insert witty title here
May. 2nd, 2008 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bitchy_merlinBecause, duh. What else have I got to do than post about random, incoherent topics at 11:30 on a Friday night?
Fuck, I'm tired, but I haven't posted this late in a while, and if I don't do it now, I'll never get around to it, and this idea will be sentenced to forgotten eternity. Which is hardly fair.
Whatever.
Things I've Learned From Various Fandoms/How that Knowledge has Affected Me:
Well, it all started back in god-knows-when, probably when I was 13 or thereabouts. M had already known about Fandom for a few years by then; she introduced me to it, of course. Not directly, though: it's not the sort of thing we do, not just 'let me show you', because that's dangerous. You don't need to know what rejection is for it to hurt.
At any rate, she somehow (throughpotterpuffs or something) inadvertently set me on a trail of links along which I found this wonderful, accepting, alive place called Fandom.
Harry Potter was my first. (If I weren't so exhausted right now, this whole post would be one big innuendo, but zzzz). I had never known anything like it. Of course, I was young and impressionable, and the first comm I stumbled across was![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
remusxsirius. It was, quite frankly, mind-blowing, not that I knew that then. You have to understand, before this, I never even knew there were such things as same-sex relationships, much less that anyone would have the audacity to write stories about fictional characters involved in them. But luckily, I wasn't a completely horrid idiot, and even then there was something different about Remus and Sirius' supposed friendship. It didn't hurt that they were my two favourite characters from all of the HP books so far (four, I think, by that stage). In those days of relative innocence, I stuck to G - PG13 ratings, but even those opened my eyes and mind to the world of possibilities that Fandom offered.
R/S, of course, is not the only pairing I have shipped - the HP fandom is amazingly diverse and engrossing, even after all that time.
Butremusxsirius was only the start, I figured. I wanted to see how far down the rabbit hole I could go. That's when I discovered shoebox_project. WOW. It was revolutionary! The extraordinary finesse of the writing, the bang-on characterization, the plot, I loved every single aspect of SBP. This was before I knew what WIPs were (and thank God for that, else I don't think I'd have clicked the link), but once I started, I was hooked. Even now that there hasn't been an update in probably more than a year, Shoebox is still something I believe in. I spent an entire summer reading and rereading the PDF version, and I printed out Chapter 23 to take with me to school on the first day of grade nine. The first project I ever did in high school had printouts of SBP icons on it. I was actually online the day it was updated once, and OMG THE ECSTATIC SQUEEAGE!
So, my first forays into HP taught me about good writing, and about the fact that heterosexuality is not, in fact, anything that necessarily defines normal. Also, as the first pairing I was ever aware of in Fandom, Remus/Sirius is still my OTP, and it doesn't look like I'll be changing that anytime soon.
I spent a good, long while in HP, because face it, there's so much to do. So many comms devoted to different things from crack to meta and everything in between. But then, over the March Break of grade 9, I discovered something new, something totally and vastly different (at least, for me). I discovered House MD. I remember because we were flying out to BC and the plane had the wicked cool tv screens in the seat in front of you so you could select whatever you wanted to watch, instead of craning your neck to stare at the big screens up front. It was a completely innocuous thing, too, this discovery of House. But I had seen the name mentioned sometimes in comment threads in and around some HP comms. I was channel surfing because I was bored, and then a name caught my eye: HOUSE MD. What? I remember thinking, That's the stupidest name for a TV show ever!
So, I obviously selected it. Twenty minutes into that ep (S2, the ep after Sex Kills), I decided I was head-over-heels in love with the show. I decided House was the coolest person on the face of the Earth, and that House and Cuddy were obviously meant to be. Then I saw Chase, and my brain kind of short-circuited because he looked good. Even with the ridiculous ties. I adored Foreman and Cameron obviously, but I had no real regard for Wilson, mostly because he didn't really strike me as a main character, as I was unaware of his connection with House. Now, of course, I consider myself suitably enlightened.
