I love good guys

> "talk about your favorite AU/fusion tropes, or tell us why AU/fusions aren’t your cup of tea"

I personally tend to think of fusions as in the crossover family, rather than the AU family. So this prompt asked me vocabulary and taxonomy as well as genre questions. On consideration, I see how fusions are often as closely related to AUs as they are to crossovers -- a kind of convergent evolution, perhaps!

For myself, I had long thought of Alternate Universe as the overarching top-level category that includes all the kinds of contradictions to and divergences from canon. This would have every degree of branched, parallel, and "total" (coffee shop and so on). Basically, I had thought of anything that didn't intend to fit into, follow from, or cap off canon as it existed at the time of the story as an AU.

From the replies I've seen to this meme prompt, it sounds like the more current understanding of "AU" has largely shed the most modest tier of canon tinkering, and now more usually means the broadest tier: the "total" AUs. Is that about right?

( My own likes in AUs )

What do you think? Do "total" AUs go with my dearest fandoms better than I yet realize?

> "In your own space, update your fandom information!"

I choose to take this prompt as an invitation to chatter at great length about miscellaneous things I like. :-)

As you're here, you likely already know that the fandoms I most actively write, request, and interact with are Forever Knight (1992-1996), Highlander (1992-1998), Dungeons & Dragons (1983-1985) (the cartoon), Battlestar Galactica (1978-1979) (the original), and (hope springs eternal) Young Blades (2005). You probably also know that I fell hard for Pokemon GO and wandered out from it into the wide (oh! so wide) Pokemon universe.

Beyond those dearest fandoms, I don't much write or read fanfic for other things that I watch and read, and so I don't often mention those other things here. They do exist...

( Chatter about other canons and fandoms and such )

How about you? Do you enjoy any of these?

'21 Snowflake #1 : Introduction

This is my fandom journal. You'll rarely find non-fannish posts here.

To this day, most posts here are about Forever Knight. Now, I do enjoy other things as much at this point! Gracious. Even my beloved first-season FK, I rarely rewatch. And yet: so much FK here. Because of the inertia of decades, because I moderate fkficfest, and because most of you know me from FK, which was my first online fandom, and ever my deepest and dearest fandom, so naturally we still connect over that shared story universe and fannish experience.

Besides FK, you'll sometimes see me post here about Highlander, Young Blades, Dungeons & Dragons (the '80s cartoon!), Battlestar Galactica (the original), and Pokemon GO (Level 43). I almost never post about any of the rest, like Masterpiece PBS/BBC shows, Bujold's "The World of the Five Gods," or even OUaT or DPS. If you're interested, I do mention further fandoms in my standing likes/dislikes post from the days I participated in a lot more fests. But most things that I watch and read, I never bring up here at all, a few because I got bitten and learned to stay away from those fandoms, but most only because they pass through lightly without needing what fandom supplies.

Three example musings on other fandoms/IPs that I rarely mention here: ( Read more... )

R: Which friendship or other platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

So many choices! As favorite, let's go with Nick and Natalie's friendship a la FK's first season, where arguably in only one episode does romance raise its head in canon.

I also love HL's Duncan and Tessa trying to make a real family with and around and for Richie, with all the challenges of just his age, never mind everything else. I love Presto and Eric's odd-couple buddy routine in D&DC. I love Riker's choices about serving second to Picard beating commanding without him. I love Brian's acceptance of Jim in The Dragon and the George novels. I love Moomintroll and Snufkin's friendship in Tove Janssen's Moomin universe. And many more.

S: Show us an example of your personal headcanon.

I have extensive headcanon about Nick's experiences in the Crusades and immediately after, from being taken prisoner at Damietta to his eventual escape, and his journey back from the Holy Land to France. I researched as deeply and widely as I could then, and built it into all the fanfic I was writing back in those years, matched up meticulously with our few canon references. Mostly in: "In the Light of Day" (~48K words) (yes, I actually used to write much longer stories than today).

After all this time, I suspect that I almost take it for granted that those flashbacks I created myself actually happened in canon. Which of course they didn't. Some of them should have, maybe.

