I used to be young; now I'm old
Mar. 9th, 2021 02:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reflectedeveSo I did a little rehauling of my fanart masterlist recently; I gave bandom and Star Trek expandable sections instead of their own cut tags, and decided I wanted to add dates (well, years) to each piece, since there's such a range (15 years!) and I wanted to preserve the alphabetical organization by fandom
Sadly, a lot of the art is currently covered in Photobucket watermarks, and some of the links are broken (mostly due to the journals where they were posted being locked/deleted), all of which is going to take longer to rectify. I continue to think wistfully about the ever-more-unlikely possibility of local image hosting at the AO3. Ah well.
Doing all that got me thinking about my fannish output by the numbers, though, so I did some VERY self-indulgent messing about.
Most prolific year:
2017, with 46 pieces of fanart(!)
Least prolific year:
A tie: 2010 and 2018, with 3 pieces of fanart each
(I blame grad school applications and NRE, respectively.)
Most prolific fandoms:
1. Star Trek: 57
1. bandom: 57
2. Teen Wolf: 29
3. Marvel Comics: 12
4. Sailor Moon: 8
5. Good Omens: 6
Very amused by that tie. Numbers being somewhat inexact, as it was hard to know when to count the pieces in image sets separately, or the pages in multi-page fancomics, but those things wouldn't affect the lineup much!
I've had a few "main" fandoms over the years (Star Trek and bandom being the most notable, at least as far as active public participation goes), but I rarely consider myself completely done with a fandom. That said, the fandom I return to the most consistently is definitely Marvel Comics (its numbers would be higher in the list above if I were going back further than 2006, and I think I skipped some of the doodles I posted on Tumblr as not masterlist-worthy, too). And I've had a few "main" fandoms that had a set time, and seem to be pretty thoroughly over for me: Teen Wolf, Stargate: Atlantis, and Kim Possible.
(Kim Possible is not well-represented in the numbers above, because I mostly conducted my engagement with it away from LJ and my main fannish circles at the time. I spent something like 6-8 months being heavily involved and prolific, and then poof. And SGA wasn't a very creatively productive fandom for me, but it was the main thing I was reading for a solid year or two.)
Bandom is an interesting case, in that it was my longest-running primary fandom and one of my most prolific, but I don't really expect to revisit it from a transformative works angle. I loved it, and it frankly contributed a lot to my creative growth, but I just feel pretty done with RPF (apart from long dead historical figures and such). At the same time, I remain a big fan of several of the bands, so I am still, well, a fan. It's its own thing in my ~history.
Fandom timeline:
2019-present
I primarily participate via multifandom, multimedia exchanges, plus Yuletide; I've also started making an effort to create extra treats as much as I can, where I used to struggle to get just my assignment done. Grad school and years of indie comics shows have made me a little better at deadlines; also, I love the gift-giving experience, and working from prompts, which can honestly be a bit hard to come by in the wild. No main fandom, but I've been somewhat focused on SFF books, notably Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series and Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb trilogy.
2016-2018
Star Trek: DS9 (and other Treks to a lesser degree) was my surprise runaway main fandom. I hung out on Tumblr and had quite an involved community there for awhile! I was super prolific with fanart, and toyed with writing fic outside exchanges (but only ever managed pages of notes). Started while unemployed and struggling with self-confidence (definitely gets a lot of credit for helping me with that!); fizzled kind of suddenly when I started a long-term romantic relationship, which may say ... interesting things about my fannish engagement/inspiration. I stuck with Yuletide, also, and started to feel pretty good about my writing.
2013-2015
Post-grad-school period of transition in my life correlated in a higher level of fannish participation. Teen Wolf was my main, reasonably prolific fandom, though my focus was never super single-minded; I got involved in more events (the increase in multimedia exchanges was really exciting!) and returned to Yuletide (with quite a bit more confidence, and a much better grasp of things like story structure).
