And then there was me.
Apparently the cool kids are doing it:
1 - I'm a married mother of two boys, somewhere past my mid-thirties. Both my kids are too smart for my own good, cute as hell, and likely to drive me insane by the time they hit the age of ten. They're both inquisitive, hate/hated potty training, love learning and reading, were able to name dinosaurs by site at the age of three (and say them correctly) and love singing the Spiderman theme song. They can both hike five miles, no problem at the respective ages of six and three, and they're the best thing in my life. Except my husband, who puts up with numbers 2-10. We'll have been married for nine years this September, known each other for 15 years next month. We met when I hired him at my old job, against my reservations (he was too quiet for retail but we were extremely short staffed) and the rest (after a few late night make out sessions in the back room) is history.
2 - I work for two OB/Gyn docs and two nurse practioners. I do general office work including reception and, for the time being and in the past, I was also their transcriptionist - taking their dictated information and typing it for in the charts. I call that "vaginaing" because when you work for two OB/Gyns, the vagina comes up a lot. As do periods, sexually transmitted diseases and the largest amount of stupidity you can imagine. Needless to say, I have no TMI level except for me personally, but that usually extends to emotional stuff rather than sexual/body stuff. I went to school and got my degree in journalism, after which I decided I didn't want to be a journalist: I'm not fit for TV or radio and print journalism is a dying art, and as cool as it would be to be a magazine journalist, I never had the desire to try. This was when the internet revolution was just beginning, so the life of a blogger/internet reporter/etc was not yet a gleam in some smart person's eye.
3 - I chat online more than I should. I chat with nolivingman and a few others, and I RP chat with inlovewithnight . It is there on AIM that fics are born, where I share WIPs and where they go "Hey, you should write this" and I usually do. I'm very susceptible in that way. I also find that I write better when I have someone to bounce stuff off of, even if I don't end up bouncing stuff off of them, so chatting is usually good for production of fic.
4 - My fandom experiences are defined by canon and by fanfiction. I do not get involved in meta. I do not get into the fannish aspect of fandoms. I don't join letter writing campaigns, I don't send producers bottles of tabasco sauce, I don't meet actors, I don't wank (hee - okay, maybe that's TMI). Fandom for me is a creative outlet. I enjoy it for what it allows me to escape into and for the most part, I enjoy the stories that I write. I write 99.99% for myself, though I'd be lying if I said that I don't enjoy/appreciate comments. That said, I did do a little of the fandom thing back in Dawson's Creek - we chatted with Paul Stupin, the executive producer guy, and I was friends with some of the BNFs in the P/Jo fandom. I was there when all of us got banned from MBTV and when all sorts of things that went down. That said, I still stayed on the periphery and I think that most of the people who were my "friends" from that era liked me for who I was as a major P/Jo writer. I also met some of the cast of Buffy at a posting board party and that was fun - more for the people who I met there who weren't actors, but Anthony Stewart Head was there and, not only did I sort of make a fool out of myself, but I swooned. Hopefully he forgot it as quickly as possible.
5 - I write. A little. I started out in Anime fandom - Ranma 1/2 and Sailor Moon. From there it was Buffy, and then when Buffy lost its luster for me, I went to Dawson's Creek. If ever I was a BNF, I guess it was there, though you could never prove it by me. After Dawson's went the way of the dinosaur, I kind of floundered for a while and then went into Harry Potter. Then it was House and Veronica Mars. From there, nolivingman introduced me to Ioan Gruffudd and King Arthur and then Horatio Hornblower. Up until the end of Dawson's Creek, I could only concentrate on one fandom. My writing process involves voices talking in my head, and either those early fandoms were more consuming or I've learned to compartmentalize better, since I can work in more than one fandom at a time now. Most of the fandoms have gone away now - most never to return except in extreme circumstances (and no, begging or asking nicely do not constitute extreme circumstances), so what you see lately is pretty much what you get: RPS, Brothers & Sisters, Hornblower, other AoS fandoms no one's heard of. I always take requests, and try my hardest to fill them, but sometimes the voices don't come, and there's nothing you can do about it, I'm afraid.
6 - One of my greatest joys in fandom is co-running the aos_challenge comm. nolivingman and I brainstormed over a year's worth of topics before we started it and we trade off picking prompts every two weeks and every month. We're both anal about things, so we're good for each other in that regard, good at tagging and memory-ing and getting prompts out there on time. I always close them, living on the west coast, and she always opens them, living on the east. Part of why this is so cool is that nolivingman is one of my bestest friends (not just online!), and it's fun to do stuff wtih her. She's a super-generous person (whether she believes it or not) and she's behind probably a good half of my fics. I've known her since Dawson's really though she was around before then, and I would be very sad without her. Also, she and I have given each other the freedom to be bitchy, catty and to wear tiaras with impunity.
