tell me a story, game!

[solo_sword]

So with the new kids coming in and showing off their shiny new fandoms, I'm curious.

How'd you get into your canon?

Did you just pick it up one day and found yourself unable to put it down, or did someone (maybe from this game) drag you into it? How long have you been into it? Was there any one thing or character that hooked you on it? This is your chance to wax nostalgic and go on about what made your canon so cool for you. If there's a story behind it, tell us! And if there's not... tell us anyway!

Comments

[solo_sword]

One of my earliest memories was watching the Star Wars movies on tape with my cousins when I was about three. I hated the movies. I was completely confused, either Vader or Jabba scared the hell out of me, and I had nightmares about Lando. (No, really. As I ended up dating many a guy like him in my early 20's, I think maybe I am just psychic.) I spent my youth absolutely hating SW and thinking it was dumb and ew all things scifi.

And then I got pulled into scifi because Jonathan Brandis was on seaQuest and he was cute and I was like fourteen. In the second season, Mark Hamill guest starred and all the commercials kept mentioning Star Wars and I realized I had no idea what the movie was actually about anymore, and oh look, USA was showing the movie freaking constantly because the box set was just about to come out, iirc. So I watched... and became completely obsessed. I pretty much memorized the movies in no time, and then I discovered they had books. Nick got a couple from the library, I let him read one and then got it immediately after. And read it faster than he could read the next one. So he gave up the book mid-read for me to get through it, and then I just passed him up and then I was the only one in the house reading the books, la!

I think the thing that got me about Star Wars was just that the story was cool. And then you get into the books, where it gets even bigger and everyone in there will always have a worse life than me! Seriously, I think that had to be what kept me reading because there was nothing but the Bantam books in those days and those books pretty much sucked ass. (I'm currently rereading them. Why? I think I hate myself, that's why.) I did give up on them a few times, too- Children of the Jedi was so bad I refused to read any more, and the spoilers of Chewie and Anakin Solo's deaths made me swear up and down that I wasn't going to bother with them anymore.

Obviously I lied. I don't even know, something just kept bringing me back to them, and I'm at the point now where I know better than to try giving it up. It's like how I tried giving up my caffeine addiction: it lasts for a little while and then I'm right back off the wagon and unlike coffee, I'm not going to try giving this up seven times. (I say this knowing that given my reaction to Chewie and Anakin, if I hadn't been playing Jaina here when LOTF ended, I may have thrown the book across the room and put it in the freezer like I did SBS and given it up again, but. We'll never know.)

...Also it helps that the new books are kinda awesome, IMO and Christmas is only like eighteen days away! \o/ (Where are my god damn spoilers, TFN? I don't care about Abeloth and the Celestials, TELL ME WHAT THE BIG EVENT THING IS, GOD.)

[solo_sword]

OH and because I'm so not editing, I have to add that the first books I read? Were all Kevin J. Anderson. The Jedi Academy trilogy and Young Jedi Knights. This is really funny if you hear my opinions on him now, especially since once I got to the good books after reading his I was all "....Did he mess up Mara's hair color?" and "I don't know who he's writing but that's not Luke" and "Omg he's trying to hook up Ackbar and Leia's bff."

[iruinenglish.livejournal.com]

You know how I love bad movies and TV to make fun of it? Yeah, I thought Buffy was going to suck.

I hated the movie a lot. When I heard they were making a TV show out of it, my reaction was pretty much "....Seriously? Oh, new network, that explains it." And so when it aired, I was all set to watch it and snark on it like I do Syfy movies and was kind of disappointed that the show was pretty good, except not really disappointed because the show was really good.

And then we had just gotten our first computer at home, and with it, the Internet. So the AOL Buffy message boards were found. Hello, Natalie's first experience with online fandom! I got really lucky in that they were relatively low-drama boards compared to what was going on in the rest of the fandom, apparently. Idk, I heard there was a lot of drama elsewhere but I was all happy in my little network of friends. (Who I mainly still talk to. One of them gets my drunk texts.)

