December Meme: December 30
Jan. 3rd, 2015 10:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seerofbreadCan you believe I forgot to do this until the next year? I can, for several reasons including that I do have a precedent for leaving thing like this for months.
Anyway, today's prompt is "formative fandoms" from100demons. I'm not 100% sure what this really means, but I'm going to give it my best shot.
The only fandom that I know would qualify is Circle of Magic by Tamora Pierce. (And spinoffs, of course.) I wasn't too strongly into the fandom when I first read the books in middle school, but I definitely drew some (awful, terrible) fanart and stuff; sometimes I'm sort of not into it but I also still am, because it's really important to me. It probably established some of my high standards for representation, even though I think I managed to believe that they were all white the first time I read it. (I have no idea why. Probably because I didn't know that POC main characters were a thing, outside of things that are specifically about race.) It almost definitely established my tendency to have mostly-female casts in my original things, and why I felt so critical of The Maze Runner having literally one female character in the whole (first) book.
Otherwise, uh. I have to give a shout-out to Yu-Gi-Oh! for probably being the reason I got my first online account? (Or maybe just my first online account for fandom things?) On this tiny fanart site, LOL. Either soon after that or actually being a solid half of why I did that, I got into Fruits Basket, which is almost definitely a formative fandom for me. Ensemble casts and all that. But probably more importantly, it set a trend that I started for doing OC fanfiction. For the first couple fandoms I did this, it usually had a self-insert in the center (though they might not really have been recognizable as me because I tended to give them so many qualities that I wished I had) but always at least two more original characters. I tended to make ensemble casts of OCs in fanfic (for the Fruits Basket one there were, like, fourteen OCs, holy shit?) which definitely continued when I wrote original things.
Naruto gets a shout-out, in addition to having what was probably my most popular self-insert fic (????), for being where I first really discovered slash. Like, I knew it was a thing, but it wasn't until Naruto that I started really actually shipping. And I shipped literally everything. I had some preferences (usually for slash or femslash but not always) but I would read pretty much any fic regardless of ship. Though uh, I seem to recall that my favorite ship was Itachi/Tobi for some reason, which probably explains that. (If you can't read your OTP then all other ships are pretty much equal by comparison, right?) I didn't get into anything smutty until Hetalia, which I got into probably a year after getting out of Naruto, but man I fucking loved shipping.
Speaking of Hetalia.... I'm not sure how much of anything about it counts as "formative" because moreso I'd think it was like, the beginning of my current fandom era which isn't necessarily formative anymore? But it definitely gets a shout-out for how the fandom practically ran on quadrants without even knowing what they are. I understand there's now a lot of overlap in the Homestuck and Hetalia fanbases, but even before that was the case I think that the Hetalia fandom like, might as well have used quadrants. So there's definitely a shout-out to be had there, for introducing me to alternative forms of shipping, and probably helping me welcome my new quadrant overlords.
Anyway, today's prompt is "formative fandoms" from
100demons. I'm not 100% sure what this really means, but I'm going to give it my best shot.The only fandom that I know would qualify is Circle of Magic by Tamora Pierce. (And spinoffs, of course.) I wasn't too strongly into the fandom when I first read the books in middle school, but I definitely drew some (awful, terrible) fanart and stuff; sometimes I'm sort of not into it but I also still am, because it's really important to me. It probably established some of my high standards for representation, even though I think I managed to believe that they were all white the first time I read it. (I have no idea why. Probably because I didn't know that POC main characters were a thing, outside of things that are specifically about race.) It almost definitely established my tendency to have mostly-female casts in my original things, and why I felt so critical of The Maze Runner having literally one female character in the whole (first) book.
Otherwise, uh. I have to give a shout-out to Yu-Gi-Oh! for probably being the reason I got my first online account? (Or maybe just my first online account for fandom things?) On this tiny fanart site, LOL. Either soon after that or actually being a solid half of why I did that, I got into Fruits Basket, which is almost definitely a formative fandom for me. Ensemble casts and all that. But probably more importantly, it set a trend that I started for doing OC fanfiction. For the first couple fandoms I did this, it usually had a self-insert in the center (though they might not really have been recognizable as me because I tended to give them so many qualities that I wished I had) but always at least two more original characters. I tended to make ensemble casts of OCs in fanfic (for the Fruits Basket one there were, like, fourteen OCs, holy shit?) which definitely continued when I wrote original things.
Naruto gets a shout-out, in addition to having what was probably my most popular self-insert fic (????), for being where I first really discovered slash. Like, I knew it was a thing, but it wasn't until Naruto that I started really actually shipping. And I shipped literally everything. I had some preferences (usually for slash or femslash but not always) but I would read pretty much any fic regardless of ship. Though uh, I seem to recall that my favorite ship was Itachi/Tobi for some reason, which probably explains that. (If you can't read your OTP then all other ships are pretty much equal by comparison, right?) I didn't get into anything smutty until Hetalia, which I got into probably a year after getting out of Naruto, but man I fucking loved shipping.
Speaking of Hetalia.... I'm not sure how much of anything about it counts as "formative" because moreso I'd think it was like, the beginning of my current fandom era which isn't necessarily formative anymore? But it definitely gets a shout-out for how the fandom practically ran on quadrants without even knowing what they are. I understand there's now a lot of overlap in the Homestuck and Hetalia fanbases, but even before that was the case I think that the Hetalia fandom like, might as well have used quadrants. So there's definitely a shout-out to be had there, for introducing me to alternative forms of shipping, and probably helping me welcome my new quadrant overlords.