7 - In all the world, there is nothing more powerful, more heartfelt, more inclusive than The Fangirl Network. I am a firm believer in it and feel that good stuff was meant to share. Sharing music, TV shows, actors, fanvids, fic, movies, everything. That's what fandom and fangirls are about. I made nolivingman watch Babylon 5 and she made me watch Hornblower, and the rest was love and history. I send Ioan Gruffudd movies to people to share the hot, and I get things in return - such pretty things like Bamber and Rhys and music and plays and movies and everything. We are one community, and the love must be shared. Spider Robinson said "Shared pain is lessened, shared joy increased". This is the motto of the Fangirl Network. Long may it reign.
8 - I have this weird thing about monkeys. Stuffed ones, cartoon ones, paper ones. As long as they're cute, I will flail and say "MONKEY" a lot. I also have a thing about sheep (in an OMGWTF sort of way) and school supplies/office supply stores. Seriously, there is nothing so happy as me in a Staples or Office Max or the school supply aisle of Target (yay!Target!) unless somewhere in there? I find said office supplies/etc with MONKEYS on them. No one quite knows how it started, but it did and there it is. I also have this thing about trivia and my brain is a repository for useless knowledge that no one needs. I have an insanely good memory for shit like that and a crap one for real things like geography. In fact, when people want to keep me from winning Trivial Pursuit, they ask me lots of geography questions. It's evil. And ever-changing. I personally think Rand McNally's behind all the breaking up of countries and coups. (A funny aside: A long time ago when Dennis Miller was on SNL, he was talking about thousands of doves taking over some country in a major political "Cooo". I cracked up. That probably tells you lots about me too)
9 - I love to read. When I was a kid, my favorite books were the Little House series, the books by Zilpha Keatley Snyder (The Egypt Game, The Changeling, and The Velvet Room were faves) and the Trixie Belden series. I will defend Trixie Belden against that elitist bitch Nancy Drew until I die. If I ever need catharsis, I read To Kill a Mockingbird or Where the Red Fern Grows or A Taste of Blackberries. As an adult, I don't think I have favorite books that I read again and again, but I have one bookcase in my bedroom that's solely the stuff that I will keep forever. If you want to know them, I'll tell you, but it's in the other room, and that's a lot of effort. The only books I keep at my desk are a dictionary, a thesaurus, a Bible, a dictionary of mythology and the complete works of Shakespeare. I also love movies and worked at a Suncoast (retail movie sales for those who don't remember - long before places like Best Buy existed). Some favorites (but by no means complete) - Big Trouble in Little China, Clue, Clueless, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Buckaroo Banzaii, The Princess Bride. There are a LOT more, but those are some biggies. The only movies at my desk are the complete (as I can get them) collection of Ioan Gruffudd, Jamie Bamber and Matthew Rhys career projects for quick boyfriend referencing. I got a special upgrade for my DVD drive so I can view all their R2 projects because I'm a weird completist about my obsessions.
10 - Speaking of collections. I have a few. I used to collect action figures and comics - mostly Xmen. I have the entire line of Buffy the Vampire Slayer action figures (up to the point that Moore Collectibles stopped making them) and I have most of the Harry Potter Lego sets. I usually find one aspect of a fandom that is MINE and then I go crazy. It's best for everyone that I get into fandoms that don't require massive amounts of purchasing of stuff, as it only ends in tears. I also collect Disney Villains and Nightmare Before Christmas stuff (before Hot Topic came along and you could find it everywhere). I love Yosemite Sam and used to collect stuff on him (back when there were Warner Bros stores to do it through). See also: Monkeys.
11 - Friending: I love when people friend me. I don't friend back, which is kind of shitty, but I have two kids, two jobs, a husband and write. If you friend me I *always* check out your journal and see who you are. I love to know who's reading me and why. I know a lot of people are out there for the fic, and that's fabulous. That's what it's for, you know? So I don't take defriending personally. We all move on and have other interests that no longer intersect. Also, maybe you're friends only and don't want someone you don't know reading your LJ. That's cool too. There are about ten people on my flist that I would be HORRIFIED if they defriended me, but I'm pretty sure I'd know it was coming, as they're all personal friends as well, but other than that, you've got your life. I've got mine. That said, I do appreciate every one of you, even if you're just a silent person reading and not commenting. Hee. And that sounded sarcastic, and wasn't meant to.