So for as much as I raged about certain points of canon (seasons four and six, I'm looking at you), there was never any chance of me giving it up, because I had all my online friends I still needed to be able to talk to, and because I found the show really relatable. Like Buffy is hands down the character I relate to most in anything ever (YEAH I KNOW, OKAY?), and the show weirdly echoed things that had gone on/were going on in my own life. I had problems with season three when it aired because I'd just gone through some of the same situations the previous year in high school and it hit too close to home. Season six happened when I was really super depressed already. Buffy even left Sunnydale both times I moved away from home. So no matter what it was like I had to keep watching because I HAD TO KNOW THINGS ENDED UP OKAY.

And that is also why I was like the only person ever who liked Chosen. :D

[brat_inslayage]

And that is also why I was like the only person ever who liked Chosen. :D

HEY NOW. :D Person who will defend that entire damn season (well, most of it) to the death RIGHT HERE. ;)

[just-add-starch.livejournal.com]

I got into due South in the wrong order. A few years back, I saw a lot of dS stories being recc'ed on crack_van that had the pairing of Fraser/RayK. And I idly clicked on one story and ended up LOVING the pairing by the end of the story. I had to read EVERYTHING that was Fraser/RayK after that even though I'd only heard of the series but never seen it.

Once I'd pretty much devoured the entire Fraser/RayK fandom (with some Fraser/RayK/RayV thrown in there), I wanted to see the canon. For awhile, dS DVDs were tough to find. They were only available via Amazon.ca and I begged my mom for season 1 for X-Mas. She came through and I was on my way! Best Buy eventually got it together and stocked all the seasons and I bought them all and blitzed my way through the series.

I had NO IDEA that Fraser and RayK were going to be as slashy as they were on the series as they're written in fic. But, I was wrong. SO SLASHY. And such a great little show that's always rewatchable.

[notagoodslayer.livejournal.com]

Truth to be told, The Buffyverse series have been probably the only two tv series I've taken the time and dedication to watch entirely (thank you streaming!). I have never seen the movie, but it has been described in such detail on how much of a failure it was that I was quite surprised when I found out (because lucky me, I saw the series without knowing there was a movie). I'm not a person that gets into fandom communities, or really goes beyond watching the series, thinking "oh, this is cool", and then moving on; until some years I barely took the time to watch much TV, and up to know there is a lot of things that I don't get about the Internets. Actually, I do RPs out of a frustrated desire to write novels (which I still do, albeit scarcely). I really never thought about using characters from TV series, but fortunately(?), I got into other things done by Whedon, and then started to inquire a little more, and even deal with the comics, and you know, watch it all over again. And then I found Fandom.

Funny thing, I've never really liked main characters (as in, ones I would like to play). So when I saw that there was no Faith, it was decided. Out of the whole cast I had liked her the most because she is clearly the best, and it has been a while since I get to play with someone so messed up. Also, I can geninuely portray Faith being completely clueless about the ways of other people, because god damn, I'm really are clueless about a lot of fandoms (something I plan to slowly change).

Oh! Also, I decided that it would be too much of a torture to app for someone based on novels I read on Spanish, because really, things are complicated enough.

[notagoose]

The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers is one of the newest fandoms that I have gotten into, I never even knew the show existed until probably a year and a half ago.

One of my favourite fanfic authors that I constantly check for weekly updates writes Galaxy Rangers fanfic and even though I didn't even know anything about the show I started reading them and got interested based on the way that she wrote the characters. I found the episodes on youtube and started watching them, getting to somewhere about episode 17 - I thought it was only 12 but when I rewatched the episodes on the DVDs I found that I actually watched more than that as Episode 18 was a new one for me.

I stopped briefly watching the episodes on youtube but when I came back to them I found that the majority had been taken down and I couldn't track down the one episode that I really wanted to see, 'Supertroopers' , which was Episode 47. I knew I wanted to get the DVDs of the show, which I had to import as only the complete sets are available in Region 1 so I ordered them and started watching the episodes.

I'm not sure what it is exactly about Galaxy Rangers that got me hooked, there was just something epic about it - the characters and storylines definitely played a part, Goose in particular was a standout for me as well - especially the depths to his character and it was interesting watching him evolve as the series progressed.

