resistance really is futile

[kindkit]

All right, I give in. I'm doing the "30 days of fanfic" meme.

1 – How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?

I didn't start writing fanfic until 2003, when I was in my thirties. But I'd always imagined fanfic--dreamed up stories about what happened next, or before, or instead. Often these scenarios were about male characters getting together, or (when I was so young that sex really wasn't there yet) having intense forever-and-ever friendships with lots of platonic touching. Yes, I not only independently invented slash, but also smarm!

I remember reading an essay about slash fanfiction when I was about 19. It was wholly or largely about Kirk/Spock, as I recall, and I wasn't a Star Trek fan at the time, so as intrigued as I was by the fact that other people had fantasies just like mine, it didn't seem like something that I could or would want to participate in. Plus, this was in the days before the internets, when you had to go to cons and know the right people to ask for the slash zines.

So, time went by, I spent my twenties very busy in graduate school and hardly reading anything for pleasure, and then it was 2003 and I was in my first real (i.e. tenure-track) academic job, which I hated, and living in a city I hated and where I didn't know anyone, and bored bored bored. I'd started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns and become intrigued by the show; I wished I had someone to talk to about it.

And then I went to an academic conference in Toronto, where I happened to see a bit of a Canadian TV sex-related documentary with a section on fanfic, including slash. When I got home (well, back to my office, as I didn't have a home internet connection at the time--no, really) I googled "Buffy slash." And I found stuff. So. Much. Stuff. I can still remember the elation, the joy of not being a solitary freak.

I quickly started to write in the Buffyverse, which was my sole fandom for about a year. The short answer to what pulled me in is "Giles," and the slightly longer answer is "Giles and Ethan," but I genuinely loved the whole show, its vivid and three-dimensional characters, its snappy dialogue, its moral complexity and the sheer scope of its universe. I also loved the fandom I found, which was smart, analytical, and critical as well as squee-ful. And full of good writers, although some of them, alas, were starting to leave for fresh woods and pastures new just as I came into the fandom. I learned a lot about how to write by reading, and in some cases imitating (stylistically, not in the sense of plagiarism), other people's stories.

Not all was rosy in the Buffyverse; some things happened in the fandom that still hurt when I think about them. But I had a great time before then, and it was fabulous while it lasted.

Comments

[st_aurafina]

I googled "Buffy slash." And I found stuff. So. Much. Stuff. I can still remember the elation, the joy of not being a solitary freak.

Oh, god, yes, that feeling. X-Files, for me, but yeah. People think the same things! People write it down!

I had lilacsigil to talk and RP with, and she'd been writing fic for a decade, but the whole thing with the internet and fanfic as a community just clicked for me like that. (But I was too scared to actually write anything myself for years after that.)

[kindkit]

I heart the internet, I really do.

I'm a bit surprised, retrospectively, that I wasn't scared to write and post. I'd done some writing (non-fanfic) as a teenager, then stopped, but I think the experience of writing and sharing work made me less nervous. And by the time I started writing fanfic I'd been having the urge to write again--not long BF (Before Fanfic) I started writing what was essentially RPF with the serial numbers filed off, about the rather spectacularly homoerotic relationship between a professor of mine and his best friend. I never finished that story, partly out of technical incompetence and partly out of guilt, but fanfic gave me permission to write, I guess.

[lilacsigil]

So. Much. Stuff! Yay! I started writing fic when I was 9 or so, but I only got to participate in fandom by playing D&D. Nearly all of my friends were fanboys, which I mean not in the gendered sense (though most of them were male) but in the "can a copper dragon defeat a green dragon in a thunderstorm when the green dragon is at a -2 penalty for all hits?" kind. It was so amazing to get online at age 19 and find everyone else out there who wanted to talk about so much more!

[kindkit]

This is why I scoff whenever people say that the internet is antisocial. It's the opposite for so many people--it made it possible for them to find a real community of interest for the first time.