1 - I'm a married mother of two boys, somewhere past my mid-thirties. Both my kids are too smart for my own good, cute as hell, and likely to drive me insane by the time they hit the age of ten. They're both inquisitive, hate/hated potty training, love learning and reading, were able to name dinosaurs by site at the age of three (and say them correctly) and love singing the Spiderman theme song. They can both hike five miles, no problem at the respective ages of six and three, and they're the best thing in my life. Except my husband, who puts up with numbers 2-10. We'll have been married for nine years this September, known each other for 15 years next month. We met when I hired him at my old job, against my reservations (he was too quiet for retail but we were extremely short staffed) and the rest (after a few late night make out sessions in the back room) is history.
2 - I work for two OB/Gyn docs and two nurse practioners. I do general office work including reception and, for the time being and in the past, I was also their transcriptionist - taking their dictated information and typing it for in the charts. I call that "vaginaing" because when you work for two OB/Gyns, the vagina comes up a lot. As do periods, sexually transmitted diseases and the largest amount of stupidity you can imagine. Needless to say, I have no TMI level except for me personally, but that usually extends to emotional stuff rather than sexual/body stuff. I went to school and got my degree in journalism, after which I decided I didn't want to be a journalist: I'm not fit for TV or radio and print journalism is a dying art, and as cool as it would be to be a magazine journalist, I never had the desire to try. This was when the internet revolution was just beginning, so the life of a blogger/internet reporter/etc was not yet a gleam in some smart person's eye.
3 - I chat online more than I should. I chat with nolivingman and a few others, and I RP chat with inlovewithnight . It is there on AIM that fics are born, where I share WIPs and where they go "Hey, you should write this" and I usually do. I'm very susceptible in that way. I also find that I write better when I have someone to bounce stuff off of, even if I don't end up bouncing stuff off of them, so chatting is usually good for production of fic.
4 - My fandom experiences are defined by canon and by fanfiction. I do not get involved in meta. I do not get into the fannish aspect of fandoms. I don't join letter writing campaigns, I don't send producers bottles of tabasco sauce, I don't meet actors, I don't wank (hee - okay, maybe that's TMI). Fandom for me is a creative outlet. I enjoy it for what it allows me to escape into and for the most part, I enjoy the stories that I write. I write 99.99% for myself, though I'd be lying if I said that I don't enjoy/appreciate comments. That said, I did do a little of the fandom thing back in Dawson's Creek - we chatted with Paul Stupin, the executive producer guy, and I was friends with some of the BNFs in the P/Jo fandom. I was there when all of us got banned from MBTV and when all sorts of things that went down. That said, I still stayed on the periphery and I think that most of the people who were my "friends" from that era liked me for who I was as a major P/Jo writer. I also met some of the cast of Buffy at a posting board party and that was fun - more for the people who I met there who weren't actors, but Anthony Stewart Head was there and, not only did I sort of make a fool out of myself, but I swooned. Hopefully he forgot it as quickly as possible.
5 - I write. A little. I started out in Anime fandom - Ranma 1/2 and Sailor Moon. From there it was Buffy, and then when Buffy lost its luster for me, I went to Dawson's Creek. If ever I was a BNF, I guess it was there, though you could never prove it by me. After Dawson's went the way of the dinosaur, I kind of floundered for a while and then went into Harry Potter. Then it was House and Veronica Mars. From there, nolivingman introduced me to Ioan Gruffudd and King Arthur and then Horatio Hornblower. Up until the end of Dawson's Creek, I could only concentrate on one fandom. My writing process involves voices talking in my head, and either those early fandoms were more consuming or I've learned to compartmentalize better, since I can work in more than one fandom at a time now. Most of the fandoms have gone away now - most never to return except in extreme circumstances (and no, begging or asking nicely do not constitute extreme circumstances), so what you see lately is pretty much what you get: RPS, Brothers & Sisters, Hornblower, other AoS fandoms no one's heard of. I always take requests, and try my hardest to fill them, but sometimes the voices don't come, and there's nothing you can do about it, I'm afraid.
6 - One of my greatest joys in fandom is co-running the aos_challenge comm. nolivingman and I brainstormed over a year's worth of topics before we started it and we trade off picking prompts every two weeks and every month. We're both anal about things, so we're good for each other in that regard, good at tagging and memory-ing and getting prompts out there on time. I always close them, living on the west coast, and she always opens them, living on the east. Part of why this is so cool is that nolivingman is one of my bestest friends (not just online!), and it's fun to do stuff wtih her. She's a super-generous person (whether she believes it or not) and she's behind probably a good half of my fics. I've known her since Dawson's really though she was around before then, and I would be very sad without her. Also, she and I have given each other the freedom to be bitchy, catty and to wear tiaras with impunity.
