To carry forward with the theme

[cornerofmadness]

Diagnosed friday the thirteenth, seeing the oncologist on Halloween. Geez. At least the appointment happened within 24 hours of asking.

So let me just dive into the fandom stuff today with a look at...well I don't really like the cinnamon roll term because most of my character faves are good, not all of them are sweet though but they all do tend to share one thing, they take a lot of abuse.

I mentioned this a while back, but when Emergency! hit the oldies channel I rewatched it for the first time in over 35 years and realized my love of the good guy getting whumped and good old fashioned hurt/comfort dated back to one of my oldest fandoms with Johnny Gage. I even saved a few of the whumpiest faves on my DVR for right now.

In the 80s early 90s I took a bit of a break from this simply because my fandoms of that time, Pern and Elfquest did not allow you to use canon characters (as hard as that might seem to the young fans) In the late 90s I fell for Buffy and Angel which gave me Giles and Connor and I had a lot of fun hurting those guys (especially Connor, in spite of a good chunk of fandom hating him. Ah well)


Then came Fullmetal Alchemist and Saiyuki. In the latter, no one has a good time. I didn't write nearly as much as I would have liked for that one (and really I need to move so much more of this stuff onto AO3 or pull the trigger on squidgeworld or both)

Now I did write a ton for FMA (138 stories on AO3) and Edward and Roy were a delight to work with (not to mention Maes, Riza, Al an Winry) There is something truly amazing about these characters. There is a depth or character to them, to the plot, frankly I find FMA a master class in story telling. Yes occasionally Ed can be a little one note with his rage over being small (and that is one thing I AM glad to see anime moving past for the most part, the chibi cutesy for no reason bullshit. That always annoyed me. It wasn't in anime in the early days but man in the 90s -2010s it was everywhere).

Oddly enough much of my FMA stuff is either post canon or shippy. In some ways that might be because of the tightness of the plot. There are more stories I wanted to tell there but fandom hit its dispersal mode at that time, fracturing into LJ/DW and tumblr and now it's that Twitter, Discord and who knows what all.

I was getting into a fandom lull, a deep one. And then came Prodigal Son with Malcolm Bright and in 4 years I'm at nearly 260 stories, a half dozen of them novel length. Something in this speaks to me. That said, occasionally I get a bit meh with the fandom as ALL they want to do is whump Malcolm. There needs to be a bit more variety in the storytelling for my tastes but it is a relatively small fandom so I hold my peace.

And in the last year I've written 50 The Owl House stories, now most of them are on the short side and I'm not hiding it, Hunter is a delicious character to whump. (as I was just decrying that a second ago) that said, yes I do want more than just that and this fandom does give it.

So who are some of YOUR favorite fandoms/characters/character types?

Comments

[ruric]

I'm just catching up on posts - so sorry to hear about your diagnosis but I'm very glad that you're getting seen so quickly!

[cornerofmadness]

thank you

[falkner]

As someone who started being online only in the early 00s, I always wondered how authors who didn't allow use of their characters/worlds could really enforce it before that, when even at that point fandom was still very fragmented and many things wouldn't be found unless you knew where to look already.

(Also, as someone who comes from a non-English speaking country... Sorry, Anne Rice and everybody else! There's plenty of fanfic of your characters in other languages!)

[cornerofmadness]

Mostly the fan zines advertised in the official fan magazines so there was a literal paper trail to your front door back then (No seriously we put our frakking addresses in each and every paper zine and if you found an artist/author you liked you wrote a letter).

I can tell you papers from a lawyer would show up in your mail box because it happened to me. I was running a Pern related one when Anne McCaffrey decided after years that she wasn't allowing it any more. I'm like yeah, not fighting that and closed the club.

and it amuses me that other countries are like whatever we're doing it.

[falkner]

Duh! I didn't think of fanzines. Relatedly, back in the 90s as a pre-teen it was perfectly normal for me to send anime and videogame related magazines my address to publish in their "looking for a penpal" sections. It sounds absolutely insane now!

> and it amuses me that other countries are like whatever we're doing it.
To be fair, I think a big part of it is the fact that (for Italians, at least) the level of English literacy is abysmal, and everybody consumes the translated source material with no further knowledge of the author, etc. It took me years to discover Anne Rice was against fan content, because that info was not readily available in Italian anywhere!

[cornerofmadness]

Yes same here I was in all kind of pen pal sections too.

That's not entirely surprising with the language. It's not as if I'd do well in Italian (mostly because my Italian grandmas weren't literate in their native language either)

[spikedluv]

I'm glad you're getting seen quickly!

[cornerofmadness]

They changed it. I go in 2 days (he had cancellations)

[spikedluv]

That's fantastic! I love being on the cancellation list. (We both have our appointments on Friday!)

[cornerofmadness]

Good luck. Hope yours goes better than mine is likely to

[spikedluv]

I expect mine will as it's merely a second opinion wrt my gallbladder.

I hope yours goes as well as it can and that they're able to schedule the necessary surgery quickly. *hugs*

[cornerofmadness]

yeah my gallbladder is a little bitch sometimes too so I know that's no fun. good luck

Thanks. That's my hope (along with praying it's all still inside the offending organ)

[dewladen]

also glad that you are getting seen quickly! i had to read back some posts to get the gist of that but gosh, getting diagnosed on the 13th... what a series of dates you have there. i will be thinking of you and wishing you the best prognosis!

i dont do a lot of fandom stuff anymore but my biggest one was bleach and jojo's bizarre adventure. i had my main blog on tumblr dedicated to those for years and i would actually put a lot of work into them and write a lot or spread art around with lots of comments. to the point that i was known as THE caejose blog for some time (a jojo's ship). those were such fun days! i'm not sure if i will ever get the energy to dive that deep into it as then but i will always remember those days super fondly. i also agree that FMA's storytelling is very good and tight! everytime i hear that someone's fav manga/anime is FMA i always feel in my heart they have amazing taste haha. i heard the mangaka is writing a new one (that is actually action too, unlike the slice of life one) so i feel like i gotta get to reading that.

[cornerofmadness]

Thank you very much

That's cool about the jojo ship tumblr. I tried with jojo but it didn't land with me. I did like Bleach quite a bit though.

Daemons of the Shadow Realm is Arakawa's latest and here is my review.