Those prompts I asked for this morning? I'm not really in the mood to write them right now. *hugs* to the people who offered them and encouragement to me this morning. I needed it.
Fandom is a group experience and this post is the LJ therapy couch for the not-too-posty elements of my f-list. Tell Dr. T all about your Stargate Atlantis experience: what got you in, when you realised it was your crack, and what you're going to take from it.
Technically, SG1 was my first fandom. I played, wrote, made friends, bitched, got bitched out, had a ball, and ultimately walked away because I didn't like how the show was going. Then SG1 led into SGA.
I got into the show partly because of the SG1 lead-in, but mostly because of Teyla. Nothing more, nothing less. She was the magnet that drew me into activities beyond merely watching he show. This is probably why it took to the end of Season One for me to go, "Oh, now I get this show!" I was ambivalent about the whole shipping thing, although I liked the John/Teyla dynamic. I liked it, but it didn't bother me that it wasn't going anywhere. John/Teyla fandom wasn't very active at the time, so I mostly wrote gen with a John/Teyla UST thing and hoped to find someone else who liked John/Teyla whose work I could appreciate.
I'm not sure I realised when it was my crack, to be honest. It just...snuck up on me. Possibly around 2005, when I wrote 'To Serve A Queen' and realised that I'd just put 50,000+ words into a fanfic about two characters who'd never actually get together on the show in an AU where they did get together and had super speshul powerz.
That was probably a watermark moment for me. "Yeah, I'm in deep. WAY deep."
Oddly enough, though, SGA has been both an up and down ride for me - partly because I can't count on the show to be constant in the things I watch it for - not the way I can with something like Bones. I want Teyla, I want team, I'm not into the John/Rodney relationship, and I wanted the show to focus on Pegasus, not on Earth and the "white peoplez".
For me, it's sort of a relief to know the end of the rollercoaster is in sight.
I will miss my show and the characters I love and the people I've met through them but with whom I haven't had the opportunity to form bonds that go beyond SGA. But I won't grieve for what won't be. I might grieve for what could have been, but wasn't; but I don't think I can feel unadulterated loss for something that wasn't measuring up to my expectations (enjoyable though it might have been).
What I will celebrate is that I've come out of the fandom with new friends, new perspectives, and another layer of fandom skin. I think. I don't know that I'll ever get into another fandom the way I did with SG1 and SGA - they were my first real fannish experiences.
What was your fannish experience with SGA?
Fandom is a group experience and this post is the LJ therapy couch for the not-too-posty elements of my f-list. Tell Dr. T all about your Stargate Atlantis experience: what got you in, when you realised it was your crack, and what you're going to take from it.
Technically, SG1 was my first fandom. I played, wrote, made friends, bitched, got bitched out, had a ball, and ultimately walked away because I didn't like how the show was going. Then SG1 led into SGA.
I got into the show partly because of the SG1 lead-in, but mostly because of Teyla. Nothing more, nothing less. She was the magnet that drew me into activities beyond merely watching he show. This is probably why it took to the end of Season One for me to go, "Oh, now I get this show!" I was ambivalent about the whole shipping thing, although I liked the John/Teyla dynamic. I liked it, but it didn't bother me that it wasn't going anywhere. John/Teyla fandom wasn't very active at the time, so I mostly wrote gen with a John/Teyla UST thing and hoped to find someone else who liked John/Teyla whose work I could appreciate.
I'm not sure I realised when it was my crack, to be honest. It just...snuck up on me. Possibly around 2005, when I wrote 'To Serve A Queen' and realised that I'd just put 50,000+ words into a fanfic about two characters who'd never actually get together on the show in an AU where they did get together and had super speshul powerz.
That was probably a watermark moment for me. "Yeah, I'm in deep. WAY deep."
Oddly enough, though, SGA has been both an up and down ride for me - partly because I can't count on the show to be constant in the things I watch it for - not the way I can with something like Bones. I want Teyla, I want team, I'm not into the John/Rodney relationship, and I wanted the show to focus on Pegasus, not on Earth and the "white peoplez".
For me, it's sort of a relief to know the end of the rollercoaster is in sight.
I will miss my show and the characters I love and the people I've met through them but with whom I haven't had the opportunity to form bonds that go beyond SGA. But I won't grieve for what won't be. I might grieve for what could have been, but wasn't; but I don't think I can feel unadulterated loss for something that wasn't measuring up to my expectations (enjoyable though it might have been).
What I will celebrate is that I've come out of the fandom with new friends, new perspectives, and another layer of fandom skin. I think. I don't know that I'll ever get into another fandom the way I did with SG1 and SGA - they were my first real fannish experiences.
What was your fannish experience with SGA?
no subject
So anyway, I don't remember what episode I started watching SG-1, but one of the first episodes I remember watching is where Jack and Teal'c (?) were stuck in a time loop, so Jack finally decided just to have fun with it and do what he wanted until they figured out how to get out of it (including kissing Carter). After that, I would catch an episode of SG-1 here and there, keeping up on the overall storyline to know what was going on, like when Daniel died/ascended, and there was something about Merlin. I started getting interested again when they brought in the Ori, because dang, that was a pretty serious bad guy, and I was really interested to see how they'd handle the whole "Convert or die" mentality of the enemy, if and how SG-1 would find a way to beat them.
I have no idea why I decided to started watching Atlantis. I think the main reason was that the show was premiering, and I like to get into the things from the beginning rather then the middle, so I decided to check out the pilot. Looking back, I'm pretty sure it was something as shallow as how cute I thought Sheppard was. And Rodney was pretty awesome, too. And, as lame as it sounds, I had remembered seeing Rainbow Sun Franks as a VJ on Much Music, so I was interested to check out his performance on the show. (Seriously? Am I the only person who didn't like Ford?)
However, I remember what really got me into the show. It was the connection between John and Teyla. From the moment he found her necklace in that cave and his hand lingered on her jacket lapel, blah blah. So. . . from then on I was watching the show to see if and when they would get together. LOL. (I had not idea how unpopular the pairing was until I started reading your blog, but then, I wasn't very active in fandom save for reading fanfiction) I was young and impressionable then, but now I know a little better about how these shows actually work. ;)
How'd I know when I was in deep? Probably when I purchased the show on DVD. It's the only show that I own on DVD. And then I pretty much went off the cliff when I started writing Ronon/Keller fic in December of last year. :)
no subject
That was definitely the first spark for me, too. But I watched casually and without any particular interest until The Gift.
Reading the responses to this post, I find it fascinating that most of the people who've' responded got in because of Teyla or John/Teyla or a combination thereof.
*hugs*