sophia_sol | fandoms of yore

It's fascinating sometimes to look back at my own history of fandoms I was once obsessed with, and notice the wide variety of possible current feelings about them.

Mostly there are three axes of note: do I ever bother to seek out fanworks for it or see myself doing so in the future, or am I no longer moved to do so? If a fanwork that looks like it has promise happens to cross my path, will I read it/watch it/look at it, or just scroll on by? Do I think of the fandom with fondness and nostalgia, or do I think to myself "well glad THAT'S out of my life now"? Within these three spectra, many options are possible; and there are even some special fandoms that break the system!

A tour of some of the big ones that fit my main schema:

Sutcliff fandom; Les Miserables; sparklefandom (hungarian musical theatre): no longer actively seek out, but I still love it dearly, and if I find myself reading a good fic for this fandom again, allllll my feels return instantly and I go feral over it again for at least the length of time it takes me to read the fic

The Witcher: Remember it fondly, and every now and then feel moved to go searching for more content because it's what I happen to be in the mood for, but if I'm not in the mood I won't bother to read the things that happen to cross my path

Highlander; Man from UNCLE (both original tv series and the movie remake); Star Trek; Star Wars; Yuri on Ice: won't seek out, but if something fun crosses my path, I'll take a look with pleased nostalgia

Bandom; Due South; Good Omens; Hamilton; American Idol RPF; Inception; The Sentinel; Stargate Atlantis; White Collar: won't seek out, unlikely to read even if something crosses my path, but I remember it with fondness

Teen Wolf: won't seek out, won't read if it crosses my path, am glad it's out of my life, and yet still remember it fondly

Hockey RPF; Sports Night; Supernatural RPF: yeah no.

Special cases:

Fairy tales: my first and forever fandom, I will never not care about it. I read folk tale collections semi-regularly still, and am always delighted to find good fanfic for any particular tale or for the genre in general.

Harry Potter: won't seek out, won't promote without major caveats, probably won't read, but if something unusually interesting crosses my path, I'll take a look with a sort of exhausted knowledge that it's the fandom that made me and it is dug deep into my psyche

MCU: totally burnt out on, will no longer read the fic, can no longer even put myself in the headspace of how I could have once cared, and yet still have a lingering fondness for Thor and the Thor movies

Fake News: ahahaha oh god. the horror of american politics since then makes the heyday of jon stewart's daily show and stephen colbert's colbert report feel like a different world, one I can no longer access

Doctor Who: Once upon a time it broke my heart in a very real way which took me years to get over, but now I have a very reasonable relationship with this show as my ex. I remember the good times fondly, and smile when I see a gif go by on tumblr, and am happy to hear that it has been doing fun and interesting things in recent times, and I scroll on by.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hockey RPF; Sports Night; Supernatural RPF: yeah no.
xD I understand.

That is interesting to look back :)

haha yeah you get me!

My weird one is due South. I spent about eight years in that fandom, and I think back fondly on the community and am proud of my many fanworks in it. But I never read in it nowadays, or only by making an effort. I fell out of that fandom not for any reason intrinsic to that fandom, but due to RL things that were happening, and somehow it's got associated with a period in my life, or events in my life, that I don't want to return to in my head now? I wish it wasn't that way, and hope someday I will be able to reread some of the great fic in the fandom.

Oh that makes a lot of sense and is so unfortunate! Something similar happened to me once with a song I listened to a lot during a particular difficult period in my life - I couldn't listen to the song for years after without being viscerally reminded of that time, but eventually it faded. I hope that with time the association between your rl stuff and due South will fade, and you'll be able to enjoy it again.

It's so funny...the way you feel abt Teen Wolf is the way I feel abt Bandom, Inception, American Idol RPF, and due South. I'm not someone who would ever be called nostalgic. Usually, whenever I move from a fandom, I don't leave a forwarding address (LOL). And yet, I do feel a degree of fondness for all of those fandoms. For the most part, I left them cuz I felt I'd gone as far as I could go with them. In some cases (like due South), I'd spent over 5 yrs actively involved. So my affection is buoyed by the satisfaction that I gave them my all while I was a part of them.

The end of my involvement with Buffy fandom happened cuz of 2 things: the end of canon (personally, I see the comics as official AUs) and the reveal that a sizable chunk of folks in front and/or behind the cameras turned out to be horrible people IRL. Because of that, I can't revisit the canon/enjoy any of it and so my interest in fanworks is non-existent.

Off the top of my head, MCU is the one fandom I salted AND scorched the earth as I was leaving it. Many of my memories of that fandom have turned sour; being in the MCU fandom was one of the worst fandom experiences ever for me. Therefore, it's actually impossible for me to revisit anything I had previously enjoyed in that fandom (let alone anything from around 2020 onward.) 🤷🏾‍♀️

The ONLY fandom that will get a pass from me is Xena. It was my first fandom and all. Still, even though the canon had one of the worst season finales ever, I can ignore all of the missteps. It's been at least a decade since I have read any Xena/Gabrielle fic. And now I am wondering how any would hold up...hmmm. XD

Well, hmm, actually 2 other fandoms that get a pass are HBO'S ROME and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. Both are on the small side and I was a reader more than anything. IDEK, they remain good places in my fannish heart. XD

Ah, lots of this comment really resonated with me!

Yeah, once you spend some time in fandoms, you can't help but notice things.

Ah yeah your experiences make a lot of sense to me too! Thanks for sharing! I think in a lot of ways I am more likely to hang onto old fandoms than many people. I don't so much leave fandoms behind as I pile newer shinier ones on top of the old ones, lol.

Thank you for writing this post! I hadn't really revisited how I currently feel abt my time in Fandom (as I mentioned, I'm not a nostalgic person to begin with). So it was kinda nice to go thru that here.

It's so fascinating! FWIW, I do wish I could do that. At least some of the time since there tends to be new ppl coming into fandoms all the time. So I wonder, frex, what I'd think abt an MCR RPF fic posted this year. Alas.

ohh yeah, an MCR fic written this year would by its very nature be a very different thing than that which was written in the days of yore, just because enough years have passed for the real life people that canon is different!

Yeah, for me it'd be abt a full decade (maybe 8 yrs if we want to go technical) since I read any MCR fic. And that's not even with the additional canon from the tour (which I have zero idea of how it went other than Gerard would dress up most of the time.) In a way, I feel that, even if I wanted to get back into it, the distance has grown too wide for me to reconnect with whatever it was that I once made heart-eyes at.

~~I listened to their discography last summer and was, for the most part, on the "huh, that's nice, I guess?" train of thought.~~ So, yeah, that's a closed chapter for sure. (pours one out for what it meant to me back in the day)

fandoms of yore

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