(no subject)
Jan. 4th, 2010 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
totchipandaFirst of all, Happy new year, flisters! Hope it's been a decent one so far. (Hard to tell just 4 days in, maybe? hehehehehe)
I am off on vacation this week (HAHAHA SUCKERS!! I mean, ... no, I really do mean HAHAHA SUCKERS!) so my plan is to do some serious cleaning. I know I'm not the neatest person in the land, nor am I the messiest, but between preparing for novelling, actually novelling, and then working my butt off for the last three months, the state of my apartment is just awful. I hate walking in the kitchen, as I have about a square foot of counter space PERIOD left. My bedroom needs work. The living room was at least tidied a little more recently, but it still needs more.
Today, starting around oh, 6pm (ahhhh I love vacation days...), I decided to clean off the table (in preparation to start work on a new corset, once I locate the pattern...), and went through the two boxes that have been beneath it since I moved in. In them, I found:
- a lot of fannish things from my early days as a J-rock fangull (more on this below)
- old letters from my first boyfriend, one of them mis-dated 1993 (he referenced Jurassic Park in it, and I was also pretty sure I hadn't been dating him when I was twelve. You know what, more on this below too)
- old letters from the boyfriend I had in high school, that I met on the internet. I read about a paragraph and put it in the "to shred" pile. Eek.
- old letters from other fanpeople, including Morgan, Elfy and Shilo.
- an old letter (page 1 of at least 2, sadly) from a Japanese penpal one of my friends in Calgary hooked me up with while she was teaching in Japan. In 1998.
- my Irish dance gilles
So, my J-rock fangullism... At the time, it was wonderful and new and exciting and I met some really great people. And some really fucking crazy people. And a lot of people whose names I will probably never remember. I transitioned a lot through these early years of the 2000s. (Oh hey, this ties in with that "look back on who you were through the last decade" meme I saw floating about.)
The obsession started in late 1998. I was big into anime from oh... 1996 or so (it started well before that, but 1995-1996 was when I was really getting into it. Damn kids and their fansubs these days. Back then, you paid $40 for a two-episode dubbed VHS and YOU LIKED IT, damnit) and I saw X about a month after hide died, but yanno how stuff like that works. Anywho, that was at the end of the previous decade. I got into fanfic, really, through Gundam Wing (which I only liked FOR the fanfic, actually...) and one of the fans I was chatty with got into J-rock fanfic, and it BLEW MY MIND that you could write fic about REAL PEOPLE HOLY CRAP! (Yeah, I was pretty naive...)
So I got into some Malice Mizer fic lists, even though I didn't really like the band
Well, hold up here. This was early 1999. X Japan had been broken up for a year. The visual scene was dominated by like, MM, and Luna Sea. Pierrot was relatively new, with their first major singles coming out some time that year. THIS WAS WHEN DIR EN GREY DID NOT SUCK, PEOPLE. Their first major singles had been released in January, and I got into them in the December before from their indies stuff, namely Garden. This was when Kyo was teeny and blond and had trouble carrying a tune in a bucket, Toshiya had legs that WENT ON FOREVER, and Shinya was barely out of high school. This was before Kami died, before Luna Sea broke up, before your fancy new bands with their fancy... ok, that metaphor doesn't work. Anyway, this is REALLY EARLY in online J-rock fandom infancy. I WAS THERE. (Sort of.)
The point of that paragraph, in short, is that there were many Main Bands and you had better Like Them. SO I joined at least one MM-centric fic list, even though I didn't really like them, because fanfic writing for J-rock was actually really hard to find. This was riiiiiiiiiiight around Shilo's birthday that year, and all I really remember was that she posted a fic she'd written, I was all "wow that was awesome", we started chatting, I totally started girl-crushing, and we've been BFF ever since. Alright, maybe not BFF, but here we are nearly 11 years later, that's gotta count for something, right?
The letter I found was amusing, in a way, cuz it was written and sent shortly after I left Calgary in July 1999 and it wasn't certain at the time whether or not I'd have internet access. But also really nostalgic, and rather sad too. It was before her move to Florida, before her sister got married, possibly even before her car collision which I still believe was entirely not her fault.
