fullygoldy | My Journey Through Fandom

First of all, I'm not having such great luck with LJ. I can't get the strikeout thing to work, I've only had my "quote" show up in italics once, and yesterday, I worked on this post for 2 hours, and just when I thought I finally had it, and went to make a cut, because, hey, I like to think of myself as a conscientious member of my communities, I lost ALL of my formatting, and the cut didn't work anyway. Can you say 'hell?' Yeah. Okay. So here it is again today, and I'm not going to make a nifty cut. If someone wants to come over and hold my hand, and show me how to do it, that would be great. But until then, this is what you get:

Inspired by

texasbek , as usual.

Somewhere around 5 years ago, I got an out of town assignment in a tiny, boring town, whose main claim to fame is that it’s the last stop in IL, before you cross over into IN. I complained to our new boyfriend that I had nothing to do at night, and he responded by sending me a link to the Complete Kingdom of Slash (CKOS). Now, he claimed he wasn’t actually a slash reader; he had been sent there by his very good friend,

roguebitch , (and now a good friend of ours, even though this is ALL HER FAULT!!) because they were both Buffy fans, and she thought he’d like the Buffy slash. I guess he liked it well enough, because that’s what he suggested I read, in his vain attempt to pimp Buffy to me.

This is where I need to go on record about vampires. I don’t do them. I’ve tried, believe me, but no vampire-verse has ever actually held my attention. Please don’t take this admission as an invitation to try to change my mind. I’ve really got no interest (like Pete and strawberries, for those in the know). I like all kinds of SF and Fantasy, but not vampires. It’s not a squick thing either. I’m just completely apathetic toward them.

But back to the slash. I was bored enough by my circumstances, and intrigued enough by the concept of slash, that I decided to poke around in CKOS some more. At that time, the index was one huge page with the fandoms listed alphabetically. So I was scrolling down, reading names of shows, and when I’d see something I was familiar with, I’d try to imagine what pairings could possibly have been made. This is when I arrived at Family Ties, of all things. I couldn’t get my head around that one. It seemed so innocuous. So I clicked and found the very nice story, Hunger or Homage by Calcasieu. I also discovered a small, unknown kink: the hot kiss up against the inside of the door. <sigh>. Intellectually, I know I read a few <strike>Buffy</strike> Angel/Xander stories before I read Hunger, but I always think of this as my very first slash.

Well, that went so well, I kept scrolling, and SportsNight was the next thing on the list that caught my eye. “Hey! I love that show! Oh man, Danny and Casey. That’s got to be hot!” To my very great fortune, I found Bone’s “Two-Player Game” first, which doesn’t seem to be in CKOS any longer. I spent many happy hours reading everything in SN. Found the trickster archive, which sadly, is down again. I know many people will agree with me when I say that SN consistently attracted the best writers. I was spoiled right out of the gate, and my standards were unknowingly set so high, it was hard to find anything else that I thought was good enough.

When SN was exhausted, I moved on to Star Trek: Voyager, and Harry Kim. OMG. Never really paid much attention to him while the show was on, but slash him with anybody and I am SO there. Yummmmm. This is where I broke down and actually wrote my first slash. Minotaur had written the “Signals” series, but stopped after three chapters. He promised more, but the dates on the stories led me to believe I shouldn’t hold my breath. For several months, I kept checking back, but alas, no further installments were forthcoming. I was so obsessed, I had to bring closure to the series so I could move on. I wrote my own Chapter 4 and sent it to Minotaur. He very kindly replied that he wasn’t going to read it, because he had the next three (!) chapters planned out, and didn’t want to contaminate his ideas with mine, and he was flattered that his work had inspired its own fanfiction, but he also very politely requested that I not post my effort as “Chapter 4” of Signals. Perhaps I could turn it into original fic? Right. As If. LOL, I suppose it’s a blessing that he never read it, and I never posted it, because I’ve still got it, and OY! It’s pretty bad. But it accomplished the goal, I finally was able to put my obsession to rest.

