alexcat: (Default)
alexcat ([personal profile] alexcat) wrote2023-01-06 11:25 am

Snowflake Challenge - Day 2

Challenge #2

In your own space, write a promo, manifesto or primer for your fave character, ship or fandom. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.


I'll be honest. My eyes glaze over whenever I try to read a manifesto or meta about fandom. It seems like bellybutton gazing to me, for the most part. If you can't see the beauty or value in a fandom, then I can't make you see it. A fandom either clicks or it doesn't.

I yack my head off about my faves IRL with my best fiend, but to write it... hmmmm.

I have a lot of fandoms and I actually have written in 50+, I think, but my two favorites are:

Tolkien:
When I was 13 or 14 maybe, I came across a paperback copy of The Hobbit, probably on a rack in a grocery store. When I began it, it was like walking into a new world for me. I was a voracious reader, but had not read anything approaching this before. Sometime later, the LOTR trilogy came out in this particular edition. Reading them was like opening a door to a MUCH bigger world than that in the previous book. I was changed, it seemed to me. I remember getting The Silmarillion when I was 17, 18? It was like a key to an even more mystical world that either of the other two.

Roll forward many years and I saw a preview of The Fellowship of the Ring in the movie theater. I remember Arwen. I wanted to see the movie - needed to, in fact, and that was it for me. I jumped in with both feet and I never looked back.

Reading Tolkien (and seeing the movies) is like opening a door to a world that no longer exists and never did, really. But it should have!


Marvel:
I never read comic books growing up. They weren't really popular here in the 70s. I do remember reading Archie Comics (yes, really!), but that was about it. I did grow up with superheroes, though. I watched George Reeves as Superman every afternoon and he was wonderful.


Also we had Batman with Adam West and Burt Ward and a wonderful Saturday morning Spiderman cartoon. But superheroes were strictly kids' entertainment in those days.

One day in the summer of 2011, Larry and I were in Walmart and the front section was filled with Marvel action figures and toys. I told Larry that they were making some kind of movie about some guy in WWII who was a superhero. Well, we went to see this superhero movie and I fell in love, not with the actor, but with Cap. He was, to me, the perfect man - the man of my dreams, actually. Smart, blond, big, loyal, and sooo sweet.

One thing led to another and soon, I was writing Captain America and then the rest of the Avengers. Oddly, I have only recently begun to see him shipped with Bucky. I saw him with Tony Stark, but was never an insane shipper. I still everyone should get a fic with Cap.

Those are my origin stories and perhaps they're the best way I can convince someone to look into these fandoms.

Ta-da. Done.

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner featuring feet in snuggly socks, a mug of hot chocolate, a notebook with 'dreams' written on the cover, and a guitar. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.
erulissedances: US and Ukrainian Flags (Default)

[personal profile] erulissedances 2023-01-06 11:25 pm (UTC)(link)
I've never done manifestos at all. Yours actually reads pretty well.

- Erulisse (one L)
muccamukk: Éowyn in a white robe facing light streaming in from a window. (LotR: Éowyn's Dawn)

[personal profile] muccamukk 2023-01-07 12:44 am (UTC)(link)
I'm pretty sure Middle Earth does exist, just from it being such a living thing in so many people's minds, something you can taste and touch without having been there.
desdemonaspace: by <lj user="rightonicons"> (Uhuru is fabulous)

[personal profile] desdemonaspace 2023-01-07 04:25 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm ashamed to say that I'm practically the only person of my generation who hasn't read Lord of The Rings, but I did enjoy the movies muchly. Ditto Captain America.

I loved George Reeves as Superman!

Pretty much a boring old Trekker here, with Buffy fandom more recently, and lately The English. I loves me some revisionist Westerns.

**happy sigh**
desdemonaspace: by <lj user="Teragramm"> (Eli Whipp)

[personal profile] desdemonaspace 2023-01-07 07:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Be warned: it's very violent. But it's so romantic...
impala_chick: (MCU || Two is better than one)

[personal profile] impala_chick 2023-01-08 08:55 pm (UTC)(link)
That's such a nice origin story :D I also knew practically nothing about Marvel but went to see Captain America: The First Avenger and totally fell for Steve Rogers <3