enemyofperfect | Snowflake Challenge #2: Fannish history (Reply)

Snowflake Challenge January 1 - 31

For the second challenge of the month, have over a thousand words of ramble about my meandering course through fandom!

Arguably the first fanfic I wrote was a Dragonriders of Pern knockoff I did for a writing club at school when I was nine. As I recall, it skipped all the weird sex stuff I wasn't interested in, but also featured a scene with my heroes getting tied up. In hindsight, I might have been a little of a proto-kinkster. I have the dim sense that the older student who read it over was somewhat bemused, but possibly more about the dragons than the durance vile.

Skip forward a bunch of years -- in which I compulsively overinvested in fictional characters, particularly ones who suffered greatly and/or got tied up -- and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban finally got me wholeheartedly onboard with that series, because Remus Lupin was a soft-spoken sweetheart with a painful secret, and I loved him. I'm not sure exactly when I discovered fanfic -- it might not have been until several years later, when Order of the Phoenix convinced me that Snape was a tragically misunderstood hero -- but when I did, I devoured any and all stories about those two, either separately or in combination.

I remained a lurker for many years after that, though, not even daring to comment on my favorite stories. I tried my hand at fanfic a couple of times -- once for Harry Potter, another time for Psych -- but never finished or shared any of the results until White Collar happened.

Ahh, White Collar. In hindsight, it's kind of messed up for a law enforcement officer to make cute jokes about sending his CI back to prison all the time, but to a younger and more naive

enemyofperfect, this show was a kinky paradise. I was still almost entirely a lurker, but I read fanfic and meta at an ever greater rate, and I actually managed to draft a few fics of my own, even if I only ever ended up posting one of them (and that years after the fact).

White Collar fandom was also notable for the cheerful ubiquity of polyamorous fic, because Elizabeth Burke was just absolutely too amazing to write out of the way just so Neal and Peter could get it on. I still have such positive memories of this fandom, even though I hardly ever interacted with it as such.

But in the way of network television, White Collar's quality began to wane, or at least its interests began increasingly to diverge from mine. I spent a while fannishly adrift, for a while taking an intense interest in Fairly Legal (a bubbly short-lived series starring Sarah Shahi) but not really finding much company in that -- and then there was Person of Interest.

I did not expect to like Person of Interest. It looked like a love letter to government surveillance starring a couple of white guy vigilantes, and one thing I have in common with myself from a decade ago is that I'm not big on unregulated violence. (The change is that I've grown even more skeptical of supposedly regulated violence, too.)

But the thing about early season Person of Interest, the thing that really surprised me, is that it loved human beings just so much. I wound up comparing it to the story about someone throwing stranded starfish back into the ocean, even though there's a beachful of them and it's impossible to save them all: but it matters to that one. That's how the show felt, like beneath all the hilariously over-the-top violence, it was affirming the worth of each individual human life, even the ones that society might not care about that much, or the ones who were starting to give up on themselves.

The other thing about early Person of Interest is that Reese and Finch were just so damn in love. I'm not saying it was necessarily sexual or even romantic, but they loved each other, and it was beautiful. I loved Carter from the start, too -- she was smart and rightfully concerned about this weirdo shooting people's kneecaps on her streets, she was great -- and when season two turned my understanding of the Machine upside down, well, that was a whole new slathering of icing on the increasingly delicious layer cake.

Person of Interest was also the first time I was really a participant in fandom and not just an observer -- I traded memes and meta on tumblr, wrote a few fills for

meme_of_interest, got into great conversations on

pofinterest_chat, and ultimately wrote more fic for it than I have for any other fandom to date, although admittedly that isn't saying much. But in a lot of ways, Person of Interest was my first real fannish home.

Season three, though, really damaged that. Not due to any fault on the part of other fans, although I imagine we did scrape each other's nerves a little raw in the immediate aftermath. But a lot of what I loved about the show was destroyed or rewritten, and after that, it was hard for me to love it as wholeheartedly as I wanted to. I still enjoyed other people's stories, but it was harder for me to write my own. And there was a shift in the mood of fandom, too, as a number of other fans were feeling the same way. To an extent, I've been missing Person of Interest ever since.

But there have been other fandoms. Imperial Radch was a delightful gift, a small but endlessly creative AI-loving fandom that I've always enjoyed my small part in. I've had fun writing primers for Killjoys and Stumptown, two shows that feature women and characters of color in refreshing ways. How to Get Away With Murder is perennially close to my heart, although I think I have an entire season to catch up on at this point, and in some ways the show gives me too much of what I want for me to feel driven to seek out more in fandom. The Good Place, though very different in tone, is in a similar position for me, although I have very much enjoyed my conversations over at

the_good_place.

There have been other fandoms I've enjoyed along the way, too:

The Foreigner series by CJ Cherryh, which is not without moments of fail, but just gives me all of the feelings;
Elementary, sometimes frustrating but always engaging, and another series whose last season I need to watch;
Sleepy Hollow for a couple of seasons, Ichabbie 4eva;
Rivers of London, although the fandom's favorite pairing is my NOTP;
Almost Human, even though I even more viscerally cannot with the fandom's favorite ship;
Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which I love a lot but don't seem to seek out many fanworks for;
Blindspot until the first season broke my heart;
Underground, which never seemed to have enough of a fandom;
Voltron: Legendary Defender, another show whose last season I haven't seen;
Yuri on Ice, bright and queer and flawed but still so lovely;
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, almost ten years after everyone else;
Leverage, less in its own right than as a substrate for beautiful polyamorous fic;
Sneaky Pete, bless its weaselly little heart;
and Doctor Who, admittedly mostly for the whump potential.

Ultimately, I seem to be tragically monofannish by temperament, and at the moment, I'm between great fannish obsessions. There are plenty of books and shows I enjoy, and I can enjoy fanfic about them, not to mention fanfic for things I've never seen; but there isn't anything right now that quite fills the place that Person of Interest or White Collar or Harry Potter did.

But that's okay. I'm still having lots of fun in fandom -- and you never know what could be right around the corner!