#My Fandom History | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

takaraphoenix · 3 months

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I'm curious, how many fandom have you been a part in? How many shows you like that has no fandoms? What are your fandom history?

Oh, that is such a fun ask, thank you! Brace yourself, I am actually giving a way more detailed answer than you probably wanted.

So, first of all, it depends on what one's definition of "in the fandom" is. Because if I'd count every fandom that I have been a part of as a "spectator" - admiring fanarts and GIFs and reading fanfiction - daaamn, that'd make this a very long list, I think.

Generally, I only count myself as part of a fandom if I also contribute to it myself, because that means this fandom really sucked me in, while the ones I only read in are more... passing fancies, I guess? That's how it is for me, anyway.

So, by that metric, have a little history of Phoe.

My earliest fandom was Charmed, though... very much unposted, like, "physically wrote with ink in a notebook" fanfiction. But that was the first show that really consumed me; my walls were plastered with posters, all my friends who bought teen mags always cut the Charmed articles out for me (which, genuinely, so sweet), heck, I had Charmed bedsheets. Also my very first next generation, the kids of the Charmed Ones. But that was waaay before I even knew the term "fanfiction", I just liked writing so I thought "what if next generation though", particularly due to how important family is in this show.

In 2005, I wrote my first fic that I actually published, though... if it still exists on the internet, it's on an account I forgot about. Twas Yu-Gi-Oh! and Puppyshipping. That was when I was actually diving into fandom, as a shared experience, instead of, you know, faning for myself. Reading fics, exploring websites that brought fans together.

Ultimately, I ended up on Animexx (German fan site, hosting forums, fanfiction, fanart, doujinshi and a shit-ton of other fannish delights) and in the Beyblade fandom.

These two, by the way, went a little hand in hand together. Beyblade and Yu-Gi-Oh! were two of the big anime of the time, airing in the noon-ish block on RTL2 in Germany at the time. That shounen sports-anime genre always got the fangirls.

And the Beyblade fandom was where I really... took off, in a creator way. Wrote a total of 39 fics spanning over 200k words in the three years I was a part of this fandom (2006-2008) and drew a bunch of fanarts too. I joined a writer's circle - kind of a club - for the ship KaRe and that hugely factored into my productivity. We gave each other feedback, had fandom events, met up at conventions. Most of them were in their early to late twenties, some older, so I had a lot of mentor figures in my life there who taught me how to be a better writer. But by 2008, the fandom started to fizzle out, more and more of the writers I admired and was friends with dropped out of it and went on to other fandoms, so by the end, I was out too, because being one of the last ones standing was... frustrating.

I was a little... lost, after that. It's weird, when your very first fandom dies, because you never experienced that before, so how does fandom life go on after that? How do you get into a fandom?

I stopped writing for about a year, not really having a fandom to channel it into, when I watched Sky High in 2009. And oh boy. That movie inexplicably captivated me. I mean, not so inexplicable, there's a pretty boy with a tragic backstory in it, like... that's catnip to me, and he even had fire-powers, c'mon.

Which is kind of how I discovered fanfiction.net because a single movie did absolutely not get a huge following in Germany so I started seeking out English fics, even though my English was absolute dog-shit. But it inspired me, it made me write again. One fic, unpublished, in German, but it got me going again and it showed me that hey no it can be that easy, just latch onto something else that brings you joy!

It's also how or why I made my FFNet account; so I could leave proper comments on the Warren/Will fics I read.

By 2010, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief hit theaters and it hit me, personally, hard. I loved that movie, the concept of modern day demigods and Greek mythology being real was just so good. Plus, elemental control, again. I love that stuff.

So I did the very untypical thing of buying the books. All five in one go. And I actually read them. I started writing PJO fics by 2010.

Heck, I started writing a lot between 2010 and 2012, for practically everything that caught my interest - Percy Jackson, Detective Conan (an anime I had been a fan of since the days of Yu-Gi-Oh! and Beyblade, only that this one was still going) were the two biggest, but things like Eureka, Transformers, Entourage, Jungle Book.

I started college in October 2011 and I, uh, well, I wrote my fics during class. Because lectures are just not... nah. They let me have my laptop in class? Hell yeah, I'm gonna write.

I had a good friend back then, a friend I made early on, who at one point noticed me writing during class and asked me if I actually post it online and I went hell no, because English is not my native language, heck, for the majority of high school (German high school spans from 5th grade to 13th grade, we don't have middle school), I didn't even pay attention in English and was fully content scraping by. I only really started paying attention in 2009 when Doctor Who saw the return of my beloved Jack Harness but not the return to the German screens so a girl had to make ends meet by watching it in English. So, yeah, though I shot to the top of my class in high school with the literal power of anime and Doctor Who, I didn't feel confident enough to post my stories on websites where actual native English speakers could read and judge them. But he kept nudging me about it and telling me that if I went through the trouble of writing them, I should share them with others who might enjoy it.

So, yeah, everybody say "Thank you, Andy" for actually making me post my fics by January 2012. Which, I just fully dumped all the fics I had written in the past two years within a short span of time. His motto of "if you enjoy it, others will too" really resonated with me so I posted everything.

And it... took off. DCMK and PJO, there was such a positive response from people, actual excitement for the fics I wrote, and I got that sense of fandom community again, answering comments and starting conversations and friendships with people, commenting on fics that I read and enjoyed. The other fandoms I wrote for kind of fizzled out because the shows ended and movies ended (well... stopped being good).

It was so different, being in ongoing fandoms, where the show still aired and the books were still being released. And I do consider myself someone who helped build up the PJO fandom, on the slash side anyway, because I wrote so much for a ship that was so tiny back then - Nico/Percy.