Examples: Taken prisoner after a certain infamous historical battle disastrously ending the siege of Damietta, after a long time in a dark cellar, wondering why he hadn't been ransomed, Nick escaped during a fire, and made his way first to Jerusalem, where he was disillusioned to learn what the Holy Roman Emperor had been up to while he had been fighting, another politician like Lord Delabarre... I told you it was extensive! :-D

T: Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

Hyperbole! Any interpretation I love that much, I am probably claiming for canon, not headcanon. Some of you who have witnessed me nitpick Fleur interpretations know this. Or my fiercely held belief that HL immortality is not -- not not not -- caused by violent death; people who are to be immortal are born to be so, and will be so, regardless of the manner of their first death (unless said first death involves losing said head). (Another that I cling to: that Eurominute where Duncan says he can get sick, he just can't die of it.)

But of things I know perfectly well that I made up myself and cling to ... I choose to believe that Nick met Janette before the first encounter we see on screen. I choose to believe that she choose him based on some interaction before that, something where, for at least a moment, he was the best of Nick, and she experienced that. My headcanon is that they met at a shoemaker's stall at sunset, and that Nick took her seriously on her own terms... that's all, a tiny thing. But that she thereby stuck herself (and Lacroix) with all the joy and pain of Nick, because she knowingly chose a better man... a better soul.

( the rest of the alphabet, for future use )

F: What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? Which?

Define "in a fandom." :-)

I'm a second-generation Trek fan. My father never attended conventions or the like, but he's a Trek fan since its '60s premiere. He resisted streaming until Picard, insisting that Discovery would come to DVD. But with Picard, he let me gift him a CBS All Access subscription.

Similarly, my memory does not extend back before already loving Star Wars and making up better stories about Leia and Luke's mom at age 6 than Lucus did in the prequels. (I'm sure we all did.) But I've never been "in the fandom," as such.

Where "in a fandom" means active sharing with others, not just my dad and closest friends, it has to be Forever Knight. Because while I've been following Marvel, HL, D&DC longer than FK, only FK is ... FK. ("Oh, look, it's time for September's 'Recently in FK' bulletin.")

G: What was your first fandom?

Define "fandom." :-)

Again, if this means actively interacting with a wider community of fans, it was either Marvel (letters pages), or my first convention (Trek), or online (FK).

Yet if it means a deep, abiding, imaginative and creative engagement on my own, let's go back to the vintage RankinBass holiday specials (cinematic universe!). After them, then Dungeons & Dragons (the '80s cartoon), and Robotech. ♥ Also books. Many books.

H: Do you prefer live action or animated TV shows?

I prefer well-told, serialized stories that pull me on week after week, month after month, year after year, to a well-planned, fulfilling end. Medium is unimportant. Nineteenth-century me would have adored Dickens part-numbers (as you likely know, what we think of today as novels were often originally published as issues, pamphlets, a lot like like today's monthly comic books).

In case anime and manga feel neglected by me here, let me pitch the historical-fiction/fantasy Rurouni Kenshin. Set at the close of the nineteenth century, in a tumultuous period in a Japan struggling to choose which route it will take into modernity, our war-traumatized heroes stand up for the best of what should have been chosen, and lessons that should have been learned... while contesting historical super-villains via impossible fighting moves with elaborate names.

I: Has online caused you to stop liking any fandoms? If so, which and why?

Oh, dear, a sad question. If I share, you won't re-open the sadness, will you?

When the new Battlestar Galactica premiered, I didn't have cable. So I was eagerly awaiting a taped-from-TV VHS via media-mail. While waiting, I heard online that while all the original recurring male characters had analogues in the new series, none -- not one -- of the original recurring female characters did. Instead, they had recast some of the original male characters as female, and had just completely dumped Serina, Cassiopeia, Sheba, Athena, Rigel... today, I understand that Siress Tinia, the only woman on the Council of Twelve in the original series, has a claim on partly inspiring the President Roslin character in the new series, but I didn't know that then... I was disappointed. I felt disrespected by TPTB.

Then there was that online kerfluffle in which a few jerks who were fans of the new BSG loudly spread disparaging remarks about Dirk Benedict, the actor who had played the original Starbuck, as well as criticizing the original Starbuck character. They specifically went at Benedict's having cancer, as if the illness somehow deligitimized the character he had played, and as if the new character of that name could not stand up if her predecessor weren't first torn down. Trolls, before I knew what trolls were.

I ended up never watching that VHS tape, nor the series at all. I thought: Why would I want to spend time near such folks? I'll stick with the original BSG78 that I've loved since I was a small child watching one year late (because that's how most non-news TV still worked back then where I lived, when they physically shipped the media).

J, K, and L...

...are missing in my meme source. Curious. Do you know why they're missing, or what they should have been?

( the rest of the alphabet, for future use )