The fandom meme
May. 9th, 2006 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snorkackcatcherTen questions about my participation in fandom. I may have posted some/most of this before -- but here goes anyway.
1. How long have you been in fandom?
Since August 2003, effectively -- I'd browsed Mugglenet a bit, but that was when I first started posting at the forums.
2. How did you discover fandom/what was your route into it?
Some of the people I worked with were HP fans too, and had Mugglenet up onscreen a few times, so I went there to find out more (this was before OotP came out). I think I first started on their forums (Chamber of Secrets) because I wanted to discuss my Theory that the prophecy meant Harry couldn't be killed before the final showdown with Voldemort, and therefore Book 6 would see him taking huge risks. (OK, that didn't work out -- JKR had a very different, and more interesting, take on prophecies.)
As for fanfic -- after I'd posted there for a few months and was getting a bit bored, and also realising that it would be another year or more before Book 6 came out, I started taking a look at some of the stories at CoS to alleviate the withdrawal symptoms. I think the first ones were on a "Snape POV" thread in the main discussion forums, which featured quite a bit of interesting stuff, including what eventually became dink's Meetings and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
a_t_rain's Witness for the Defense. I moved on to the regular fanfic area ('Flourish & Blotts'), and although the first few I looked at weren't great, fortunately I took an early look at other a_t_rain/Lady deMimsy stories and realised that hey -- who'd've thought it, these fanfic thingies can actually be good! (The story was Counsel, Guardian, Intruder, Heir which later became An Interesting Little Legal Problem. She was only about half-way through Purloined Prophetess at the time, which gives me the smug sort of feeling you might get from spotting a great band on the local circuit before they hit it big. :D)
3. Do you actively participate in any forums you may wish to pimp? Any you joined then but would not set foot in now?
I seem to post most often on LJ now, sometimes FAP, very rarely CoS. I've no objection to posting there, it's just that I don't have the leisure time or interest to debate things oft-debated elsewhere.
4. How did you discover LJ, and what made you get one?
I'd seen other people mention articles etc on there, and took a look a few posts, and eventually decided I might as well get one of my own so I could make signed comments. I don't make that many posts on my own LJ (the last few days are unusual), but it's fun to have.
5. How did you come up with your username?
When I registered with CoS, I wanted a suitably quirky name, so I came up with "The Crumple-Horned Snorkack Preservation Society".
Nope, too long. 15 character maximum.
So I riffed a bit on a theme of Snorkacks until I eventually came up with 'SnorkackCatcher'. I wasn't completely convinced by that, but I'd already spent too long faffing about so I went with it. As names go, it does have the advantage of being distinctive, so I can use it to register on other sites in the expectation that no-one else will have used it.
6. Who is your favourite character?
Hermione. Close call between her and Remus, but she just shades it (although Remus is the character I tend to actually identify with most, obviously).
Why? Well, I think possibly because in a lot of the school stories I read as a child, the Swotty Kid was pretty much the object of fun and/or suspicion, and generally Not Really That Much Of A Good Egg. Since I was rather a swotty kid (although not to Hermione's extent) I suppose I must have had to overlook that -- well actually, I probably agreed with it, since the swots in those stories were basically annoying. Then as an adult I read HP -- and JKR surprised me.
Before I finally decided I'd have to find out what all the fuss was about and read PS, the only extract from the books I'd seen was a brief quote in the newspaper when PoA came out. It was the bit where they've just finished the Transfiguration exam and Hermione is fretting over whether her tortoise looks too much like a turtle, while everyone else is more worried about whether it still looked like a teapot. I didn't really know anything about the books, so I'd assumed Hermione was the standard irritating and unpleasant swot who got her comeuppance and was made to look foolish at the end; and the first few Hogwarts chapters of PS kind of confirmed that.
Then came the Troll -- and the rather pleasant development of the swotty character turning out to be a good sort. At the end, the Devil's Snare scene was also rather endearing (as is her insecurity in general) and made me warm to her a lot. And then, finally, came the scene where she and Harry part company, and she makes her little speech about books and cleverness not being as important as friendship and bravery and I thought YES! At last, a brainy character with heart and decency as well!
