So I handed in my vanity plates just now and got your average everyday plates.
And now I feel like I'm driving around incognito...
And now I feel like I'm driving around incognito...
December 14th, 2018
A lot of my online existence has been fandom over the last twenty years and more - particularly the first ten years before things like Facebook and Twitter really took off. I think my first fandom might have been Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince novels, although it's really a little bit blurry as to where 'fandom' actually began for me.
first canon I felt fannish about: So the answer for this is either 'Star Wars' (where I wrote a fic outline at age 10) or 'David Eddings' Belgariad, Malloreon or Elenium series' (where I talked about it with other girls at school and we waited desperately for the next book to come out).
first canon I wrote fanfic for: Apart from the Star Wars fic outline, probably the self-insert creative writing assignment for school where I wrote about myself and a bunch of friends meeting She-Ra and her friends, the crew from Mask, and ending up in medieaval times and in the future with spacemen. (There was time travel involved. I handwaved the actual travelling part and how, we just wandered through and started meeting people.)
thing I've been most obsessed with/fannish about without ever being even adjacent to its fandom: X-Files. I wasn't in the fandom, didn't watch the show, but around 2004, I become obsessed with Mulder/Scully fanfic, and read most of the old Gossamer archive over the course of six months.
first online fandom: I can't remember if it was an Australian email list for Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, or the bulletin board for Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince series. (It might also have been the X-Men, circa 1997, but the timelines are all blurry twenty years later.)
online fannish trajectory: There was the Discworld emailing list, X-Men fanfic, and Melanie Rawn bulletin boards pre-2000. Buffy newsgroups around 2000, I think. In early 2001, I got into Stargate SG1, and discovered yahoogroups for those fandoms. Then came the era of LiveJournal and things really started taking off. Stargate SG1 was my main fandom until around the end of Season Six, when I became briefly obsessed with X-Files M/S fanfic. Somehow, I started getting into Justice League Unlimited - specifically the Diana/Bruce pairing, and a little bit of Angel - mostly on the strength of Faith's cameo in Season 4. I watched Firefly and Battlestar Galactica but couldn't actually get into the fandoms. Stargate Atlantis pulled me in, but not on the same lines that 99% of the fandom wanted to play and I began to realise that I was never going to hit the same high note that I did in Stargate SG1, simply because I was never going to like what the popular kids liked. I did a brief stint in Merlin fandom, then an equally brief stint in Sanctuary, then a really really brief stint in Harry Potter NextGen, before I watched the Avengers movie (having seen the previous movies but not really investing in them) and suddenly a character had me in her grip. Since then, MCU has been pretty much my major focus, with a year's foray into Pacific Rim before The Winter Soldier came out and I got sucked back into the MCU. There was a very small dip into Jupiter Ascending, and more recently a look-see into the Star Wars Sequels, Rogue One, and the DC Cinematic Universe, but I think I'm still mostly focused on the MCU right now. Or, at least, on the characters I most like in the MCU.
online platform trajectory: Email -> bulletin boards -> fic archives -> LiveJournal -> AO3 -> Dreamwidth -> Tumblr. About eighteen months ago I started pulling back from Tumblr and have pretty much stuck to DW.
first fic posted online: Something from the X-Men comic book 'Generation X' - long since lost to computer replacements and the morass of old and collapsed webpages...
fandom with the most fics written: According to AO3, Stargate Atlantis leads my way with 268 fics (MCU has only 255).
OTPs over the years: Maria Hill/Steve Rogers, Mako Mori/Raleigh Becket, Sam Carter/Jack O'Neill, John Sheppard/Teyla Emmagan, Wonder Woman/Batman, Harry Potter/Luna Lovegood, Kate Freelander/Will Zimmerman, Rose Weasley/Scorpius Malfoy, Lee Adama/Kara Thrace, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce/Faith Lehane, Scott Summers/Jean Grey. I WILL FIGHT YOU.
thing I feel closest to fannish about without having written a word of fic (posted or not): Hamilton? X-Files? I went through a two year phase of collecting BPAL scents, but that's actual money spent, so that probably counts as fannish.
