Memories

I don't think people as a whole appreciate how much the media that they consume shapes their lives (if you're reading this, I'm sure you do, but you also know what I'm saying here). I'm sure that it's taken different forms nowadays but there was an almost church-like community in watching a show every week and discussing it with other fans the next day. Then, there was this shit.

My Family

Not to brag or anything, but I come from a p r e s t g i o u s line of fanboys and girls. My mother nearly named me Eowyn (still haven't forgiven her for chickening out). Here's some anecdotes ranging from funny to dramatic.

• Bilbo the Dog - I wasn't old enough to remember him very much, but pictures from the time show he was a Corgi mix. Absolutely adorable. Unfortunately, he must have hated us because he was always running to stay with another family. I was a baby so this must have been the early 90s - way before the movies - but during one such adventure my mom was shouting down the road for him: 'Bilbo, Bilbo!' and according to my dad everyone on the street's jaw dropped. This happened a few mores times and my mom never understood why until someone finally asked why she came outside to yell 'dildo' all the time. In the end, we had to move (supposedly for unrelated reasons) and my parents let the other family keep him. We got updates until he passed away at a very ripe old age, but I hope that neighborhood didn't keep thinking he was named Dildo.
• Buffy Caused a Family Friend's Divorce - Only slightly sensationalized for humor's sake. A family friend had what appeared to be a normal marriage (depressingly, I guess she did) but her husband always seemed like a joykill. Turns out, he absolutely was; belittling her when she got into Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It sounds shitty even from a sheltered perspective, I don't know if he was jealous or what but I do remember him openly calling it 'stupid'. Eventually, she turned to the internet for fan discussion and met someone who shared her enthusiasm for the series. They must have had mad chemistry because she dumped the shitty guy and moved away to be with her web luva. I never saw her again but she's still Facebook friends with my family and she's still married to the other guy! I wasn't familiar with the show yet - I didn't get into it until it was almost over and I was like 12 - so for the longest time I only knew it as 'that show that made my family's friends get divorced' lmao. I wonder what would have happened if I got my family into the show much sooner.
• My Aunts, The Spirk Shippers...and More! - Okay, to be fair I don't know for sure they were Spirk shippers. My mom told me she and her sisters would huddle around to listen to radio versions of Star Trek episodes. Knowing what I know now, I can't help but think this is where it started for those girls. What I DO know: once I turned 18, I got into Supernatural. No one in my family believed it was good until I was done with the series (same thing happened with Buffy, come to think of it) but when my aunts caught up, I was invited to a Facebook group they'd made for SPN fans. This isn't actually as embarassing a memory as it should be, I'm not into Wincest or Destiel and although they very much WERE (with fanfics to prove it), I was really hype that my aunts were tumblr grade fangirls. It got a little cursed eventually, though - at least one of them is still a huge slash shipper. My mom says she wrote Geralt/Jaskier fanfics but wouldn't let her read them; and I saw her discussing Wolverine/Deadpool with my cousin recently.
• Weaboo Mother - Okay, this might be the worst family one. In fact, this one is so long and visceral that I contained it on its own page. Believe it!

Friends

• Fanfiction in Class - A lot of people did this, right? In 6th grade, my friends and I discovered fanfiction and quickly took to writing our own. Once I wrote one that my friend liked so much that she printed it out and brought it to school to read in class. I was surprised and a little embarassed but mostly flattered. I guess my other fake ass friends weren't really reading my fics (their reviews must have been hollow platitudes!) before then because once they read her copy, they all wanted me to write things for them. I obliged even though I didn't know most of the characters they wanted them to be about. They'd give me little blurbs for me to work off of when applicable, some were OCs they wanted shipped with their guy of choice. Even funnier was that sometimes they wouldn't tell me the fandom so I had no clue who I was writing - one such fic was my first foray that they'd ever know about into slash involving 'Mike' and 'Chester'. Which, looking back...Linkin Park?? LMAO, how mortifying. We were lucky we never got caught. Imagine if the teacher demanded to see our accidental old man yaoi (thankfully G-rated) and read it aloud. I know my bratty little friends would have thrown me under the bus.
• The Fan Art Cold War - Back in the day, you couldn't get anime merch just anywhere. Instead, we printed out pictures from the internet and plastered them (or, if you were fancy, used binders with sleeves) all over our folders. My family printer rarely worked and when it did, it would print out the faintest and most disappointing images ever. My friends had beautifully printed - at least, it seemed that way at the time - full color pictures of Inuyasha or Sesshomaru or whoever, but they'd never let me use their printers. I get it, ink is expensive and asking parents is fraught, but I was still a little salty since they made fun of me. My internet prowess was better than theirs, though (we had older devices sure but mine were actually in my room because my mom didn't want my stepdad to have free access to the internet lmao) so I'd find the most beautiful fan art and art of anime they'd never seen. On top of that, I got into editing software so I was able to make up for SOME of the printer's short comings and also add flourishes and other edits to the art to make them unique. My friends were jealous and in turn I gatekept the source of these pictures. Eventually someone's mom was kind enough to suggest that I bring the files over and she'd print everyone a pretty copy, and thanks to friend's mom (and her impressive ability to figure out how to undo the way I'd had to crank up the saturation to make up for my crappy printer, all through her own printer's settings), the cold war was over. Thank you, Britt's mom.
• Broken Heart Syndrome - A repeat from my roleplaying page, but the parallels with the story about my mom are too funny. I got embroiled in drama about a different shonen franchise I had nothing to do with, all to try to help my friend, here.

Opps

• A Stalker Tries to Ruin Haunting Ground - Don't worry, he didn't succeed. This is probably my weirdest story and at the time, combined with everything else he was doing, it was unnerving. But now it's really fucking funny, I'm sorry. This guy was my friend for about a year and we shared a lot of fandoms; but after I turned him down romantically he kept trying to use literally everything he knew about me against me. He wrote a bizarre and NSFW (albeit, in extremely stupid and unsexy ways) fanfiction about one of my favorite games, Haunting Ground. This ridiculous story is still up where he posted it - back then, I actually contacted the admins and explained the situation and while they refused to take it down, they did change the names and ages so whatever, I guess. I still won't be linking them because they suck and their website is stupid and bad. My favorite part though is that hardly anyone looked at it and nobody gave it a like or a comment so really that's more embarrassing for him than it is for me.