I think from that scene onwards she became my favourite character, and still is. Yes, she can still be immensely annoying (it's not just Harry and Ron who want to yell "shut UP, Hermione!" from time to time) but she's still a great character and the sort of clever, decent person I would want to know in real life.
Other characters I like a lot -- Snape, Luna, Dumbledore, Tonks, Ginny, Ron.
7. Have your opinions changed towards any characters/ships in your time in fandom?
Tonks went from being a background character I'd liked but never paid much attention to, to a character I could see potential in after seeing her in fanfic, to a favourite after I started NTLJ (in which she became the lead almost by default) and began writing a lot of scenes through her eyes.
Ron and Ginny also started growing on me a lot after I saw people bashing them. :)
8. Do you write/draw within fandom? What made you start?
Once I'd started reading fanfic -- well, naturally I eventually decided this looked like fun and felt like having a go, because I'd always kind of fancied myself as a writer and wanted to see if I could do stories. So I tried a fanfic contest at CoS (came second), had an idea for and then posted a oneshot (Whatever Gets You Through The Night) and then started on NTLJ (Yes, it really has been that long, although it's coming to the closing chapters now.)
Getting plot bunnies seems to get a lot easier with practice. At first I couldn't think of anything much, now the bloody things pop up all the time, and a back catalogue of about 18 stories has built up.
I don't draw, having no noticeable talent in that area. :(
9. Does what you write/draw differ from what you would read? How so? What are your biggest kinks/squicks?
It's pretty much the same as I would read, I suppose -- a fairly wide range of situations and characters -- although I do read a lot of stuff I wouldn't feel especially confident about writing in a non-clunky manner, especially shippy stuff. I'm not sure I really have any kinks that I look for in fics (which in this fandom sometimes seems perverse in itself), and have the common squicks (incest, noncon, scat etc).
10. Of what piece of your work are you most proud, and why?
I'm never quite sure what to say to this -- there are things I like about all of my fics, and also things that seem clunky or just plain make me wince. Some of the recent oneshots I've enjoyed because they were experiments in trying something different that seemed to work, but I suppose I'm going to have to say Nymphadora Tonks and the Liquor of Jacmel simply because it is the most ambitious and by far the longest -- and because I've managed to get to nearly the end now, and the various plot threads are tying up without too many loose ends.
1. How long have you been in fandom?
Since August 2003, effectively -- I'd browsed Mugglenet a bit, but that was when I first started posting at the forums.
2. How did you discover fandom/what was your route into it?
Some of the people I worked with were HP fans too, and had Mugglenet up onscreen a few times, so I went there to find out more (this was before OotP came out). I think I first started on their forums (Chamber of Secrets) because I wanted to discuss my Theory that the prophecy meant Harry couldn't be killed before the final showdown with Voldemort, and therefore Book 6 would see him taking huge risks. (OK, that didn't work out -- JKR had a very different, and more interesting, take on prophecies.)
As for fanfic -- after I'd posted there for a few months and was getting a bit bored, and also realising that it would be another year or more before Book 6 came out, I started taking a look at some of the stories at CoS to alleviate the withdrawal symptoms. I think the first ones were on a "Snape POV" thread in the main discussion forums, which featured quite a bit of interesting stuff, including what eventually became dink's Meetings and
a_t_rain's Witness for the Defense. I moved on to the regular fanfic area ('Flourish & Blotts'), and although the first few I looked at weren't great, fortunately I took an early look at other a_t_rain/Lady deMimsy stories and realised that hey -- who'd've thought it, these fanfic thingies can actually be good! (The story was Counsel, Guardian, Intruder, Heir which later became An Interesting Little Legal Problem. She was only about half-way through Purloined Prophetess at the time, which gives me the smug sort of feeling you might get from spotting a great band on the local circuit before they hit it big. :D)3. Do you actively participate in any forums you may wish to pimp? Any you joined then but would not set foot in now?
I seem to post most often on LJ now, sometimes FAP, very rarely CoS. I've no objection to posting there, it's just that I don't have the leisure time or interest to debate things oft-debated elsewhere.
4. How did you discover LJ, and what made you get one?
I'd seen other people mention articles etc on there, and took a look a few posts, and eventually decided I might as well get one of my own so I could make signed comments. I don't make that many posts on my own LJ (the last few days are unusual), but it's fun to have.