Moving on from ST:V, the natural progression (alphabetically speaking) was X Files. The Skinner/Mulder OTP jumped me (I wish!), and suddenly I was drooling over every balding, bespectacled guy I came across. Like this guy in our town, with a kid our son’s age, who coaches basketball and baseball…. DH hangs out with him during football season, and Laughs, laughs, laughs at poor tongue-tied me. I mean, Mulder’s hot, but Skinner? Skinner is a MAN. CKOS led me to Three Way Stop, with Frogdoggie & Mik’s epics. Very satisfying until, I’d run through them all.

By this time, I was on the SN list, and had been lured over to the personal list of incomparable Emily Brunson, aka janissa11 , as well. In addition, West Wing was getting some press on SN, being so closely related. And I met pinkikat over there, whom I miss terribly. She beta’d a couple of stories for me, which weren’t too poorly received (one negative, several positive comments). She also pimped me into due South, (Fraser/RayK, thank you kindly) which I remembered not watching on purpose (it sounded really lame, what can I say?) by linking me to Kelly Matthews, Bone & Aristide (The Course is absolutely scorching), and finally

One day, I was jonesing for the good stuff, and Em wasn’t writing much SN anymore, but she was cranking out tons of something called “CSI.” OMFG!! Right here is where I say that West Wing and CSI are both shows I started watching because of the amazing slash (WW also has some amazing het <blush>). Gil/Nicky will always be my first CSI love, but after 'Grave Danger,' I’ve been looking for Warrick/Nick. I’ll actually read any pairing in CSI, even though pre-GD I swore Warrick was straight.

Finally we arrive at today, and my newest obsession, Stargate: Atlantis. Sheppard/McKay is absolutely the OTP. The only other canonically true pairs that can compete IMHO are Danny/Casey, & Fraser/RayK. And maybe Jack/Daniel.

People I haven’t listed by name yet, but who I must mention eventually:

resonant8 ,

astolat ,

raietta ,

shoshannagold , and julian/thwart , your day is coming, and I’ll try to do you justice. That’s my journey, and I thank each and every person who ever fed the compulsion or the muse. Eventually, I’ll feel compelled to do my journey through slash writing.

shrift and

nestra 's Polyamorous Recommendations. My god! Who has time to read and rec all the stuff these women wade through? Plus, they both write! Absolute heaven at Poly Recs, and if you haven’t been there, shame, shame. But having found them, I was also eventually sucked into reading Alias, Harry Potter, LOTR, and Stargate:SG1. I promise all of you fantastic authors in those fandoms, that I’ll eventually get around to pimping you by name and story.

cesperanza, who quickly became my all-time favorite writer.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I know many people will agree with me when I say that SN consistently attracted the best writers.

Amen, sista'

Skinner is a MAN I know we have discussed htis before but in my world, Mitch and I will be getting married. Yeah, I've crushed on guys before in fandoms, but this is true love people. won't even use Mitch icons because that is my hubby and that would just be too wierd. Ok, I'm nuts.

Let me know how I can help you with LJ.

michigangirl30 has been having problems with LJ as of late- you might want to ask her how she fixed it. Just tell her I sent you over.

Hi.

texasbek told me you were having troubles with LJ too. Not sure if the troubles you are experiencing are the same as mine were and I'm really not good at this type of thing but I thought I'd just point you to the place I found that helped me out.

http://www.livejournal.com/support/

There's one note for Mac users. I just followed the instructions there and Voila! my problems were over. Maybe this will help you too?

Your writings are interesting, but not in how I relate to what you are saying. Many of the pop cultural references are unknown to me (though for the record I was a big Buffy and X-files fan). It's more about how I don't related. See, it's not so important that I understand what "slash" is but more that there is some cultural phenomena here that is called slash. Interesting to be looking into a subculture window through your writings, and at the same time a window into generational differences. Plus it wasn't so long ago that I watched a fair amount of TV myself. So I see a bit of my past in there as well. Wow! what great head (smile).

I wonder, speculatively, if your vampire disinterest is related to their dinner selections. Really, a meal of freshly draw blood has to be quite boring, and to think they can't even dress it up with a little fresh garlic! LOL. By the way there are a couple pictures on the Polyamory_In_Wisconsin site, but I know it's not like seeing someone in person. MarkJ

My Journey Through Fandom

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