Snapshot of a fangirl: manpain

[phoenix64]

From a very early age I remember that when a male character that I liked was hurting, usually emotionally but sometimes physically, I kind of, well, liked it. Something inside me went all gooshy and I wanted to, I guessed, be the one that made them feel better. And I felt like there was possibly something wrong with me for feeling like that. This may have actually been the beginning of the constant self-assessment that's followed me through life: "Would you like it if this happened in reality? No? Then you're probably fine, stop dwelling." (And yet I continue to dwell. I'm not sure that I ever stop.)

Obviously this all predates online fandom* and Joss urging us to let our angst flags fly. I'm talking The Hardy Boys on TV, Man From Atlantis, Star Trek: TOS of course, and M*A*S*H. In comics I had Batman, and Swamp Thing long before Alan Moore got his hands on him.

As freakish as I felt I still treasured those moments. A look at my old VHS tapes will show a pretty clear pattern from the TV episodes I recorded, and many of the movies as well, taped or purchased. As I got older I worried less about possibly being some kind of sadist deep-down, but it wasn't something I would have talked about. It settled into something between a quirk and a guilty pleasure.

Then I discovered fandom. You beautiful, crazy people. Thank whatever powers there might be for you guys.

Honestly? I still suspect I'm a bit of a freak. But I certainly feel a LOT less alone.

*squishes you all*


*I don't mean to ignore fandom before and outside the internet, but I was in a small town in Alaska, so as far as I was concerned it might as well have not existed.

Comments

[rustydog.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I have started composing a post like this many times, but never posted it! My childhood guilty secret was that I liked it when a character was in peril (sickness or danger, usually) and another character was worried about them. It made my stomach flip in a scary but pleasant way. I remember specific episodes of Scarecrow and Mrs. King based on that criteria, and some scenes in the Star Wars movies got watched a lot more than others. I thought I was probably afflicted by something sinful, so of course I didn't tell anybody. But then I found fandom and found out there's a guilty pleasure for everyone. :)

::loves fandom with you::

[phoenix64.livejournal.com]

Oh, I hope you write that post. We need to share the Fandom Appreciation and Love. And see, your "guilty secret" doesn't sound remotely bad in any way to me, but I still understand that feeling so much, and I think a lot of us do.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_medley_/]

Bwah--Becky and I were just blaming our h/c kink on ST:TOS, which we both watched waaay before we discovered fandom. And when we want them hurt, we want them hurt. So, you know, I totally understand, right down to the relief that I wasn't the only one who felt that way. *squishes you*

[phoenix64.livejournal.com]

I just love thinking about the ways we were fans before we had anyone else to share it with sometimes. I wrote G-rated femslash when I was ten. They were original characters, but there really is no better way to describe it than femslash.

We need to have a Fandom Appreciation Fest, we really do.

*squishes you back*

[http://users.livejournal.com/_medley_/]

Aw, I love the thought of 10-yr old you writing femslash. I just thought everybody should marry their best friend. For years. I kinda still do. *nods*

[travels-in-time.livejournal.com]

I have a massive h/c kink. I think I can date it from very early in my fannish life--probably 11 or 12--when I found published ST:TOS fanfiction. There was one story in particular that featured amnesia, a character lost in time, and physical abuse. I LOVED it. (Those are still huge buttons for me. Well, more the amnesia, time-travel, and lostness than the physical abuse, but. Long-term effects, yo!)

It wasn't until much later that I re-read that story and realized that it also featured awful writing and a blatant Mary Sue...

Er, my point is, You Are Not Alone. :D