2008-2012
Oh, bandom. My longest-lasting main fandom, and the first one in which I was a reasonably active and prolific community participant, rather mostly lurking and spending time with a few IRL fannish friends. I moved away from my family in 2008 to get a job in the city; that early-adulthood sense of being unmoored and out on my own, combined with the particular in-person participation element bandom had (going to concerts and regularly meeting people from the internet) were probably a big part of my increased involvement. I made friends, collaborated, participated in big bangs a bunch and got really into illustrating specific fic for awhile there. I continued participating in varied holiday exchanges outside the fandom; I added Yuletart (RIP), wound up losing interest in the Good Omens Exchange after 2008, and eventually dropped Yuletide after 2010 to focus on grad school.
2007
This was a strange year. I was out of college but still living at home, and I also didn't really have a main fandom, having dropped Kim Possible early in the year. I toyed with focusing on From Eroica With Love, but the fandom wasn't active enough to give me what I was looking for at the time. I generally felt a little lost! I still did Yuletide, of course, as well as participating in the Good Omens Exchange again, and tentatively trying my hand at drawing some smut.
2006
Started the year still in Stargate: Atlantis (and even drew some stuff), but got sick of it pretty early on. I was feeling pretty disillusioned by how male-character-centric it all was, especially when one of the female leads left, I think? So I spent a bunch of the year being really into Kim Possible, which was a message-board-based fandom (weirdly nostalgic that way) and kind of off in a corner. I participated in Yuletide (even wrote a treat that year, as a sneaky gift for the BFF), and the Good Omens (holiday) Exchange on LJ. I also graduated from college.
Pre-2006
The time before I split my fannish journal/persona off from my IRL self, creating this account (on LJ, originally). I first got online in fall 1998, as a high school freshman, and I started to be "in" fandom (in a self-identified, community-adjacent way) from that point on. Sailor Moon, Labyrinth, Harry Potter, Whedonverse, Smallville, and Stargate: Atlantis were my main fandoms, more or less in that order (but with a good deal of overlap). I was always into a lot of littler fandoms (mostly TV, some comics, movies and books). Early on, I made lots of Sailor Moon OC art and wrote horrible (often self-insert) Labyrinth fanfic; of which the less said, the better. After that, I mostly did fanart for Harry Potter and Marvel Comics (which has never been my "main" fandom only for lack of a cohesive larger community, really). I rarely wrote fic, but I did participate in Yuletide starting with its first year (2003).
So ... that all happened (and continues to happen).
Appropos of very little: is my writing style kind of ... pompous? I don't necessarily mean fic, just uh. Journaling and such.
Sadly, a lot of the art is currently covered in Photobucket watermarks, and some of the links are broken (mostly due to the journals where they were posted being locked/deleted), all of which is going to take longer to rectify. I continue to think wistfully about the ever-more-unlikely possibility of local image hosting at the AO3. Ah well.
Doing all that got me thinking about my fannish output by the numbers, though, so I did some VERY self-indulgent messing about.
Most prolific year:
2017, with 46 pieces of fanart(!)
Least prolific year:
A tie: 2010 and 2018, with 3 pieces of fanart each
(I blame grad school applications and NRE, respectively.)
Most prolific fandoms:
1. Star Trek: 57
1. bandom: 57
2. Teen Wolf: 29
3. Marvel Comics: 12
4. Sailor Moon: 8
5. Good Omens: 6
Very amused by that tie. Numbers being somewhat inexact, as it was hard to know when to count the pieces in image sets separately, or the pages in multi-page fancomics, but those things wouldn't affect the lineup much!
I've had a few "main" fandoms over the years (Star Trek and bandom being the most notable, at least as far as active public participation goes), but I rarely consider myself completely done with a fandom. That said, the fandom I return to the most consistently is definitely Marvel Comics (its numbers would be higher in the list above if I were going back further than 2006, and I think I skipped some of the doodles I posted on Tumblr as not masterlist-worthy, too). And I've had a few "main" fandoms that had a set time, and seem to be pretty thoroughly over for me: Teen Wolf, Stargate: Atlantis, and Kim Possible.
(Kim Possible is not well-represented in the numbers above, because I mostly conducted my engagement with it away from LJ and my main fannish circles at the time. I spent something like 6-8 months being heavily involved and prolific, and then poof. And SGA wasn't a very creatively productive fandom for me, but it was the main thing I was reading for a solid year or two.)
