rionaleonhart: top gear: the start button on a bugatti veyron. (going down tonight)
Riona ([personal profile] rionaleonhart) wrote2018-07-28 07:47 am

I Accidentally Hit Post Without A Title.

More adventuring through my fandom history! All three of my real-person fandoms are in this instalment, so it's easy to skip if RPF makes you uncomfortable.


Scrubs

First saw this when I was seventeen. I don't remember exactly how I got into it, but I think maybe my brothers were watching it? I was surprised by how little fanfiction there was at the time.

I haven't revisited Scrubs in a very long time. I'm curious to know how it would hold up.

Previously I'd mainly written angst and introspection, but in this fandom I took tentative steps towards writing more dialogue and humour. I enjoyed it a lot. (I've sort of fallen back into angst and introspection nowadays! And I didn't entirely escape angst with Scrubs; I wrote the inevitable Silent Hill crossover, after all.)

Favourite character: Dr Cox! Very angry, very sarcastic, very unprepared to engage with his feelings. I had a lot of fun writing him.
Favourite pairing: JD/Cox. I'm pleased to look back and realise my taste in pairings has always run towards the slightly unhealthy. I also enjoyed Cox/Ben and was strangely taken with Elliot/Janitor, although I never wrote fanfiction for the latter.
Number of words written: 35,548.

Snippet: I once wrote a JD/Cox fic where JD was handcuffed to a radiator, then a sequel, then a retelling of the first fic from Dr Cox's point of view. This was going to be the Cox-perspective sequel to that.


"I don't care what you say," she chirps, proving my point beautifully. I can feel the vein in my forehead beginning to twitch. "I'm important to you, Dr Cox, and you know it."

I close my eyes and take three very deep, very slow breaths.

"Okay, Cara, let's break this down into the simplest terms possible so you don't get horribly confused. Now, you can try to twist this - this whatever-it-is into anything you want, but you might want to consider, oh, I don't know, reality before you start getting ideas about the two of us riding off on rainbow unicorns into the sunset. I mean, for God's sake, I can see that you're still bruised all over from our little radiator incident. When you tried to talk to me about this before, I felt you up and then knocked you out. Ever since you arrived in this place I've been mocking you, humiliating you and confusing you out of your poor little hormonal teenage-girl skull about whether those fluttery butterflies you get in your stomach every time you see your stunningly gorgeous mentor are to do with something other than just nerves. Hate to break it to you, sweetie, but that's just not a healthy relationship."



Top Gear

[livejournal.com profile] thegreatesthits/[livejournal.com profile] gayjunglefever was the first online friend I ever met in person (we went to see the Silent Hill film on our first meeting; she was not familiar with Silent Hill and was incredibly confused). One day, when I was just about to turn eighteen, I went to her house, and she enthused about Top Gear, and I went '...that's a show about cars, isn't it? I'm not really interested in cars.'

She showed me the episode where they make their own amphibious vehicles.

I spent the next year and a half writing fanfiction.

Top Gear fandom was an absolute blast. I found a lot of lasting friendships (hi, guys ♥). I found a housemate! I met up with a whole bunch of you in real life to have adventures in London, which probably did a fair bit to help me overcome my extreme shyness. I owe a great deal to Jeremy Clarkson, which isn't good, perhaps, but it's true.

This was the first real-person fandom I wrote for, and Richard Hammond had his jet-car crash right after I started writing fanfiction. A lot of people in the fandom felt really guilty for writing stories about car crashes beforehand. It shaped my personal approach to RPF; if I'm writing about real people, I cannot write about anything terrible happening. (Well, anything plausible and terrible, at least. Going to Silent Hill is still fair game.) After an even worse 'something horrible happened right when you were getting really into these guys' experience with Linkin Park, I doubt I'll ever pick up a real-person fandom again. But the ones I've been in have been a lot of fun.

Favourite character: Jeremy Clarkson. Extremely obnoxious, extremely fun to write.
Favourite pairing: Jeremy/Richard. I think James/Richard was the most popular pairing in the fandom, but I just wanted Jeremy Clarkson being obnoxious all over the place, and it was particularly fun if he was being obnoxious at Richard, because Richard was worse than James at enduring it.
Number of words written: 90,357.

