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kindkitHere are my responses to the questions I was asked so far in this meme. There are still a lot more potential questions if you're curious about anything.
7. Do you remember your first OTP, and if so, who was in it?
Much depends, for all these questions, on how we define "first." I didn't get involved in fandom until 2003, but long before I knew fandom existed, I was creating fanficcish stories or at least scenarios in my head, most of them slashy. I was slashing long before puberty, in fact, making up stories about devoted male friends in circumstances that just happened to allow/require them to cuddle. When I was six or seven I adored the TV show "Emergency," which featured best-friend paramedics. I kind of slashed Snoopy and the Red Baron, too. Then it was Keith Mallory and his friend Andrea (a man) from the novel The Guns of Navarone (which I tried to re-read recently . . . it's pretty terrible, but still hella slashy). Then, as I began to finally understand the erotic component of what appealed to me, I shipped Charles and Sebastian from Brideshead Revisited (the miniseries, although I did read the book soon after), and the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein with a gay friend of his whose name I can't remember, but who was mentioned in a Beatles biography. (This last, specifically the fact that I kept obsessively reading a couple of key passages--one about Brian having a brief affair with this friend, the other speculating about Brian and John Lennon during their trip to Barceona--made me understand at the age of thirteen or so that I found the thought of sex between men sexy.)
I didn't write any of these daydreams down, but when I was eleven or twelve I did compose a slashy "original" epic about first world war pilots, which I recorded onto a cassette in my best fake British accent. The cassette subsequently disappeared, and I hope to god no one in my family ever found and listened to it.
My first proper fannish OTP was Giles and Ethan from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but really that was just a small step from what I'd been doing mentally all along. (Including in graduate school; there was a chapter of my dissertation that, while it also talked about politics and stuff, included a large measure of, in essence, historical RPS.)
9. Has the internet caused you to stop liking any fandoms, and if so, which and why?
I don't think I've ever grown to dislike a source purely because of its fandom, but I can definitely lose fannish interest. I still really love the show Cabin Pressure, for example, but almost all the fanfic is so terrible, clichéd, and in my view out of character, that I don't have much interest even in writing my own fic. (That said, if good CP fic turns up, I'll read it.)
Fandom can more easily make me dislike characters, generally characters that the majority of fandom loves too much or in a way that, in my view, misunderstands them. Spike from BtVS, for instance, or Jack Harkness from Doctor Who and Torchwood, are characters I find interesting in canon but unbearable in most fanfic.
10. Name a fandom you didn't care much about until you saw it all over Tumblr/LJ/DW.
Oh, the internets draw me into lots of fandoms. I wasn't much interested in Doctor Who until I read people's discussions of it, and I'm pretty sure I first heard about Colditz through internet osmosis (I know some people who are interested in Man from UNCLE and/or NCIS, and some fans of those shows mentioned Colditz due to David McCallum being in it). On the other hand, sometimes a lot of buzz makes me stubbornly uninterested, e.g. The Hunger Games or Inception.
19. Show us an example of your personal headcanon.
"Headcanon," for me, means "things that although not canonically stated, I think will be true for every iteration of this character/universe" as opposed to interpretations I use for one particular story. So, to pick an example from the Buffyverse since it's less obscure than many of my other fandoms, my headcanon is that Giles and Ethan were lovers. I simply can't accept an interpretation of the characters in which they weren't--it doesn't make sense to me. On the other hand, "Ethan was at Oxford too and that's where Giles met him" is just a premise I used once.
There's also, to me, a distinction between headcanon and fanon. Headcanon has to have canonical plausibility; it has to consistently make sense within canon. Fanon, which for me is a term that still has negative associations (although it seems more neutral in current fannish usage) is something that begins as one author's interpretation but then becomes so influential that other people adopt it even though there isn't much or any canonical support. In Cabin Pressure the idea that Martin Crieff has an eating disorder is fanon, and it turns up, infuriatingly, in lots of fic.
20. Do you remember what you first fanwork was?
The first story that I ever wrote and posted is right over here. It has oh so many flaws (I didn't know better than to write it in first person, I swear!), but there are things I like about it too, so while there are a few early stories I've let sink into merciful oblivion, this one's still around.
23. Five favorite characters from five different fandoms.
It's hard to narrow this down to five. I'll go from first fandom to latest fandom, focusing (except for my current fandom, which is obscure to say the least) on large or well-known fandoms.