It's just a shame that the show only lasted for one season.

[slapbetcommish.livejournal.com]

I thought everything on CBS sucked and their shows were all going to be bad.

And then Barney came to FH and ruled really hard. So I had to watch the show, and lo, I was wrong about all CBS shows sucking. It was actually just awesome to find a show that was funny that I could relate to with characters around my own age (this is surprisingly difficult, mostly due to the funny thing).

So, um, show #1 I can fault Pard for.

[longislandiceme]

I inherited my geekery, trufax. My dad was a big Hulk/Spider-Man/X-Men fan throughout high school/university, and though he sold off most of his comics (something he regrets now) some time ago, he kept a few kicking around, so they're always something I've been sort of vaguely aware of.

So, yeah, X-Men ended up being my favourite, and somehow comic books gradually shifted over from "something my dad bought me every once and a while" to "something I spent a good portion of my money on (especially when I forgot to return TPBs/hardcovers to the library" to "something I downloaded regularly because I'm poor and have no money" ;)

Amusing but not immediately relevant to the story: my mom was huge into the speculator market thing for a while, and everyone who knows my family is always REALLY SURPRISED when they find out the storage room full of comic books? ALL HER DOING.

[hasthegirlballs.livejournal.com]

Ohh, man. My love affair with Scrubs began when the pilot aired on Dutch TV in what must have been... 2002 or 2003 or something. I watched it religiously for several seasons because it was so much fun. Then, like many people before me, I dropped it like a rock when it got bad around season 5 or 6. Didn't look back to it.

I ran across the first episode of season 9 while surfing a questionably legal TV episodes site *cough* and wound up slightly confused by the image they used, which barely showed any of the old cast. Turned out they'd replaced most of them with new characters for the 9th season. I actually remember complaining to someone - might have been flowering_mind - about the change ,and how it absolutely had to be horrible.

... Naturally, I let curiosity get the best of me about just how horrible it would be. As a result, I saw Drew and Denise (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3EN5kQb4Q4) in action for the first time, totally OTP'ed them, and got back into the groove of watching Scrubs every week.

Yeah, 'Med School' wasn't the best Scrubs had ever done, but I had totally fallen for Denise and Drew. I went back, rewatched the eighth season - mostly for Denise - and kind of went back to adsfjdsfkaj YES-land. And that's it. Denise saved Scrubs for me. (It astounds me, watching season 1 episodes, how much this show has changed with time. It's like watching a new era slowly forming on your TV)

[flashesforinfo.livejournal.com]

My boyfriend has a complete Scrubs adoration going on, and every few months he'll literally work his way through the entire thing with barely a break.

As such, I'm pretty sure I've seen EVERY EPISODE EVER, MULTIPLE TIMES. Including the not so great later seasons. Or it feels like it anyway. I do love it! Just... not in such large doses as I seem to get it.

[furious-maximus.livejournal.com]

I picked up Codex Alera sometime after the second book was out... I know this was, in part, due to the fact that I'd enjoyed Butcher's Dresden stuff, but I feel like someone recommended them too, but now I don't know who that was.

Anyway, it's a good thing I started after there were two books out because the first one was very wobbly. Then the second book had one of my absolute favorite introduction scenes for a character ever (it was Max, of course), and I was hooked.

Which, now that I think about it, is kind of a boring way to get into a canon...

[vanillajello]

Wow, really had to think about this for a moment. It's only been a little over a year, but... for a moment there I just couldn't figure out where the hell I grabbed this show from.

But, okay. I think I remember it. LJ spotlighted a community for... people dealing with mental illness? Or possible for the families and friends of said people? Either way, I checked it out, probably because I had nothing better to do. Someone with DID mentioned this new TV show about the condition, with Toni Collette as the lead, called United States of Tara.

So, I like Collette, and I was intrigued. A quick trip through the internets revealed that S1 had just ended like a week or two before. I downloaded the first couple of episodes straight away. And then I watched them.

