Topic 5: First fandom

[bironic]

kassrachel asked: Reminisce about your first fandom: what did you love about it?

This is much harder to answer than anticipated, because my entry into fandom occurred stepwise across 15 or 20 years.

There was the first canon I obsessed over and daydreamed about and encountered ancillary storytelling for in the form of tie-in novels (Star Trek), the first for which I found fic online and engaged with my best friend in what I now recognize as RPing (Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles) [and I started writing stories for Trek and the VC around the same time, as a teen], the first for which I inhaled fic and couldn't figure out how to stop (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the first I wrote meta/acafan stuff about and went to cons for (Harry Potter), and the first fandom I fully participated in on LJ, including writing fic and commenting on other fans' posts (House).

When I asked kassrachel if she could help narrow down the definition of "fandom" in this case, she said: "First canon you fell in love with and wanted to tell stories about? First canon you actively wrote stories about? First canon about which you wrote stories which you shared with other fans?" Fortunately, for all of those, I think I can answer Star Trek.

I can't say I have ever really been in Star Trek fandom the way we tend to define our corner of fandom as a community that makes/consumes zines and fic and vids and tumblrs and whatnot, but it was the first canon about which I was fannish. Intensely so. I think we've talked here before about how as far back as I can remember I was already watching TOS, because my mom had loved it since she was a kid and watched it on TV all the time, along with TNG when that started airing (I was about 5). Some of my earliest dreams were about TOS. Certainly my earliest crushes and fantasies were about TOS - being captured by Romulans or something and sharing a cell with McCoy or Kirk, or being rescued by them. To answer part of kass's question, those were the first fannish stories I wanted to tell, even if I only wanted to tell them to myself. Baby's Mary Sues.

Then I grew up. Just a little. I fell in love with Deep Space Nine when that came on the air. I didn't lose the yearning for Mary Sue fantasies, but I did develop the desire and some of the skills to write them out. The first start-to-finish fannish story I wrote was a DS9 one. I was 16. It was 44,000 words. And I shared it with other Star Trek fans. Granted, they were friends and family members and teachers (ack, how I blush to think about what I revealed about myself to some of those people), but they were fans, and I got a range of feedback, and that was awesome.

I still play with that Mary Sue and that basic plotline today. Hopefully in more sophisticated ways. But I guess it says a lot about me, good or bad, that that basic hurt/comfort plot in that same universe has been with me for 25 years.

I don't know what attracted me about Star Trek in those early days. The drama, maybe? The intensity of the characters and what they went through? The encouragement of the use of imagination? It's hard to know what I thought about it when I was 6 or 8. By the time I entered my teens, though, I know for sure that a large part of what I loved about creating fannish works in the Star Trek universe (and, as mentioned above, at around the same time, in the Vampire Chronicles too) was how it allowed me to explore my sexuality - my desires, and my fears about those desires. I still remember the thrill of the epiphany I had one day that when I sat with a notebook or at a keyboard, I was totally, utterly free to write whatever I wanted to. Some I could share and some I could keep secret. What has been unspeakably wonderful about becoming a part of fandom here - and I know I've expressed this before - is that some of what I thought I had to keep secret I actually didn't (don't), because there are others, absolutely lovely people, who want to tell and want to hear those stories too.

I don't know: Did that even answer the question? I love the Enterprise and Deep Space Nine and found families and trying to solve problems through a combination of reason and compassion, and I love space exploration and encounters with different cultures and biologies, and I love the uniforms and the ambient noises and Cardassians and tricorders and thinking about the future with idealism.

Comments

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

My first foray into organized fandom was Star Trek, too. Before that I was a little kid writing little ficlets about my favorite shows, but it was only when I became a Star Trek fan that I realized that lots of other people were doing that too, and I could go to conventions and meet them and read their stories and so forth. First it was the original series, then Next Gen, then DS9. I never got into the later iterations. (It's possible that I didn't have a television set anymore by then.)

I think that one of the best things about Star Trek as a fandom is how much scope for imagination the show inherently provides. Even while still in the Mary Sue stage, you can write stories about *anything* and anyone, explore facets of imaginary cultures or communication systems or mating practices. (And then you can inflict them on your friends and family, as I also did. Oy.)

[blackmare.livejournal.com]

I can relate to soooo much of what you're talking about here, though when I was 5 it was Emergency! and Baa Baa Black Sheep, and I was making up stories for myself and whoa yeah, hurt/comfort, two decades before I would ever encounter that term.

I've always been way more reticent than you were, about sharing any of the things that go on in my brain. I had tried writing fanfic (for old-school Doctor Who) a few times, not even knowing it was a thing, but I failed miserably. I hated my OCs and I couldn't plot a cemetery, let alone a story, so my solitary efforts never got past about three pages. That didn't change until I was 32 and I accidentally Doctor Who fandom online, while merely looking to see what kind of information was out there. And I stayed in that fandom until 1. it left my non-cable-having self in the dust in late 2005 with the new series and 2. by accident I didn't change the channel on that awful-looking House show before the credits started, and it said HUGH LAURIE WAIT WHAT?!!? and here we are.

Your willingness to write and then post your Mary Sue stuff is something I kind of envy (and, yeah, I like those stories). I can't imagine I'll ever be un-repressed enough to do the same; that space AU thing of mine is the closest I'll likely get to it.

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is such a marvelous answer! ♥ ♥ ♥