I'm still actively writing for both of these fandoms to this day, 12 years later.

And then came Teen Wolf in 2013. I started watching it during the hiatus between season 2 and season 3 and got really addicted and devoured all the fics I could and I thought "holy shit, this is going to be my next big thing" and then season 3 just... crushed... literally every single hope I had for the show. Don't get me wrong, 3B is, imo, the best storyline, but by then 3A had already destroyed so much. And season 4 kinda sucked, which put me off. And I straight up hated season 5 so I dropped the show and thought that's that, moving on. This was the closest I have come to actually abandoning a story since I left the Beyblade fandom, including the 10 years after this, because the show's quality drop had demotivated me so much, I put the multichapter fic I had started onto a... long... hiatus. I only continued it about 4 years later, when I started feeling so guilty about abandoning the fic that I said "Nah, I am going to rewatch this damn show for the sole purpose of finishing this damn story" in 2018. And I did! Finish the story, and the show.

Ironically enough, this year, Teen Wolf has sank its claws into me again and dragged me in deep. I mean, really deep. I wrote 30k worth of fics for it this month alone and just started a rewatch again. So, consider me officially back in this fandom.

2014 was when I finally caved and watched Kuroko no Basuke, which was hugely popular in the crowd of former Beyblade fandom members. And kinda got addicted to that. Fully did not write as many fics for it as I wish I would have, but I loved that show.

2015 saw me dipping my toes into DC Comics through the Arrowverse and, mainly, Leonard/Barry. This will, ultimately, kick off my interest in actually reading the comics, we'll get to that in 2021.

In 2016, I succumbed to the MCU. That lasted until 2020 when Endgame kind of, ya know, ended that for me. And, not gonna lie, the fandom experience here didn't really help me want to stay active. Sure, there were many nice people and the response to my fics was overwhelming, but... if your fandom is overly toxic about your favorite character, it's just kind of exhausting and at one point I was just tired arguing with antis too, you know.

But let's go back to what ran parallel to me still being in the MCU.

In 2017, I started watching Shadowhunters. A show based on the books whose movie adaptation I had already seen, and loved, in 2014. One look into Jace's heterochromic eyes and I sold that character my soul. I have written so many fics for this fandom since then, made some truly wonderful friendships (among them my best friend) and am still active in this fandom.

2018 was a bit of an experimental year for me, because I actually got my tumblr account in autumn 2017 and tumblr changed my interactions with fandom again. It wasn't limited to fanfiction and comment sections anymore, you could just... throw your opinions out there, reblog fanarts, GIF sets existed!! That was a game changer. I dipped my toe into a couple fandoms for like... one fic - Musketeers, Star Wars, Maze Runner (that one's fully on Dylan O'Brien btw), Imposters (absolutely fueled by the fact that tumblr gave me GIFs and I started making GIFs for this show and got much more invested than I would have gotten if I hadn't had a tumblr account), Dragon Prince. Honestly, I don't know how I feel about all that. Part of me is always frustrated when I go and throw one singular fic into the abyss and then move on, but at the same time I do enjoy stretching my wings.

Nothing really major to report between 2019-2021, I kind of just... continued on in the fandoms I was in already. I didn't have much space for new fandoms, the pandemic and changes in my personal life were Enough New Things, so I kind of clung onto the familiar.

So Marvel disappointed me by 2020, right. That factored into why, in 2021, I figured, why not focus more on the other side of the two only comic franchises in existence (sarcasm, I am aware there are more), since I was already watching and loving the Arrowverse and continuously writing fics for it. I started reading DC Comics, really diving into it and letting it consume me and started spinning my own Elseworld - creating this patchwork of things I loved in main continuity, many Elseworld stories, cartoons and the Arrowverse. That's still a work in progress, by the way.

2021 is also the year that gave me Shadow and Bone, a show I quickly got addicted to and wrote a couple of fics and still hate that I haven't written more for this show. I know I will, because I know I will rewatch this show and I will remain bitter about my OTP and I predict that I'm going to fall off the deep end and end up writing for it after all. I am reading fics for it though, still.

That's also the year I started writing Buffy fanfiction, because, again, thank you, tumblr. I don't think I would have ever written anything for it if tumblr hadn't shown me that even so many years after the show ended, there is still such an active and dedicated and beautiful fandom, filled with people who create gorgeous GIFs, interesting meta takes and silly shitposts. Love you, BtVS tumblr.

Damn, 2021 was a productive year for me. Because, mind you, on top of DC, SaB and BtVS, I was also still juggling PJO and Shadowhunters.

I also wrote a few Harry Potter fics between 2020 and 2021, though I did not (and still don't) consider myself part of that fandom, those were gifts for my girlfriend at the time.

In 2022, I started watching Fire Country and the show punched me in the face with a really good ship and though only a handful of episodes were out, I wanted to read fics... and there was not a single one... so I started writing them myself.

Honestly, not much has happened in 2023, because I had the most massive writer's block since leaving Beyblade and didn't write a single word in months. I still worked on DC, PJO, DCMK and Shadowhunters though.

And now we're here, in 2024, which sees my Teen Wolf resurgence.

So, I feel like that covers your first and third question. I don't think I can answer your second question though. Because I have truly consumed so many shows over the course of my life and I'm not... interested in "bonus content" - aka fics or fanarts or GIFs - for the majority of them. They're just entertainment that is running in the background while I write fics for the fandoms I'm in. The only times that I watched a show and wanted a fandom and didn't find one were Imposters and Fire Country, both due to having been really new back then. But other than them, I've been pretty lucky by getting attached to things with very active and often times even very big fandoms.

#About Me #Fandoms #I don't know what else to tag this as #My Fandom History #???#it was fun to go through this and look back at the chronology though

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