... Yeah, I think it took me all of 5 minutes to decide this was a show for me. About until T's "Dude, I've been digging 'round your closet for like and hour and I can't fucking get to Narnia!" actually. By the end of the first episode I was sure of it. (In part due to one of my favourite fight scenes ever. "Wait, you're who?" Also, yeah, this family is a bit screwed up. No surprise there.)

It just grabbed me. It was witty and funny and touching, it had solid acting, and characters that intrigued me. And yeah, I had a soft spot for Kate (and Marshall, too) from pretty early on. Even if a lot of her actions left me protesting at the screen. I just loved her personality, and just how believably teenaged she was. Which then in turn, a couple of months later, led me to apping her here, yay.

Now, the show is halfway through its second season, and I still love it. And seem to have tricked a few of you into watching, too. I would say I'm sorry but I'm not.

[joan-notjane.livejournal.com]

I loooooove your canon so much and I would DESPERATELY love to attempt to RP as Tara somewhere but I don't think I could swing bringing her to Fandom.

[weldedtomyspine]

I actually started reading the new Blue Beetle to see just how angry it was going to make me. I'd been a huge fan of Ted Kord (the previous Blue Beetle), and he had one of the most ridiculously infuriating deaths I know of in comics. So I expected to find his replacement really annoying and a huge disappointment.

So I picked up the first issue.

And it turned out to be good. Actually, it turned out to be amazing. Griffen and Rogers obviously got it. What made Ted awesome as the Beetle. And what makes comic books awesome to read. Not to diss Peter Parker (much), but Blue Beetle was a the book Spiderman would have been if Peter didn't live in a world that was constantly out to kick him in the balls.

So I kept up with the book, enjoying it tremendously. And then I got to issue 16... And that was it. It's still one of the single most enjoyable issues of any comic I've ever read. (In fact, I had to take a little break in the middle of this comment to read it again.)

Everyone should read it as it requires next to no context and is HILARIOUS.

The end.

[boywonder03.livejournal.com]

DENTIST!

Have you seen this (http://oxboxer.livejournal.com/34473.html), btw?

[endsthegame]

Ahem. So back when I first joined the ranks of the Online at age 10 in 1997, I did so chasing the fandom of a game called Creatures. (Artificial life game. Absolutely awesome. Anyway, I get off track) I met a boy my age called Bryan who I got into the habit of exchanging emails with.

On my birthday, he sent me a book. It was Ender's Game. It was engaging, and extremely powerful to me at age 11, with little to no friends and a lot of crap going on in my life because I was considered one of the gifted kids in elementary school. AKA, at the time, freaks.

So I got heavily into Ender's story, and loved the book dearly, and it stayed one of my favorite books of all time because of it. And that's really the whole story. I love this book. It was my companion for several pretty difficult wee years of my life.

[ancientbschamp.livejournal.com]

Let's start with Xena: Warrior Princess since it was my first real fandom, shall we? Yes.

I have to admit, I didn't actually get into X:WP right away. The first episode I ever saw, thanks to the scheduling-pinball magic of syndication, was the season 2 opener "Orphan of War," and my basic reaction was a gigantic OMGWTF?!? I was sitting there going "Okay, she seriously just killed that really bad CGI centaur with a GIANT CROSSBOW BOLT MADE OUT OF A TREE, this show is insane, I cannot deal." And then after that, I didn't really bother for a while until there was a lot of hype about the first musical episode, season 3's "The Bitter Suite." Which was cracky, and fun, and pretty, but again I was too o.O and confused by the syndication schedule to really get into it.

Then an ex-girlfriend of mine linked me to some X:WP fic, I couldn't tell you what it was now, but it was some long fic and it was pretty good and I just kept reading fic (I developed a huge thing for the early canon ubers based on "The Xena Scrolls," with Janice Covington and Mel Pappas) and I decided "screw it, I'll give this show another shot."

So I did, which just happened to land me right in season 4, 9 episodes in with "Past Imperfect." Season 4 was so not the best season to start watching, but I really did get hooked -- that was the season where they really started ramping up the subtext and the intensity of the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle, and the New Zealand locations were absolutely gorgeous, and let's face it, the leads were smoking hot, and right about that point in my life it was about the best hook I could ever ask for in a show.