As soon as I got back home, the first comm I found washouse_md. YESSS. All I ever needed to know about the House fandom in one comm. PPTH was a bit confusing at first, as was PotW, but I got them eventually. Then, I figured out who Wilson was, and *BAM* slash goggles on and functioning. house_wilson was my favourite haunt for the next long while. This show taught me important lessons about SUBTEXT, reading between the lines (an activity I practiced avidly), and emotional tension and drama. As for the fandom itself, hanging around H/W comms, I learned about Angst and Issues (the few deathfics I have mem'd are enough to get me teary-eyed), and the dreaded House/Cameron ship (though of course, I still adore the Ducklings). The fics I read were rarely only G, but nothing hardcore. I also eventually learned about my personal likes/dislikes. I found I'm not really one for angst, unless it gets completely and totally resolved in the end. I learned that nebulous endings are depressing because I need concrete evidence of the main characters being happy together. Most importantly, I learned that I'm an unbelievable sucker for any type of hurt/comfort fic. With one condition: the character I perceive as more emotionally fragile (or y'know, the one I sympathize most with) has to be the hurt one (Wilson, in this case), and the emotionally blocked-off character (House) has to be the one comforting as best they know how. nightdog_barks' fic was always particularly good, IMHO, as well as anything written by mer_duff.
I really enjoyed the House fandom because it taught me about not-instant gratification and the power of subtlety. And how to recognize good acting when you see it.
I moved on during the summer hiatus. I dabbled in the Good Omens fandom (why don't they just come out and say it?), at sites likelower_tadfield, and discovered some really good GO art by... well, it's in my memories, cause the name escapes me.
Then, the release of PotC 1 and 2, and I was like "WOW". True to form for me, my OTP in said fandom is and will always be Will and Elizabeth just because. However, the only pairing I read is Jack/Will, which I'm sure says something about me, but I'm not quite sure what. Anyway, the story Hurricane Jack by jesus-i-can't-remember-who was my formal intro to the hotness of J/W smut. I liked it. Even now, with an h/c streak a mile wide, I still crave the hawt that is really good PotC fic. And the character studies are not to be missed. From this fandom, I learned sex=good. Then PotC 3 and I was blown away completely, which only rekindled my love for this fandom and taught me that AUs can be fucking amazing if you do them right.
Moving on to more recent times, the movies Sweeney Todd and Across the Universe pretty much took over my life for a while. The ST fandom is basically crack on wheels, a point to which many of my mem'd entries can attest. The weeks in that fandom, I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my life.capslocksweeney FTW. Gorgeous icons too, I must say (err... mainlly the ones not dealing with the crack. Although, I suppose you could have gorgeous cracktastic icons, if you were really determined).
BUT AtU, OMFG I LOVE. SO much, I can't fit it into words. IT WAS SO GOOD. All through the movie I made conscious efforts to support Jude and Lucy but in the end I cried when MAX and JUDEY and the HUG and YES!backbenttulips is the place to go for AtU slash of any type. THAT MOVIE and then there was the EYECANDY and the MUSIC and GUH! The AtU fandom is so unique and wonderful, and there are such talented people there it's amazing. This fandom introduced me to music and I love it.
And currently? Supernatural is fucking controlling my life, I swear. Which is sad, really, because the quality is nowhere near House at all. The plot, yeah, I can deal with because ok, demons are pretty sweet, and Bobby=teh win, and the car is hot as hell, but what really drives this fandom is the friggin' abundance of Issues Sam and Dean have. Because they're brothers for Chissakes and brothers don't do the type of shit they get up to in fics. Or even ignoring that possible romantic entanglement, the show just gives viewers so much else to work with - parents dead, demons popping up from hell, people with hair so shiny it's actually quite scary - that what goes on every week on TV actually just seems like possible fodder if the fans want. It's like Kripke et al. are saying "here's what the show says, BUT you can go off and do your own thing, that's totally cool, we're just brainstorming." 'S wicked. And of course the whole getting knocked about every week means a literal neverending supply of h/c or fluff fics, which makes my inner h/c junkie go into fits of glee.
Well, throughout all of this, I can see a pattern. I generally like to concentrate on one fandom in particular, sometimes for months at a time (House, HP) before something new and shiny pops up, and then I generally wander through various fandoms for a short while each until I find another vent for my obsessive enthusiasm. Seriously, though, the h/c thing, it's getting to the point where I won't read a fic if it doesn't say it's fluff or h/c. WTF, Me, broaden your horizons.