my weirdest unfinished fic: I...don't know. 'The Right Hand Knows Not' perhaps? If it's unfinished, it's usually a serious story that got out of hand, leaving me unable to complete it.
my weirdest finished fic: I think it would have to be "The Zplknmni That Got Away" - It will dtlnddi svdrnna your kglffi!
fandom with multiple abandoned fics and no finished ones at all: None, I think. I usually have mostly finished fics, with a handful of unfinished/abandoned ones. Maybe Jupiter Ascending?
most upsetting research topic undertaken for fic-writing purposes: I don't remember, most likely because I blocked it out entirely.
oddest purchase for fannish research: 'Mirror To The Eye Of Heaven' - well, that's not actually fannish research. It was for a novel I was writing a few years back, and this book is about the father of the main character I was inserting into a rewritten Tang Dynasty China.
longest-held primary fandom: It's either MCU (6 years, although the last couple have been so-so) or Stargate Atlantis (5 years, but I was unenthusiastic about the last season, while getting very into the SGA Legacy book series, which is the closest thing to closure that the fans are ever likely to get now that Jason Momoa has hit the big time.)
geekiest possession/expenditure: I don't even know anymore. Probably one of the props from Stargate Atlantis. Oh, paying money for the dinner with Tori Higginsen, Ben Browder, and Michael Shanks at one of the Australian conventions?
single geekiest activity: Spending an entire weekend going to the USA (only 12 hours on US soil) just to go to a BPAL product launch?
fannish activity I've never done and would like to: Can't think of one. I've even attended an official movie premiere - Star Trek 2009 at the Sydney Opera House. (Incredibly lucky: I called as soon as the lines opened and somehow got three tickets.)
random geeky bonus: Fandom has made some very long-lasting friends for me: there's a woman I've known since 1997 who I met because of the Australian Discworld mailing list - we still have dinner occasionally. There's a woman I first met in person from the Melanie Rawn fandom back in 2000 (but we'd emailed back and forth with another group of people for at least a year before that) and we caught up at DragonCon 2015. And a friend who now lives in Victoria I first met in 2003 when we had a 'con' for a visiting BNF from the UK - we went around the room telling people our ages, and she was SO RELIEVED when she discovered that she wasn't the oldest by five or more years!
first canon I felt fannish about: So the answer for this is either 'Star Wars' (where I wrote a fic outline at age 10) or 'David Eddings' Belgariad, Malloreon or Elenium series' (where I talked about it with other girls at school and we waited desperately for the next book to come out).
first canon I wrote fanfic for: Apart from the Star Wars fic outline, probably the self-insert creative writing assignment for school where I wrote about myself and a bunch of friends meeting She-Ra and her friends, the crew from Mask, and ending up in medieaval times and in the future with spacemen. (There was time travel involved. I handwaved the actual travelling part and how, we just wandered through and started meeting people.)
thing I've been most obsessed with/fannish about without ever being even adjacent to its fandom: X-Files. I wasn't in the fandom, didn't watch the show, but around 2004, I become obsessed with Mulder/Scully fanfic, and read most of the old Gossamer archive over the course of six months.
first online fandom: I can't remember if it was an Australian email list for Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, or the bulletin board for Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince series. (It might also have been the X-Men, circa 1997, but the timelines are all blurry twenty years later.)
online fannish trajectory: There was the Discworld emailing list, X-Men fanfic, and Melanie Rawn bulletin boards pre-2000. Buffy newsgroups around 2000, I think. In early 2001, I got into Stargate SG1, and discovered yahoogroups for those fandoms. Then came the era of LiveJournal and things really started taking off. Stargate SG1 was my main fandom until around the end of Season Six, when I became briefly obsessed with X-Files M/S fanfic. Somehow, I started getting into Justice League Unlimited - specifically the Diana/Bruce pairing, and a little bit of Angel - mostly on the strength of Faith's cameo in Season 4. I watched Firefly and Battlestar Galactica but couldn't actually get into the fandoms. Stargate Atlantis pulled me in, but not on the same lines that 99% of the fandom wanted to play and I began to realise that I was never going to hit the same high note that I did in Stargate SG1, simply because I was never going to like what the popular kids liked. I did a brief stint in Merlin fandom, then an equally brief stint in Sanctuary, then a really really brief stint in Harry Potter NextGen, before I watched the Avengers movie (having seen the previous movies but not really investing in them) and suddenly a character had me in her grip. Since then, MCU has been pretty much my major focus, with a year's foray into Pacific Rim before The Winter Soldier came out and I got sucked back into the MCU. There was a very small dip into Jupiter Ascending, and more recently a look-see into the Star Wars Sequels, Rogue One, and the DC Cinematic Universe, but I think I'm still mostly focused on the MCU right now. Or, at least, on the characters I most like in the MCU.