After that, I watched every episode pretty much religiously, went back and mainlined the earlier seasons, bought all the DVDs when they came out, went to a bunch of cons . . . the rest is pretty much history. X:WP is always going to have a soft spot in my heart as my first "real" fandom, as in the first one where I actually got so hardcore into the show that I did the fic thing and the con thing and the mailing-list/message board thing. (And yeah, this fandom is totally how I met divinesurfchick, holy crap how many years ago was that now)

And the getting flamed out of sections of the fandom for defending the series finale thing. Remember this, it'll be a bit of a motif.

[therewaslife]

Every few months, I get into these Xena moods where ALL I WANT TO WATCH ARE THE DVDS. And I just do it incessantly. I so hate that I didn't get all the DVD sets before they were discontinued (I'm like one season away).

CURSES!

[sorella-vecchia.livejournal.com]

The first season of the Gunslinger Girl anime came out during a period when I was trying lots of different anime. I'd try just about anything, even if it did have a weird title and silly promo art. So I ended up with this little 13-episode series burned to CDs (because that's how we rolled back then) and I popped one in.

And, seriously? They had me from the moment the opening started rolling and I realized they'd used The Delgados The Light Before We Land (http://popup.lala.com/popup/1225260577998121032).

Then I was struck by the art. They were using a very non-traditional (for anime) color palette. Earth tones abounded, but they were light ones. The colors weren't the frenetic oranges and reds and blues of lighter anime, and it wasn't the blacks and crimsons of darker stuff. It was... different. And less artificial.

Halfway through that first episode I realized that someone had reached into my brain and written a story that poked almost all of my buttons. I mean, I was spending huge amounts of time reading about indoctrination, education, and how society draws the line between them. Needless to say, I was hooked.

Then I discovered that someone had bought the US rights to the manga and started translating. Which is when I realized that not only was Yu Aida a brilliant writer who appeared to like the same stories I did, he also draws the most elegant hands I've ever seen.

What? I like hands, okay?

[rocksthescarf.livejournal.com]

After the OC got ruined for me in season 2 I vowed never to watch another Josh Schwartz show again.

Then repeterpetrelli told me to watch Gossip Girl for Chuck and I forgot all about whatever vows I made and checked it out. And fell in love.

The first episode I saw was Desperately Seeking Serena which to me looked like Dawn Summers was drugging a hot blonde to have her way with her and the hot blonde wasn't having that so she called her awesome brother to help her out and he did so by bribing people to take the SATs for them and flirting with his hot sister's annoying boyfriend. So naturally I was like "This is awesome!" and didn't look back.

The show is just plain awful now but I keep watching anyway for some reason. I usually give up on shows pretty easily so I don't know what's going on here.

[talkstodeadppl.livejournal.com]

Okay, so, I've been watching Lost since the pilot which started the day after my 17th birthday (oh so long ago). I was like super obsessed with it and squeed about it until people got super annoyed with me. But I did not care, because it was Lost and Lost is better than eveeeeerything else in the world.

Then season three rolled around and I was like "Yeeeeah. You've spent the last 5 episodes trapped in cages, I'm outta here" and I stopped watching. I will seriously stop watching shows at the drop of a hat. I am fickle like that.

Then a year later (and I remember this clearly) I was waiting for Supernatural to come back from commercial and I was flipping channels and came across this nerdy dude in a tie taking off a helmet and saying "I'm Daniel Faraday. I'm here to rescue you" and I was like "Is this fucking LOST?" and it was. So I decided to catch up and I totally don't regret it because seasons 4 and 5 of Lost are the best ones.

And now I've become super annoying about it again. I DON'T CARE.

[bloody-luck.livejournal.com]

God damn fish biscuits. *makes face*

[capt-maxfactor.livejournal.com]

We were living in Azerbaijan when the first movie came out in the States, and pirates are kind of an in-joke among our group of friends, so I really, really wanted to see it.

But getting legitimate movies in Azerbaijan...doesn't happen...and the only theater in the city got movies, but voiced-over in Russian. So I went to see Pirates in Russian. Which I don't speak. I got vague ideas of the plot from my friend who was visiting because she'd seen the movie four times back in the States.

