User:Pet

Name/s:	Pet, apetslife
Fandom/s:	Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel the Series, Popslash, Die Hard, Due South, CSI, The Chronicles of Riddick
You can find me at:	My Livejournal
On Fanlore:	My contributions / email me

Biography

First or third person? Such a dilemma.

I am an active writer and reader in many fandoms, and a fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy television, movies, and fiction. I read and write [slash fiction] exclusively, no gen or het. I have attended a few cons, but primarily interact with fandom via LiveJournal.

I started reading fanfiction entirely by accident; the Portal of Evil linked me to a Star Wars slashfic site in 2000, and once I realized the stuff existed, I immediately searched for fanfiction about my favorite show: [Buffy the Vampire Slayer].

Fandom was weird back then. No LiveJournal, no comms, just email lists and archives and personal websites. I was adopted by Kassie and Lar, who showed me the ropes and brought me up properly in fannish etiquette: always leave feedback, don't flame the strangers, learn how to write a proper fic header, always take personal fights off-list, and ask politely before archiving something or offering criticism. Before long I was writing lots and lots of Spike/Xander fic, with some Angel/Spike and Angel/Lindsey thrown in for fun. I still love that fandom, and still read the fic as often as I can. There were some truly incredible websites and archives, and one of the best is the UnConventional RelationShippers archive, where all my fic still lives.

Then came Popslash. All of a sudden, there was this huge groundswell of amazing stories...there was Puppies in a Box, a site that was the gateway drug for so many of us, where Synchronik and Helen and Dale and so many others of the "first wave" kept their amazing stories about the boys of N Sync (and occasionally the Backstreet Boys), and many others, writing just amazing fiction. I jumped in full-force, and even though I was still writing Buffy stories, the pop boys had won me over almost completely by 2002. I even got my own website, graciously hosted by Wax Jism, and it's still up with all my popslash at Bury Me Deep. Don't let the front page fool you; I lost all shame years and years ago.

Right about that time, fandom started shifting towards LiveJournal in a huge way. All of a sudden it was much more a social networking venue, and less an email exchange with websites. The debate still rages on whether this is a good or bad thing; personally, I love the atmosphere and convenience of LJ. Pop fans made communities on LJ, and started meeting up for concerts and shows and MTV Awards viewing parties galore.

There was also a funny shift going on in the [RPS]/[FPS] argument. I remember when I started in the fandom, people were very uncomfortable with RPS. Some writers were making pseuds of their pseudonyms, so their RPS wouldn't be connected to them in fandom. Some sites wouldn't host RPS. There were endless debates and arguments about legality and morality, but in the end, most people just kept writing. And eventually, the stigma (mostly) vanished, as popslash hit the mainstream of fandom.

For more on the different "waves" of fan involvement in popslash (to this day one of the most far-reaching and all-encompassing fandoms I've ever seen) you can visit this entry in Silveryscrape's LiveJournal. Lots of fun perspectives and stories there.

One of the most incredible things that I ever got to participate in, during the heyday of popslash, was the Don We Now Our Gay Apparel holiday fic exchange. Modeled on the Buffy fandom's Secret Santa fic exchange, it was a challenge where people would sign up to write stories to the specifications of their secret recipient, and to their (rough) specifications. Georgina (eponymous on livejournal) created the page, hosted the fic, and set up the tech. My contributions were some basic html, writing harrassing emails to dropouts, chivvying people to get their stories in on time, and attempting to moderate the occasional explosion. It was a major organizational undertaking, but the rewards were outstanding.

Georgina has left fandom, and the challenge has been adopted by others in the popslash world, and it's still going strong. There are six years of stories still archived at Georgina's site: DWNOGA Archive. In its busiest year, we had over 300 participants, all writing stories for each other.

When N'Sync went on permanent hiatus, and Backstreet did too, we were all kind of lost and drifting. Since then I've read and written in so many fandoms: Due South, Harry Potter, Smallville, and CSI. CSI was the first fandom I found myself writing actively in, and it was a delight to get that spark back. But the fandom was small, and the show lost some of its appeal for me as seasons went on. I kept reading anything I could find; Pirates of the Carribean, MORE Due South, even X-Men moviefic (the power of Hugh Jackman is strong).

Then came Supernatural.

It was like a great big reunion for me. So many of my friends from the popslash and Buffy days, who I'd stayed in touch with through LJ, were all in a great big fandom again, even if just peripherally. Great writers writing epic stories and shorts and one-offs and posting episode reviews, lots of meta and communities springing up. An entire con, WinchesterCon (created by Ethrosdemon and Estrella), has drawn hundreds of fans for the last three years. The fandom's had some growing pains--I ended up writing Die Hard slash during one summer to escape the fandom for a breather--but it's still going strong and still producing amazing fiction, art, and fan activity.

Right now, this is where I live, and what I watch. I still read Popslash and Buffy fic, I still poke into my old favorite stories in other fandoms sometimes, and I'll never stop loving Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski to pieces. I read bandslash sometimes and enjoy the similarities to popslash in some ways (and get scared by them in other ways), but my fandom home as of 2008 is definitely Supernatural. I love those Winchester boys. I think the show is smart and scary, sexy and fun, and I wait for Thursday night breathlessly every week. The same way I waited for Tuesday, back when Buffy and Angel were still on the air.

Mostly, I post fiction to my Fiction Journal these days, and talk about real life and fandom randomness in my personal LJ. One of these days I'll get my webpage changed around to hold all the different fandom stories I've written, but for now, LJ treats me right and I love the flexibility of the interface and the social aspects of it.

Who knows what fandom will be next? I follow the good fic wherever it might lead, and I think fandom will be around for a long, long time. I'll be right there with it.