Snowflake Challenge #2

[softroe]

Challenge #2
In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story.

gosh… when have I NOT been in fandom spaces…? Thinking back hard on it now, I think my first foray into online spaces was in 2007?

I was a very active deviantArt user, and was on and off LJ though I often browsed LJ without an account. My very first fandoms were pokemon, happy tree friends, neopets, hetalia, vocaloid, soul eater, and just yaoi in general. My god the yaoi.

I was such a yaoi fiend as a grub, thinking back on it now makes me laugh a lot. I was always looking to rp or draw with people, and I remember spending a lot of time on websites like iscribble or sketchfu or like, flipnote hatena. I wish I still had any art from when I was a young deviantart user, but I had such a bad habit of deleting everything that it’s mostly all gone!

from deviantart I hopped to tumblr in 2008-09, and it quickly became my homebase so to speak for a very very long time. It was where my fandom experience really took off, just because it felt so easy to connect with other people, and I felt “cool” for finally having a blog which is what I would hear older people talk about online all the time, so I felt like part of the incrowd LOL!!!!!

sometimes i wonder about who I’d be if I wasn’t apart of fandom, and I truly do not think that me would have ever existed. I love being involved in things, I love being a member of a community, and I love meeting new friends and fans of the things I love.

it feels silly to say I’m grateful, but I really am.

Comments

[unholyghost]

catch me nodding at the Pokemon, the Neopets, the Soul Eater, the "my god the yaoi" because same.

tumblr really was a game changer when it came to fandom, for better and for worse. finding new people and getting into new stuff was just so ?? fast and easy back then over there?? the fandom osmosis was so real, especially in the early to mid-2010s. also I saw you mention asks blogs in another comment and oof I miss them so much too and wish they'd get more popular again somehow.

and I understand feeling a bit silly about being grateful for it all. fandom is kind of inherently silly, I think, but in the best way possible. but I'm also grateful for all the cool fanworks and people and connection it brings, and I'm glad it's brought you so much joy as well and I hope it keeps bringing you that same happiness well into the future :D

[softroe]

I’m glad someone feels the same about the ask blog thing because oh my GOSH I miss it so much!!! It makes me so happy to know everyone has such similar experiences, I really love that fandom provides such a space for people to collaborate and put their heads together and just *make* things. Enjoy things together… waaah, brings a tear to my eyes.

[unholyghost]

same same, they were kind of magical? not really sure if that's the right word, but they were such a fun/co way to make use of tumblr's ask feature that I've never seen replicated anywhere else, and if I had the energy for it I'd try and bring them back myself because aaaa we can't be the only ones that miss them (ノ´Д｀)ノ

and yeah I agree 100% there's just something about that collective creative energy that makes me get all sentimental like look at us! people around the world, sometimes oceans apart, making things together for the love of it!!