5. How did you come up with your username?
When I registered with CoS, I wanted a suitably quirky name, so I came up with "The Crumple-Horned Snorkack Preservation Society".
Nope, too long. 15 character maximum.
So I riffed a bit on a theme of Snorkacks until I eventually came up with 'SnorkackCatcher'. I wasn't completely convinced by that, but I'd already spent too long faffing about so I went with it. As names go, it does have the advantage of being distinctive, so I can use it to register on other sites in the expectation that no-one else will have used it.
6. Who is your favourite character?
Hermione. Close call between her and Remus, but she just shades it (although Remus is the character I tend to actually identify with most, obviously).
Why? Well, I think possibly because in a lot of the school stories I read as a child, the Swotty Kid was pretty much the object of fun and/or suspicion, and generally Not Really That Much Of A Good Egg. Since I was rather a swotty kid (although not to Hermione's extent) I suppose I must have had to overlook that -- well actually, I probably agreed with it, since the swots in those stories were basically annoying. Then as an adult I read HP -- and JKR surprised me.
Before I finally decided I'd have to find out what all the fuss was about and read PS, the only extract from the books I'd seen was a brief quote in the newspaper when PoA came out. It was the bit where they've just finished the Transfiguration exam and Hermione is fretting over whether her tortoise looks too much like a turtle, while everyone else is more worried about whether it still looked like a teapot. I didn't really know anything about the books, so I'd assumed Hermione was the standard irritating and unpleasant swot who got her comeuppance and was made to look foolish at the end; and the first few Hogwarts chapters of PS kind of confirmed that.
Then came the Troll -- and the rather pleasant development of the swotty character turning out to be a good sort. At the end, the Devil's Snare scene was also rather endearing (as is her insecurity in general) and made me warm to her a lot. And then, finally, came the scene where she and Harry part company, and she makes her little speech about books and cleverness not being as important as friendship and bravery and I thought YES! At last, a brainy character with heart and decency as well!
I think from that scene onwards she became my favourite character, and still is. Yes, she can still be immensely annoying (it's not just Harry and Ron who want to yell "shut UP, Hermione!" from time to time) but she's still a great character and the sort of clever, decent person I would want to know in real life.
Other characters I like a lot -- Snape, Luna, Dumbledore, Tonks, Ginny, Ron.
7. Have your opinions changed towards any characters/ships in your time in fandom?
Tonks went from being a background character I'd liked but never paid much attention to, to a character I could see potential in after seeing her in fanfic, to a favourite after I started NTLJ (in which she became the lead almost by default) and began writing a lot of scenes through her eyes.
Ron and Ginny also started growing on me a lot after I saw people bashing them. :)
8. Do you write/draw within fandom? What made you start?
Once I'd started reading fanfic -- well, naturally I eventually decided this looked like fun and felt like having a go, because I'd always kind of fancied myself as a writer and wanted to see if I could do stories. So I tried a fanfic contest at CoS (came second), had an idea for and then posted a oneshot (Whatever Gets You Through The Night) and then started on NTLJ (Yes, it really has been that long, although it's coming to the closing chapters now.)
Getting plot bunnies seems to get a lot easier with practice. At first I couldn't think of anything much, now the bloody things pop up all the time, and a back catalogue of about 18 stories has built up.
I don't draw, having no noticeable talent in that area. :(
9. Does what you write/draw differ from what you would read? How so? What are your biggest kinks/squicks?
It's pretty much the same as I would read, I suppose -- a fairly wide range of situations and characters -- although I do read a lot of stuff I wouldn't feel especially confident about writing in a non-clunky manner, especially shippy stuff. I'm not sure I really have any kinks that I look for in fics (which in this fandom sometimes seems perverse in itself), and have the common squicks (incest, noncon, scat etc).
10. Of what piece of your work are you most proud, and why?
I'm never quite sure what to say to this -- there are things I like about all of my fics, and also things that seem clunky or just plain make me wince. Some of the recent oneshots I've enjoyed because they were experiments in trying something different that seemed to work, but I suppose I'm going to have to say Nymphadora Tonks and the Liquor of Jacmel simply because it is the most ambitious and by far the longest -- and because I've managed to get to nearly the end now, and the various plot threads are tying up without too many loose ends.
