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General: All with the Love
Well, this is my four-thousandth post. That's a lot of posts.
*squints*
Yep, that's quite a lot of posts. In celebration of this, I give you a brief history of my life in fandom and what it has taught me.
Star Trek(s)
I grew up watching The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. Quit Voyager at about the half-way point and only watched the first episode of Enterprise. This is the fandom that taught about being fannish and what a fan was. Because I grew up with fannish parents and around fannish people, fannish is the norm for me. My parents played D&D with friends and taught my brother and me how to at a young age (I haven't kept it up, but my brother has). I've always been bookish and a touch geeky and this is a part of me that I have no issues with. My particularly geekishness is book and word-related rather than math or engineering, but while I don't always understand the specific vocabulary of any given fannish sort, I do always understand the enthusiasm and am capable of finding that interesting even when I don't understand the context.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
When I hit my mid-teens, I needed something that was made for me, specifically. For my brand of weird. And BtVS was just that. I started watching during the first season summer reruns and didn't miss an episode after that (missed the first ten minutes once, and that was pretty much a horrible emergency situation at the time -- you can check with my mom. I was distraught.). BtVS is the show that I always say 'saved my life', which is true, if horribly dramatic. It also taught me about online fandom, which I hadn't known before (related to this is the other show that I picked up at the time, which was Dawson's Creek, but I'm only clocking fandoms that I've learnt something in, and the learning in DC came quite a bit later). I learned about 'shipping and suchlike. I learned about the existence of slash, but BtVS wasn't the fandom that I learned to write slash in, as I was (and remain) a firm Buffy/Xander shipper (and hey, they have such a good chance at coming together, post-series, what with both of them being alive! I was really happy about that, the living thing).
This is the show that I grew up with -- Buffy and the gang were one short year older than I was, so I could identify with them pretty easily. I love them. I love them for failing, and for never letting that failure define them, and instead being defined by the way they get up and find a new thing to try. The way they always manage to break through the boxes and the false dichotomies that the world gives them. There's the easy way, there's the hard way, and then there's Buffy's way. It taught me so much about how to look more deeply at the world, how to ask questions, how to search for meaning, because the meaning is there, even if it's unintended by the creator.
*NSYNC
Found these guys the easy way -- I was a major TRL junkie as a mid-teen. *NSYNC just... clicked for me. All these years later, listening to their music still can give me chills (particularly the a cappella stuff). Their voices blend beautifully. And this is where I discovered slash. I knew of its existence from Buffy, but this fandom taught me how to write slash, and that I wanted to. This is also the fandom where I discovered lj and that slash-inclined sorts were hanging about on it.
The very important step that distinguishes this phase -- I told my mom that I was writing fanfiction, and showed her a piece of said writing (which was slash). And my mom was very supportive of me finding an outlet for my creativity, though a touch worried by how intense I was with it all. All in all, she's been very good about supporting me in general.
due South
Switch over to writing-mode, this is the fandom that taught me about attention to detail. Benton Fraser is a very detail-oriented character, so to write from his point of view meant noticing things that I never thought to notice on my own. Brief aside, this is my 'pure happy ending' fandom. Giddy rush of joy just thinking about how it ends, I tell you.
*happy sigh*
This fandom also gave me another hero, a non-Buffy hero. Benton Fraser is... a guy that I've felt close to since I first saw Mountie on the Bounty, my first episode. I feel like I can really understand him -- both of us were raised by librarians, we both sit outside the norm on many issues, and we both think RayK is really hot.
Angel the Series
This fandom, above all else, taught me about internet politics, about human interaction. This is probably the fandom where I've felt the most hurt, both by the show and by the fandom itself, but it's also a fandom that has given me intense joy. I love Buffy with a fierceness, but the visceral reaction that Angel can pull out has such a power that I can't even come up with the words, even now. This show has made me want to throw up. It's made me give up on it in agony, only to come back a few episodes later, longing for a fix.
Angel packs a punch, and aims right for the weakest spots. Makes sense that the fandom would have an intensity to match it. Makes sense that this is the fandom where the aches echo years later, where the pain remains just as clear as the glory.
Stargate: SG-1
The show that I picked up as Angel ended (not gently, but with a rage and a fire). I needed a hero again, like Benton Fraser. I needed someone that I could lean on. I found Daniel and I found Jack. Daniel Jackson is... he's a lot like the other heroes that I love so much. He's another of the bookish sorts that I feel a deep kinship with.
Stargate fandom is where I learnt how to finish a series. I'd started some before, in previous fandoms, but I never managed to finish one. In SG1, I was so moved by the brief glimpse of our Daniel in Moebius (2), that I felt inspired to write a nine-part series. It has a beginning and it has an end, and it has a middle. It has both individual plots and character arcs. I'm pretty thrilled with it, all told.
