men).
10 2013 to now
I don’t have enough distance for this. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was new and exciting, the first webseries I watched, but I didn't interact with it as a transmedia story live. Borgen and The Good Wife were my favourite shows. I was still into Downton, Harry Potter, MCU and Sky High, which is partly why I mentioned them above.
As for what next, who knows? I'm very aware that I'm writing this post in Dreamwidth and cross-posting it to lj (although I'm better at dealing with lj's interface, these days, I like having a presence on both sites). There has been less activity on lj of late, I'm all too aware. Anyway, I'm glad I was given the excuse to look back at the last decade.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/96262.html.
Picking one fandom for some years was really hard, because it turns out I’ve always been multifannish, which the nature of livejournal encouraged. But here goes!
1. up to and including 2004
X-Men (particularly Rogue/Wolverine) and Dark Angel (particularly season 2 and Max/Alec) got me into the fanactivity part of fandom and, as I said in my first post, I got a livejournal to motivate me into posting fic, which turned out to be mainly Dark Angel. I was also active on Nuns with Pens at this point and the Wolverine and Rogue Fan Archive was where Wolverine/Rogue fic was to be found.
But 2004 is also about Alias season 3. I’d watched and enjoyed the first two series (I keep meaning to rewatch this show), the second ended with a major reveal that the third was never going to deal with entirely satisfactorily. What got to me was that they’d broken up the main canonical couple of Sydney/Vaughn, or appeared to, and were teasing all manner of other romantic options for Sydney. I plumped for Sydney/Weiss, which is probably the fluffiest possible outcome, and threw myself into reading and writing fic. I mainly do associate my interaction with this fandom with lj, and the fact that the show aired first in the US meant that I had to learn spoiler management tactics that would be vital for the next decade.
2. 2005
Firefly/Serenity
I only started watching the show when it was repeated (possibly on the Sci Fi channel), so I was a latecomer. Before that, I had known that the show existed, but thought that Jayne was a female character. At the end of this year, because Serenity was coming, I bought the DVDs and watched the episodes as intended. I still remember the excitement of going to see Serenity IN THE CINEMA. How fast my geeky heart beat.
3. 2006
This is a cheat - Sky High came out in October 2005 and my review is in the middle of this post but it was in 2006, probably after I got the DVD, that I started writing and posting fic. And I don’t think I’m done yet. The premise is high school...for kids with superpowers. I love this film. It’s very funny and goofy and likeable. Plus there's Layla/Warren, which never quite happens in the film.
4 2007
ER stomped all over my Neela/Ray shippy heart, but really that’s a tale of the last two years also. I haven’t mentioned ‘meta’ as a fandom, either, and that was a big part of my first five years on lj, but I should say that 2007 is when I got into Strictly. It had been airing for a while, but I was a Pop Idol/The X-Factor viewer until circumstances conspired and I watched the end of Alesha’s year. From then on, winter would never lack sequins again.
5 2008
Harry Potter. I’d started reading the books after The Prisoner of Azkaban was published, but took my time to read Goblet of Fire and then bought the rest and watched the movie adaptations as quickly as I could. I dipped into the meta aspect of the fandom a little, reading others’ speculation, and being aware of shipwars, etc. But it was really after the publication of Deathly Hallows that I dived into fic, mainly het and gen. Because I started reading fic ‘late’ and there’s so much of it, I’m playing catch-up and HP will probably be a big part of my fannish experience for a while yet.
6 2009
Push - so, there’s this film about people with super abilities set in Hong Kong featuring a desperate young girl who is older than her years, partly because she sees visions of the future and the baddies have got her mother. But Cassie comes across Nick, a telekinetic who’s been on the run for most of his life. And he’s going to help her.
I came out of the cinema, thinking ‘I want to play’. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one who saw Cassie/Nick.
7 2010
The Mentalist - I got into it because of het_reccers. I’d only seen bits of the first season, and hadn’t been much impressed, but I read some recommended Lisbon/Jane fics and got genned up on what had happened in the first season, and started watching the show properly. Lisbon was my OTC, and some of the episodes were really very powerful. The law of diminishing returns and stupid take-backs have since applied. But it's a good-looking show that can be very entertaining and features some great actors. It's also lead to stellar meta over the years that I've enjoyed reading.
8 2011
Downton Abbey started this year, which was when I was not so frustrated with it and all yay!Sybil and Anna/Bates was a joy and there was ‘What is a weekend?’ Even then, I was trying to watch it at a remove - I think it makes a difference that I never fell head over heels into obsessing over a ship - but I’m probably more into it than I own. (I keep writing ficlets for the show without meaning to.)
9 2012
Avengers / Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’d faithfully gone to see all the Marvel movies (except The Hulk ones), but felt that everyone else was more fannish about them than I, but this year tipped me over. I started reading Darcy/Clint fics. I went to see Avengers Assemble and it was brilliant, as was Natasha. The number of pairings I read about grew exponentionally. I'm still just a reader, and I'm probably never going to get into the actual comics - I just like the movie adaptations (see also Batman and the X-Men).
10 2013 to now
I don’t have enough distance for this. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was new and exciting, the first webseries I watched, but I didn't interact with it as a transmedia story live. Borgen and The Good Wife were my favourite shows. I was still into Downton, Harry Potter, MCU and Sky High, which is partly why I mentioned them above.
As for what next, who knows? I'm very aware that I'm writing this post in Dreamwidth and cross-posting it to lj (although I'm better at dealing with lj's interface, these days, I like having a presence on both sites). There has been less activity on lj of late, I'm all too aware. Anyway, I'm glad I was given the excuse to look back at the last decade.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/96262.html.