Snowflake Challenge #2

For snowflake_challenge: "Talk about your fannish origin story."

My true fandom origin stretches back before I can specifically remember - coming up with games and play-acting stories based on the shows I watched and books I read. I would imagine my own Pokemon team as I played in my yard, or come up with improbable ways in which I could meet and hang out with characters from Redwall or Valdemar or Tortall or Sailor Moon. I don't think I ever wrote any of those stories down; I just acted them out when playing. (Though in middle school I did start to write a story that was absolutely just a thinly-veiled, serial-numbers-filed-off version of Outlaw Star, haha.)

My first formal introduction to the idea of organized fandom came while sitting in the cafeteria in high school. Freshman year, probably? My friend Kelsey and I were talking to each other, and she said something to the effect of, "It's weird, but when I'm going to sleep, I imagine stories about my favorite characters and me where we go on adventures and things." 

I said something like, "That is SO weird, because I do the same thing! How crazy!"

Third friend Erin (who I always thought was way cooler than me, and would soon become my source for weird VHS anime and such) rolled her eyes and smacked her hands down on the table and said, exasperated, "Oh my god, that's not weird at all! Haven't you ever heard of FANFICTION?" 

She then dramatically walked away, and Kelsey and I stared at each other a moment. I was bemused, because no, I had not ever heard that word! She said it like it was something I should have been familiar with, so I was vaguely embarrassed that I apparently didn't understand something I should, and now slightly-cooler-friend realized it!

That night I googled the term, and found fanfiction dot net and that was that! From there I also found other sites like media miner, as well as the then-wealth of individual sites and character shrines and personal archives and such. I eventually started writing fanfiction of my own. (It was all very bad. There were terrible songfics!)

(Ultimately I also introduced much of the rest of the friend group to fanfiction. I was one of the only ones with easy internet access and a printer, so I'd print off favorite fics, and we'd pass them around in binders.)

It wasn't long before I'd also joined my school's anime club, and then for many years went to the main anime con in the region.

So thank you, Erin, for your offhand comment, introducing me to the idea that it wasn't that weird to imagine your own stories about your favorite characters!