Snowflake Challenge, Day 5
Jan. 5th, 2015 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pensnestI did yesterday's challenge - make contact with people you don't know - as I've been commenting here and there on Yuletide and other fics, but didn't bother to say so.
Todays challenge is: In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story. How did you come to fandom, why did you choose your fannish name, do you have more than one secret identity?
I can't help but feel I've talked about my fannish origins before—so I think I'm going to put a slight spin on the idea by talking about getting into fanfic.
I always have stories in my head. i wrote an epic, multi-generational fairy tale when I was about thirteen—and to my current woe threw it away when I was sixteen and a better critic. Ah well. As a child I dreamed up adventures for Sir Gareth (kid brother of Sir Gawaine and thus, obviously, my favourite) and Ginger (Biggles' second sidekick, and thus, obviously, my favourite) and probably a whole lot more sidekicks and younger brothers I have since forgotten about.
At boarding school, I began watching Alias Smith and Jones. *sigh* These days it would be Pete Duel to make me croon happy songs, but back then it was Ben Murphy, most likely on the grounds that he was the quiet type and Pete's character did all the talking. Ben's character was, therefore, the sidekick.
Sensing a theme, possibly.
Well. I found my way into Star Trek: The Next Generation and fell for Data in a big way. Not only was he in the sidekick role, he was also *exactly* my preferred physical type (which seems to be 'funny-looking, preferably Jewish, guys who make me laugh') but he was also pretty much a high functioning autistic chap, which apparently is also what I like. Not that my Beast is definably on the spectrum, but he's close. (I discovered years later that many youngsters with Asperger's Syndrome identified with Data.)
So naturally I started making up stories about Data in my head.
I don't quite know when I became aware of the existence of fanfic. I found fandom via the official Star Trek magazine, which I used to sneak out of the bookshop in a large brown paper bag: there was an ad for the IDIC newsletter, and as I was in full 'CONSUME ALL THINGS TREK' mode at the time, I subscribed, and it was a thing of joy. A thing of joy which contained small ads for fanfic zines. I sent for something that I cannot now find, but which I think was Make It So #21, and the very first story was a lovely Data-based one which became personal canon for me before I really knew what that meant. I wrote a LoC to the zine and asked that it be passed on to the author, who became a penfriend for several years. I dunno whether I'd already been informed that feedback was A Good Thing or not, but it always worked for me.
Anyway. The glorious discovery that other people did this stuff too was promptly followed by the realisation that I could write my stories down and someone would publish them and other people would read them. So I did. I had a delightful but very brief period of having stories accepted into zines, but this came just as the internet was laying waste to the idea of printed fanfic, and some of them never actually made it into print.
I can't remember how I made the acquaintance of Marty Siegrist (awesome fan artist), but she sent me copies of her brilliant reviewzine, Psst… hey kid, wanna buy a fanzine? and this inspired me to try something rather less beautiful and ambitious, and thus was born An Idiosyncratic Review, in which I besought reviews and articles and LoCs and published them on a six-monthly schedule, with diggie ratings. Thus did I become acquainted with PageMaker. Which—apart from its worrying tendency to quit at random but crucial intervals—was a lovely little program. Oh, and I also published a zine focussing on Data, using my own stories but also stories from other people who'd written Data fic that I enjoyed. Illustrated it myself, too. I have *no* idea how much money I lost on that, but it was very satisfying to produce my own zine.
Well. It was the nineties. Zines were dying out and the internet was revving up. I started reading and writing on alt.startrek.creative, which was kinda fun because the feedback there (a) was instant and (b) actually happened, which it really didn't with printed stories. I was not prolific enough (too lazy!) to be one of the Big Names, nor did I write about one of the major pairings, but I found fellow Data-fans and that was a nice little community for a while.
Eventually, though, I fell out of love with ST:TNG. The films didn't help, nor the implosion on my Spinerphiles group, nor the general lack of traction for ST:TNG when there was Voyager to be watched. I liked DS9, but wasn't in love with it, and only watched enough Voyager to realise I didn't care. So that was me, no fandom.
I got into Harry Potter for a while, and even had a story rejected by the SugarQuill for being too racy—good grief!—and was very much excited by Buffy, but never dared to try writing in that fandom as I knew I would never get the dialogue right. Firefly I loved, and I'm sure I would have written for it had it gone on longer, but happily for me, I was at some kind of Jossverse convention with my daughter when a leaflet for a different convention caught my eye, and I recognised it as something that had at one time advertised in A.I.R., so I went.
