User:Yunitsa

Name/s:	yunitsa
Fandom/s:	Star Trek (TNG and DS9), X-Files, Farscape, Mary Russell, Harry Potter, Rome, Life on Mars, due South; others including rare and lit-based fandoms
You can find me at:	http://yunitsa.livejournal.com/
On Fanlore:	My contributions / email me

After discovering the time-wasting potential of the Internet through text-based role-playing games, I first began participating in Star Trek fandom (chiefly ST:TNG and DS9) on the alt.startrek.creative newsgroup around 1999, at the age of twelve. I posted some truly dire fanfic (consisting mostly of shippy songfics and Mary Sue self-insert epics), joined some mailing lists (back when YahooGroups was OneList), and held several positions as an ASC volunteer.

I was then glancingly involved with The X-Files and Farscape. My main attraction to fandom at this point was as a het shipper (Picard/Crusher, Odo/Kira, Mulder/Scully, John/Aeryn) and I tended to be serially mono-fannish.

Sometime in 2000, I first began reading the then-classics of Harry Potter fandom, though I did not actively participate until the next year. Having read the Mary Russell series, I joined RUSS-L, which lead me to many other great book series. Around that time, there was some overlap between RUSS-L members and Snapefans, due to the perceived similarities between the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Severus Snape; having read R.J. Anderson's Snape/OFC Darkness and Light Trilogy, I began to write a Snapefic of my own (eventually a duology), which was posted on Fanfiction.net, Sugarquill, and FictionAlley. This was probably my period of greatest participation in fandom, when I met many of the people that remained friends after my interest in Harry Potter waned.

I began a blog on Blogger in 2002, and moved to Livejournal the following year, when I first took the name yunitsa. My LJ has been mostly focused on RL and original writing, though I have lurked and read fic in a wide array of fandoms, including many rare and book-based ones. My tendency has been to follow favourite authors across to unfamiliar fandoms, then watch/read the canon in question, seek out further authors, and so on - this was how I first discovered SGA, dS, and many others.

2007 saw a resurgence in my fan activity, as I wrote fic for Rome, Life on Mars and others, tried my hand at vidding, and first participated in Yuletide. All of my fanfic (that I will - reluctantly - own to) is hosted at [link to archive of our own when it's open]. Much of my current output has been thinky gen or slash; I also write original fic involving m/m relationships.

Although I do not consider myself to be an aca-fan, I am a student of English Literature interested in transformative works and related topics. I have written an undergraduate dissertation on "reading derivative fiction in a critical context", and plan to pursue a Masters on originality and authorship in the Medieval/Renaissance periods.

Identity

"yunitsa" literally means "heifer" - it is a reference to Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles, where it's used as a term of endearment. I first became involved in fandom under my full real name and variations there-of, and haven't succeeded in eradicating all traces of that from the 'net. As such, it's something of an open secret, but I would prefer that my fannish and RL identities not be linked together in a searchable way.