Status Update
I can move my head again (yay!), and my fever is gone (I think), although the side-effects of Western meds are always more annoying than herbal treatments. Luckily, the tea and herbal supplements (in types and amounts I duly wrote in a report for my doctor before he wrote out his prescriptions) loosened up my musculature enough that the doc only prescribed extra-large doses of over-the-counter meds to finish the job rather than the kind of heavy-duty nonsense that would take me entirely out of commission. Although over-the-counter stuff is only marginally better... one of the unfortunate facts about my fun biochemistry: I knew Ibuprofen makes me sick, apparently Aleve makes me existential! I would so much rather be walking into walls due to conclusive proof that there's such a thing as enough valerian and chamomile tea to actually render me absolutely unfit to operate heavy machinery, but I'm not a medical professional, and I want to get better. I'll note this as something new to tell the doctor (hopefully, someday, somebody will find some kind of medicine that doesn't make me crazy), and in the meantime... like when herbal meds made me walk into walls, I'll say to myself, "It's just the meds -- eat a sandwich!"
See, this is why I never take anything when I can help it, and always feel the urge to laugh my head off when doctors ask if I use illegal stuff for recreational purposes. If cold medicine is more likely to make me unfit for work than a cold, and the caffeine in chocolate can give me paranoia attacks, I don't even want to think what actual psychotropics or narcotics could do.
In the meantime, the pain isn't entirely gone, but it's now much reduced and localized in my middle back where it doesn't affect my ability to sit up or type (as long as my keyboard is in an ergonomically approved position). It doesn't feel quite like a muscle spasm or a knot anymore, but I'm not worrying too much before a doctor can tell me anything. My previously noted fun biochemistry will only give me psychosomatic symptoms if I worry too much. I'm waiting for full results on the x-rays they took yesterday, and in the meantime will avoid gymnastics and heavy lifting, and will make sure to rest if anything hurts.
What a stupid mess to get into, all from a sore throat and a cough! But it's clearly going to be fine. I'm certain that if there were a critical problem with my spinal cord, a little bit of rest and Aleve wouldn't be this effective. As soon as the doctor has news, I'll pass it along.
To celebrate the fact that I'm finally able to type and look at computers with fair ease again, I'm stealing a meme from chaeche!
First TV show I had self-insertion fantasies about:
The time has come for me to be unbelievably, unthinkably, and embarrassingly... let's say "old school" rather than straight up "cliche". When I was young and foolish (11? 12? Maybe it was closer to 14... but something like that), I must admit... I wrote a solid chunk of a Star Trek novel. Classic Trek, although I was introduced to sci-fi by NextGen. Classic Trek, with tribbles, and I'm fairly certain my entire ballet school was in it. My ballet teacher's character was an undercover Klingon agent, which my actual ballet teacher just loved. I have no doubt that I wrote myself as a perfectly horrid Mary Sue, and thank goodness that's now out of my system. It may be best for my own sanity that I lost that notebook in a hotel somewhere in the middle of nowhere...
First fandom in which I interacted with other fans:
Gosh. I want to say The X-Files, since the X-Philes Dot Club at CTY was so near and dear to my heart (note how I still go by "Skinner" after all these years), but I think technically I have to give this to Star Trek as well. I may not have been allowed to go to the conventions I begged to attend, but I certainly started a sci-fi club with two other Trekkies at school (another student, and my French teacher), finagled my way into a membership with a Canadian group that ran a newsletter for "Starfleet Chief Medical Officers" (I honestly don't remember how that happened, since I lived in Delaware and I don't think I had the internet yet), and was a card-carrying member of the Nitpicker's Guild with entries in the dictionary under my name. I still have that card, too. Damn, those were the days. The Nitpicker's Guides were also my first introduction to the idea that innocent people can get hurt by copyright suits... So, the question of which came first, the Trek or the X-Files comes down to: Did I do any of that before I was fourteen?! Geez! I think I did all of it before then. It's entirely possible that I was also part of my church's workgroup, "The Seven Principles and Purposes According to Star Trek", before I was 14...