Back into some "who was I at the turn of the decade? (and century)" thing, I'd also met a girl through fandom who was 5 years older than me and who shall remain nameless. She was a bright spark in my life, and a defining force in my personal approach to the world at large and the person I was and the person I have become. After 4 and a half years, she was no longer the person she had been when we'd first met, and no longer someone I wanted to associate with. We parted ways in 2003, somewhat messily. But that's a story for another entry.
So yes, I found these old letters, and some bad fanfic, and some fanart, and some original art of original characters, and some tiny, tiny snippets of writing for those characters. And I found a fanzine that one girl had collected and put together for a band who'd been around for a Long Time but was not one of the Main Bands (though I and the other rabid fangirls we all were loudly suggested that they Should Be). They have since broken up, shortly after the 'zine was printed.
This nostalgia really wants to make me write a loooooooooong entry on my fandom days, but that is better spent writing new fanfic for the prompt list I signed up for 3 years ago.
Onto old letters from old boyfriends...
There was this guy. I was 13, he was 19. At the time, this did not bother me. (It does now, holy crap.) This was at an age where I felt everything with Absolute Certainty. I sent valentines to my 6th grade (maybe it was 5th) classmates declaring that the front of the card was true (it was the Swedish Chef saying "I LOOOOOOOOOVE YOU!"). You know, that age. I forget how we ended up dating, but anyway, we did. We saw Jurassic Park like, 4 times (or something. I saw it 9 times total, how am I supposed to remember which showing was which?) We watched Dracula at least once, cuz he mentioned it in the letter. We were both big into vampire-related stuff at the time, which makes me think my "phase" started earlier than I first remembered... Anyway, he moved to Edmonton, and sent me this four-page letter along with a container of cookie dough as a Valentine's Day present. I, being the unaware not-quite-14-year-old that I was, sent him a letter in reply to break up with him.
In retrospect, that was totally heartless and entirely undeserved.
Before the letter, though, I don't remember when it was exactly, but we, as a family, had gone up to Edmonton some time that winter, and we were at his (his mom's, really) place. Overnight or not, I don't remember or care. At one point, I sat on the floor and he sat really, really close to me. And it made me really, really uncomfortable. I had the impression that he wanted something from me, something I couldn't put a name to (this was before I had to look up orgasm and masturbation in the dictionary, so I am not entirely certain I had a firm grasp on what sex was. Remember the earlier comment about naivety? Go ahead and laugh :P) and it unsettled me enough to prompt the break-up letter when I finally got around to writing it. I've been using this incident as a foundation layer for being asexual, along with the notion that had I actually wanted sex at 14 or 15 or whenever the hell it was, I would have been finding a way to get it. So.
In the end, I am not sorry I broke it off, only in the manner and timing.
And now that I've written all that, I have no idea at all what I was saying. Gonna find something to eat and go back to pattern hunting and possibly fanfic-writing :)
2010 is gonna be an awesome year.
I am off on vacation this week (HAHAHA SUCKERS!! I mean, ... no, I really do mean HAHAHA SUCKERS!) so my plan is to do some serious cleaning. I know I'm not the neatest person in the land, nor am I the messiest, but between preparing for novelling, actually novelling, and then working my butt off for the last three months, the state of my apartment is just awful. I hate walking in the kitchen, as I have about a square foot of counter space PERIOD left. My bedroom needs work. The living room was at least tidied a little more recently, but it still needs more.
Today, starting around oh, 6pm (ahhhh I love vacation days...), I decided to clean off the table (in preparation to start work on a new corset, once I locate the pattern...), and went through the two boxes that have been beneath it since I moved in. In them, I found:
- a lot of fannish things from my early days as a J-rock fangull (more on this below)
- old letters from my first boyfriend, one of them mis-dated 1993 (he referenced Jurassic Park in it, and I was also pretty sure I hadn't been dating him when I was twelve. You know what, more on this below too)
- old letters from the boyfriend I had in high school, that I met on the internet. I read about a paragraph and put it in the "to shred" pile. Eek.