Snippet: Jeremy and James discuss how to deal with the fact that Richard Hammond is a werewolf.


"I think I know what we can do about Hammond," Jeremy says. "Have you read the Harry Potter books?"

"Oh, yes, because children's literature is always the place to turn when you're looking for a cure for lycanthropy."

"Shut up," Jeremy says. "Just listen. That teacher from the one with the dog, you know, the obviously gay one, he sort of reminded me of you..."

"Yes?" James says, cautiously.

"Well, he's a werewolf. And his friends were able to stop him killing people by turning into animals." Jeremy finishes this with a distinct air of triumph.

There is a long silence.

"Let me make sure I'm quite clear on this," James says. "You're suggesting we become Animagi?"

"Well, it's that or that potion thing, and as Snape's a fictional character I don't think he'll be able to help us."

Another pause.

"Yes," James says, slowly. "I have to point out that your Animagus scheme does have a similar flaw."



Supernatural

One of two shows I got into because I had a dream about them and went 'I'm going to take this as a sign I should watch this show' (the other was Atlantis, although I never wrote for that). I started watching this when I was nineteen. (I can't believe it's still running.) The first episode I saw was Faith, which definitely caught my interest. The second or third was Malleus Maleficarum, which was so revolting I almost stopped watching then and there. Fortunately, I persevered!

I got extremely invested in Supernatural. Fictional siblings! Unhealthy coping mechanisms! What a great combination. The only fandom I've ever attended a convention for.

Favourite character: Dean Winchester. What a mess.
Favourite pairing: I don't think I 'ship anything in Supernatural much, actually. I dabbled a bit in Sam/Dean when I first got into Supernatural, back in season three, when Sam/Dean was pretty much all that existed, but I ended up concluding I preferred them as brothers. I do have a certain strange fondness for Castiel/Bobby. (There's barely any fanfiction, which perhaps isn't a surprise. I read a couple of Castiel/Bobby fics recently and went '...actually, this feels not entirely unlike Hank/Connor.')
Number of words written: 52,383, although this is counting the finished-but-never-posted Derren Brown/Doctor Who/Supernatural fic chapter (see below).

Snippet: I wish I'd finished this Supernatural/Pushing Daisies fic.


Sam is watching him warily. “Do that again.”

Dean really doesn’t want to have this conversation. Not now, not ever. “Do what?”

“Touch her again.”

Dean reaches out and taps the woman’s wrist with a fingertip. She doesn’t stir.

“It’s not just me, is it?” Sam asks, staring at her. “You can bring anyone back. And you touch them again, they die again.”

Dean nods, hoping desperately that Sam has somehow become really stupid and won’t think of the obvious question.

“But the second time you touched her was deliberate,” Sam says, frowning. “You killed her on purpose.”

Dean says nothing. Sam tilts his head.

“I’m waiting for an explanation.”

“Well, you’re not getting one.”

“You killed someone.”

“She was already dead!”

“She didn’t have to be,” Sam says.

Dean stares at the wall.

“Why couldn’t she have been like me?” Sam asks. “It would’ve been easy for you not to touch her again.”

Dean doesn’t answer. The plane they’re in is hurtling toward the ground, he knows, and all he can do is stand there and watch it coming.

“I know you must have had a reason,” Sam says, gently. “Just tell me what it is. If I’m causing problems by being here, I’m going to want to know about it.”

“No,” Dean mutters, not looking at him. “No problems. I touch you now, it won’t make anything better.”

“Then why did you touch her?”

It was going to come out some time, Dean thinks.

“Dean.”



Derren Brown

How did I get into Derren Brown? I was twenty years old. I think I caught his stage show Something Wicked This Way Comes on the television. He temporarily deprived himself of oxygen, then lay down on a bed of broken glass and made a man stand on him. I'll be honest: it was hot. I promptly created [livejournal.com profile] derrenbrownfic. It never got hugely far off the ground, but people did write a few things, which is impressive given that there was only one 'character' involved.

Derren Brown is the only celebrity to whom I have sent a ukulele in the post. He sent back a very nice letter.

Favourite character: There is literally one character.
Favourite pairing: Derren Brown/the Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who, which obviously makes vast amounts of sense.
Number of words written: 27,206.