7. Do you remember your first OTP, and if so, who was in it?
Much depends, for all these questions, on how we define "first." I didn't get involved in fandom until 2003, but long before I knew fandom existed, I was creating fanficcish stories or at least scenarios in my head, most of them slashy. I was slashing long before puberty, in fact, making up stories about devoted male friends in circumstances that just happened to allow/require them to cuddle. When I was six or seven I adored the TV show "Emergency," which featured best-friend paramedics. I kind of slashed Snoopy and the Red Baron, too. Then it was Keith Mallory and his friend Andrea (a man) from the novel The Guns of Navarone (which I tried to re-read recently . . . it's pretty terrible, but still hella slashy). Then, as I began to finally understand the erotic component of what appealed to me, I shipped Charles and Sebastian from Brideshead Revisited (the miniseries, although I did read the book soon after), and the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein with a gay friend of his whose name I can't remember, but who was mentioned in a Beatles biography. (This last, specifically the fact that I kept obsessively reading a couple of key passages--one about Brian having a brief affair with this friend, the other speculating about Brian and John Lennon during their trip to Barceona--made me understand at the age of thirteen or so that I found the thought of sex between men sexy.)
I didn't write any of these daydreams down, but when I was eleven or twelve I did compose a slashy "original" epic about first world war pilots, which I recorded onto a cassette in my best fake British accent. The cassette subsequently disappeared, and I hope to god no one in my family ever found and listened to it.
My first proper fannish OTP was Giles and Ethan from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but really that was just a small step from what I'd been doing mentally all along. (Including in graduate school; there was a chapter of my dissertation that, while it also talked about politics and stuff, included a large measure of, in essence, historical RPS.)
9. Has the internet caused you to stop liking any fandoms, and if so, which and why?
I don't think I've ever grown to dislike a source purely because of its fandom, but I can definitely lose fannish interest. I still really love the show Cabin Pressure, for example, but almost all the fanfic is so terrible, clichéd, and in my view out of character, that I don't have much interest even in writing my own fic. (That said, if good CP fic turns up, I'll read it.)
Fandom can more easily make me dislike characters, generally characters that the majority of fandom loves too much or in a way that, in my view, misunderstands them. Spike from BtVS, for instance, or Jack Harkness from Doctor Who and Torchwood, are characters I find interesting in canon but unbearable in most fanfic.
10. Name a fandom you didn't care much about until you saw it all over Tumblr/LJ/DW.
Oh, the internets draw me into lots of fandoms. I wasn't much interested in Doctor Who until I read people's discussions of it, and I'm pretty sure I first heard about Colditz through internet osmosis (I know some people who are interested in Man from UNCLE and/or NCIS, and some fans of those shows mentioned Colditz due to David McCallum being in it). On the other hand, sometimes a lot of buzz makes me stubbornly uninterested, e.g. The Hunger Games or Inception.
19. Show us an example of your personal headcanon.
"Headcanon," for me, means "things that although not canonically stated, I think will be true for every iteration of this character/universe" as opposed to interpretations I use for one particular story. So, to pick an example from the Buffyverse since it's less obscure than many of my other fandoms, my headcanon is that Giles and Ethan were lovers. I simply can't accept an interpretation of the characters in which they weren't--it doesn't make sense to me. On the other hand, "Ethan was at Oxford too and that's where Giles met him" is just a premise I used once.
There's also, to me, a distinction between headcanon and fanon. Headcanon has to have canonical plausibility; it has to consistently make sense within canon. Fanon, which for me is a term that still has negative associations (although it seems more neutral in current fannish usage) is something that begins as one author's interpretation but then becomes so influential that other people adopt it even though there isn't much or any canonical support. In Cabin Pressure the idea that Martin Crieff has an eating disorder is fanon, and it turns up, infuriatingly, in lots of fic.
20. Do you remember what you first fanwork was?
The first story that I ever wrote and posted is right over here. It has oh so many flaws (I didn't know better than to write it in first person, I swear!), but there are things I like about it too, so while there are a few early stories I've let sink into merciful oblivion, this one's still around.
23. Five favorite characters from five different fandoms.
It's hard to narrow this down to five. I'll go from first fandom to latest fandom, focusing (except for my current fandom, which is obscure to say the least) on large or well-known fandoms.
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Giles.
2. due South, Ray Kowalski (and not, to everyone's surprise including my own, Benton Fraser)
3. Doctor Who, Second Doctor
4. X-Men, Erik Lehnsherr aka Magneto
5. Colditz: aaaaaaaaaugh, don't make me choose! If I absolutely must, I'd have to say George Brent, who slightly edges out Dick Player by virtue of being one of those vulnerable, introspective, depressive, lonely characters that I can't resist.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-30 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-31 04:51 am (UTC)what is it about that fandom and giving Martin an eating disorder?
It baffles and aggravates me, especially since it takes a genuinely moving moment, when we see how hard Martin's life is and how much he sacrifices to be a pilot, and competely reverses the point as well as introducing woobie clichés.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-31 10:44 am (UTC)