LogicGunn

Day 20: A random character shows up at your doorstep at dinnertime saying a friend sent them.  Why did your friend send that person, how does it go, and what do you talk about? 

Well, anyone that knows anything about my fannish life would send Rodney McKay my way, because they know how much I adore him.

I would feed him spaghetti and meatballs, and we would talk about our partners and grumble about our childhoods and stay up all night watching films and complaining about the bad science. In the morning we'd go somewhere for coffee and bagels and then part ways with an awkward hug. :)

Day 18: Recall a time when two of your fandoms collided, at least in some way.  For example, a song that you fell in love with from one fandom showed up in a second fandom.

Every single time Red Right Hand by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds is played on anything it immediately rushes me back to my first time watching the X Files Episode "Ascension" where Duane Barry is driving with Scully in the boot of his car. It's one of my top 10 TV/Film moments of all time and it gives literal chills, so whenever I hear this song I get goosebumps.

It's not technically a fandom for me, but I can remember the first time I heard that song out of the contect of The X Files - my first viewing of Scream. It plays during the curfew montage. (I have a secret and shameful love for the Scream films.)

Also, I hadn't listened to it for a while so you can imagine how utterly floored I was when Peaky Blinders started airing! Haven't watched the show at all though.

Fun Fact - this the the number one song on my Serial Killer WIP playlist. ^^

I should also add that watching SG1 and having John de Lancie show up was wonderful (he's Q on TNG) and also Robert Picardo in SG1 and SGA (The Doctor in STV).

Day 16: Do you have a fandom that you follow - either regularly or casually - with little to no knowledge of canon?

Not yet! I'm slowly being sucked into the Due South fandom, but I'm still resisting. I watched it back in the day but I can barely remember a thing other than the fact that I loved it.

Day 14: What fandom broke your heart?

TBH none. I tend to roll with the punches and if canon goes in a direction I don't like? Well there are always fanfics.

There are fandom-adjacent things that have upset me, but they're mostly about people being dicks IRL and I try not to dwell on it.

Day 10: Drop your OTP or small ensemble from the fandom they're in into another fandom - how do they do?

I'm going to cheat this one because I've already done it.

I dropped John and Rodney into a video game called The Long Dark by Hinterland Studios. It's a Canadian post-apocalyptic survival game where the two main characters crash their plane during an EMP storm and have to survive on a wintry island.

John is transporting a snarky Canadian scientist from Resolute in Nunavut to Thule Airbase in Greenland when the Aurora Borealis lights up the sky and an unseen force overloads the chopper and causes them to crash. They're split up when they land and have to find eachother, then survive and try to find a way to get rescued. It's a bit of a fluff fest with a little angst. Between them they have the skills to survive and 90% of the story is John and Rodney falling in love.

The Long Dark on AO3.

Day 7: What's the longest time you've been in a fandom. Not necessarily your oldest fandom, but a fandom that you started and still continue to read/write/create content for in some way.

I've been a sporadic reader/lurker in the HP fandom for something like 22 years, so I guess that takes the cookie?

But I've been a writer in the SGA fandom for 2 years and seven days, plus another year or so when I jumped headfirst into the McShep fic and returned to reading fanfiction in a big way. :)

Day 5: Compare and/or contrast your very first fandom obsession and your latest fandom obsession.

There are two parts to my fandom history. The before days when I was very young and into bad boys and smart, competent women, and the now days when I'm into (ahem) complexity and scope, with a very large gap in between when I was absolutely a fan, but very much apart from fandom.

THEN

My first ever fandom obsession was The X Files, and I was definitely too young to watch that show but my mum had a videotape of the Duane Barry/Ascension/One Breath arc and when I confessed to watching it in secret she let me watch it on TV. I was mad about both Scully and Mulder (together and with others) for over a decade, spent my (very limited) pocket money on any magazine that had the show or the characters or the actors in it, and when I got my first paying job I bought the video collections of all the series one by one. I stepped my toes into fandom; chatted on forums and read fics and joined mailing groups and discovered FFN, and it was glorious.

