Fannish History Meme

[paxpinnae]

Because my Dai Stiho Friend/Ship fic won't procrastinate itself, here, have my fannish history meme.



First TV show I had self-insertion fantasies about:

I didn't really watch TV regularly until college, but let me tell you about my many-dozens-of-hours-long debate with the neighbor boy from down the street over what animal we'd be if we were transported to Redwall. He insisted he was an otter, but he ate like a pig so he was totally a hare. And you guys, I was such a badger, but he kept saying I was a shrew because I argued too much. His little sister was a hedgehog, because she was boring, except when we wanted to tease her and made her be a sparrow. This debate literally spanned YEARS, with constant slight adjustments as we acquired new books and changed our opinions on which species were coolest. The only constants were that otters were awesome and no one wanted to be a shrew.

First fandom in which I interacted (online and in person) with other fans:

As I mentioned earlier, I spent a lot of time arguing with the neighbor boy over what animal we'd be in Redwall and whether Rachel from the Animorphs could take Marco in a fight (correct answer: any day of the week and twice on Sundays), but I'm not really sure that counts. Neither of us identified as "fans" per se, because we were ten and arguing mainly to kill time.

However, when I was in middle school I was friendless and alone, and there was this group of girls who were REALLY ENTHUSIASTIC about something called "anime." They seemed cool, if a little crazy, and I kinda liked cartoons, so I decided to learn a little bit about this "anime" stuff as an entry point to friendship. One of them loaned me the first book of this Fushugi Yuugi thing and I was totally and completely hooked. (Yes, my first manga was trashy romance. In fairness, my second was Ghost in the Shell.) Ten years and a dozen anime cons later, I'm still friends with four of those girls.

Then, at about the same time, I was looking online for anything to do with Harry Potter, and I somehow stumbled across this story where Hermione attended a masked ball and went home with a mysterious stranger, who turned out to be Draco EW EW EW. I back-buttoned, but not before leaving a comment about what a disgraceful travesty the author was for not realizing that Ron and Hermione were meant to be together forever. I wouldn't come back to online fandom or fanfic for another three years.

Pairing in the first slash fanfiction I read:

Remus/Sirius, The Shoebox Project. If I had to, I could probably dig around and find the exact date, but it was sometime in December 2004. I'd been using LiveJournal for about a year to keep in touch with friends from nerd camp, and one of them left a comment on an entry with an icon that had two boys together and "Remus x Sirius" written across the bottom. I replied, "ew no, Remus and Sirius aren't together." She replied, "No, they really are, you have to read this thing," and I went all the way down the rabbit hole of online fandom.

First RPS/RPF I read:

I'm pretty sure I stumbled across some bandom fic before this, but the first RPF I remember reading on purpose was chash's Supernatural RPF. It's hilarious and totally AU and I apologize for nothing.

First fanfiction I read that made me think, YES, this is exactly the kind of fanfiction I'd like to write...

I still don't know that I have. I've admired a lot of fanfiction, especially the long-form, canon-questioning pieces that you get out of megafandoms like SGA and The Avengers, but I don't know that any have inspired me to conscious imitation.

Pairing in the first fanfiction I wrote:

Ron/Hermione. It was a super-angsty first-person internal monologue from Ron's point of view. I was young and foolish.

First OTP:

OH MAN. I don't actually know! In terms of organized online fandom, it was a tie between Remus/Sirius and Ron/Hermione. However, I remember arguing passionately with friends in favor of Tohru/Kyon in the great Fruits Basket shipping wars. Even before that, I was acting out elaborate, long-term stories using my Han Solo and Leia Organa action figures. I probably would have written those down were it not for the fact that penmanship and I were never friends, so they probably count as my first OTP.

First RPS/F OTP:

I try not to get "OTP" about RPS/F, because that leads to tinhattery and shame. I supposed I got pretty close with Johnny Weir/Evan Lysacek, though.

First fannish friend I met in person:

I met moonythestrals after the universe proved that it is impossibly small, and then sort of fell out with her after it got even smaller. (The drama was all real-life related, not fandom-related, and was at least 50% my fault. moonythestrals is a decent person who writes awesome fic. It was just a very, very strange situation.)

First character I formally roleplayed:

I have never formally role-played fannishly. My college roommate, J, did, but I couldn't get into it.


Okay. Time to get back to writing!