Star Wars
My new baby. Seriously, watching RotS, I felt something click. There's a thread that runs through every couple that I ship and in everything that I write. It's something that was actually summed up amazingly-well in the movie Maurice, with this perfect line -- "Did you ever dream you had a friend? Someone to last your whole life?"
At the baseline, this is what all my pairings are about. I'm attracted to pairings that feel as though they match up, as though they, could, indeed, be 'friends to last an entire life'. And in Obi-Wan and Anakin, I found what feels like the ultimate epic expression of this theme. They have a bumpy beginning, and they don't entirely understand each other, and they end up estranged for years, but they never stop caring, never stop thinking about each other. To Obi-Wan, Anakin is always, first and foremost, 'a good friend'. For Anakin, Obi-Wan is still the person he wants to prove himself to. No matter what, they matter to each other in a way that lasts an entire life, that lasts past their mortal lives. Despite their misunderstandings, they have a commonality of spirit that sings to me.
SW is the fandom that is bringing me interesting personal insights, some of which I'm not quite ready to say aloud just yet (or type, as the case happens to be).
This does not cover every fandom that I love, or even every fandom that I've written in. It just covers some of the ones that I felt taught me important lessons that I've carried with me, not just into new fandoms, but into life. Lessons about viewing the world and the people around me. Lessons about questions and about answers.
And, in every fandom that I've entered, I've encountered at least a few bright and wonderful souls that I've stayed near, people that I couldn't imagine not deeply caring about, no matter where my fandom interests take me. People like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fox1013 and brooding_soul, my first friends on the internet, who I met on MBTV before I'd ever signed up on lj or heard of its existence. People like kita0610 and ros_fod, who I've gone through emotionally-tough times with, and who I'm exceedingly grateful to know.
Honestly, I could run down my flist and call out dozens (hell, hundreds) of names. You, all of you, give my life color and life beyond anything that I could have imagined. I keep thinking that I should do some sort of flist culling, but every time that I call up that edit page, I realize that I can't part with a single one of you. People that I've known from the *NSYNC days, people that I have discovered searching out new fandoms... each of you brings a vivid shade of color to my flist and to my life. Here, there's a flash of hobbit love that I couldn't do without, and over there, the Harry Potter flame burns bright and I want to bask in the fire.
I love them all. I still love them all.
And I don't see that love going anywhere any time soon.
In celebration of such a day as this (four thousand posts, man!), I just want to say that, if you want to know, I will tell you why I think you're all types of wonderful. Comment to receive love. As simple as that. I have Saturdays off, so I should have pretty good response time today, too.
*squints*
Yep, that's quite a lot of posts. In celebration of this, I give you a brief history of my life in fandom and what it has taught me.
Star Trek(s)
I grew up watching The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. Quit Voyager at about the half-way point and only watched the first episode of Enterprise. This is the fandom that taught about being fannish and what a fan was. Because I grew up with fannish parents and around fannish people, fannish is the norm for me. My parents played D&D with friends and taught my brother and me how to at a young age (I haven't kept it up, but my brother has). I've always been bookish and a touch geeky and this is a part of me that I have no issues with. My particularly geekishness is book and word-related rather than math or engineering, but while I don't always understand the specific vocabulary of any given fannish sort, I do always understand the enthusiasm and am capable of finding that interesting even when I don't understand the context.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
When I hit my mid-teens, I needed something that was made for me, specifically. For my brand of weird. And BtVS was just that. I started watching during the first season summer reruns and didn't miss an episode after that (missed the first ten minutes once, and that was pretty much a horrible emergency situation at the time -- you can check with my mom. I was distraught.). BtVS is the show that I always say 'saved my life', which is true, if horribly dramatic. It also taught me about online fandom, which I hadn't known before (related to this is the other show that I picked up at the time, which was Dawson's Creek, but I'm only clocking fandoms that I've learnt something in, and the learning in DC came quite a bit later). I learned about 'shipping and suchlike. I learned about the existence of slash, but BtVS wasn't the fandom that I learned to write slash in, as I was (and remain) a firm Buffy/Xander shipper (and hey, they have such a good chance at coming together, post-series, what with both of them being alive! I was really happy about that, the living thing).
This is the show that I grew up with -- Buffy and the gang were one short year older than I was, so I could identify with them pretty easily. I love them. I love them for failing, and for never letting that failure define them, and instead being defined by the way they get up and find a new thing to try. The way they always manage to break through the boxes and the false dichotomies that the world gives them. There's the easy way, there's the hard way, and then there's Buffy's way. It taught me so much about how to look more deeply at the world, how to ask questions, how to search for meaning, because the meaning is there, even if it's unintended by the creator.
*NSYNC
Found these guys the easy way -- I was a major TRL junkie as a mid-teen. *NSYNC just... clicked for me. All these years later, listening to their music still can give me chills (particularly the a cappella stuff). Their voices blend beautifully. And this is where I discovered slash. I knew of its existence from Buffy, but this fandom taught me how to write slash, and that I wanted to. This is also the fandom where I discovered lj and that slash-inclined sorts were hanging about on it.
