Fandom Snowflake Challenge #2

[spiralicious]

In your own space, talk about your fannish history.

Wow, um, so I guess begin at the beginning then?

When I was 12, I started writing little stories about my favorite characters in the books I read, just in notebooks and kept them to myself. Computers were only kind of a common thing, but only on TV and not where I lived, and the internet wasn't really a thing yet and I had no idea about fandom or anything like that. I just thought I was weird.

Fast forward to college. I had my first computer of my own and my own internet connection. But that's not where this started. I was working the closing shift (and later the 11p -7a shift) and had a sleeping disorder, so I was always up at ungodly times of the night. While channel flipping, I found this weird animated show about what I, at the time, thought was a cat person. Eventually, I figured out what time this show was on, what it was called, and that I had started with the worst episode to start with.

It was Inuyasha when it was still on Toonami. He is actually half dog demon and its set in the Japanese feudal era, but that first episode I saw the Noh Mask episode, one of the only ones set in the modern era and he has tiny pointed ears and was in a tree.

I began watching it obsessively, doing random internet searches about the show (I just realized this was pre-Google Image Search), and started watching the other shows in the Toonami line up.

The girl across the hall caught on and decided this was totally unacceptable. You can't just start with Inuyasha. She loaned me her Ranma ½ and Hellsing manga. Thus began my now 13 year (and counting) long obsession with anime and manga.

The same girl also explained to me how fanart was good, but fanfic was evil. I immediately started reading fanfic. I hadn't known such a thing existed. Inuyasha was my first real fandom and finding fics I wanted to read was hard in those days, but I eventually learned all the sites and how to navigate them. I think it was another two years before I started writing my own for the consumption of others.

That was when I found LJ. By then, I had favorite authors and one of them mentioned that they ran a competition comm on LJ. So I checked it out, eventually joined, and after awhile I started participating.

The next few years a blur of writing comms, fandom wars, making friends, attending conventions, comic book shops, forums, and adding more and more fandoms to collection, mostly anime.

Then I found AO3. And some of my live action shows I liked had fandom there (I see you SG-1 & SGA). A friend sent me an invite and it became my primary home for my fic and fic reading.

As these things come in waves, its not surprising that my fandoms started dying and their communities with them. I held on, but I was mostly alone.

Then someone reintroduced me to Supernatural.

When Supernatural started originally, I had a friend who was very into it, but our friendship by then had gone a bit toxic and I was torn between keeping up with her and cutting her out of my life, which I think tainted the show a bit originally. She kept me informed of the goings on of the show every week to the point where I felt like I was watching it myself. For. Five. Seasons.

During season six though, a different friend got into it and she would not shut up about it. Eventually, she wore me down and I tried a few new episodes. Then I stalked the TV guide to see what episodes were playing on TNT in the morning and managed to start over from the beginning, three episodes at a time, and when the new season started, I was ready and more hooked than could be believed.

I knew everything. There was no trivia test I could not pass.

For awhile, it was the fandom that ate all other fandoms.

But it was the beginning of the end for fandom on LJ and while I made the slow slide to being primarily on DW, the Supernatural fandom doesn't seem to be here and I don't play a lot of places anymore.

Then something curious happened, I made real life fandom friends, not in Supernatural, but anime, gaming, sci-fi, fantasy, horror movies... it was weird. I've had online friends in fandom that had turned into RL friends, but never ones that started as RL friends. Granted, it was a tiny group, but it was one hell of a ride; themed parties, gaming nights, anime nights, LARPing.

My other fandoms came back to me and I found a way for Supernatural and everyone else to play nicely together.

My friends are gone now though; some passed away, some moved. We keep in touch, but it's not the same.

But, I've seen fandoms rise, fall, and rise again. These things ebb and flow. You just have to ride it out.

Did I mention that I started a new gaming group last week with someone who's really into Stargate?