It's crazy what the internet can teach you. I wonder what non-fen do when they're on the computer for leisure. facebook isn't that interesting.
Fuck, I'm tired, but I haven't posted this late in a while, and if I don't do it now, I'll never get around to it, and this idea will be sentenced to forgotten eternity. Which is hardly fair.
Whatever.
Things I've Learned From Various Fandoms/How that Knowledge has Affected Me:
Well, it all started back in god-knows-when, probably when I was 13 or thereabouts. M had already known about Fandom for a few years by then; she introduced me to it, of course. Not directly, though: it's not the sort of thing we do, not just 'let me show you', because that's dangerous. You don't need to know what rejection is for it to hurt.
At any rate, she somehow (through
potterpuffs or something) inadvertently set me on a trail of links along which I found this wonderful, accepting, alive place called Fandom. Harry Potter was my first. (If I weren't so exhausted right now, this whole post would be one big innuendo, but zzzz). I had never known anything like it. Of course, I was young and impressionable, and the first comm I stumbled across was
remusxsirius. It was, quite frankly, mind-blowing, not that I knew that then. You have to understand, before this, I never even knew there were such things as same-sex relationships, much less that anyone would have the audacity to write stories about fictional characters involved in them. But luckily, I wasn't a completely horrid idiot, and even then there was something different about Remus and Sirius' supposed friendship. It didn't hurt that they were my two favourite characters from all of the HP books so far (four, I think, by that stage). In those days of relative innocence, I stuck to G - PG13 ratings, but even those opened my eyes and mind to the world of possibilities that Fandom offered. R/S, of course, is not the only pairing I have shipped - the HP fandom is amazingly diverse and engrossing, even after all that time.
But
remusxsirius was only the start, I figured. I wanted to see how far down the rabbit hole I could go. That's when I discovered shoebox_project. WOW. It was revolutionary! The extraordinary finesse of the writing, the bang-on characterization, the plot, I loved every single aspect of SBP. This was before I knew what WIPs were (and thank God for that, else I don't think I'd have clicked the link), but once I started, I was hooked. Even now that there hasn't been an update in probably more than a year, Shoebox is still something I believe in. I spent an entire summer reading and rereading the PDF version, and I printed out Chapter 23 to take with me to school on the first day of grade nine. The first project I ever did in high school had printouts of SBP icons on it. I was actually online the day it was updated once, and OMG THE ECSTATIC SQUEEAGE! So, my first forays into HP taught me about good writing, and about the fact that heterosexuality is not, in fact, anything that necessarily defines normal. Also, as the first pairing I was ever aware of in Fandom, Remus/Sirius is still my OTP, and it doesn't look like I'll be changing that anytime soon.
I spent a good, long while in HP, because face it, there's so much to do. So many comms devoted to different things from crack to meta and everything in between. But then, over the March Break of grade 9, I discovered something new, something totally and vastly different (at least, for me). I discovered House MD. I remember because we were flying out to BC and the plane had the wicked cool tv screens in the seat in front of you so you could select whatever you wanted to watch, instead of craning your neck to stare at the big screens up front. It was a completely innocuous thing, too, this discovery of House. But I had seen the name mentioned sometimes in comment threads in and around some HP comms. I was channel surfing because I was bored, and then a name caught my eye: HOUSE MD. What? I remember thinking, That's the stupidest name for a TV show ever!
So, I obviously selected it. Twenty minutes into that ep (S2, the ep after Sex Kills), I decided I was head-over-heels in love with the show. I decided House was the coolest person on the face of the Earth, and that House and Cuddy were obviously meant to be. Then I saw Chase, and my brain kind of short-circuited because he looked good. Even with the ridiculous ties. I adored Foreman and Cameron obviously, but I had no real regard for Wilson, mostly because he didn't really strike me as a main character, as I was unaware of his connection with House. Now, of course, I consider myself suitably enlightened.