But Jack Sparrow was awesome, Orlando Bloom spent a good chunk of the movie wet, and I was a happy fangirl. There was seriously excellent fanfic out there that I could read until the bootleg got to Baku, and when I finally saw the movie and understood it, I was hooked.

Movies two and three were less impressive, and I'm afraid of the fourth one they are currently planning, but when it comes to a movie based on a theme park ride, Pirates is hard to beat.

[spring-lost.livejournal.com]

Really, my whole love affair with this canon can be traced back to the statement, 'My favorite comic ever is Cable & Deadpool #19, 'Why, When I Was Your Age''. It no doubt isn't the best comic written in the history of comicry - there are way too many amazing comics on this planet - but it is my personal favorite.

But to take it back to day one... I'd once read a crazy Hellblazer/Sailor Moon crossover in my youth, which got me interested in watching the Constantine movie that was coming out back then. I actually liked it quite a bit, and finally told myself that I'd have to Read The Real Thing or I'd wind up feeling like a douche if I ever wrote in the fandom.

So I took my first - literally terrified, because I thought I had a bullseye drawn on my back the moment I came in - steps into the comic book world with Hellblazer... I think it's issue #104 or #106, 'Cross-Purpose'. Got into Vertigo for a while, read almost every series - except for Fables, funnily enough - they published, and finally got drawn into the world of Superhero Comics through the Superbuddies - the series Formerly Known as the Justice League and I Can't Believe It's Not THe Justice League.

Of course, then DC had to go and kill off Ted Kord, one of the main characters from those series. I got disillusioned by DC, started poking around Scans_Daily complaining, and stumbled onto some Deadpool scans. Okay, funny, fine.

Then I ran into Deadpool scans that involved him being involved in a bonafide serious conversation, without ruining what of his characterisation I had picked up so far, with an old, grizzled, yet optimistic guy in a bar while he grew back to his old self after a quick deaging incident. It was very serious, and yet not, there was joking back and forth, there was real comradery jumping off the page in a very... I don't even know what the word is. Thorough? Way. They wound up taling about their childhoods. A lot.

The flashbacks we saw in the background showed that they were both lying their asses off. Making things seem more rose-coloured than they were.

And they called each other on it on the last page.

And then they just walked off together.

I was lost. Here were two guys who had been enemies for as long as they'd known each other - and that was a long time - and they knew each other so well. Bought the comic. Did not stop buying the comic. It became my favorite thing to look forward to every week.

I can't find the full issue anywhere online where you don't have to just download the full thing, so have some scan snippets (http://community.livejournal.com/cabledeadpool/81988.html#cutid1) instead.

[brat_inslayage]

My history of involvement with Buffy fandom has some freakish similarities to my history with X:WP fandom, actually. I'd seen the original movie, way back when, and when I first heard they were making a TV series of it I just boggled, a lot, not realizing how different it was going to be in tone from the movie.

So I didn't watch it. It just sort of existed at the edge of my already scanty pop-culture consciousness as this oddity that amused me, but not enough to get into. It probably didn't help that my first accidental viewing of the show was "Bad Eggs" from season 2. Yeah, there was the whole OMGWTF IS THIS thing.

The first time I actually did intentionally watch it was when they finally aired season 3's "Earshot," because of all the hype about how it'd been pulled from the original airing schedule in the wake of the Columbine shootings, and I was curious. And I was like "Wow, this show is pretty cool, actually." But at the time I worked nights, and I didn't have a VCR, so I just didn't really get a chance to watch it, although I do remember managing to watch both parts of "Graduation Day."

And then "Hush" happened in season 4, there was the big ad campaign built around it, and I was like "Okay, now I really have to check this one out."

And holy crap, I was hooked. I saw that episode and was like "I get it now, show, I am freaking in love with you." Much like I did with X:WP I never missed an episode after that, went back and caught up on all the previous seasons (but during hiatuses so as not to confuse myself), got into the online fandom (though in retrospect wow, I could've picked more sane sections of it to hang out in, yes I realize this may be relative), got to watch some of the location shooting for parts of "Once More With Feeling," went to Comic-Con for the first time because Amber Benson was there, flew all the hell the way to Brooklyn to see Iyari Limon at a con...