And that was Redemption in 2005, and that was where I metnopseud and was introduced to popslash. I'm not what I'd call a 'natural slasher'—I'd read slash stories during my Trek phase, but didn't particularly seek them out, and tended not to notice slashy stuff onscreen, by and large. However, it turned out the sparkly dancing boys hooked me good and proper, and after reading *all the time* (not actually true, I was in a show during this period, but it felt like it) for about six weeks, started up a LiveJournal and posted my first popslash fic.
LiveJournal was a revelation in terms of fannish interaction. It was possible to connect with people and figure out who they were in a quite different way from newsgroups, and stories could be posted and recced and receive feedback and everything was just so much fun. I kinda wish I'd discovered popslash (and LJ) a couple of years earlier, when it was still The Big Thing, although overall I'm glad not to have been caught up in the "RPF is Evil" debate. I made my peace with it pretty quickly, I have to admit!
And I'm still in love, even though my adored ones don't sparkle quite the way they used to. Well, Lance does. I love Lance. He sparkles more, and he—anyway. I kept a word count of my output for a while, but stopped when it got above 400,000. (My Trek count, incidentally, was a little under 60,000 words). I've written a hundred and eighty popslash stories, from 100 to 36,000 words in length, plus a handful more of Adam Lambert fics as he was hard to resist. I ran a Dragon Challenge for five years, participated in I don't know how many challenges and comunities of various kinds, and still love my boys and have things yet to say about them.
Along the way I learned a lot from fandom—I still mourn the demise of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
metafandom because the discussions, and the rows, and the almighty blowups, taught me so much. I'm sure my writing has improved, and my beta-reading too. And I've had so much fun, reading stories, talking about fic, having MTYG get-togethers and going to concerts and Camp Sparkle and what not, really. Oh, I also learned a great deal about Photoshop, through making icons and other graphics. I read outside my beloved fandom (have to, really) but somehow don't feel that connection which would get me to write in another one. Still. I kinda feel sorry for people who aren't in fandom.
So that's my fannish journey.
Oh, my name? I'm pensnest everywhere (although on my website (how old school is that?) I put "stories by Pen"). I've been pensnest on the internet ever since Compuserve let me have a name instead of a number, and as far as I can tell, I'm the *only* pensnest on the internet. Quite right too. I do, inexplicably, have a different name on Ravelry, but that's a minor thing.
There. More than you ever needed to know about me!
Todays challenge is: In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story. How did you come to fandom, why did you choose your fannish name, do you have more than one secret identity?
I can't help but feel I've talked about my fannish origins before—so I think I'm going to put a slight spin on the idea by talking about getting into fanfic.
I always have stories in my head. i wrote an epic, multi-generational fairy tale when I was about thirteen—and to my current woe threw it away when I was sixteen and a better critic. Ah well. As a child I dreamed up adventures for Sir Gareth (kid brother of Sir Gawaine and thus, obviously, my favourite) and Ginger (Biggles' second sidekick, and thus, obviously, my favourite) and probably a whole lot more sidekicks and younger brothers I have since forgotten about.
At boarding school, I began watching Alias Smith and Jones. *sigh* These days it would be Pete Duel to make me croon happy songs, but back then it was Ben Murphy, most likely on the grounds that he was the quiet type and Pete's character did all the talking. Ben's character was, therefore, the sidekick.
Sensing a theme, possibly.
Well. I found my way into Star Trek: The Next Generation and fell for Data in a big way. Not only was he in the sidekick role, he was also *exactly* my preferred physical type (which seems to be 'funny-looking, preferably Jewish, guys who make me laugh') but he was also pretty much a high functioning autistic chap, which apparently is also what I like. Not that my Beast is definably on the spectrum, but he's close. (I discovered years later that many youngsters with Asperger's Syndrome identified with Data.)
So naturally I started making up stories about Data in my head.
I don't quite know when I became aware of the existence of fanfic. I found fandom via the official Star Trek magazine, which I used to sneak out of the bookshop in a large brown paper bag: there was an ad for the IDIC newsletter, and as I was in full 'CONSUME ALL THINGS TREK' mode at the time, I subscribed, and it was a thing of joy. A thing of joy which contained small ads for fanfic zines. I sent for something that I cannot now find, but which I think was Make It So #21, and the very first story was a lovely Data-based one which became personal canon for me before I really knew what that meant. I wrote a LoC to the zine and asked that it be passed on to the author, who became a penfriend for several years. I dunno whether I'd already been informed that feedback was A Good Thing or not, but it always worked for me.
