Fandom Snowflake Challenge #10

[aadler]

Taking on the meme/challenge here.

Fandom Snowflake Challenge #10

In your own space, talk about one of your fandom firsts. This could be your first fandom, your first fandom friend, the first fanwork you created, the first fanwork you interacted with … The options are endless! Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment here saying you did it.

There are different ways I could go on this. I think I’ll touch on a few, then focus on one.

The first person I ever interacted with when I started reading/doing fanfic … well, I doubt I accurately remember, since that was over 25 years (and several email addresses and web servers) ago. The first one I do remember, though, was Christina Kamnikar (butterflykiki/butterflykiki), who corresponded with me and welcomed me to the Sunnydale Slayers. I actually used something from one of her fics (“Threnody for Fallen Warriors”) in my own “Shadow and Substance”, and I have a sense that another of my stories was inspired by something of hers but I can’t recall what. Sadly, because she’s one of the ‘old guard’ — cut her teeth on Forever Knight fanfic before Buffy the Vampire Slayer ever came along — many old sites have gone dark and I haven’t been able to find a comprehensive collection of her writings, but fair samples can be seen at SunS Fanfic and Fanfiction.net. We fell out of touch, but I remember her with affection and gratitude.

First fanfic author to inspire me? That would be Yahtzee (yahtzee63). Even apart from the quality of the writing, Yahtzee astounded me by how well the characters’ voices were captured, and I’ve done my best ever since to live up to that. The main site has disappeared (or been bought out); some of Yahtzee’s stories can be seen at Fanfiction.net, but the FFN collection doesn’t contain the story that first inspired me (“Acid Test”). I hate to think of all that’s been lost with internet shifts, but this one isn’t completely lost yet.

First time I really started interacting with other fandom/fanfic people? That would be when I joined LiveJournal, in the latter half of 2005. The comment-response capability really amped things up, along with the fact that I went in because I’d been finding other fanfic things there, so I started out with a base of like-minded people to whom I could talk and from whom I could get replies. LJ has diminished enormously — at least, my corner of it — but it’s still my favored platform, just because I’m already there and I can’t really make any sense out of Tumblr or Instagram.

First time I met fandom folks IRL? That would have been the first WriterCon, Las Vegas 2004. I was accompanied there by my daughter sroni (who was also my fanfic protegée and occasional collaborator before she married and moved into other ventures). I met honorh, agilebrit (Julie Frost, who transitioned to independent publishing several years ago), liz_marcs, and doubtless other familiar Buffy authors who have since faded from my memory. Even then, though, WriterCon was looking at the entire Jossverse — Buffy, Angel, and Firefly — and I additionally found myself unenthused by so much of the focus on Spike; when the second WriterCon opened itself out to even more fandoms — and there were other issues as well — that was enough for me. Not saying they were wrong, just that my preferences weren’t in the direction they clearly were going. (My interests were in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series, and that was where I wanted to stay even if I was occasionally willing to touch on other subjects; as their range got larger, it moved away from my preferred focus.)

I’ll settle, then, on my first fanfic, “Point of Focus”. Yes, I’d written in fandoms before, but 1) that was decades before I ever encountered the term ‘fanfiction’, and 2) following the example that introduced me to it, my previous stories were all about me, doing this or that in various fictional universes. A fun pastime in itself, but only barely comparable to what I found myself doing in May 1999.

I had only recently discovered this thing called fanfiction, while cruising the (still relatively new) Internet for more stuff about this show I was watching with my kids, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Until I ran across fanfiction, and the online fandom driving it, I hadn’t even realized how much a Buffy fan I had become. So I found and read these things, and showed some of them to my kids, and browsed and enjoyed …

And then, on a site I’ve long since forgotten, I saw a contest for new fanfic authors, and for the first time the words crossed my mind that will doubtless be familiar to many: “Heck, I could do something lots better than some of the stuff I’ve been seeing.”

In my Buffyfic browsings, I’d seen examples of alternative Slayers in the Sunnydale setting: Cordelia and Willow are the ones I specifically remember, and there might have been one that cast Jenny Calendar the same way. I looked at who hadn’t yet been used for that purpose — at least that I’d seen — and the only one that came to mind was Buffy’s mother, Joyce. And the story was off from there.

I don’t know how long it took me to write it, but probably less than a month (that seems the most likely contest deadline). As it happens, the story didn’t qualify for the contest because their limit was 10,000 words and I couldn’t keep it under 13,000 without cutting things I wanted to keep. So, I just showed it to my kids — (“You killed Buffy?” “No, I didn’t do it, it was just what happened in the story!”) — and then very shortly later I got the notion for another story, and then another after that, and then I wanted at least four to post to the Slayer Fanfic Archive (sadly, now also gone) so I’d be an author with stories instead of one with a story … and then I just kept on going.

I don’t believe “Point of Focus” was the absolute best thing I’ve ever done (there are other strong contenders), but it was what launched me into the fanfic life, and by its construction it absolutely could have been made into an actual episode of the show, and people who wanted to claim it IS my best would be able to make a strong argument, because it still holds up even decades later.

I wish I still had that kind of passion. It isn’t all gone yet, though, because I still have a few stories to tell.

And that’s it for this one.