That seems like such a short timeline... I know I only discovered Star Trek when I was eight, and it took me practically six months to figure out why it didn't have the same cast as Star Wars after I clawed through my parents' VHS collection for anything with the word "Star" in the title...
Short story: Yes, I was always a nutter.
Pairing in the first slash fanfiction I read:
Slash? ::thinks:: ... ... ... It must have either been Weiss Kreuz or Gundam Wing... If Weiss, I can't remember if it was a Youji/Aya, Nagi/Omi, Crawford/Aya/Schuldig or Crawford/Youji/Aya/Schuldig I read first. ... Probably the one with the MacDonalds runs, and Farfarello's ketchup in a perfect circle, and... topiary? If so, Crawford/Aya/Shu. Nagi/Omi was definitely one of the first I wrote (and no, I'm not publishing that -- it's a piece of s***). If Gundam Wing, it must have been Duo/Heero. I'm afraid I can't give exact details of the story. That whole fandom was kind of a blur.
The above assumes my first slashfic wasn't in the Tokyo Babylon fandom (is it "slash" if the pairing's canon? oh, sure, why not...), which was obviously Seishirou/Subaru and is entirely possible, but I think I was fed fanfic before I went looking on my own. Maybe certain persons who lent me their binders of printouts can check my memory. You know who you are.
First RPS/RPF I read:
I'm pretty sure this award goes to The Mirror of His Dreams by my friend, beltenebra, a Johnny's Entertainment fusion piece with Alice in Wonderland. I absolutely adored her choices for all the different characters.
First fanfiction I read that made me think, 'YES, this is exactly the kind of fanfiction I'd like to write...':
My confession: I don't actually read that much fic anymore. Read a pile early on in college, but once I got back into writing, I just didn't have the time. However, I have read a couple real winners that are a great deal like the kinds of stories I want to create, although my beta reader reminds me that my actual writing style doesn't really resemble them. Either Jacquemart (Utena, by harnums) or A Forfeit of Dreams (Labyrinth, by klmorgan). They're both excellent, and everyone should read them.
First time I remember getting really turned on by a fic:
Hmm. ... Hmmmmm. I generally avoid stories with a lot of sex, and skim it for plot content when it's there at all. Porn just isn't my thing (laugh all you want: it's why I'm so persnickety about the porn I actually write -- even though the scenes are called for in the text, it never seems right, and I just send it out on faith with massive thanks to my beta readers). So I don't remember the actual sex from a lot of stories, but there was one particular thing that I do remember reading, and actually remember images from after all these years... ::googles for links::
It's been so long, I don't remember anything else about the fic, but I still remember bits of the sex scene in "Drift I" of firecat's Sakura and Snow (Seishirou/Subaru, Tokyo Babylon and X), so I'm going with that: "Alone in the Dark" was the specific scene. I'm sure there are warnings I ought to issue, given the pairing, but I don't remember it that clearly. If you know the names "Subaru and Seishirou" I doubt I have to explain, and if you don't know who they are, you're probably not interested in what they're doing in bed.
... ... ... Many people who do know who those characters are would probably be vehemently uninterested in what they're doing in bed, now that I think about it. ::shakes head sadly:: Now everyone's going to think I have entirely different kinks than I actually do have. ::sigh:: C'est la vie.
First OTP:
Definitely Mulder/Scully (X-Files). I shipped them hardcore. Still do. They were even responsible for me writing my first piece of shippy fanfic, even though at the time I had no idea what fanfic was or that I was writing it.
First RPS/F OTP:
OoMiya. I would very, very rarely say I actually ship real people, but looking at those two just kills me.
First fannish friend I met in person:
I'm not sure if this question means, "The first real-life friend with whom you shared fannish endeavors" or "The first person you met in fandom who you later met in real life". For that matter, how does one define fandom? Because, as noted, I had my school sci-fi club with real people (Kate and Mme. D), and the church Star Trek group. But would my friends Scully and
scintilla72 from CTY be the first people I knew who were in fandom at any verifiable point...? I'm not sure how the timelines work on that one. And I don't know that I've spoken to someone offline whom I first met via internet or mailing list fandom...
Yet. There are plans in the offing with
pandoraculpa for spring, to which I am looking forward mightily.
