milestones

[aria]

The sun is shining, the snow is blindingly refusing to melt, I am wearing the world's fluffiest bathrobe, Yuletide continues amazing, and today I have successfully been in the world for twenty-three years.

My birthday this year is inconsequential, though, because, as near as I can calculate it, today also marks the day in which I have been in fandom for a whole fucking decade. For Christmas 2000, you see, my mother and I got this awesome new computer that could be hooked up to the dial-up modem and access the internet! I had occasionally gone onto the internet using my dad's computer before, and, if memory serves, had mostly waited for long patient minutes for .jpegs of Beanie Babies to load on the official site, or racked up perfect scores on some Harry Potter trivia game on the Scholastic page. Now that I had my own computer, though, I went straight to Google! I typed in 'Harry Potter'! Somewhere in the first page was the link to the Unofficial Harry Potter Fan Club, so off I went, to play games and to look at fanart. And around the 27th, I started reading fanfic.

I didn't start posting fic until early April 2001, but before that, I think I spent most of January writing the fifth Harry Potter book. (It was 87 pages long! Harry and Hermione became Animagi! There was this hilarious Mary Sue who was Dumbledore's granddaughter! And I think I mercifully figured out not to post it and instead started writing MWPP fic. IDK.) Anyway, my point is, I've been cheerfully muddling about here for ten years.

Doctor Who: 149,326 words
due South: 101,956 words
Young Wizards: 34,454 words
Dark is Rising Sequence: 18,999 words
Life on Mars: 14,343 words
Good Omens: 13,991 words
Highlander: 10,677 words
Harry Potter: 10,097 words
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 9727 words
Battlestar Galactica: 9093 words
Slings & Arrows: 8823 words
Narnia: 6016 words
Hard Core Logo: 5710 words
Secret Garden: 5584 words
Stargate Atlantis: 4962 words
Sanctuary: 4233 words
My Life as a Dog: 3572 words
Hot Fuzz: 2859 words
Firefly: 2554 words
Merlin: 1514 words
Dalemark Quartet: 1234 words

397,331 words total. (Crossovers counted twice for each fandom, so the above numbers shouldn't add up to this one.)

These are, of course, all ballpark figures; some of the Good Omens fic I have faithfully recorded here is from as early as 2003, but for the most part, all these numbers come from 2007 or later. I've had ... two fandom phases, I guess, neatly and conveniently divided by 2006, the year I wrote only original things and also graduated high school. Basically, 2001-2005 I was a wee one who was (for the most part) monofannish about Harry Potter and wrote reams of fic that should probably not seen the light of day again; 2007-now is fic I can stand to reread without hiding under rocks, and is obviously of many fandoms.

I still have a lot of the phase one stuff Harry Potter stuff squirreled away on my computer, though, and, god help me, it's possible to still find a lot of it on the internet too, if you know where to look. (It is still on the internet because I have literally forgotten some of the email addresses I used to sign up for fanfiction.net accounts, although oddly enough I still remember the passwords. Let this be a cautionary tale.) In any case, in the interest of not invalidating all the hard work I did when I was fourteen, this is the rough word count for the Harry Potter fic I wrote between 2001 and 2005:

old Harry Potter: 286,242 words

Really. To be fair, 136,507 of those words were one fic, the 250-page epic of Lily and James from the time they were eleven until their deaths, and since I started it in early 2001 and finished it roughly a month before Order of the Phoenix came out, which wiki tells me was mid-2003, I did work on it for two years straight. And this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say "all the hard work I did when I was fourteen." To my mild horror people still email me occasionally asking for it, and I will give it to them, but with the caveat that, Christ, are they sure they want to be reading 136k of the Jossed epic of a fourteen-year-old?

I do kind of hope I won't feel that way about my current stuff in another ten years. I assume we shall see, though, because fandom is kind of my home and I doubt I'll ever permanently wander away.

Comments

[icepixie]

Happy birthday! And congratulations on a decade of fannishness. :)

Ohhhh, I have one of those Jossed epics written by a fourteen-year-old. It was for DS9, and was about my main ship at the time, Bashir/Jadzia Dax. I think it was about 70,000 words, but I never finished it, and thankfully only posted it in on my old website, which no longer exists. (The days before ff.net--this would've been about 1998--did make it easier to keep track of stuff.)

[aria]

Thanks! :D

I am so delighted that other people have ridiculous early-days Jossed epics! I mean, I am not particularly surprised, but I love hearing about them.

[luzula]

Yay, happy fandom birthday (and happy actual birthday, too)! \o/

I find it really interesting with people who have basically always been writing stuff, because I am so not that person--I started writing around 2007 after about a year of lurking around in fandom. It was kind of like a revelation! Like, wow, I can actually do this thing myself that I earlier thought was some arcane skill only possessed by actual Authors. This is also why I read actual books in a whole different way now. When I was younger, it would never have occurred to me to question why things happened in a particular way in a book--that was just the way it happened in the book, which was sort of a given world unto itself.

