Diving into a new fandom meme

[dolorosa_12]

Via nyctanthes and a couple of others in my circle, I discovered this fun set of fandom-related questions created by squidgiepdx. The idea is that you answer one question a day for the first twenty days of June, and that's obviously not going to happen in my case, so instead I will answer them in batches until I've done the lot.

I should also preface this by saying that a lot of the questions apply to an approach to fandom that's very different to my own — for various reasons I gravitate towards tiny fandoms, and once I'm fannish about something those feelings never switch off, so 'being in fandom' for me tends to be a) a solitary activity and b) a permanent state of being in which new fandoms are added, but they never replace old fandoms.


Day 1: What's changed about your fandom life in the last 365 days?

A year ago, I was deep in the grips of a fandom that sank its claws into me and wouldn't let me go until I'd written what ended up being a 30,000-word fic. 30,000 words is pretty short by fanfic standards, but it is long for me (my sweet spot tends to be 3000- to 5000-word oneshots), and it completely took over my fannish brain for much of 2020. This fic also ended up necessitating me creating an entirely new AO3 profile and basically cordoning it off from my main fannish identity, because it was so different from my normal fannish output (introspective gen for Yuletide book fandoms) that the thought of associating it with my Dolorosa profile was inhibiting.

One year on, and, weirdly, I'm on the verge of writing more fic that will have to live under the other profile as well (but for a different fandom). To be honest, creating this second account has been extremely liberating. I've always written mainly for myself (obviously when I write giftfic I'm writing to someone else's prompts and hoping that they like the result, but because I write for such small fandoms I need to have a sense of proportion in terms of how much feedback and engagement I'm likely to get), but having this separate account is a step even further in that direction, and I'm really glad I did so.

Day 2: You've got your OTP, you have to throw a third into the mix (from the same fandom), creating an OT3. Who is the OTP, and in your opinion, why would they make a perfect third for them? Bonus question: What about adding a third to your OTP from a different fandom? Who and why?

So this is one of those questions that's so outside the realm of how I do fandom that I almost can't figure out how to answer it. I have fallen in love with OT3s in the past (for the ten seconds I was in Sleepy Hollow fandom I was all about Ichabod/Abbie/Katrina, but the fandom was ... not a great place to ship that trio; my preferred ship in ATLA was Sokka/Suki/Toph; and obviously in Lions of Al-Rassan my heart belongs to Jehane/Ammar/Rodrigo/(Miranda)), but it's not a matter of adding a person to an existing OTP — the ship appeals to me from the beginning with all three characters, and I have zero interest in removing them.

And when it comes to pairings (i.e. OTPs), I'm drawn to the ship from the beginning due to the character dynamic, which usually entails at least one of the following, or some combination thereof:

-enemies-to-lovers
-two characters on opposite sides of the social divide, with a massive power imbalance
-one non-human character with supernatural powers of some kind, one ordinary human character

To my mind it's hard to add a third character to the mix in such situations and retain that specific character dynamic, and it would make the relationship stop being the thing that interested me in the first place.

Day 3: What's a favorite, or at least memorable fandom meeting/interaction that you've had?

The first fandom person I met in person was lowercasename, and we met through a His Dark Materials fan forum. By the time I'd joined the forum, the series of books had been published for quite some time, and regular forum-goers had somewhat exhausted topics of discussion of Pullman's books — so for the most part, people tended instead to discuss current books they were reading, other media such as films or TV shows, or their everyday lives (school, uni, family stuff etc).

At some point, I wandered into a thread where people were talking about beloved books from childhood. lowercasename mentioned Victor Kelleher's novel Parkland, and noted that his favourite primary school teacher had introduced it to the class. Now, I knew that lowercasename lived in Canberra, my hometown, and I had a fairly good sense of what was standard for primary schools in Canberra, and what was a bit left-field — and reading Parkland aloud to a bunch of Year Six students certainly fell into the latter category. So I replied to lowercasename's forum post asking, was this Year 6 teacher Mr Rosenberg at [my primary school]?

His answer was yes. And that was how we discovered that he had gone to the same primary school as I had, had the same Year 6 teacher, his class had performed the very silly version of Robin Hood that my Year 6 class had written seven years earlier, he was currently a student at my former high school, and we lived fifteen minutes away from each other. (He would go on to attend the same college as I did for the final two years of secondary school, and he ended up moving to the UK to do a MA and PhD, like me, and he has settled in this country, like me, so our lives have continued to mirror each other's in weird ways.)

To put into perspective how mindboggling this was, basically every single other active user on that forum lived in North America or western Europe. There was one other Australian who lived in Perth, but who had ceased to use the site actively for several years. So literally the only two Australians in the community attended all the same schools (his friends were even the younger siblings of people I'd gone to school with) and lived virtually next door to each other. And we figured out this connection because we had the same formative primary school teacher who had introduced us to the same personal canon of dystopian Australian YA fiction.

The above episode also illustrates how fast and loose everyone on that site was with their personal information. I knew the wallet names of basically all the active users, we all knew what universities people went to, we were constantly posting photos of ourselves — and some of the users were still children, still in the early years of secondary school!

My favourite fannish encounter with a creator rather than a fellow fan is how I got to know Sophia McDougall, the author of my beloved Romanitas trilogy. Back in the day, I was essentially the only person online talking about these books. I set up a fanblog, and enthused loudly about the books all over the place. At some point, Sophia must have googled herself and found my blog, and she reached out to me to say how touched she was that I loved her books that much. We ended up becoming ... I'm not sure I'd say 'friends', since these kinds of online connections are a bit weird and hard to define, but certainly mutual followers on all online platforms, and she was certainly happy to initiate DM conversations about things unrelated to her books, and so on.

And when the third book in the series was published, she thanked me in the acknowledgements: To [my name], for being generally wonderful.