First character I formally roleplayed:
Tough. Question. I'd love to say, "Inigo Montoya!", since that part was so much fun, but it was an actual restaging of The Princess Bride according to the script, so it wasn't roleplay qua roleplay. I think. Time to retrace my childhood... throwing out "roleplaying exercises" from teambuilding sessions and DARE classes and such, since those don't have fannish characters.
I'm assuming that my Snow White costume from when I was knee-high doesn't count, since that was Halloween and certainly not formal. Playing the evil witch in the Girl Scouts rewrite I did of the Snow White story and acting out Santa Lucia at church were really more normal plays, as were all the school plays. That 4th grade project where I pretended to be Molly from American Girls to talk about World War II...? I was so nervous, I don't even remember if I pulled it off or not. And playing Power Rangers on the school playground isn't "formal", right? Or is it? I'm not even sure if I was a specific Power Ranger...
I'm pretty sure no one even noticed me going through my Greek classes at summer camp as Daphne, except for the teacher who had to deal with me writing "Fleet-footed Daphne" at the top of all my homework assignments and tests. Plus, there were no costumes involved, and I still answered to other names during that time. (42 of them, as I recall. Despite what everyone tells me, I'm really quite certain I must have been a horror to raise.) The part of a Star Trek doll my ballet teacher wrote for me was another scripted production... My friends from those days may have to keep me honest as to whether I "formally" put on any characters. I'm nigh unto certain that we just took character names in the XPDC rather than doing actual roleplay.
So perhaps that time I went to school as David Bowie (Aladdin Sane version) for Rock Star Day? Although I didn't really act the part. I did actually act out an improv as Buddy Holly in our drama class's lip sync exercise, complete with costume (I picked the song "Heartbeat"). Let's go with that, then. Buddy Holly. That way, I can do you a favor and spare you the crap I pulled in college.
I've never done online RP. My first cosplay in a fannish setting, although there wasn't roleplay that I recall at any point, was either Lucifer from Angel Sanctuary or Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings. Hmm. I'm going to have to look up the dates on that.
According to the release date of The Two Towers versus the timing of my first Otakon, my first solid cosplay was officially Aragorn. Now I wish I had pictures. My stubble was awesome, and I even got to use my sword from playing Inigo -- which had of course been broken and reforged (with duct tape, because it was made of silver spray-painted PVC pipe).
So there you go.
I am, as I ever was, and ever shall be, yours, yours, yours. Glad to be back! Hope everyone had fun reading about my youthful insanity!
This entry was originally posted at http://psiten.dreamwidth.org/79363.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
See, this is why I never take anything when I can help it, and always feel the urge to laugh my head off when doctors ask if I use illegal stuff for recreational purposes. If cold medicine is more likely to make me unfit for work than a cold, and the caffeine in chocolate can give me paranoia attacks, I don't even want to think what actual psychotropics or narcotics could do.
In the meantime, the pain isn't entirely gone, but it's now much reduced and localized in my middle back where it doesn't affect my ability to sit up or type (as long as my keyboard is in an ergonomically approved position). It doesn't feel quite like a muscle spasm or a knot anymore, but I'm not worrying too much before a doctor can tell me anything. My previously noted fun biochemistry will only give me psychosomatic symptoms if I worry too much. I'm waiting for full results on the x-rays they took yesterday, and in the meantime will avoid gymnastics and heavy lifting, and will make sure to rest if anything hurts.
What a stupid mess to get into, all from a sore throat and a cough! But it's clearly going to be fine. I'm certain that if there were a critical problem with my spinal cord, a little bit of rest and Aleve wouldn't be this effective. As soon as the doctor has news, I'll pass it along.
To celebrate the fact that I'm finally able to type and look at computers with fair ease again, I'm stealing a meme from chaeche!
