silveradept | Snowflake Challenge 2022 #13: Remembering The Past

Challenge #13 offers us the opportunity to tell stories.

In your own space, share a favorite memory about fandom: the first time you got into fandom, the last time a fanwork touched your heart, wild times with fellow fans (whether on-line or off-line), a lovely comment you’ve received or have left for someone.

There's a couple of phases of fandom in my life, which roughly translate to "when I had time and no money" and "when I have no time and a little bit of money." The "time but no money" phase is when I get a lot of watching and playing and an annual convention visit here and there and riding the wave of the return of anime to not needing to be made child-friendly. Even if the stuff that makes it over here is the kind of stuff that might be considered for younger audiences in the country of origin. It's the time of going to the local anime shop to see piro of Megatokyo fame (after the split with Largo) and get a book sketched in and meeting three other artists also present doing Secret of Mana Theater, Flipside, and 9th Elsewhere, the last of which is a bit of a ride about getting a book done and it taking nearly a decade to arrive, because the creator of a comic about someone suffering from mental health issues might have some of her own that create delays. (I have the book, it is precious, and while the comic itself has fallen away from the Internet, barring what the Internet Archive has collected, one of my pie in the sky "has time, motivation, and an idea" items is to finish the story, in a fanfic way, or to discover that the creator has done so and to read it myself.) It's the time of recognizing and being okay with the idea of liking stories with women as protagonists, of comedies over dramas (or series that are an endless series of fights against stronger opponents, with the exception of Henshin Heroes, because there's always an exception) and having a close-knit group of fans who met in person at a used bookstore to discuss their fandoms and make recommendations to each other about new things to watch that they might enjoy. I suspect it's the same kind of nostalgia of fandom that happens for the people who came in to their first ones online in a heyday that hasn't really returned and has to be cultivated.

The second phase, of having less time and a little more money, also is being in a completely new place and taking only the online things with me, but it's also the pause, essentially, where I don't do a whole lot of fandom related anything that's not for work, because there's not a lot of being fannish when the fandom stuff you bring with you doesn't get prominent display and the person you're with doesn't want you to go anywhere or do anything with people other than them. So, we emerge from that pause in a better place, still pretty poor, but able to do things like go to convention again, and two of them a year, for relatively cheaply. And the stuff goes on the walls, and I get a little less shy about the idea of joining the transformative fandom side publicly, rather than having written things here and there and letting them live on whatever forum they were related to. In a lot of ways, this phase is both better (neat stuff to read and write! More fans everywhere! A better understanding of many of the problems and attitudes that my younger self and or friends had.) and worse (no group to go to convention to with and trade stories of what happened, and therefore no hotel room to come back to after a good day to continue with good times well into the night) than the one before. And, participation in chunks when I have a little bit of time to write.

But, as a starting exchange author, like many other things in my life, I didn't have much confidence in my own skill. Never mind all the practice I have at writing in various forms from work and university and fandom experiences, if it's something new, there's no reason to believe it will be anything good. Within a few exchanges, though, I had a specific proof that things were going to go well.

Best gift. Best gift. I knew when I asked for Boy Who Cried Wolf and Cassandra of Troy meeting, it was the longest of long shots, and looky! And Arachne's here too! :-D

Which was exactly the kind of proof I needed to believe that it wasn't just someone being polite when they say they enjoy it, even if they gave detailed lists of what they liked about the thing. Brains are weird, okay?

So that's the thing that I'm chasing every time I write something - the kind of enthusiasm-radiating keysmash from someone who found it fantastic and exactly the kind of thing they wanted, possibly even a thing they put in as a long shot that turns out to have been the match for the exchange.

I am incoherent with glee at this. The pastiche, the characterisation, the worldbuild - it's all fantastic. I'm going to copy/paste my rambling -- just, thank you thank you!

[…]

Oh, author, this was amazing. My prompt was so out there, and I really didn't want you to feel constrained, but I am so happy you ran with it. The amount of consent is perfect, and everything is just... Crazy good. THANK YOU so much for this. Happy, happy yuletide to you - may it be as good as the one you just gave me!

So, yeah, there's a lot of nice memories captured in recipient comments for me.

Oh my gosh this is FANTASTIC. eeeeeee, I wonder if it was the same demon rat. Or possibly a related demon rat?! Who knows!

CATS ARE UNDETERRED BY YOUR EXCESSIVE USE OF ALLCAPS.

I am giggling like an idiot, you should know. And I love the idea of this being a family thing passed down forever. But current-Joji is correct, his needs a better name than Mr. Bubbles. Also future adventures! And also thrilled that I was right about that being a Neko Atsume ref, I will definetly go and read that next. Or. Sometime tomorrow since technically I should not be awake. Thank youuuu! <333

These are the kind of things that I go back to when I'm having a bad day, or when I'm unsure that I'm going to be able to pull something off, or it won't be good.

PLACEHOLDER TEXT FOR A LONGER COMMENT BUT OH MY GOD REST ASSURED I AM YELLING THIS IS SO GREAT.

[…]

I had seriously, zero expectations going into this fic and I am delighted to tell you that anything I could have dreamed up would not have been NEARLY as good as this fic.

Seriously, this was so brilliant and so clever. It forced me to think and to engage in the text in a way i normally wouldn't. If I hadn't left such a long comment and also wouldn't be breaking a thousand rules of fanfic, I would send this to the Medieval Lit professor who taught me to love Canterbury Tales because I think he'd get such a kick out of it. I certainly did!

And the nicest thing about this is how many different fandoms these kinds of comments come from, since I have such a long tail, because exchange fic tends to test your breadth much more than your depth, based on how the matching works and what you have to offer compared to what you can request.

This is utterly magnificent. A masterpiece! I am completely delighted, thank you so much for crafting this fun, clever story for me!

The breaking of the fourth wall was artfully done. I laughed aloud at several points. And poor little Galahad. He was trying so hard to be a good boy. I'm so glad he enjoys himself, and the ladies too. The ladies were all excellent!

So, there's a lot of happy, happy fandom memories that are entrenched in my comments sections to the things that I put together, whether on AO3 or elsewhere.