Fandom Questions

[amado1]

 

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• A: Your current OTP.
• I'm in a fandom drought, I don't have one!! My most recent one is Dale Cooper/Harry Truman from Twin Peaks. I read through every fic in the tag a few months ago and started writing my own ... but it was ill-fated, I wasn't really out of my writing block yet.
• B: A pairing you initially didn’t consider but someone changed your mind.
• I remember fighting hard against Rush/Young from Stargate: Universe when I was a teen. I was like, "No way, they're not gay! Rush had a wife and she DIED and he's super sad about it! Young is divorced from a WOMAN!" Bisexual people don't exist, I guess? Either way, I was weirdly compelled by their dynamic and kept reading every Rush/Young fanfic I could find, grousing and justifying my interest by pretending there just weren't any other fics with them (there were). Eventually I became an ardent shipper. And came out as gay.
• C: A pairing you wish you shipped, but just can't.
• I wish I could get into any of the canon gay pairings in popular TV shows. Something about being canon turns me off. Caitlyn/Vi from Arcane is a big one here. I can't help it, I'm rooting for incestuous Vi/Jinx instead. Don't put my girl Vi with a cop.
• D: What was the first thing you ever contributed to a fandom?
• I wrote some really awful Redwall crackfics when I was in 5th grade, and equally awful Harry Potter crackfics between Dolores Umbridge/Cornelius Fudge (Fudgebridge). My first serious fic efforts were for SGU and Once Upon a Time (Rumplestiltskin/Jiminy Cricket). 
• E: Have you added anything stupid/cracky/hilarious to your fandom, if so, what?
• I think I'm semi-famous for writing Thrawn/Yoda for Star Wars. People still mention those fics to me. I also wrote a hideous E-rated fic between Luke Skywalker and the titty milk monster from The Last Jedi.
• F: What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? What fandom was it?
• I think Once Upon a Time, from the moment the first episode came out (I fell in love with both Robert Carlyle and Lana Parilla) to ... 10+ years later? When I got into Thrawn? I didn't even watch the whole show, I stopped at S3. But I kept up with spoilers and stayed active in the fanfic realm for yearssss.
• G: What was your first fandom?
• The first fanfic I ever read was for the Charlie Bone children's books. I didn't realize it was a fanfic, so I thought the author was out here writing official stories where Teenage Villain graphically fucks Teenage Lackey, both male. 
• H: Do you prefer real-life TV shows or animated TV shows?
• Real-life generally, I think I just know the fandom is gonna be ass for animated shows so I stay away. I have no prejudice against them. 
• I: Has tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?
• Steven Universe, god. I actually loved that show, me and my ex-wife would watch every episode together as they came out. We were so stoked by the lesbian vibes between Rose/Pearl and Garnet/Garnet. 
• J: Name a fandom you didn’t care/think about until you saw it all over tumblr.
• Hngh I tend to get in early on new fandoms. Maybe Conclave counts here. I didn't see any shippy material, but lots of gifs, and it looked so damn good. Then I read the book and watched the movie, wrote a fic, joined a discord, got obsessed.
• K: How do you feel about the other people in your current fandom(s).
• I still stay in touch with Thrawn friends but I avoid the fandom in general because it's genuinely dogshit. Idk what it is about Thrawn specifically, but I feel like it attracts the worst of the Star Wars fans -- already a notoriously toxic fandom! If you've been around here for a while you already know that I got stalked by a Thrawn fan and had to move to a new state. And that wasn't my first bad experience there by a long shot.
• L: Your favorite fanartist/author gives you one request, what do you ask for?
• I would 100% ask for whumpy bloody fanart of my favorite character. Maybe also piss kink. Let's be real.
• M: A person who got you into a fandom and what fandom they pulled you in to.
• Rich got me into Star Trek TNG. He was a huge fan in high school whereas I only liked TOS. He made me watch all kinds of episodes with him, and eventually it worked and I got even more obsessed than him.
• N: Your favorite fandom (for the people; not the thing you fangirl over).
• Star Trek. If there's drama here, it has peacefully passed me over.
• O: Choose a song at random, what ship does it remind you of?
• "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" by Frankie Valli. Mike/Nick from The Deer Hunter. Feels like cheating, they use that song in the film.
• P: Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).
•  Definitely love the idea of an AU that connects Dale Cooper closer to Laura Palmer -- like a secret in his past that makes the impact of her death and who killed her more intimate for him. Whether it's something with his father or with Windom Earle, doesn't matter. Windom would be fun -- you could do so much with their relationship, with Coop hiding or fudging certain facts, lying to his friends about exactly what happened.