And then the great FFN 2002 purge happened, deleting not just the smut but all the (fem)slash with it because everyone slapped an NC17 rating on anything even remotely queer. To say I was distraught would be an understatement, but I was a teen. So...

This traumatic event (because seriously, FUCK YOU FFN) coincided with the burgeoning relationship between my wife and I, so I got distracted and pulled out of fandom so fast I'm pretty sure I had whiplash. I dipped my toes into reading Snape-centric HP fics on and off, but for most of the rest of the next 15 or so years, I was too disillusioned with fandom and too distracted by life to step into any kind of fannish space.

NOW

And then I discovered SGA.

I fell hard and fast onto the Rodney/John wagon early in season 1 and I started wondering was it just me? Or did other people ship them too? So I looked it up and not only did people totally ship them, there were over 600 pages of fics dedicated to their relationship on a fan-made archive called AO3.

Mind. Blown.

I missed a lot of happenings in those 15 years. With all that time between fandoms, my feelings and interests were different. I mean, as a teen I mostly dug smut, right? But as an adult I wanted something more from my fandom. I wanted angst and H/C and AUs (and yes, smut), but I also wanted complexity and scope and it wasn't enough to just read other people's ideas, oh no, I had to go and get some of my own. And those ideas screamed to be written down.

So I dipped my toes into the writing thing, then I dipped my toes in the sharing thing, and even though I was convinced that posting my first fic would either drag me into a fandom war or doom me to another purge, the world didn't end. I honestly think people are just a lot less argumentative than they were when I was in the XF and HP fandoms. Maybe we're all old and jaded, maybe we're just tired. It almost certainly helps that SGA finished airing years before I even watched it, nevermind looked for the fandom.

(Secretly, I think that having a reliable archive helps too.)

It all couldn't be more different this time around, and now I've written and shared something like 50 fics, which isn't something I ever thought I'd do because I fucking hated creative writing as a kid. I would never have posted anything I wrote back then - and we can all be thankful that my teenage scribblings aren't lurking in a damp, dark corner of the internet.

Day 3: What's a favorite, or at least memorable fandom meeting/interaction that you've had?

Honestly, the SGA fandom is so incredibly awesome and wholesome (especially considering all the smut that we read/write...), almost all the interactions with other people I've had have been wonderful. I've never been to a convention, I find crowds difficult to be in, so every interaction has been online.

I love that I've gotten to know people from all over the world (I also love just how many SGA fans live in Scotland like me!). I love that we have such different lives but we all have this thing in common that makes us happy.

I think the most memorable interactions I've ever had were the comments I got on my the first fic I posted. I was hella nervous, kind of felt like I was intruding in someone elses fannish space, but everyone was so welcoming. It made it much easier to share other stories. Whever I have doubts about posting I think back to how I felt at my first comments and try to capture that feeling of belonging.

I'm not someone who belongs to many social groups or socialises easily, so becoming part of a fandom was a little scary but incredibly eye opening.

Day 1: What's changed about your fandom life in the last 365 days?

Hmmm. There have been some major life changes in the past year, unrelated to the pandemic, that have had a knock on effect on everything. It's given me more time for fandom, both reading and writing, but instead of focusing one one fic at a time I've had a hundred ideas at once and so I now have several long WIPs that I've been flitting between for the past 6 months.

I really need to knuckle down and get one of them finished.

On the plus side my reading rate has been just about the same. I'm up to page 207/639 of the AO3 McShep fics (in order from oldest to newest), so I'm on course to catch up to the new ones I've read since I discovered the fandom in...ooh, about 4 years? :D

I've also had a return to the Harry Potter fandom, despite my serious misgivings about the author, and I wrote my first Snape centric fic since I was in High School. It's a serious and emotional character study inspired by a crack fic my wife wrote. There's a good chance I'll try my hand at a Snupin fic in the future, but my OTP will always be John and Rodney.