7 - In all the world, there is nothing more powerful, more heartfelt, more inclusive than The Fangirl Network. I am a firm believer in it and feel that good stuff was meant to share. Sharing music, TV shows, actors, fanvids, fic, movies, everything. That's what fandom and fangirls are about. I made nolivingman watch Babylon 5 and she made me watch Hornblower, and the rest was love and history. I send Ioan Gruffudd movies to people to share the hot, and I get things in return - such pretty things like Bamber and Rhys and music and plays and movies and everything. We are one community, and the love must be shared. Spider Robinson said "Shared pain is lessened, shared joy increased". This is the motto of the Fangirl Network. Long may it reign.
8 - I have this weird thing about monkeys. Stuffed ones, cartoon ones, paper ones. As long as they're cute, I will flail and say "MONKEY" a lot. I also have a thing about sheep (in an OMGWTF sort of way) and school supplies/office supply stores. Seriously, there is nothing so happy as me in a Staples or Office Max or the school supply aisle of Target (yay!Target!) unless somewhere in there? I find said office supplies/etc with MONKEYS on them. No one quite knows how it started, but it did and there it is. I also have this thing about trivia and my brain is a repository for useless knowledge that no one needs. I have an insanely good memory for shit like that and a crap one for real things like geography. In fact, when people want to keep me from winning Trivial Pursuit, they ask me lots of geography questions. It's evil. And ever-changing. I personally think Rand McNally's behind all the breaking up of countries and coups. (A funny aside: A long time ago when Dennis Miller was on SNL, he was talking about thousands of doves taking over some country in a major political "Cooo". I cracked up. That probably tells you lots about me too)
9 - I love to read. When I was a kid, my favorite books were the Little House series, the books by Zilpha Keatley Snyder (The Egypt Game, The Changeling, and The Velvet Room were faves) and the Trixie Belden series. I will defend Trixie Belden against that elitist bitch Nancy Drew until I die. If I ever need catharsis, I read To Kill a Mockingbird or Where the Red Fern Grows or A Taste of Blackberries. As an adult, I don't think I have favorite books that I read again and again, but I have one bookcase in my bedroom that's solely the stuff that I will keep forever. If you want to know them, I'll tell you, but it's in the other room, and that's a lot of effort. The only books I keep at my desk are a dictionary, a thesaurus, a Bible, a dictionary of mythology and the complete works of Shakespeare. I also love movies and worked at a Suncoast (retail movie sales for those who don't remember - long before places like Best Buy existed). Some favorites (but by no means complete) - Big Trouble in Little China, Clue, Clueless, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Buckaroo Banzaii, The Princess Bride. There are a LOT more, but those are some biggies. The only movies at my desk are the complete (as I can get them) collection of Ioan Gruffudd, Jamie Bamber and Matthew Rhys career projects for quick boyfriend referencing. I got a special upgrade for my DVD drive so I can view all their R2 projects because I'm a weird completist about my obsessions.
10 - Speaking of collections. I have a few. I used to collect action figures and comics - mostly Xmen. I have the entire line of Buffy the Vampire Slayer action figures (up to the point that Moore Collectibles stopped making them) and I have most of the Harry Potter Lego sets. I usually find one aspect of a fandom that is MINE and then I go crazy. It's best for everyone that I get into fandoms that don't require massive amounts of purchasing of stuff, as it only ends in tears. I also collect Disney Villains and Nightmare Before Christmas stuff (before Hot Topic came along and you could find it everywhere). I love Yosemite Sam and used to collect stuff on him (back when there were Warner Bros stores to do it through). See also: Monkeys.
11 - Friending: I love when people friend me. I don't friend back, which is kind of shitty, but I have two kids, two jobs, a husband and write. If you friend me I *always* check out your journal and see who you are. I love to know who's reading me and why. I know a lot of people are out there for the fic, and that's fabulous. That's what it's for, you know? So I don't take defriending personally. We all move on and have other interests that no longer intersect. Also, maybe you're friends only and don't want someone you don't know reading your LJ. That's cool too. There are about ten people on my flist that I would be HORRIFIED if they defriended me, but I'm pretty sure I'd know it was coming, as they're all personal friends as well, but other than that, you've got your life. I've got mine. That said, I do appreciate every one of you, even if you're just a silent person reading and not commenting. Hee. And that sounded sarcastic, and wasn't meant to.