The very important step that distinguishes this phase -- I told my mom that I was writing fanfiction, and showed her a piece of said writing (which was slash). And my mom was very supportive of me finding an outlet for my creativity, though a touch worried by how intense I was with it all. All in all, she's been very good about supporting me in general.
due South
Switch over to writing-mode, this is the fandom that taught me about attention to detail. Benton Fraser is a very detail-oriented character, so to write from his point of view meant noticing things that I never thought to notice on my own. Brief aside, this is my 'pure happy ending' fandom. Giddy rush of joy just thinking about how it ends, I tell you.
*happy sigh*
This fandom also gave me another hero, a non-Buffy hero. Benton Fraser is... a guy that I've felt close to since I first saw Mountie on the Bounty, my first episode. I feel like I can really understand him -- both of us were raised by librarians, we both sit outside the norm on many issues, and we both think RayK is really hot.
Angel the Series
This fandom, above all else, taught me about internet politics, about human interaction. This is probably the fandom where I've felt the most hurt, both by the show and by the fandom itself, but it's also a fandom that has given me intense joy. I love Buffy with a fierceness, but the visceral reaction that Angel can pull out has such a power that I can't even come up with the words, even now. This show has made me want to throw up. It's made me give up on it in agony, only to come back a few episodes later, longing for a fix.
Angel packs a punch, and aims right for the weakest spots. Makes sense that the fandom would have an intensity to match it. Makes sense that this is the fandom where the aches echo years later, where the pain remains just as clear as the glory.
Stargate: SG-1
The show that I picked up as Angel ended (not gently, but with a rage and a fire). I needed a hero again, like Benton Fraser. I needed someone that I could lean on. I found Daniel and I found Jack. Daniel Jackson is... he's a lot like the other heroes that I love so much. He's another of the bookish sorts that I feel a deep kinship with.
Stargate fandom is where I learnt how to finish a series. I'd started some before, in previous fandoms, but I never managed to finish one. In SG1, I was so moved by the brief glimpse of our Daniel in Moebius (2), that I felt inspired to write a nine-part series. It has a beginning and it has an end, and it has a middle. It has both individual plots and character arcs. I'm pretty thrilled with it, all told.
Star Wars
My new baby. Seriously, watching RotS, I felt something click. There's a thread that runs through every couple that I ship and in everything that I write. It's something that was actually summed up amazingly-well in the movie Maurice, with this perfect line -- "Did you ever dream you had a friend? Someone to last your whole life?"
At the baseline, this is what all my pairings are about. I'm attracted to pairings that feel as though they match up, as though they, could, indeed, be 'friends to last an entire life'. And in Obi-Wan and Anakin, I found what feels like the ultimate epic expression of this theme. They have a bumpy beginning, and they don't entirely understand each other, and they end up estranged for years, but they never stop caring, never stop thinking about each other. To Obi-Wan, Anakin is always, first and foremost, 'a good friend'. For Anakin, Obi-Wan is still the person he wants to prove himself to. No matter what, they matter to each other in a way that lasts an entire life, that lasts past their mortal lives. Despite their misunderstandings, they have a commonality of spirit that sings to me.
SW is the fandom that is bringing me interesting personal insights, some of which I'm not quite ready to say aloud just yet (or type, as the case happens to be).
This does not cover every fandom that I love, or even every fandom that I've written in. It just covers some of the ones that I felt taught me important lessons that I've carried with me, not just into new fandoms, but into life. Lessons about viewing the world and the people around me. Lessons about questions and about answers.
And, in every fandom that I've entered, I've encountered at least a few bright and wonderful souls that I've stayed near, people that I couldn't imagine not deeply caring about, no matter where my fandom interests take me. People like
fox1013 and brooding_soul, my first friends on the internet, who I met on MBTV before I'd ever signed up on lj or heard of its existence. People like kita0610 and ros_fod, who I've gone through emotionally-tough times with, and who I'm exceedingly grateful to know.Honestly, I could run down my flist and call out dozens (hell, hundreds) of names. You, all of you, give my life color and life beyond anything that I could have imagined. I keep thinking that I should do some sort of flist culling, but every time that I call up that edit page, I realize that I can't part with a single one of you. People that I've known from the *NSYNC days, people that I have discovered searching out new fandoms... each of you brings a vivid shade of color to my flist and to my life. Here, there's a flash of hobbit love that I couldn't do without, and over there, the Harry Potter flame burns bright and I want to bask in the fire.
I love them all. I still love them all.
And I don't see that love going anywhere any time soon.
In celebration of such a day as this (four thousand posts, man!), I just want to say that, if you want to know, I will tell you why I think you're all types of wonderful. Comment to receive love. As simple as that. I have Saturdays off, so I should have pretty good response time today, too.
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