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Today's Post is About Firsts
Dec. 7th, 2013 12:51 pmSpecifically, my first fandom and first femslash pairing.
Which, actually, are two different questions. My first fandom - at least the first thing I think of as a fandom, I think I was always a little more, ah, involved with the stories I was exposed to than the other children - was the 90s Star Treks. The Next Generation was something that was watched on Saturday mornings with my dad; it was the only morning I was allowed to have coco puffs for breakfast, the rest of the week it was shredded wheat. I must have seen every episode of that at least twice, although I haven't re-watched any of them in years, for the same reason that I've never read any fic; TNG lives in the little roped off section of my brain marked "Precious Childhood Memories."
By the time Deep Space Nine and Voyager reached their heyday, I was in my teens and had acquired that most wondrous of things: a ludicrously slow dialup connection--
A brief aside, as this was back in the dark ages, the UK still showed most US shows years after they originally aired, and there was nothing you could do about it. Except, what you could do about it was go to Star Trek Conventions, which weren't conventions so much as they were two hundred nerds sitting in a conference room in one of Glasgow's more middling hotels, where by means of VCR, an overhead projector, and somebody's friend in the States, you would be shown the latest episodes of DS9 and Voyager.
--Where was I? Oh, yes, having just discovered the internet, and shortly thereafter fandom, and the frankly sanity-saving discovery that I wasn't the only person who made up stories about Star Trek characters in their head.
Deep Space Nine was one of those rarest of shows; one I was fannish about, but so satisfied by the canon that I didn't feel any real need for fic. Although, the fact that Rejoined was the hour of television that I watched more than any other in my teens probably tells you all you need to know about me at that age. And then there was Voyager, which hit that fannish sweet spot of having beloved characters, a great basic premise, and just enough wrong with it to make you want to swan dive straight into it and swim around.
Strangely, given that Voyager was one of the big formative femslash fandoms, wee baby lesbian me was exclusively a het shipper there. I loved Tom and B'Elanna, and was delighted when they got married. I loved Seven and the Doctor, and how important they were to each other, and how they were both emotionally inarticulate in different ways. Seven/Chakotay was my first exposure to I-have-just-pulled-this-out-of-my-arse endgame shipping.
The first fandom where I shipped femslash was the also the first fandom where I wrote my own fic as well as reading other people's, and that was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was a fandom where I read and wrote really widely, well, because everything was new and shiny and made of puppies and sunshine and lesbians. And Buffy had two big femslash pairings; Willow/Tara, which I must confess did very little for me, at the beginning I found it boring and curiously sexless, and later fucked-up and kind of abusive, and became frustrated with canon and fandom's lack of engagement with the fucked-up-ness; and Buffy/Faith, which had chemistry up the wahzoo, legions and shippers, and made so very much sense, and inexplicably did nothing for me.
What can I say? Antagonist pairings don't tend to appeal, pairings where I have a cat's chance of finding any fic don't tend to appeal. You know what I shipped hard during my Buffy days? Tara/Anya. I don't even remember why, entirely, except that at the time my fondest wish was for a fic where they left the Hellmouth and opened a comparatively priced magic detective agency (not like Angel had a detective agency, this one would specialise in finding lost pets and the like, Anya knows a niche in the market when she sees one.)
Admittedly, this early fondness for rare to nonexistent femslash did teach me two things that have served me well in all my subsequent fandoms: 1) it only takes one sufficiently interesting fic to sell even the most outlandish of pairings, and 2) if I want something to exist badly enough, I write it.
Which, actually, are two different questions. My first fandom - at least the first thing I think of as a fandom, I think I was always a little more, ah, involved with the stories I was exposed to than the other children - was the 90s Star Treks. The Next Generation was something that was watched on Saturday mornings with my dad; it was the only morning I was allowed to have coco puffs for breakfast, the rest of the week it was shredded wheat. I must have seen every episode of that at least twice, although I haven't re-watched any of them in years, for the same reason that I've never read any fic; TNG lives in the little roped off section of my brain marked "Precious Childhood Memories."
By the time Deep Space Nine and Voyager reached their heyday, I was in my teens and had acquired that most wondrous of things: a ludicrously slow dialup connection--
A brief aside, as this was back in the dark ages, the UK still showed most US shows years after they originally aired, and there was nothing you could do about it. Except, what you could do about it was go to Star Trek Conventions, which weren't conventions so much as they were two hundred nerds sitting in a conference room in one of Glasgow's more middling hotels, where by means of VCR, an overhead projector, and somebody's friend in the States, you would be shown the latest episodes of DS9 and Voyager.
--Where was I? Oh, yes, having just discovered the internet, and shortly thereafter fandom, and the frankly sanity-saving discovery that I wasn't the only person who made up stories about Star Trek characters in their head.
Deep Space Nine was one of those rarest of shows; one I was fannish about, but so satisfied by the canon that I didn't feel any real need for fic. Although, the fact that Rejoined was the hour of television that I watched more than any other in my teens probably tells you all you need to know about me at that age. And then there was Voyager, which hit that fannish sweet spot of having beloved characters, a great basic premise, and just enough wrong with it to make you want to swan dive straight into it and swim around.
Strangely, given that Voyager was one of the big formative femslash fandoms, wee baby lesbian me was exclusively a het shipper there. I loved Tom and B'Elanna, and was delighted when they got married. I loved Seven and the Doctor, and how important they were to each other, and how they were both emotionally inarticulate in different ways. Seven/Chakotay was my first exposure to I-have-just-pulled-this-out-of-my-arse endgame shipping.
The first fandom where I shipped femslash was the also the first fandom where I wrote my own fic as well as reading other people's, and that was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was a fandom where I read and wrote really widely, well, because everything was new and shiny and made of puppies and sunshine and lesbians. And Buffy had two big femslash pairings; Willow/Tara, which I must confess did very little for me, at the beginning I found it boring and curiously sexless, and later fucked-up and kind of abusive, and became frustrated with canon and fandom's lack of engagement with the fucked-up-ness; and Buffy/Faith, which had chemistry up the wahzoo, legions and shippers, and made so very much sense, and inexplicably did nothing for me.
What can I say? Antagonist pairings don't tend to appeal, pairings where I have a cat's chance of finding any fic don't tend to appeal. You know what I shipped hard during my Buffy days? Tara/Anya. I don't even remember why, entirely, except that at the time my fondest wish was for a fic where they left the Hellmouth and opened a comparatively priced magic detective agency (not like Angel had a detective agency, this one would specialise in finding lost pets and the like, Anya knows a niche in the market when she sees one.)
Admittedly, this early fondness for rare to nonexistent femslash did teach me two things that have served me well in all my subsequent fandoms: 1) it only takes one sufficiently interesting fic to sell even the most outlandish of pairings, and 2) if I want something to exist badly enough, I write it.