First TV show I had self-insertion fantasies about:
The time has come for me to be unbelievably, unthinkably, and embarrassingly... let's say "old school" rather than straight up "cliche". When I was young and foolish (11? 12? Maybe it was closer to 14... but something like that), I must admit... I wrote a solid chunk of a Star Trek novel. Classic Trek, although I was introduced to sci-fi by NextGen. Classic Trek, with tribbles, and I'm fairly certain my entire ballet school was in it. My ballet teacher's character was an undercover Klingon agent, which my actual ballet teacher just loved. I have no doubt that I wrote myself as a perfectly horrid Mary Sue, and thank goodness that's now out of my system. It may be best for my own sanity that I lost that notebook in a hotel somewhere in the middle of nowhere...
First fandom in which I interacted with other fans:
Gosh. I want to say The X-Files, since the X-Philes Dot Club at CTY was so near and dear to my heart (note how I still go by "Skinner" after all these years), but I think technically I have to give this to Star Trek as well. I may not have been allowed to go to the conventions I begged to attend, but I certainly started a sci-fi club with two other Trekkies at school (another student, and my French teacher), finagled my way into a membership with a Canadian group that ran a newsletter for "Starfleet Chief Medical Officers" (I honestly don't remember how that happened, since I lived in Delaware and I don't think I had the internet yet), and was a card-carrying member of the Nitpicker's Guild with entries in the dictionary under my name. I still have that card, too. Damn, those were the days. The Nitpicker's Guides were also my first introduction to the idea that innocent people can get hurt by copyright suits... So, the question of which came first, the Trek or the X-Files comes down to: Did I do any of that before I was fourteen?! Geez! I think I did all of it before then. It's entirely possible that I was also part of my church's workgroup, "The Seven Principles and Purposes According to Star Trek", before I was 14...
That seems like such a short timeline... I know I only discovered Star Trek when I was eight, and it took me practically six months to figure out why it didn't have the same cast as Star Wars after I clawed through my parents' VHS collection for anything with the word "Star" in the title...
Short story: Yes, I was always a nutter.
Pairing in the first slash fanfiction I read:
Slash? ::thinks:: ... ... ... It must have either been Weiss Kreuz or Gundam Wing... If Weiss, I can't remember if it was a Youji/Aya, Nagi/Omi, Crawford/Aya/Schuldig or Crawford/Youji/Aya/Schuldig I read first. ... Probably the one with the MacDonalds runs, and Farfarello's ketchup in a perfect circle, and... topiary? If so, Crawford/Aya/Shu. Nagi/Omi was definitely one of the first I wrote (and no, I'm not publishing that -- it's a piece of s***). If Gundam Wing, it must have been Duo/Heero. I'm afraid I can't give exact details of the story. That whole fandom was kind of a blur.
The above assumes my first slashfic wasn't in the Tokyo Babylon fandom (is it "slash" if the pairing's canon? oh, sure, why not...), which was obviously Seishirou/Subaru and is entirely possible, but I think I was fed fanfic before I went looking on my own. Maybe certain persons who lent me their binders of printouts can check my memory. You know who you are.
First RPS/RPF I read:
I'm pretty sure this award goes to The Mirror of His Dreams by my friend, beltenebra, a Johnny's Entertainment fusion piece with Alice in Wonderland. I absolutely adored her choices for all the different characters.
First fanfiction I read that made me think, 'YES, this is exactly the kind of fanfiction I'd like to write...':
My confession: I don't actually read that much fic anymore. Read a pile early on in college, but once I got back into writing, I just didn't have the time. However, I have read a couple real winners that are a great deal like the kinds of stories I want to create, although my beta reader reminds me that my actual writing style doesn't really resemble them. Either Jacquemart (Utena, by harnums) or A Forfeit of Dreams (Labyrinth, by klmorgan). They're both excellent, and everyone should read them.
First time I remember getting really turned on by a fic:
Hmm. ... Hmmmmm. I generally avoid stories with a lot of sex, and skim it for plot content when it's there at all. Porn just isn't my thing (laugh all you want: it's why I'm so persnickety about the porn I actually write -- even though the scenes are called for in the text, it never seems right, and I just send it out on faith with massive thanks to my beta readers). So I don't remember the actual sex from a lot of stories, but there was one particular thing that I do remember reading, and actually remember images from after all these years... ::googles for links::
It's been so long, I don't remember anything else about the fic, but I still remember bits of the sex scene in "Drift I" of firecat's Sakura and Snow (Seishirou/Subaru, Tokyo Babylon and X), so I'm going with that: "Alone in the Dark" was the specific scene. I'm sure there are warnings I ought to issue, given the pairing, but I don't remember it that clearly. If you know the names "Subaru and Seishirou" I doubt I have to explain, and if you don't know who they are, you're probably not interested in what they're doing in bed.