- old letters from other fanpeople, including Morgan, Elfy and Shilo.
- an old letter (page 1 of at least 2, sadly) from a Japanese penpal one of my friends in Calgary hooked me up with while she was teaching in Japan. In 1998.
- my Irish dance gilles
So, my J-rock fangullism... At the time, it was wonderful and new and exciting and I met some really great people. And some really fucking crazy people. And a lot of people whose names I will probably never remember. I transitioned a lot through these early years of the 2000s. (Oh hey, this ties in with that "look back on who you were through the last decade" meme I saw floating about.)
The obsession started in late 1998. I was big into anime from oh... 1996 or so (it started well before that, but 1995-1996 was when I was really getting into it. Damn kids and their fansubs these days. Back then, you paid $40 for a two-episode dubbed VHS and YOU LIKED IT, damnit) and I saw X about a month after hide died, but yanno how stuff like that works. Anywho, that was at the end of the previous decade. I got into fanfic, really, through Gundam Wing (which I only liked FOR the fanfic, actually...) and one of the fans I was chatty with got into J-rock fanfic, and it BLEW MY MIND that you could write fic about REAL PEOPLE HOLY CRAP! (Yeah, I was pretty naive...)
So I got into some Malice Mizer fic lists, even though I didn't really like the band
Well, hold up here. This was early 1999. X Japan had been broken up for a year. The visual scene was dominated by like, MM, and Luna Sea. Pierrot was relatively new, with their first major singles coming out some time that year. THIS WAS WHEN DIR EN GREY DID NOT SUCK, PEOPLE. Their first major singles had been released in January, and I got into them in the December before from their indies stuff, namely Garden. This was when Kyo was teeny and blond and had trouble carrying a tune in a bucket, Toshiya had legs that WENT ON FOREVER, and Shinya was barely out of high school. This was before Kami died, before Luna Sea broke up, before your fancy new bands with their fancy... ok, that metaphor doesn't work. Anyway, this is REALLY EARLY in online J-rock fandom infancy. I WAS THERE. (Sort of.)
The point of that paragraph, in short, is that there were many Main Bands and you had better Like Them. SO I joined at least one MM-centric fic list, even though I didn't really like them, because fanfic writing for J-rock was actually really hard to find. This was riiiiiiiiiiight around Shilo's birthday that year, and all I really remember was that she posted a fic she'd written, I was all "wow that was awesome", we started chatting, I totally started girl-crushing, and we've been BFF ever since. Alright, maybe not BFF, but here we are nearly 11 years later, that's gotta count for something, right?
The letter I found was amusing, in a way, cuz it was written and sent shortly after I left Calgary in July 1999 and it wasn't certain at the time whether or not I'd have internet access. But also really nostalgic, and rather sad too. It was before her move to Florida, before her sister got married, possibly even before her car collision which I still believe was entirely not her fault.
Back into some "who was I at the turn of the decade? (and century)" thing, I'd also met a girl through fandom who was 5 years older than me and who shall remain nameless. She was a bright spark in my life, and a defining force in my personal approach to the world at large and the person I was and the person I have become. After 4 and a half years, she was no longer the person she had been when we'd first met, and no longer someone I wanted to associate with. We parted ways in 2003, somewhat messily. But that's a story for another entry.
So yes, I found these old letters, and some bad fanfic, and some fanart, and some original art of original characters, and some tiny, tiny snippets of writing for those characters. And I found a fanzine that one girl had collected and put together for a band who'd been around for a Long Time but was not one of the Main Bands (though I and the other rabid fangirls we all were loudly suggested that they Should Be). They have since broken up, shortly after the 'zine was printed.
This nostalgia really wants to make me write a loooooooooong entry on my fandom days, but that is better spent writing new fanfic for the prompt list I signed up for 3 years ago.
Onto old letters from old boyfriends...
