The Story of How Fanfic Took Over My Brain
OK, I haven't been updating this for years as since my last post I have become a live journal ghost, if I read something here I rarely comment (sorry!) and even that has become a rarity due to my unplanned defection to fanfiction.net (again...sorry!). But here I am, out of school 18+ (take that parental controls) and in uni.
I thought that now, with a long summer ahead of me I should start doing a post once a day, be it a Drabble or a sentence; hell, even a word would be better than my community presence over the past few years.
So, today, I would like to introduce myself and how I, a complete innocent became involved with this community.
My name is Reedsangel aka Amy. I'm now 19 years old and have been in/aware of the fanfic community for a very long time. (I use Lj primarily to read fanfic and discuss fandoms).
It all started in 2001 with the start of a little show called Star Trek:Enterprise, eventually this show traveled across the pond to old blighty and my parents, fans of scifi, introduced me to it at the tender age of 9.
I fell in love with the characters and the story. I'd watched other Star Trek programmes and nothing had touched me like this before.
After about 2 years of insatiable love of the show, watching reruns and recorded versions my parents put onto VCR and saving up the money to but each new season on DVD (when DVDs were new and expensive, each season being around 10 weeks pocket money), I turned to the Internet.
Google being ever amazing led me to 5min.net which in turn led me to Trip Hammered and finally onto a site called TripMalcolm, a branch of the House of Tucker.
This is when I first came across fan fiction, primarily slash fiction. I didn't jump in headfirst, to this day I can remember the shock when I realised what I was reading. I hasten to add this was nothing to do with the fact it was 2 guys involved as I was raised non practising Christian and taught to love all no matter what their sexual orientation. However for a young girl it's quite shocking to find a description of your two favourite characters making out. Needless to say I closed the browser and legged it.
Thankfully in my innocence I had only read a PG-13 story. Had I scrolled down to the NC-17 I probably would never had found the bravery to come back. However, I was curious. So weekend mornings I would go downstairs and start reading. I knew it was wrong but this gave me new story lines, new facets of the characters to explore. This was like opening a door to a new way of thinking.
As a child I had a very good reading standard, note at the same age I had moved onto adult scifi fantasy books from my mum's collection, so reading the fanfic was not challenging at all.
However as I read down the list things became more explicit. But, unaware of how abundant fanfic was, I charged onwards, thinking this was it for my new found entertainment.
Getting my head around graphic sex descriptions would take a few more years. At this stage I scrolled past frantically, desperate to return to the story.
I knew that 2 men could love each other (thanks to the wonderful upbringing education) but I was still at a stage when sex was a mystery to me. Only a year before had I found out what sex actually entailed in a Heterosexual relationship and I was still reeling slightly from the "he puts it WHERE?!?" moment. Evidently the mechanics of gay sex were similarly received.
Then came the day where I reached the bottom of that familiar blue page and I had, unknowingly, found my Original True Pairing. At the time I thought they were my One True Pairing but suddenly...warp5complex.
All at once I was bombarded by every pairing imaginable within the crew of the enterprise. My inner vocabulary suddenly contained words like Ship, het, slash, threesome, Drabble, fandom... My eyes were open and here was an entire archive of stories to absorb. By now I was 12, things that seemed grown up appealed to me. I started reading the graphic parts of the stories I read, although I didn't understand all of it, I did it anyway. And thus was my sexuality born. I read all types if fic with all gender and species pairings. At the time, my indifference didn't bother me, though looking back now I realise that it was the first indication that I sat in the grey between black and white with my own sexual preference.
The warp5complex was my Internet home for around a year. During that time I experienced my first personal ship battle; the introduction of Major Hayes as another ship suitor for my beloved Malcolm Reed almost broke my heart through indecision. Major Hayes won out at the time, and though the two pairings always hold a place of honour with me, neither feature today in my top ships.
However, all childhood dreams fade and die, as did my excitement for ENT. When the cancellation was announced, everything was soured. And the death of Trip Tucker ended my fan fiction reading nearly permanently.
But then, about a year later, after I had fallen into something of a slump, Torchwood came to the rescue. Jack and Ianto's onscreen relationship kick started my fanfic reading again. This time, my google search landed me in the path of LiveJournal.
I made an email that my parents didn't know and signed up. But what to have as my username? I thought back through my journey so far and found one constant: Malcolm Reed. Hence Reedsangel was born.
For the first time I had a base where I could post my own works, a community I could join. Torchwood was the first fandom for which I wrote fanfic and put it on Lj . It was a short piece, an IM conversation within the team. The feedback I got was so nice and friendly I wrote a sequel. Although I had written before, I had never published any of it online. Many of my earlier pieces I scribbled down during my ENT phase remain unfinished to this day.
After Torchwood, the fandoms came rolling in. 2008 brought Merlin, 2009 had Whitechapel and in this time I also revisited many tv shows from my childhood - diagnosis murder and other smaller shows for short amounts of time. With such an influx of reading, my actual visible activity died down on LiveJournal, then I got a boyfriend (nice for a while) and then GCSEs struck.
The truth of the matter was that in June 2009, my life took a change in direction. Sitting in my local cinema next to my boyfriend, the words "I don't need a doctor dammit, I am a doctor" we're uttered onscreen by a dishevelled unshaven man. I fell in love in an instant. For Dr. Leonard H McCoy had entered my life, and 4 years later, I have yet to get rid of him.
