Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 15

[aadler]

 
Continuing the meme/challenge begun here and kept up to date here.

Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 15

In your own space, share a favorite memory about fandom: the first time you got into fandom, the last time a fanwork touched your heart, crazy times with fellow fans (whether on-line or off-line), a lovely comment you’ve received or have left for someone. Leave a comment on this post saying you did it, and include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

So. Last one and done.

1. The first time I got into fandom

As I’ve mentioned before, I was actually doing fanfiction before the term was invented. At the same time, my involvement, while heartfelt and enthusiastic, was limited: I traded stories with friends in another state, they were all unabashed self-insertion fics with me/us appearing in various popular (at the time) fandoms, and — since this was pre-Internet — I was never part of any community larger than the five of us.

It was (again, no surprise) with my discovery of Buffy fanfic that this changed. In fact, it was the accidental discovery of fanfiction in a casual Web-search for Buffy that made me aware of just how much a fan I had become of the show; I was busy at the time, working two jobs and taking full-time classes and having my kids with me every other weekend, I had watched and enjoyed the show without actually noticing how much hold it had taken on me. I wrote my first Buffyfic in April 1999, probably only a few months after first encountering fanfic as such, and from there on there was no turning back.

Nothing else has ever had that kind of effect on me. I love certain shows, but nothing else has come close to swallowing me whole — watching, reading, writing, and sharing — the way Buffy the Vampire Slayer did once it settled into me. (Smallville might have done it, if it had come at a slightly different time and I hadn’t already been so utterly possessed by Buffy … but, then again, the seeming dominance of Clark/Lex slash might well have repulsed me past the point of being able to take that fandom to my heart to the same degree.) I’ve written in other fandoms, and actually plan to expand my scope further in the coming year, but at the same time I rather doubt that the total captivation that I first experienced will ever come again.

You never forget your first.

2. The last time a fanwork touched my heart

There are a lot of candidates, and if I hewed precisely to the definition I could probably come up with something more recent, but off the top of my head, two things come to mind.

The first is “A Girl Made of Light” (BtVS), by visitorfic. It was cute, and sweet, and nice, and posited a pairing I’d never considered before, but was convincingly and entertainingly presented. I remember it affectionately, and revisit it every now and then.

The second is something I’ve already mentioned in this meme: “Journey to the Place of Ghosts”, by bitbitbot (Harry Potter). Following it requires solid knowledge of HP fandom, a bit of imagination, and perhaps hints from fellow readers, but it is SO affecting and well done.

3. Crazy times with fellow fans (whether on-line or off-line):

Oh, that would have to be the two WriterCons I attended, in July 2004 and July 2006. I went to both, enjoyed both, looked forward to doing it again …

But things were changing, and in one of those changes I got hit by a tidal wave. Following the second ’Con, I posted a day-to-day recitation of my experiences, both on my LJ and on the WriterCon site, as an expression of appreciation and in emulation of what I saw others doing. Turns out that mine — at least in the opinion of several hundred people who made their opinions known — wasn’t like what other people had done. I went into more depth, mentioning points of minor annoyance as well as the greater proportion of pleasant and positive experiences, and I quickly learned that dissent was not welcome, even mild and indirect. I was blasted as bitter, intolerant, misogynistic, homophobic, the embodiment of self-entitled male privilege … my oldest LJ friend de-friended me on the spot and has since made a point of never knowingly acknowledging my continued existence.

Yeah, yeah, “the personal is political”. I just didn’t know I was getting into politics with the opinion that habitually slashing male characters was maybe not the most accurate characterization that one could engage in.

Ah, well. It probably wouldn’t have continued anyway. As always, my fannish interest has been centered on Buffy the Vampire Slayer; even by the second ’Con, the venue was being expanded to accommodate other fandoms, and continued movement in that direction would have taken it yet further from what I wanted. (Not saying it would have been wrong, just not to my preference.) Still, it didn’t feel good to recognize that I might well be unwelcome at another such event.

And I miss liz_marcs. I do. Over five years now, and I’m still sad about it. We had an amiable online relationship, reading and enjoying and reccing each other’s stories, and I was genuinely sorry to lose that. But I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised: you don’t always get much tolerance from people passionate about Tolerance.

4. A lovely comment you’ve received:

One of the best (and at the same time, one of the most disappointing) comments I got was just a couple of months ago. Good: she lauded the professional quality of my writing (action, plot, pacing, and character), my perfect English and spelling and punctuation, my original characters and the originality of my plots, my use of language, my success in turning out multiple stories without habitually duplicating plots and tropes, even the convincing authenticity of the dream sequences I’ve done. Disappointing: she devoted one long paragraph to praising everything I had written, without going into particulars on any single story. I really liked what she had to say, but seriously: I’ve done forty-six stories in Buffy fandom, and five in other fandoms, and a single sentence for each of those stories would have massed more — and been more on point — than the fulsome but diffuse approval of the entire body of work.

Probably the most appreciated feedback I’ve had was in response to “Otherwise a Perfect Sky”, in that it came from the author whose story I had remixed to produce OPS, some of the closest fans of the author, and — oh, yes — liz_marcs herself. (Before the author reveal, when she didn’t know whose work she was approving. And, yes, that wasn’t the first time she’d done that.)

On a separate note, texanfan has for years been consistently my best observer of fic. (sroni is my most welcome and most well-beloved, but she does tend toward blanket approval.) texanfan reliably observes exactly what she liked about a fic and why it worked for it, any potential weak spots (very tenuous criticism, and she always apologizes for it) … and, best of all, the themes she points to and appreciates are exactly the ones I was trying to communicate. Wonderful. Wonderful.

There we are, then. Meme complete.