online platform trajectory: Email -> bulletin boards -> fic archives -> LiveJournal -> AO3 -> Dreamwidth -> Tumblr. About eighteen months ago I started pulling back from Tumblr and have pretty much stuck to DW.
first fic posted online: Something from the X-Men comic book 'Generation X' - long since lost to computer replacements and the morass of old and collapsed webpages...
fandom with the most fics written: According to AO3, Stargate Atlantis leads my way with 268 fics (MCU has only 255).
OTPs over the years: Maria Hill/Steve Rogers, Mako Mori/Raleigh Becket, Sam Carter/Jack O'Neill, John Sheppard/Teyla Emmagan, Wonder Woman/Batman, Harry Potter/Luna Lovegood, Kate Freelander/Will Zimmerman, Rose Weasley/Scorpius Malfoy, Lee Adama/Kara Thrace, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce/Faith Lehane, Scott Summers/Jean Grey. I WILL FIGHT YOU.
thing I feel closest to fannish about without having written a word of fic (posted or not): Hamilton? X-Files? I went through a two year phase of collecting BPAL scents, but that's actual money spent, so that probably counts as fannish.
my weirdest unfinished fic: I...don't know. 'The Right Hand Knows Not' perhaps? If it's unfinished, it's usually a serious story that got out of hand, leaving me unable to complete it.
my weirdest finished fic: I think it would have to be "The Zplknmni That Got Away" - It will dtlnddi svdrnna your kglffi!
fandom with multiple abandoned fics and no finished ones at all: None, I think. I usually have mostly finished fics, with a handful of unfinished/abandoned ones. Maybe Jupiter Ascending?
most upsetting research topic undertaken for fic-writing purposes: I don't remember, most likely because I blocked it out entirely.
oddest purchase for fannish research: 'Mirror To The Eye Of Heaven' - well, that's not actually fannish research. It was for a novel I was writing a few years back, and this book is about the father of the main character I was inserting into a rewritten Tang Dynasty China.
longest-held primary fandom: It's either MCU (6 years, although the last couple have been so-so) or Stargate Atlantis (5 years, but I was unenthusiastic about the last season, while getting very into the SGA Legacy book series, which is the closest thing to closure that the fans are ever likely to get now that Jason Momoa has hit the big time.)
geekiest possession/expenditure: I don't even know anymore. Probably one of the props from Stargate Atlantis. Oh, paying money for the dinner with Tori Higginsen, Ben Browder, and Michael Shanks at one of the Australian conventions?
single geekiest activity: Spending an entire weekend going to the USA (only 12 hours on US soil) just to go to a BPAL product launch?
fannish activity I've never done and would like to: Can't think of one. I've even attended an official movie premiere - Star Trek 2009 at the Sydney Opera House. (Incredibly lucky: I called as soon as the lines opened and somehow got three tickets.)
random geeky bonus: Fandom has made some very long-lasting friends for me: there's a woman I've known since 1997 who I met because of the Australian Discworld mailing list - we still have dinner occasionally. There's a woman I first met in person from the Melanie Rawn fandom back in 2000 (but we'd emailed back and forth with another group of people for at least a year before that) and we caught up at DragonCon 2015. And a friend who now lives in Victoria I first met in 2003 when we had a 'con' for a visiting BNF from the UK - we went around the room telling people our ages, and she was SO RELIEVED when she discovered that she wasn't the oldest by five or more years!
Tags:
I signed up for fandom stocking, and my stocking is here with all the usual suspects.
If you want to leave me something there that I haven't requested but which you know I'd like, go right ahead!
If you want to leave me something there that I haven't requested but which you know I'd like, go right ahead!