Bandom is an interesting case, in that it was my longest-running primary fandom and one of my most prolific, but I don't really expect to revisit it from a transformative works angle. I loved it, and it frankly contributed a lot to my creative growth, but I just feel pretty done with RPF (apart from long dead historical figures and such). At the same time, I remain a big fan of several of the bands, so I am still, well, a fan. It's its own thing in my ~history.
Fandom timeline:
2019-present
I primarily participate via multifandom, multimedia exchanges, plus Yuletide; I've also started making an effort to create extra treats as much as I can, where I used to struggle to get just my assignment done. Grad school and years of indie comics shows have made me a little better at deadlines; also, I love the gift-giving experience, and working from prompts, which can honestly be a bit hard to come by in the wild. No main fandom, but I've been somewhat focused on SFF books, notably Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series and Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb trilogy.
2016-2018
Star Trek: DS9 (and other Treks to a lesser degree) was my surprise runaway main fandom. I hung out on Tumblr and had quite an involved community there for awhile! I was super prolific with fanart, and toyed with writing fic outside exchanges (but only ever managed pages of notes). Started while unemployed and struggling with self-confidence (definitely gets a lot of credit for helping me with that!); fizzled kind of suddenly when I started a long-term romantic relationship, which may say ... interesting things about my fannish engagement/inspiration. I stuck with Yuletide, also, and started to feel pretty good about my writing.
2013-2015
Post-grad-school period of transition in my life correlated in a higher level of fannish participation. Teen Wolf was my main, reasonably prolific fandom, though my focus was never super single-minded; I got involved in more events (the increase in multimedia exchanges was really exciting!) and returned to Yuletide (with quite a bit more confidence, and a much better grasp of things like story structure).
2008-2012
Oh, bandom. My longest-lasting main fandom, and the first one in which I was a reasonably active and prolific community participant, rather mostly lurking and spending time with a few IRL fannish friends. I moved away from my family in 2008 to get a job in the city; that early-adulthood sense of being unmoored and out on my own, combined with the particular in-person participation element bandom had (going to concerts and regularly meeting people from the internet) were probably a big part of my increased involvement. I made friends, collaborated, participated in big bangs a bunch and got really into illustrating specific fic for awhile there. I continued participating in varied holiday exchanges outside the fandom; I added Yuletart (RIP), wound up losing interest in the Good Omens Exchange after 2008, and eventually dropped Yuletide after 2010 to focus on grad school.
2007
This was a strange year. I was out of college but still living at home, and I also didn't really have a main fandom, having dropped Kim Possible early in the year. I toyed with focusing on From Eroica With Love, but the fandom wasn't active enough to give me what I was looking for at the time. I generally felt a little lost! I still did Yuletide, of course, as well as participating in the Good Omens Exchange again, and tentatively trying my hand at drawing some smut.
2006
Started the year still in Stargate: Atlantis (and even drew some stuff), but got sick of it pretty early on. I was feeling pretty disillusioned by how male-character-centric it all was, especially when one of the female leads left, I think? So I spent a bunch of the year being really into Kim Possible, which was a message-board-based fandom (weirdly nostalgic that way) and kind of off in a corner. I participated in Yuletide (even wrote a treat that year, as a sneaky gift for the BFF), and the Good Omens (holiday) Exchange on LJ. I also graduated from college.
Pre-2006
The time before I split my fannish journal/persona off from my IRL self, creating this account (on LJ, originally). I first got online in fall 1998, as a high school freshman, and I started to be "in" fandom (in a self-identified, community-adjacent way) from that point on. Sailor Moon, Labyrinth, Harry Potter, Whedonverse, Smallville, and Stargate: Atlantis were my main fandoms, more or less in that order (but with a good deal of overlap). I was always into a lot of littler fandoms (mostly TV, some comics, movies and books). Early on, I made lots of Sailor Moon OC art and wrote horrible (often self-insert) Labyrinth fanfic; of which the less said, the better. After that, I mostly did fanart for Harry Potter and Marvel Comics (which has never been my "main" fandom only for lack of a cohesive larger community, really). I rarely wrote fic, but I did participate in Yuletide starting with its first year (2003).
So ... that all happened (and continues to happen).
Appropos of very little: is my writing style kind of ... pompous? I don't necessarily mean fic, just uh. Journaling and such.