I was born in fandom
Apr. 7th, 2020 08:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12We're up to Day Six of the fandom meme:
F: What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? What fandom was it?
I'm not loving the past tense here, since I am very much still in the fandom in question.
I had to cast my mind back to remember which of my book fandoms was the book I read first, but thankfully I have a very good long-term memory, particularly for stuff like the time and circumstances in which I read deeply formative books for the first time. So, it's not Gillian Rubinstein's Space Demons trilogy, which I only read for the first time in 1996, it's not the Obernewtyn series (which, although it existed since the late 1980s I only began reading in 1999), it's not any one of the myriad Victor Kelleher books I read since 1996, and it's not even the Pagan Chronicles books, which I only began reading for the first time in 1995 when I was chosen as one of a handful of students from Canberra primary schools to go to an event at the now defunct Griffith public library where we would meet Catherine Jinks and hear her read from the fourth book in the series.
Nope, even that venerable fandom of mine is beaten by Gillian Rubinstein's book Galax Arena, which I first picked out of my school library as a nine-year-old in 1994. It got its claws into me in an intense way. (Among other things, it was the first book that made me realise it was totally acceptable to find a story's narrator and point-of-view character boring and wish that I knew more about the experiences of one of the antagonists, so I think it was also the first book that sparked a fannish 'I want to play around in this story and focus on things that the author didn't focus on' reaction in me.)
I've been in the fandom for this book ever since. Unfortunately, the fandom is basically me and ... silence. There are five fics in this fandom in Ao3. Two are by me. Two are gifts for me from exchanges (thanks,![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Morbane!). And one is a crossover which takes characters from another fandom and dumps them in the world of Galax-Arena. I wish I liked that kind of crossover, but I'm in fandom almost exclusively for fic focused on the characters I love in the settings that I first encountered them in canon, so while I'm sure that crossover is delightful, it's not for me.
So, yeah. Twenty-six years and counting in this fandom, and I can't see myself ever leaving.
G: What was your first fandom?
H: Do you prefer live action TV shows or animated TV shows?
I: Has online caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?
J: Name a fandom you didn’t care/think about until you saw it all over the internet.
K: What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?
L: Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves.
M: Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.
N: Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).
O: Choose a song at random, what ship does it remind you of?
P: Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).
Q: A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.
R: Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?
S: Show us an example of your personal headcanon.
T: Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?
U: Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.
V: Which character do you relate to most?
W: A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.
X: A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.
Y: What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?
Z: Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go!
F: What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? What fandom was it?
I'm not loving the past tense here, since I am very much still in the fandom in question.
I had to cast my mind back to remember which of my book fandoms was the book I read first, but thankfully I have a very good long-term memory, particularly for stuff like the time and circumstances in which I read deeply formative books for the first time. So, it's not Gillian Rubinstein's Space Demons trilogy, which I only read for the first time in 1996, it's not the Obernewtyn series (which, although it existed since the late 1980s I only began reading in 1999), it's not any one of the myriad Victor Kelleher books I read since 1996, and it's not even the Pagan Chronicles books, which I only began reading for the first time in 1995 when I was chosen as one of a handful of students from Canberra primary schools to go to an event at the now defunct Griffith public library where we would meet Catherine Jinks and hear her read from the fourth book in the series.
Nope, even that venerable fandom of mine is beaten by Gillian Rubinstein's book Galax Arena, which I first picked out of my school library as a nine-year-old in 1994. It got its claws into me in an intense way. (Among other things, it was the first book that made me realise it was totally acceptable to find a story's narrator and point-of-view character boring and wish that I knew more about the experiences of one of the antagonists, so I think it was also the first book that sparked a fannish 'I want to play around in this story and focus on things that the author didn't focus on' reaction in me.)
I've been in the fandom for this book ever since. Unfortunately, the fandom is basically me and ... silence. There are five fics in this fandom in Ao3. Two are by me. Two are gifts for me from exchanges (thanks,
So, yeah. Twenty-six years and counting in this fandom, and I can't see myself ever leaving.
G: What was your first fandom?
H: Do you prefer live action TV shows or animated TV shows?
I: Has online caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?
J: Name a fandom you didn’t care/think about until you saw it all over the internet.
K: What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?
L: Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves.
M: Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.
N: Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).
O: Choose a song at random, what ship does it remind you of?
P: Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).
Q: A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.
R: Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?
S: Show us an example of your personal headcanon.
T: Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?
U: Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.
V: Which character do you relate to most?
W: A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.
X: A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.
Y: What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?
Z: Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go!