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Stories as foundation
Apr. 5th, 2020 10:10 amGood morning, and welcome to Day Four of the fandom meme:
D: What was the first thing you ever contributed to a fandom?
My answer to this depends on how you define 'a fandom'. Like most fannish adults, rewriting the endings of my favourite stories, or imagining I was a character in said stories was a major feature of my childhood. Indeed the fact that I a) had very poor hearing as a young child until I got grommets put in my ears to unblock the eustachian tubes and b) generally spent my time imagining I was a character from one of my favourite books doing all the things I did in my daily life meant that I was an extremely vague child who found it very difficult to focus on the words coming out of real-life people's mouths. Because I did this sort of thing for as long as I can remember (I have memories of myself as a three-year-old toddler pretending my doll was a character in a picture book I enjoyed at my childcare centre), it's impossible to name my first 'contribution' to fandom if we're counting childhood play as fannish activity.
If participation in fandom as a shared activity is how you're defining it, it would have been some time around the early 2000s, when I first dipped my toes into fan forums for two of my favourite book series: Bridgetothestars, a Philip Pullman fansite with its Republic of Heaven forum, and Obernewtyn.net, a fansite for Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn series. I made a couple of posts, but at the time was not very interested in the internet and mostly just wanted to be on my own reading books, so I drifted away until 2007, when a combination of intense situational depression, and living away from my support network forced me back online in a kind of desperation. Both sites welcomed me with open arms, and on the Republic of Heaven in particular I racked up a massive post count. Over the years I met most of the people on those sites in real life — the Obernetters were easier, as almost everyone on that site lived in Australia, whereas apart from![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
lowercasename, all the Pullman fans lived in Europe or North America, so I didn't meet most of them until I moved to the UK. I wouldn't be able to track down my first 'contribution' to either site, but it would have been a post replying in some way to some discussion thread about either series.
If your definiation of fandom solely relates to fanworks posted online in shared spaces, that's easy: it's 'Bodies of Clay', the first fic I published on Ao3, back in 2012:
Bodies of Clay (3638 words) by Dolorosa
Chapters: 10/10
Fandom: Pagan Chronicles
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Isidore Orbus/Babylonne Kidrouk
Characters: Isidore Orbus, Babylonne Kidrouk
Summary:
How would you define 'fannish activity'?
( The other days )
D: What was the first thing you ever contributed to a fandom?
My answer to this depends on how you define 'a fandom'. Like most fannish adults, rewriting the endings of my favourite stories, or imagining I was a character in said stories was a major feature of my childhood. Indeed the fact that I a) had very poor hearing as a young child until I got grommets put in my ears to unblock the eustachian tubes and b) generally spent my time imagining I was a character from one of my favourite books doing all the things I did in my daily life meant that I was an extremely vague child who found it very difficult to focus on the words coming out of real-life people's mouths. Because I did this sort of thing for as long as I can remember (I have memories of myself as a three-year-old toddler pretending my doll was a character in a picture book I enjoyed at my childcare centre), it's impossible to name my first 'contribution' to fandom if we're counting childhood play as fannish activity.
If participation in fandom as a shared activity is how you're defining it, it would have been some time around the early 2000s, when I first dipped my toes into fan forums for two of my favourite book series: Bridgetothestars, a Philip Pullman fansite with its Republic of Heaven forum, and Obernewtyn.net, a fansite for Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn series. I made a couple of posts, but at the time was not very interested in the internet and mostly just wanted to be on my own reading books, so I drifted away until 2007, when a combination of intense situational depression, and living away from my support network forced me back online in a kind of desperation. Both sites welcomed me with open arms, and on the Republic of Heaven in particular I racked up a massive post count. Over the years I met most of the people on those sites in real life — the Obernetters were easier, as almost everyone on that site lived in Australia, whereas apart from
If your definiation of fandom solely relates to fanworks posted online in shared spaces, that's easy: it's 'Bodies of Clay', the first fic I published on Ao3, back in 2012:
Bodies of Clay (3638 words) by Dolorosa
Chapters: 10/10
Fandom: Pagan Chronicles
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Isidore Orbus/Babylonne Kidrouk
Characters: Isidore Orbus, Babylonne Kidrouk
Summary:
Ten moments in Isidore and Babylonne's life together. Post Pagan's Daughter/Babylonne.
How would you define 'fannish activity'?
( The other days )