Snippet: From the Supernatural chapter of my and [livejournal.com profile] moogle62's overambitious Derren-as-the-Doctor's-companion project. The chapter was going to be called 'In Which Derren Is Shot, and Things Get Worse from There'. I actually finished writing the entire Supernatural chapter, but we had a couple of other chapters planned to come before it, so I never posted it!


There are two men standing in the corridor. One of them is holding a shotgun.

There is a loud report, followed by a great deal of pain, and it takes Derren’s mind a moment to register that the man just shot him. He shot him! Derren has just been shot!

“You just fucking shot me!” Derren exclaims. This is unnecessary, as he suspects that the shooter is aware of this, but it makes him feel a little better.

“Oh, shit,” says the man who is not holding the gun and whom Derren therefore likes quite a lot more.

Perhaps Derren is going to die. He doesn’t want to die. His time with the Doctor has given him so many new ideas for Trick or Treat, and he can’t die before making a member of the public fall in love with a whale.

“Okay, sir, you’ll be fine,” the gunless man says, holding up his hands. “The gun was loaded with salt. It’s not going to kill you.”

Whilst this is a relief, it does raise the question of why, exactly, someone would want to shoot him with salt. Derren, clutching his chest (which hurts a fucking lot) and trying very hard to be as polite as possible, makes an enquiry regarding this. More or less every other word in his enquiry is some variant on the verb ‘to fuck’, so his attempt at politeness is perhaps not entirely successful, but he thinks he can be forgiven in this case.

The man grins, awkwardly and inappropriately. “It’s kind of embarrassing, actually,” he says. “We were trying to save your life.”



British Comedy

British comedy is obviously a fairly expansive fandom, but I was in the Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell corner of it. I'd liked Mitchell for a while (I first became aware of him when Joseph introduced me to Peep Show), but I only got into British comedy as a fandom after discovering Brooker at the age of twenty-one.

This fandom was great, great fun. As with Top Gear, many of the members lived in London, so we met up and hung out a lot. Even better: a lot of comedy shows are recorded in London, and you can apply for free tickets! I went to twenty-something comedy recordings with other members of the fandom and wrote them up on my 'recording recaps' tag. It was great.

This entire fandom manifested at the start of 2010, thrived for six months and vanished pretty much overnight when Brooker got married, but it was a lot of fun while it lasted.

Favourite character: Charlie Brooker. Crude, hilarious, self-deprecating, surprisingly soft-hearted, worryingly attractive.
Favourite pairing: Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell. I also loved David Mitchell/Victoria Coren and was ecstatic when they got married. First time an RPF 'ship of mine turned out to be canon!
Number of words written: 20,435.

Snippet: This was a work of Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell romantic angst that I never finished because it seemed like more fun to write about them training Pokémon.


Over the last few months I’ve been going through all the stages of love: denial, more denial, slow creeping horrible acceptance, fear, hours telling yourself in the mirror that maybe it’s not completely fucking impossible for someone to love you back even if you do look like an angry face drawn on the bottom of a steam iron, confession, fleeting happiness, inevitable hideous disaster. I’m now at the well-documented ‘passive-aggressive newspaper column’ stage, and if you have any sense at all you’ll stop reading now.

(...)

During a brief lull in the filming of the Big Fat Quiz, Charlie, feeling daring, decides to find out whether David is up for socialising somewhere outside a recording studio in the near future.

“Go out for a meal?” David echoes, raising his eyebrows.

Two desks away, Jonathan Ross cracks up.

Charlie rolls his eyes. “There’s a reason I was keeping my voice down.”

“Ah, so you didn’t actually intend your tone to sound quite so sordid. I suppose that’s reassuring.”

“It’ll never work,” Ross calls. “You’ll have to dance at the wedding.”

“I don’t eat properly when I’m at home,” Charlie says. “I can’t cook. If I don’t go out to eat once in a while, I’ll probably get scurvy or something.”

“You can prevent scurvy by eating fruit,” David points out. “It requires less than the most minimal of cooking skills.”

“Never mind,” Charlie mutters, pouring himself a glass of water and trying not to look too mortified.

“I wasn’t refusing the offer; I was just pointing out that your argument didn’t make sense,” David says, after a moment. “I’m not doing anything on Wednesday.”

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