Day 4: What are the origins of your penname/username?

Day 5: Compare and/or contrast your very first fandom obsession and your very latest fandom obsession.

Day 6: What's a fandom that you wish had a bigger following?

Day 7: What's the longest time you've been in a fandom. Not necessarily your oldest fandom, but a fandom that you started and still continue to read/write/create content for in some way.

Day 8: Crack!fic - We all know it. What's your opinion of it, and if you want, show us an example.

Day 9: Drop the cast of a fandom you follow into a reality tv show - who/what/why?

Day 10: Drop your OTP or small ensemble from the fandom they're in into another fandom - how do they do?

Day 11: What would make you leave a fandom, or prevent you from getting into it in the first place?

Day 12: Who is someone that you share the most fandoms with?

Day 13: Squicks - What are some things that squick you in fandom - not necessarily "icky", though it can be. From anything involving blood, to bad grammar.

Day 14: What fandom broke your heart?

Day 15: What fandom pairing took you over like Venom took over Eddie?

Day 16: Do you have a fandom that you follow - either regularly or casually - with little to no knowledge of canon?

Day 17: Do you prefer art, fic, or vids? Why? Bonus: If someone was to give you a fandom gift, what format would it be?

Day 18: Recall a time when two of your fandoms collided, at least in some way. For example, a song that you fell in love with from one fandom showed up in a second fandom.

Day 19: What is something that you associate with a character in fandom, but aren't sure if it's canon or fandom?

Day 20: A random character shows up at your doorstep at dinnertime saying a friend sent them. Why did your friend send that person, how does it go, and what do you talk about?

Comments

[pauraque]

Those are some great fannish connection stories! When I lived in a major US city it wasn't uncommon to run into people online who lived near me (or to be able to meet up when people happened to visit my city), but now that I've moved to a rural area it never happens anymore, and I miss it.

When I was in middle school, one of my friends somehow struck up a friendship with Tamora Pierce online. She ended up coming to our school to give a talk about fiction writing, and one of her books is dedicated to my friend.

[dolorosa_12]

It's certainly easier to meet fannish people in major cities than it is when living in more remote parts of the world (and indeed due to that Philip Pullman forum I have people I can visit all over the UK, parts of western Europe, and in the US and Canada — and I have done so!).

My impression is that Tamora Pierce used to be very chatty and friendly online — I think she had a Livejournal and connected with a lot of people through that. But how wonderful for your friend to have a book dedicated to them — that's truly special.

[chestnut_pod]

Wow, what a small world!

I really feel you on the OT3 question -- that's just… not my experience of OT3 relationships in fandom, or, for that matter, of triad relationships in real life! However, you intrigue me with this Sokka/Sukki/Toph dynamic; I can really see it.

[dolorosa_12]

I think a lot of people do transformative fandom for the potential to explore possibilities — they're interested in what happens if you change one thing from canon (e.g. dropping a third person into a relationship). It's a kind of ... engineering way of looking at stories: taking them apart, seeing how they work, adding new parts, or putting the parts together in a different way.

My brain just doesn't work like that. When I'm fannish about something, I want more of whatever made me fannish to begin with: more of that thematic element, more of that gang of misfits having adventures together, more of that specific relationship (whether it's a pairing, triad, or whatever). That's not to say that I only ship canon relationships, of course.

Sokka/Suki/Toph just works for me in a way that I feel all the individual pairings within that triad don't, and I'm sad that there isn't much fic for that OT3, produced either during the first wave of ATLA fandom or the current renaissance resulting from the show being on Netflix.

Wow, what a small world!

It really is! And to make things stranger still, lowercase has lived in London the entire time he's been in the UK — but he's recently got a job in Cambridge and is going to be moving to this part of the world. We can't get away from each other!

[trepkos]

That is an amazing coincidence with your fellow primary school alumnus.

[dolorosa_12]

I know, right? It's absolutely wild that of all the fan forums in the world, this is the one that we both wandered into.

[nyctanthes]

I am intrigued by your second account. Is it a lot different from your current ones (bigger, different media, etc.)? And of course, don't talk about it if you don't want to. :)

[dolorosa_12]

I don't want to be too specific, because that will end up defeating the purpose: I set it up because I felt unable to create the kind of content that I wanted if it was attached to my primary fannish/online identity. It's different fandoms (no Australian 1990s YA novels in sight!), but it's also different kinds of stories, things that I felt inhibited about attaching to my main identity. It's not that it was 'problematic' content, more that it was so different to my usual output (which, as I say, is introspective gen one-shots, often making use of medieval Irish mythology) that it made me feel anxious, and I felt I needed a sense of distance to be able to put it in a public space.

[superborb]

You're like, the third person who's recently said that they've created a separate pseud for some of their works, which I find fascinating! I wonder if it's always been a common thing, and I've only just noticed, or if it's a recent trend.

[dolorosa_12]

I think there are people who have always had multiple pseuds and sock puppets, but I think the current puritanical fandom climate doesn't help, and probably encourages people to cordon off their more out-there fanworks under a separate identity.

[merit]

I connected with someone after writing several comments on their (anon) Yuletide stories. Turned out we lived in the same city and had gone to the same university (and had similar degrees!). This felt Big to me as the biggest I placed lived in before moving to the big smoke had a population of 5k, so. Limited fannish presence.

[dolorosa_12]

Oh wow, that's an amazing coincidence. The internet is such a small world, sometimes. I always expect it with Canberrans (it's not quite as true as it used to be in the past, but until about five years ago, if I met any random Canberran I could guarantee two degrees of separation with pretty much all of them, even people who had just moved there to work in the public service), but it used to shock me when it happened in online social circles. If you came from a place with a population of 5000, though, I can see why it was such a surprise!