Amatara

Too little time to spare for fannish stuff these days, and what time there is I'm trying to divide between writing my Babylon 5 story for help_japan and continuing to squee over X-Men: First Class, but a meme is always fun! I probably won't be able to do this properly, being one day at a time, but we'll see.

1 – How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?

Strictly speaking, I was writing fanfic before I even knew what fandom was. I was thirteen or so, quite fond of sci-fi but not exceptionally so, owning and loving the Star Wars movies and trying to catch ST: TNG when I had the chance... which was when I discovered the Star Trek movies and fell like a brick for the old TOS crew. From then on, I was a fan in the true sense of the word: I started collecting everything Trek-related that I could get my hands on (which wasn't spectacular: magazine clippings mostly, plus the occasional novel I bought in the single specilaized sci-fi and comics store in my country that I knew of and that I got to visit once or twice a year), got a subscription to a Trek fanzine... and wrote the obligatory horrid Mary Sue story, which was my official first foray into fanfiction. That was long before we had Internet, and because I was too young to actually become a member of a fanclub and go to meetings, fandom, to me, was just that single sci-fi bookstore along with a pen-pal whom I found by putting out an ad somewhere.

By the time we finally did get internet at home, I was seventeen and far more interested in my real-life teenage friends than in anything else, so I didn't have the reflex then to acquaint myself with online fandom. That only happened a few years ago, when I bought the box set of Babylon 5 on Amazon for no other reason than that it was cheap and seemed fun, and fell head over heels in love with the show. This time I did go scouring the web for resources, and, lo and behold, people had been writing fic in this fandom! There were comms about this fandom! People were actually doing this as a hobby! It felt like I'd just had a revelation: yes, yes, I want this too! I think I spent a few weeks lurking, on LJ and elsewhere, and then I wrote the first fanfiction I wrote since my teenage days: Changes of Heart. I still remember emailingselenak, one of the authors whose fanfic I'd been devouring, to spout a cartload of squee about her writing and finally, feeling nervous as all hell, asking her to beta my story. She said yes. And so, as they say on Babylon 5, it begins... :)

As for why this particular fandom pulled me in: it was partly coincidence, I think, just a matter of finding the right kind of show at the right time. B5 was the first show ever that I saw on DVD in its entirety, and the storyarc really did grip me from beginning to end; that, and a certain Centauri named Londo Mollari. *g* If it seems funny that a middle-aged, overweight character with a ridiculous hairdo might have been what eventually pulled me into fandom, well, it probably is. I can only say: it happens to the best of us. *winks*

2 – Name the fandoms you've written in, and how much you've written in that fandom, and if you still write in it.

Like everyone else, I'll just copy from my list of works on AO3.

Babylon 5 (14)
Twin Peaks (13)
Lost (4)
Star Trek: The Original Series (2)
Despicable Me (2010) (1)
Star Trek (2009) (1)
Torchwood (1)
X-Men: First Class (2011) (1)
Stargate Atlantis (1)

Not too impressive, compared to what some other produce, but given that English isn't my first language meaning it takes me quite some time to put a story together, and I'm a perfectionist to the point of obsessiveness, and I'm no longer a grad student with time to write during working hours, I have to say I'm pretty happy with my output. If this list makes one thing clear, it's that I don't stray out of my comfort zone very often: I generally write in the same limited set of fandoms, except very occasionally for a fic exchange or auction where I make a conscious attempt to try something else. Except for those few fics that were a one-time event, like, say, Despicable Me and possibly Torchwood and SGA, I definitely see myself writing in all of these fandoms again.


( The rest of the days )