BtVS is really the only other show that I ever got into as hardcore as I did X:WP, and seriously, the patterns of how I got into both of them are disturbingly similar, right down to being that crazy person who really liked the later seasons and getting bitched out by a lot of people for saying that certain events that took place in the sixth season of each show were not going to piss me off enough to disown it.

And in case you couldn't tell by now, I love season 7 (that box set is the most worn-out of all my DVDs, or at least the last four discs of the season are) and will defend the hell out of it. Because I am that crazy person.

...sixth season can still DIAF, though. Except for a couple of episodes.

[need-no-moon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think I did something similar only it was Buffy actually killing Angelus that woke me up. I couldn't believe they'd just done that and after that I just needed to see it all.

Yes, I shipped Buffy/Angel. What of it?

[trigons_child]

Here's where I show my age. Back in the early 80s in California, my little brother started collecting baseball cards. My family had a Sunday ritual: we'd get dragged to church (where I surprisingly did not burst into flames), then we'd drive to Santa Maria to see a matinee at the mall. But there was always time to kill between arriving and the movie, so we'd hit up a store to shop for baseball cards. I was bored out of my mind, but lo and behold, the store sold comics, too, so I started checking them out. My first pick was exceptionally girly -- Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, whom I've toyed with the idea of apping but I don't know how the age thing would work in Fandom. Then I stumbled across Teen Titans when I spotted the gothy half-demon empath who struggled with her dark side. *shifty eyes* No, that wasn't hitting my kinks even back during my early tween years. Then they killed her off, and I was pissed, but I kept reading in hopes she would come back, because this was comics, after all. And she did! And then a few years later they killed her again in a really ridiculous plotline. And I kept reading out of habit. And she came back! Except she was all evil and skanky and kinda gay. And then they killed her again and screwed with the team so much it was barely recognizable, so I stopped reading. And then once I apped Raven, I started following Titans again and found that she'd gotten better and the writers were still doing horrible things to her. Oh, canon.

[carpe_demon]

I watched the first few episodes of Charmed because yay girl power and yay pagan-y goodness. But the show managed to offend me rather quickly by going through books of ancient gods and goddesses and going "Oh, that's a cool name, let's give it to a demon." Seriously, Hecate was a demon who comes to earth every 200 years to find an innocent man from a well-born family to get her knocked up? And Kali was an evil sorceress who was cursed to chill in a mirror? Way to offend part of your target audience, Charmed. So I stopped watching. Then while I was flipping through channels a couple years later, I landed on Charmed without realizing what it was. And there was this hot demon guy who was struggling with his dark side and I was hooked. :) And then the show went to hell after Prue suffered Death-by-Alyssa and the writers started turning the sisters into tramps and performing character assassinations on everyone and killing Cole off and I still watched because occasionally there were good moments like Drake and I still liked Piper and the Wyatt and Chris stuff was good when the COs weren't running around in their underwear and bitching about their sacred duty and don't get me started or I will froth.

[absolutesnark]

I admit, the use of goddesses in the wrong way did not bother me at the time because I just didn't know. You have made me more knowledgeable about things like that! At least those eps can easily be skipped due to being terrible for many reasons.

[likes_scoundrels]

When wasn't I a Star Wars fangirl? I saw ANH when I was living on an AF base in Spain. I actually saw it on TV first because it took months for new movies to get to us, but someone managed to get a bootleg copy and rig a cable network in our neighborhood to broadcast it. Then I later saw it in the theater when it finally got to us. I fell in love with it -- especially with Han. :)

I can't count the number of times I saw ESB or RotJ in the theater, and I was so psyched for the prequel trilogy until George Lucas broke my heart. I did see AotC and RotS in midnight showings the night of the release. I would've seen the TPM midnight showing, but I missed opening night due to a epic and tragic tale of woe involving UHaul and why I will never use them again. I have the Marvel run of SW comics and read all the original novels (Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the Han Solo trilogy, the Lando trilogy, the earliest of the EU books until The Courtship of Princess Leia made me go "WTF is this crap?" and I fell out of the habit).