To follow will be the story of the missing years. Aka why I dropped off the face of the planet for 4 years. Get ready for psychological babble and some depressing moments. :(. (Don't worry, it has a happy ending)
I thought that now, with a long summer ahead of me I should start doing a post once a day, be it a Drabble or a sentence; hell, even a word would be better than my community presence over the past few years.
So, today, I would like to introduce myself and how I, a complete innocent became involved with this community.
My name is Reedsangel aka Amy. I'm now 19 years old and have been in/aware of the fanfic community for a very long time. (I use Lj primarily to read fanfic and discuss fandoms).
It all started in 2001 with the start of a little show called Star Trek:Enterprise, eventually this show traveled across the pond to old blighty and my parents, fans of scifi, introduced me to it at the tender age of 9.
I fell in love with the characters and the story. I'd watched other Star Trek programmes and nothing had touched me like this before.
After about 2 years of insatiable love of the show, watching reruns and recorded versions my parents put onto VCR and saving up the money to but each new season on DVD (when DVDs were new and expensive, each season being around 10 weeks pocket money), I turned to the Internet.
Google being ever amazing led me to 5min.net which in turn led me to Trip Hammered and finally onto a site called TripMalcolm, a branch of the House of Tucker.
This is when I first came across fan fiction, primarily slash fiction. I didn't jump in headfirst, to this day I can remember the shock when I realised what I was reading. I hasten to add this was nothing to do with the fact it was 2 guys involved as I was raised non practising Christian and taught to love all no matter what their sexual orientation. However for a young girl it's quite shocking to find a description of your two favourite characters making out. Needless to say I closed the browser and legged it.
Thankfully in my innocence I had only read a PG-13 story. Had I scrolled down to the NC-17 I probably would never had found the bravery to come back. However, I was curious. So weekend mornings I would go downstairs and start reading. I knew it was wrong but this gave me new story lines, new facets of the characters to explore. This was like opening a door to a new way of thinking.
As a child I had a very good reading standard, note at the same age I had moved onto adult scifi fantasy books from my mum's collection, so reading the fanfic was not challenging at all.
However as I read down the list things became more explicit. But, unaware of how abundant fanfic was, I charged onwards, thinking this was it for my new found entertainment.
Getting my head around graphic sex descriptions would take a few more years. At this stage I scrolled past frantically, desperate to return to the story.
I knew that 2 men could love each other (thanks to the wonderful upbringing education) but I was still at a stage when sex was a mystery to me. Only a year before had I found out what sex actually entailed in a Heterosexual relationship and I was still reeling slightly from the "he puts it WHERE?!?" moment. Evidently the mechanics of gay sex were similarly received.
Then came the day where I reached the bottom of that familiar blue page and I had, unknowingly, found my Original True Pairing. At the time I thought they were my One True Pairing but suddenly...warp5complex.
All at once I was bombarded by every pairing imaginable within the crew of the enterprise. My inner vocabulary suddenly contained words like Ship, het, slash, threesome, Drabble, fandom... My eyes were open and here was an entire archive of stories to absorb. By now I was 12, things that seemed grown up appealed to me. I started reading the graphic parts of the stories I read, although I didn't understand all of it, I did it anyway. And thus was my sexuality born. I read all types if fic with all gender and species pairings. At the time, my indifference didn't bother me, though looking back now I realise that it was the first indication that I sat in the grey between black and white with my own sexual preference.
The warp5complex was my Internet home for around a year. During that time I experienced my first personal ship battle; the introduction of Major Hayes as another ship suitor for my beloved Malcolm Reed almost broke my heart through indecision. Major Hayes won out at the time, and though the two pairings always hold a place of honour with me, neither feature today in my top ships.
However, all childhood dreams fade and die, as did my excitement for ENT. When the cancellation was announced, everything was soured. And the death of Trip Tucker ended my fan fiction reading nearly permanently.
But then, about a year later, after I had fallen into something of a slump, Torchwood came to the rescue. Jack and Ianto's onscreen relationship kick started my fanfic reading again. This time, my google search landed me in the path of LiveJournal.
I made an email that my parents didn't know and signed up. But what to have as my username? I thought back through my journey so far and found one constant: Malcolm Reed. Hence Reedsangel was born.
For the first time I had a base where I could post my own works, a community I could join. Torchwood was the first fandom for which I wrote fanfic and put it on Lj . It was a short piece, an IM conversation within the team. The feedback I got was so nice and friendly I wrote a sequel. Although I had written before, I had never published any of it online. Many of my earlier pieces I scribbled down during my ENT phase remain unfinished to this day.
After Torchwood, the fandoms came rolling in. 2008 brought Merlin, 2009 had Whitechapel and in this time I also revisited many tv shows from my childhood - diagnosis murder and other smaller shows for short amounts of time. With such an influx of reading, my actual visible activity died down on LiveJournal, then I got a boyfriend (nice for a while) and then GCSEs struck.
The truth of the matter was that in June 2009, my life took a change in direction. Sitting in my local cinema next to my boyfriend, the words "I don't need a doctor dammit, I am a doctor" we're uttered onscreen by a dishevelled unshaven man. I fell in love in an instant. For Dr. Leonard H McCoy had entered my life, and 4 years later, I have yet to get rid of him.
To follow will be the story of the missing years. Aka why I dropped off the face of the planet for 4 years. Get ready for psychological babble and some depressing moments. :(. (Don't worry, it has a happy ending)