• Q: A ship you’ve abandoned and why.
• Thranto, aka Eli Vanto/Thrawn. I abandoned it because my interest was artificial to begin with; in the first new Thrawn book (2017), there are three male main characters: Thrawn, the genius villain/antihero, Eli, his young aide, and Nightswan, a genius fighting for the good guys. Thrawn is obsessed with Nightswan throughout the book, challenged by him, entranced by him -- and at the end they both try to recruit the other, and both refuse due to strongly-held ideals. Nightswan dies a tragic death at Thrawn's hands. That's ship-bait for me. So I was shocked to find out that no one was shipping them! There were maybe two fics for them on AO3 when I checked, and there aren't many more than that now, years later. Instead everyone was all over Eli/Thrawn. I convinced myself I could see the appeal and even wrote and read fics for them. But eventually I got back into the old Legends books from the 90s, where there's a better version of Eli -- in Legends, he's an old war-grizzled veteran named Pellaeon who at first fears Thrawn and distrusts his abilities, then slowly grows to admire and respect him while still getting into shouting matches with him. He also witnesses Thrawn's death and spends several books grieving for him. THAT'S MY SHIP RIGHT THERE. BYE ELI.
• R: A pairing you ship that you don’t think anyone else ships.
• Blessed that every tiny rarepair I've explored has attracted at least one other freak. 
• S: What's a headcanon you have?
• I don't know if this is a headcanon or if it's 100% canon and I'm just the only person smart enough to SEE IT but I 1000% believe that Alec Hardy (David Tennant's character from Broadchurch) was molested as a kid and has that connection with Danny. IMO it's, like, subtext ... but so vividly clear that I'm stunned nobody's talking about it. Maybe that's changed, I haven't been active in the fandom for years now. But back in the day, the fandom was POPPING but the only fics I could find exploring this were my own.
• T: What are your favorite male/male ships or female/female ships?
• Male/male: Holmes/Watson, Silco/Vander from Arcane, Izzy Hands/Any guy, Rush/Young from SGU, Thrawn/Pellaeon. I tend to like gross little guys who are not meant to be heroes. I also really like Herbert/Dan from Reanimator, Nite Owl/Rorschach from Watchmen, Batman/Joker.
• Female/female: Swan Queen from OUAT, Lucille/Edith from Crimson Peak, Jinx/Vi from Arcane. I like a lot of random crackships from standalone movies. It doesn't give you a ton of material, but when the vibes are there, the vibes are there.
• U: What are your favorite male/female ships?
• Riker/Troi from Star Trek TNG.
• V: Do you have any 3-way ships? If so, what?
• Riker/Troi/Picard and Riker/Troi/Worf from TNG; Kristen/Ben/David from Evil. The latter is my all-time OT3. Kristen is a lapsed Catholic agnostic and a forensic psychiatrist; Ben is an atheist Muslim; David is a devout Catholic training to be a priest. They team up to debunk/prove demonic possessions and miracles. They have conflicting motivations and different levels of skepticism, and insane chemistry. 
• W: 5 favorite characters from 5 different fandoms.
• Ben from Evil -- as soon as they did their first Ben!whump episode I was SUNK.
• Riker from TNG
• David Xanatos from Gargoyles 
• Nick from The Deer Hunter
• Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks
• X: 3 OTPs from 3 different fandoms.
• Xanatos/Goliath from Gargoyles, natch. I'm writing a fic for them right now! Goliath is a medieval gargoyle transported to modern NYC (well, 90s NYC) by amoral billionaire David Xanatos. The names say it all. And Xanatos is a surprisingly nuanced villain for a kids' cartoon.
• Rush/Young from SGU -- my first OTP and it never gets old. Rush is an amoral scientist grieving his dead wife, and he gets a crew of military and civilians stuck on a ship with no way to return home. Young is the bullheaded military leader who just wants to retire and deal with his divorce. Their hatred is sexy. 
• Vi/Jinx from Arcane -- if this were released in a different time you Philistines would see it too instead of crying about incest. Jinx's whole entire mental breakdown comes from the fact that Vi is just HANGING OUT with another girl! C'mon.
• Y: A fandom you’re in but have no ships from.
• The Terror. I can hardly even say I'm in the fandom. The fics are so ship-centric that there's basically nothing to read unless you want to see the characters getting down and dirty.
• Z: What's a ship that you want to ship publicly, but everyone on tumblr hates it so you keep your mouth shut about it?
• I don't even really use Tumblr for fandom purposes because of the culture there. The worst one was Izzy Hands from OFMD -- people were so dramatic about him. Even if you weren't shipping him with anyone, just saying, "Hey, I like this guy," you'd get harassed. And it's mind-boggling because he's not even a villain, he's part of the main crew!
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