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Talking about how fandom has improved my life must include the ways in which fandom has also been a struggle in my life. (Why must it? Because my thoughts about the good things are intimately tied up with the bad things.)
In an attempt to keep this relatively brief, I'm only counting fandom from my college days on (about 13 years ago to present).
In my last couple of years at college, I joined a DC Comics roleplaying group on Tumblr. I had, at this point, already made a couple of friends through tumblr, but it was during my time in this group that I really started posting my own fanfics online and getting very involved in the then-current Batfandom on Tumblr. (Fun Fact: My first ever smut writing experience was a threesome in a live chat/real-time RP with two other people. This was the event that convinced me I could, in fact, write and post my own smut. If I could do it live, I could certainly do it on my own time!) I was on Tumblr for the New 52 event. I was there for the entire run on Grayson, including the unnecessary (and, lbr, pretty damn racist) hatred towards the rebooted version of Helena Bertinelli and the absolute bullshit that was the aggressively loud Grayson-haters' Twitter harassment of Tim Seeley while he was on a date.Some of y'all fuckers need to learn some manners, I stg.
During this time, I went to several comic conventions (WonderCon and Long Beach Comic Con being the biggest two). I met some local artists and creators. I actually got to not only get some Grayson comics signed by Tom King for me and a friend, but also got to talk to him about the comic for a good chunk of time. (My favorite story: During the issue where Dick walks through the desert with the baby, there are two pages where he tells the story of a dream he had, which is actually the 1963 Batman story Robin Dies At Dawn. The art in Grayson is of Dick walking through the bottom third of the pages while the sun beats down on the upper two-thirds. Tom King had originally wanted the upper parts of the panel to be drawings from the Robin Dies At Dawn story as a nice reference/Easter Egg. Editorial said no, so they stuck with the sun.)
I wrote a ton of fanfics between 2013-2018! I did so many fandom events and big bangs! I made some fandom friends who I still consider very dear friends!
And I also saw a lot of fandom explode at others and implode on itself.
Right around 2019, I got my first job outside home. I still wrote a lot, but a lot of my fandom friends were either going into new fandoms or moving to different sites, especially after the 2018 Tumblr porn ban. By 2020, I was starting to get back into fandom in a very light-touch way, but so many of us were gone. I did end up writing my biggest/most involved fanfic in years during that year (a graveyard shift job as a COVID symptom checker where I only had to pay attention at the top of each hour helped immensely, ngl). But, oof, there was a lot going on that I no longer wanted to be part of in fandom.
In 2021, I wound up back at the same company I worked for in 2019 (this time as a permanent employee) and my stress levels tripled. I started to get back into fandom as a way to stay sane, and it worked, for the most part! I was still doing too many exchanges and events (which ended up only adding to the stress, unfortunately), but I was getting back into that kind of fandom friendship space that I genuinely had missed. I even ended up going back on Tumblr!
And then, in 2024, after an incredibly brutal end to 2023, I found a Discord group that seemed to have that old-school fandom feeling to it. During my three months off work post-surgery, I not only joined that group, but found a subgroup of new friends within it (and we've been going strong since).
I feel like a lot of this post seems more negative, but it's not really meant to be. I have made some great friends through fandom. I've written some honestly fantastic things because of fandom. I've also learned a lot about myself through fandom, about what stresses I can take, about what kinds of things I like to write and read, even about how to take care of myself and when I need to remove myself from the more toxic and/or anger-inducing aspects of fandom.
And yet, unfortunately, brevity is clearly not one of the things I've learned via fandom.
In an attempt to keep this relatively brief, I'm only counting fandom from my college days on (about 13 years ago to present).
In my last couple of years at college, I joined a DC Comics roleplaying group on Tumblr. I had, at this point, already made a couple of friends through tumblr, but it was during my time in this group that I really started posting my own fanfics online and getting very involved in the then-current Batfandom on Tumblr. (Fun Fact: My first ever smut writing experience was a threesome in a live chat/real-time RP with two other people. This was the event that convinced me I could, in fact, write and post my own smut. If I could do it live, I could certainly do it on my own time!) I was on Tumblr for the New 52 event. I was there for the entire run on Grayson, including the unnecessary (and, lbr, pretty damn racist) hatred towards the rebooted version of Helena Bertinelli and the absolute bullshit that was the aggressively loud Grayson-haters' Twitter harassment of Tim Seeley while he was on a date.
During this time, I went to several comic conventions (WonderCon and Long Beach Comic Con being the biggest two). I met some local artists and creators. I actually got to not only get some Grayson comics signed by Tom King for me and a friend, but also got to talk to him about the comic for a good chunk of time. (My favorite story: During the issue where Dick walks through the desert with the baby, there are two pages where he tells the story of a dream he had, which is actually the 1963 Batman story Robin Dies At Dawn. The art in Grayson is of Dick walking through the bottom third of the pages while the sun beats down on the upper two-thirds. Tom King had originally wanted the upper parts of the panel to be drawings from the Robin Dies At Dawn story as a nice reference/Easter Egg. Editorial said no, so they stuck with the sun.)
I wrote a ton of fanfics between 2013-2018! I did so many fandom events and big bangs! I made some fandom friends who I still consider very dear friends!
And I also saw a lot of fandom explode at others and implode on itself.
Right around 2019, I got my first job outside home. I still wrote a lot, but a lot of my fandom friends were either going into new fandoms or moving to different sites, especially after the 2018 Tumblr porn ban. By 2020, I was starting to get back into fandom in a very light-touch way, but so many of us were gone. I did end up writing my biggest/most involved fanfic in years during that year (a graveyard shift job as a COVID symptom checker where I only had to pay attention at the top of each hour helped immensely, ngl). But, oof, there was a lot going on that I no longer wanted to be part of in fandom.
In 2021, I wound up back at the same company I worked for in 2019 (this time as a permanent employee) and my stress levels tripled. I started to get back into fandom as a way to stay sane, and it worked, for the most part! I was still doing too many exchanges and events (which ended up only adding to the stress, unfortunately), but I was getting back into that kind of fandom friendship space that I genuinely had missed. I even ended up going back on Tumblr!
And then, in 2024, after an incredibly brutal end to 2023, I found a Discord group that seemed to have that old-school fandom feeling to it. During my three months off work post-surgery, I not only joined that group, but found a subgroup of new friends within it (and we've been going strong since).
I feel like a lot of this post seems more negative, but it's not really meant to be. I have made some great friends through fandom. I've written some honestly fantastic things because of fandom. I've also learned a lot about myself through fandom, about what stresses I can take, about what kinds of things I like to write and read, even about how to take care of myself and when I need to remove myself from the more toxic and/or anger-inducing aspects of fandom.
And yet, unfortunately, brevity is clearly not one of the things I've learned via fandom.