... ... ... Many people who do know who those characters are would probably be vehemently uninterested in what they're doing in bed, now that I think about it. ::shakes head sadly:: Now everyone's going to think I have entirely different kinks than I actually do have. ::sigh:: C'est la vie.
First OTP:
Definitely Mulder/Scully (X-Files). I shipped them hardcore. Still do. They were even responsible for me writing my first piece of shippy fanfic, even though at the time I had no idea what fanfic was or that I was writing it.
First RPS/F OTP:
OoMiya. I would very, very rarely say I actually ship real people, but looking at those two just kills me.
First fannish friend I met in person:
I'm not sure if this question means, "The first real-life friend with whom you shared fannish endeavors" or "The first person you met in fandom who you later met in real life". For that matter, how does one define fandom? Because, as noted, I had my school sci-fi club with real people (Kate and Mme. D), and the church Star Trek group. But would my friends Scully and
scintilla72 from CTY be the first people I knew who were in fandom at any verifiable point...? I'm not sure how the timelines work on that one. And I don't know that I've spoken to someone offline whom I first met via internet or mailing list fandom...
Yet. There are plans in the offing with
pandoraculpa for spring, to which I am looking forward mightily.
First character I formally roleplayed:
Tough. Question. I'd love to say, "Inigo Montoya!", since that part was so much fun, but it was an actual restaging of The Princess Bride according to the script, so it wasn't roleplay qua roleplay. I think. Time to retrace my childhood... throwing out "roleplaying exercises" from teambuilding sessions and DARE classes and such, since those don't have fannish characters.
I'm assuming that my Snow White costume from when I was knee-high doesn't count, since that was Halloween and certainly not formal. Playing the evil witch in the Girl Scouts rewrite I did of the Snow White story and acting out Santa Lucia at church were really more normal plays, as were all the school plays. That 4th grade project where I pretended to be Molly from American Girls to talk about World War II...? I was so nervous, I don't even remember if I pulled it off or not. And playing Power Rangers on the school playground isn't "formal", right? Or is it? I'm not even sure if I was a specific Power Ranger...
I'm pretty sure no one even noticed me going through my Greek classes at summer camp as Daphne, except for the teacher who had to deal with me writing "Fleet-footed Daphne" at the top of all my homework assignments and tests. Plus, there were no costumes involved, and I still answered to other names during that time. (42 of them, as I recall. Despite what everyone tells me, I'm really quite certain I must have been a horror to raise.) The part of a Star Trek doll my ballet teacher wrote for me was another scripted production... My friends from those days may have to keep me honest as to whether I "formally" put on any characters. I'm nigh unto certain that we just took character names in the XPDC rather than doing actual roleplay.
So perhaps that time I went to school as David Bowie (Aladdin Sane version) for Rock Star Day? Although I didn't really act the part. I did actually act out an improv as Buddy Holly in our drama class's lip sync exercise, complete with costume (I picked the song "Heartbeat"). Let's go with that, then. Buddy Holly. That way, I can do you a favor and spare you the crap I pulled in college.
I've never done online RP. My first cosplay in a fannish setting, although there wasn't roleplay that I recall at any point, was either Lucifer from Angel Sanctuary or Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings. Hmm. I'm going to have to look up the dates on that.
According to the release date of The Two Towers versus the timing of my first Otakon, my first solid cosplay was officially Aragorn. Now I wish I had pictures. My stubble was awesome, and I even got to use my sword from playing Inigo -- which had of course been broken and reforged (with duct tape, because it was made of silver spray-painted PVC pipe).
So there you go.
I am, as I ever was, and ever shall be, yours, yours, yours. Glad to be back! Hope everyone had fun reading about my youthful insanity!
This entry was originally posted at http://psiten.dreamwidth.org/79363.html. Please comment there using OpenID.