I'm afraid to start reading them again. O.O

[sith_happened]

*shifties* I can make sure you read only the good ones, omg.

[sith_happened]

When I was a Small!Fry, my family lived in Korea for two years (yeah, I travel a lot), and there was only one television station in English. And when you are 12 and there is only one channel in English, you watch a LOT of movies. My brother got into Star Wars. Like, obsessively. He watched the trilogy (because back then it was only a trilogy) once a week for two years.

So...I hated Star Wars. A lot. For years. It was movies that my little brother liked and sci-fi was for losers, okay? I read Russian novelists! (I was one seriously pretentious high school student.) And then I went to college, we had a Star Wars trilogy night in the common room and I was hooked. I'd forgotten just how awesome Leia was, and how adorable Han was and how whiny Luke was, and how badass Vader was. And the my cousin told me that there were books!

And I started with Timothy Zahn (fortunately), worked my way through everything that was published (including a good chuck of the Young Jedi Knights), and then they dropped a moon on Chewie and I stopped reading.

I started playing Anakin here and realized that I needed to catch up on the fandom (though I still can't read most of the Clone War novels because they are just. so. bad), discovered Legacy of the Force as they were still coming out and fell in love with Ben.

And so, nope, never leaving Star Wars canon again.

[bitchprince]

I've repeatedly told various versions of this story before, but hush, today has me all clingy to my new alum.

So my flist filled up with squee about some show called Merlin a few years back. First season, only the first ep had just aired, and I went '...eh, let's check it out'. So I downloaded the first episode, found it somewhat amusing, and decided to keep watching.

It would've kept on being just One Of Those Shows that I watch just to have something to watch, but episode 5 came along with the massive freaking chemistry between Arthur and Lancelot, and Arthur generally revealing himself to be a badass jackass who managed to be kind and understanding in the weirdest ways at the weirdest times, and I fell colossally in love with the character and the show.

Fast forward a while to me getting Elaine into it. She then started babbling about fanfic in the fandom, which got me slowly and resignedly reading fanfic in the fandom - because I tend to have slash blindness until someone points it out to me in the canon. (I know, hard to believe, but I seriously often do not see the slash on the first watching)

And then I fell even worse for the show, bad and campy as it is, and now I'm the kind of fangirl who can tell you completely random trivia like the fact that Bradley James' friends like to chant 'pull yer sword out for the lads' when he's talking to a girl, and that he thinks of his friendship with Colin Morgan as a 'bromance' that often involves him 'pausing to realise we're a pair of weirdoes.'

Ahem.

[make-the-shot.livejournal.com]

The Red Star is one of the most amazing things ever written. Seriously.

I've generally felt that the term "graphic novel" was pretty silly, but it fits oddly well here. Because Christian Gossett's lack of a comics background shows through in this project, but in an awesome way. There's all this text, and so much of it is just there on the page. No word bubbles, no text boxes, just text. Over some absolutely gorgeous and epic pages of art.

Finding this book was almost totally serendipitous. I wasn't really into comics during the first (and only busy) year of The Red Star. It was years later, in a local bookstore, that I found the third TPB sitting on a shelf. It was an oversized book, and the cover was interesting, so I picked it up and flipped through it. And I found a pair of two-page spreads that, without any context whatsoever, ripped my heart out.

I've got those up. The first one (http://www.rushin-doll.net/redstar/redstar03_23_24.jpg). The second one (http://www.rushin-doll.net/redstar/redstar03_25_26.jpg).

This book is raw, epic, human life. It's a story about the horrors of war that never finds itself being preachy. It's about love and loss and love. It's romance, but not in the way we mean it when we talk about "romance novels". It's romance in the historic sense. Huge and human.

And I can never explain why it's so good. I'm gonna see if I can make gorka_wolf do it...

[gorka-wolf.livejournal.com]

As you wish. (http://community.livejournal.com/fandomhigh_ooc/763811.html?thread=28881571#t28881571)