As soon as I got back home, the first comm I found was
house_md. YESSS. All I ever needed to know about the House fandom in one comm. PPTH was a bit confusing at first, as was PotW, but I got them eventually. Then, I figured out who Wilson was, and *BAM* slash goggles on and functioning. house_wilson was my favourite haunt for the next long while. This show taught me important lessons about SUBTEXT, reading between the lines (an activity I practiced avidly), and emotional tension and drama. As for the fandom itself, hanging around H/W comms, I learned about Angst and Issues (the few deathfics I have mem'd are enough to get me teary-eyed), and the dreaded House/Cameron ship (though of course, I still adore the Ducklings). The fics I read were rarely only G, but nothing hardcore. I also eventually learned about my personal likes/dislikes. I found I'm not really one for angst, unless it gets completely and totally resolved in the end. I learned that nebulous endings are depressing because I need concrete evidence of the main characters being happy together. Most importantly, I learned that I'm an unbelievable sucker for any type of hurt/comfort fic. With one condition: the character I perceive as more emotionally fragile (or y'know, the one I sympathize most with) has to be the hurt one (Wilson, in this case), and the emotionally blocked-off character (House) has to be the one comforting as best they know how. nightdog_barks' fic was always particularly good, IMHO, as well as anything written by mer_duff. I really enjoyed the House fandom because it taught me about not-instant gratification and the power of subtlety. And how to recognize good acting when you see it.
I moved on during the summer hiatus. I dabbled in the Good Omens fandom (why don't they just come out and say it?), at sites like
lower_tadfield, and discovered some really good GO art by... well, it's in my memories, cause the name escapes me. Then, the release of PotC 1 and 2, and I was like "WOW". True to form for me, my OTP in said fandom is and will always be Will and Elizabeth just because. However, the only pairing I read is Jack/Will, which I'm sure says something about me, but I'm not quite sure what. Anyway, the story Hurricane Jack by jesus-i-can't-remember-who was my formal intro to the hotness of J/W smut. I liked it. Even now, with an h/c streak a mile wide, I still crave the hawt that is really good PotC fic. And the character studies are not to be missed. From this fandom, I learned sex=good. Then PotC 3 and I was blown away completely, which only rekindled my love for this fandom and taught me that AUs can be fucking amazing if you do them right.
Moving on to more recent times, the movies Sweeney Todd and Across the Universe pretty much took over my life for a while. The ST fandom is basically crack on wheels, a point to which many of my mem'd entries can attest. The weeks in that fandom, I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my life.
capslocksweeney FTW. Gorgeous icons too, I must say (err... mainlly the ones not dealing with the crack. Although, I suppose you could have gorgeous cracktastic icons, if you were really determined).BUT AtU, OMFG I LOVE. SO much, I can't fit it into words. IT WAS SO GOOD. All through the movie I made conscious efforts to support Jude and Lucy but in the end I cried when MAX and JUDEY and the HUG and YES!
backbenttulips is the place to go for AtU slash of any type. THAT MOVIE and then there was the EYECANDY and the MUSIC and GUH! The AtU fandom is so unique and wonderful, and there are such talented people there it's amazing. This fandom introduced me to music and I love it.And currently? Supernatural is fucking controlling my life, I swear. Which is sad, really, because the quality is nowhere near House at all. The plot, yeah, I can deal with because ok, demons are pretty sweet, and Bobby=teh win, and the car is hot as hell, but what really drives this fandom is the friggin' abundance of Issues Sam and Dean have. Because they're brothers for Chissakes and brothers don't do the type of shit they get up to in fics. Or even ignoring that possible romantic entanglement, the show just gives viewers so much else to work with - parents dead, demons popping up from hell, people with hair so shiny it's actually quite scary - that what goes on every week on TV actually just seems like possible fodder if the fans want. It's like Kripke et al. are saying "here's what the show says, BUT you can go off and do your own thing, that's totally cool, we're just brainstorming." 'S wicked. And of course the whole getting knocked about every week means a literal neverending supply of h/c or fluff fics, which makes my inner h/c junkie go into fits of glee.
Well, throughout all of this, I can see a pattern. I generally like to concentrate on one fandom in particular, sometimes for months at a time (House, HP) before something new and shiny pops up, and then I generally wander through various fandoms for a short while each until I find another vent for my obsessive enthusiasm. Seriously, though, the h/c thing, it's getting to the point where I won't read a fic if it doesn't say it's fluff or h/c. WTF, Me, broaden your horizons.
It's crazy what the internet can teach you. I wonder what non-fen do when they're on the computer for leisure. facebook isn't that interesting.