Anyway. The glorious discovery that other people did this stuff too was promptly followed by the realisation that I could write my stories down and someone would publish them and other people would read them. So I did. I had a delightful but very brief period of having stories accepted into zines, but this came just as the internet was laying waste to the idea of printed fanfic, and some of them never actually made it into print.
I can't remember how I made the acquaintance of Marty Siegrist (awesome fan artist), but she sent me copies of her brilliant reviewzine, Psst… hey kid, wanna buy a fanzine? and this inspired me to try something rather less beautiful and ambitious, and thus was born An Idiosyncratic Review, in which I besought reviews and articles and LoCs and published them on a six-monthly schedule, with diggie ratings. Thus did I become acquainted with PageMaker. Which—apart from its worrying tendency to quit at random but crucial intervals—was a lovely little program. Oh, and I also published a zine focussing on Data, using my own stories but also stories from other people who'd written Data fic that I enjoyed. Illustrated it myself, too. I have *no* idea how much money I lost on that, but it was very satisfying to produce my own zine.
Well. It was the nineties. Zines were dying out and the internet was revving up. I started reading and writing on alt.startrek.creative, which was kinda fun because the feedback there (a) was instant and (b) actually happened, which it really didn't with printed stories. I was not prolific enough (too lazy!) to be one of the Big Names, nor did I write about one of the major pairings, but I found fellow Data-fans and that was a nice little community for a while.
Eventually, though, I fell out of love with ST:TNG. The films didn't help, nor the implosion on my Spinerphiles group, nor the general lack of traction for ST:TNG when there was Voyager to be watched. I liked DS9, but wasn't in love with it, and only watched enough Voyager to realise I didn't care. So that was me, no fandom.
I got into Harry Potter for a while, and even had a story rejected by the SugarQuill for being too racy—good grief!—and was very much excited by Buffy, but never dared to try writing in that fandom as I knew I would never get the dialogue right. Firefly I loved, and I'm sure I would have written for it had it gone on longer, but happily for me, I was at some kind of Jossverse convention with my daughter when a leaflet for a different convention caught my eye, and I recognised it as something that had at one time advertised in A.I.R., so I went.
And that was Redemption in 2005, and that was where I met
nopseud and was introduced to popslash. I'm not what I'd call a 'natural slasher'—I'd read slash stories during my Trek phase, but didn't particularly seek them out, and tended not to notice slashy stuff onscreen, by and large. However, it turned out the sparkly dancing boys hooked me good and proper, and after reading *all the time* (not actually true, I was in a show during this period, but it felt like it) for about six weeks, started up a LiveJournal and posted my first popslash fic.LiveJournal was a revelation in terms of fannish interaction. It was possible to connect with people and figure out who they were in a quite different way from newsgroups, and stories could be posted and recced and receive feedback and everything was just so much fun. I kinda wish I'd discovered popslash (and LJ) a couple of years earlier, when it was still The Big Thing, although overall I'm glad not to have been caught up in the "RPF is Evil" debate. I made my peace with it pretty quickly, I have to admit!
And I'm still in love, even though my adored ones don't sparkle quite the way they used to. Well, Lance does. I love Lance. He sparkles more, and he—anyway. I kept a word count of my output for a while, but stopped when it got above 400,000. (My Trek count, incidentally, was a little under 60,000 words). I've written a hundred and eighty popslash stories, from 100 to 36,000 words in length, plus a handful more of Adam Lambert fics as he was hard to resist. I ran a Dragon Challenge for five years, participated in I don't know how many challenges and comunities of various kinds, and still love my boys and have things yet to say about them.
Along the way I learned a lot from fandom—I still mourn the demise of
metafandom because the discussions, and the rows, and the almighty blowups, taught me so much. I'm sure my writing has improved, and my beta-reading too. And I've had so much fun, reading stories, talking about fic, having MTYG get-togethers and going to concerts and Camp Sparkle and what not, really. Oh, I also learned a great deal about Photoshop, through making icons and other graphics. I read outside my beloved fandom (have to, really) but somehow don't feel that connection which would get me to write in another one. Still. I kinda feel sorry for people who aren't in fandom. So that's my fannish journey.
Oh, my name? I'm pensnest everywhere (although on my website (how old school is that?) I put "stories by Pen"). I've been pensnest on the internet ever since Compuserve let me have a name instead of a number, and as far as I can tell, I'm the *only* pensnest on the internet. Quite right too. I do, inexplicably, have a different name on Ravelry, but that's a minor thing.
There. More than you ever needed to know about me!