Oops, digression. Sorry! Anyway, your post gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. : )

[aria]

Why thank you! :D

And your digression is fascinating! I mean, I'm sure I started writing fic instantly because I was very much of an age where I wanted to imitate anything that looked cool to me, and then it was fun so I kept doing it! But I definitely know what you mean about reading actual books a different way now -- which is probably the reason I have old childhood comfort reads, actually, because with those I don't have any moments of "Yes, but why would you do this plot thing instead of another thing?" XD

[trinity_clare]

Step 1: Wait! Aria writes Dark Is Rising fic? I must investigate!
Step 2: http://archiveofourown.org/users/Aria/works
Step 3: http://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&selected_tags[tags][]=116194&boolean_type=and&user_id=Aria&commit=Filter+Works
Step 4: *looks at wordcounts*
Step 5: *looks at 16000-word epic being recced all over my friendslist*
Step 6: *raises eyebrow*

[aria]

Ahaha, your icon. <3

I bow before your investigative skills, and can neither confirm nor deny anything until New Year's. :D

[china_shop]

Those are some impressive word counts! I keep trying to imagine what it would be like to grow up with fandom (and with Harry Potter being such a ubiquitous experience, both within and outside of (our corner of) fandom) and I just can't. The internets are made of magic, aren't they?

Wishing you the happiest of birthday and fandomversaries! *balloooooons*

[aria]

Says the woman who wrote 201,000 words just this year. :D

The internets are indeed made of magic! And I am trying to imagine what it would have been like to grow up without fandom, and -- well, I did start finding bookish people in real life about the same time that I discovered fandom, so I probably would have been all right, but I think I'm a much better/happier person for raising myself on it.

Thank you! \o/

[china_shop]

Says the woman who wrote 201,000 words just this year. :D

Well, but I wasn't doing anything else. *g*

*twirls you*

[feverbeats]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! And happy fanniversary! <3333333333333333

[aria]

Thank yoooooou. <33333

(omg what the hell, ten years, scottworth)

[rivendellrose]

Happy Birthday, and happy fannish anniversary!!!

...and omg, you've written BSG fic. I cannot wait to rummage through that!

[aria]

Thank you!

I feel I should warn you that it is all mildly alarming fic about Leoben or it is college AUs? XD

[rivendellrose]

I'm pretty familiar with the mildly-alarming-Leoben-fic genre at this point (that's deborah_judge's particular flavor of choice as well, and I've enjoyed her take on him), but college AU? Now that I must see to believe. ♥

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for your contributions.

[aria]

Thank you! I certainly have fun making them. :)

(Also, your icon is hilarious and adorable.)

[littledust]

Happy biiiiirthday! ♥ Also, my goodness, that is quite a lot of fic.

[aria]

Thank yooou! And I suppose it is! It's mostly a testament to ten years' worth of my inability to write short things. XD

[starlady]

Happy Birthday, and congratulations! That is a very impressive amount of fic.

[aria]

Thank you! And on reflection it is, but I did have a decade to do it. :)

[labellementeuse]

A decade is a really, really long time. Wow. (I went and poked around, and I've been on LJ for seven years, and I was definitely reading fic well before OotP, so I think that makes me around eight years in fandom. Everything I've written is still online and likely to remain so, even the terrible stuff, because I don't care enough; although occasionally I see an icon I made in like, 2004, and people are still using it and I'm like, gdi, I wish I could fix that one.)

A couple of other fans our age & I were talking to China & a few older fans recently-ish and there's *such* a distinctive generation gap. I'm so *glad* I grew up with fandom and learned to spell and the political ramifications of Britpicking (and also, truly, I feel like people who *grew up* in Harry Potter fandom have the healthiest attitude to Fandom Drama). And met Writers with a capital W, and people who just want to have fun and play around, and really kind older fans (there were a few people at the YW forum I used to hang out on who I honestly believe are responsible for turning me & not a few other people into vaguely healthy & smart adults w/a sense of perspective) and queers coming out my ears which was such a boon to me, and and and. Well, you know, we share these experiences. I'm reminded of it seeing that meme go around which occasionally does, you know, the "copy this paragraph if there are people in your life you'd never have met without the internet" - anyway, I'm just blithering now. <3 You seem to have had a pretty gorgeous fandom life and I'm glad that I've been around for the more recent bits!

[aria]

I respect your ability to let your terrible stuff stick around! I meanwhile have a tendency to recycle my own ideas (usually the thematic ones) with a vengeance, which means that if I think something is horribly written but I like some of the content, I will happily say whatever I wanted to say a second time and purge all evidence of the first. XD

I feel like people who *grew up* in Harry Potter fandom have the healthiest attitude to Fandom Drama

I think you are probably right, at least in the majority of cases! In fact, I was nodding enthusiastically to your entire second paragraph. I mean, I don't think the world would be dire or anything if I'd grown up without the internet, but I remember being convinced as a child that I'd always be stuck sitting quietly in the library and laughing at my own literary in-jokes because no one ~understood~ me -- and then, for instance, a few days ago I posted about how Narnia gives me FEELINGS and had a spirited discussion about this with like with about fifteen people, and that just makes me glow, you know? So yes! Growing up in fandom, having fandom, YAY.

[sophia_sol]

Ten years. TEN YEARS. That's a number that just feels incredible to me. Happy belated birthday and fandom birthday, and here's hoping your next ten years are AWESOME!

[aria]

It is pretty boggling to me too! I guess at this point I have definitely adopted Fandom As A Way Of Life. :)