There was this guy. I was 13, he was 19. At the time, this did not bother me. (It does now, holy crap.) This was at an age where I felt everything with Absolute Certainty. I sent valentines to my 6th grade (maybe it was 5th) classmates declaring that the front of the card was true (it was the Swedish Chef saying "I LOOOOOOOOOVE YOU!"). You know, that age. I forget how we ended up dating, but anyway, we did. We saw Jurassic Park like, 4 times (or something. I saw it 9 times total, how am I supposed to remember which showing was which?) We watched Dracula at least once, cuz he mentioned it in the letter. We were both big into vampire-related stuff at the time, which makes me think my "phase" started earlier than I first remembered... Anyway, he moved to Edmonton, and sent me this four-page letter along with a container of cookie dough as a Valentine's Day present. I, being the unaware not-quite-14-year-old that I was, sent him a letter in reply to break up with him.
In retrospect, that was totally heartless and entirely undeserved.
Before the letter, though, I don't remember when it was exactly, but we, as a family, had gone up to Edmonton some time that winter, and we were at his (his mom's, really) place. Overnight or not, I don't remember or care. At one point, I sat on the floor and he sat really, really close to me. And it made me really, really uncomfortable. I had the impression that he wanted something from me, something I couldn't put a name to (this was before I had to look up orgasm and masturbation in the dictionary, so I am not entirely certain I had a firm grasp on what sex was. Remember the earlier comment about naivety? Go ahead and laugh :P) and it unsettled me enough to prompt the break-up letter when I finally got around to writing it. I've been using this incident as a foundation layer for being asexual, along with the notion that had I actually wanted sex at 14 or 15 or whenever the hell it was, I would have been finding a way to get it. So.
In the end, I am not sorry I broke it off, only in the manner and timing.
And now that I've written all that, I have no idea at all what I was saying. Gonna find something to eat and go back to pattern hunting and possibly fanfic-writing :)
2010 is gonna be an awesome year.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 03:51 am (UTC)oh newborn JRock Fandom, how I miss it. ;0; I was just a little behind you, but I still remember the beginnings of fanfics and and fansites and all of that. I miss a lot of those fics, actually XD Especially some of the Luna Sea ones. *is terrible*
And I would feel very, very uncomfortable, too, I think. (And 13 to a 19 year old? oh man D: ) And darling, I had not a clue about most sexual things until I started reading fic, and even then I was still learning through listening to highschool peoples and learning terms from roommates and oh yeah. Naivety, ahoy.
:D
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 03:58 am (UTC)I know, right? @@ I mean, I'm currently dating someone 7 years my junior but at least he's well over age of consent? Looking back, it was just so skeevy, even though I was thrilled at the time...
But you can use asexualness as an explanation there too, right? You simply didn't care, so you weren't motivated to find out the "fun" way. Erm, if you find that sort of thing fun, that is... You know, for someone (me) who's as obsessed with sexytiemz fanfic as much as I am, I am really, really confused...
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 06:33 am (UTC)I had a site in the making, but it never was finished and ... yeah. It got lost when the old computer died ^^; It was mainly a place to put my fics... and oh dear, the fics I wrote. *laughs*
I like sexytiemz fanfic. Sexytiemz real life makes me uncomfortable, or at least it does right now. Life is strange. :3
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 06:36 am (UTC)But hey, we have to start somewhere :)
We are seriously twins ^^; I don't like just all-out sexytiemz fic, but a nicely done pronz in the middle of some story... mmm yes plz
WTF. I need some more pairing-specific icons on here. Eesh.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 06:51 am (UTC)Sometimes just all-out-sexytiemz fics are good, but I like some
meatumphum story to go along with it, you know? Plot please. Plots are good. (Unless it's a random plotless thing, and sometimes that can be grand, too.) Oh man, that's one fic I don't think I was able to save- my very first lemon. Hah, do they even call them lemons anymore? XDand yes, yes we are. XD
no subject
Date: 2010-01-08 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 04:20 am (UTC)*misses old!DeG*
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 04:56 am (UTC)*also misses old!DEG. A LOT*
no subject
Date: 2010-01-13 10:55 pm (UTC)