Snowflake Challenge Day 15

Day 1
Day 2
Days 3 and 4 were "go meet someone" or "go comment", so uh... things happened?
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14

Day 15

In your own space, share a favorite memory about fandom: the first time you got into fandom, the last time a fanwork touched your heart, crazy times with fellow fans (whether on-line or off-line), a lovely comment you’ve received or have left for someone. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

The one everyone knows, which is bittersweet now: I met someone through fandom and fell in love. We're no longer together, but I have to say that was the first time in my life I really was in love with someone. Everything else, in comparison, was fun or friendship or exploratory or, in a few unfortunate cases, really fucked up. I think that relationship really taught me a lot of things... and I don't quite know how to express how pleasant it is to be with someone you love, even the quiet just hanging out and sitting there doing nothing parts.

I'd have to say that, as a whole, this fandom has really been good for me. I've said more than once that I identify strongly with the Decepticons for very personal reasons. I'm not sure that I want to explain all of that here again, but I will say that at the time I really got into this fandom I was looking to figure out how to change some things about my life. How to become a more confident, strong person. How to care less what other people thought of me. How to deeply believe in myself, which I had trouble doing despite also being strong in my convictions. How to push myself to strengthen and care for my body. How to hold myself to high standards without getting scared or weak and running away.

How to find my own path despite fear of being judged, and hold to my beliefs when people around me said "well, good people don't..." How to answer that with "Okay, good people don't -- well, I'm just not on your map, then. Oh well." I think that was the big one for me. I used to get all angry and up in arms about people who defined good in this really narrow way, who decided people couldn't do this, want that, like the other thing. Because it meant being bad somehow. Immaturity. False consciousness. Unintended cruelty. Whatever. And their vision of "good" seemed to me like a straightjacket, and I said so, loudly -- but I internalized their ideas nonetheless, and felt if they were good, I was bad. And hated myself for being bad, even as I felt rationally that they were crazy, and nowhere near as good as they thought they were.

So... the Decepticons. This isn't about canon at all and it's my own weird personal extrapolation. But it gave me a way to say "I'm just made different. These things -- I want or do or like them because I'm something else, something that doesn't fit your standards, something that isn't on your map. You're fine -- well, I'm not convinced you are fine, but that's neither here nor there -- but I'm fine too. I'm the way I'm supposed to be, even if it bothers or frightens you. I haven't done anything to you but exist, and I won't. And if you can't see that, it's because you can't see anything but what you yourself are. I'll just be over here with people who understand or with people who don't but who know better than to judge."

It's funny. In canon, there's always a war. But for me, this gave me a way of not warring. It gave me a way to make peace in my own head with those I'd seen as my enemies. I'm still a Taurus and I still get angry at things, but I'm ten times calmer than I once was, because I can look at people who I feel spin choking rules for themselves and who seem to me like they fear of their own darkness too much and not jump in to berate them or save them or convince them. It gave me a way to let it go, to say, "That's their thing, and that's their business."

It's not like I think that the villainous faction from an old TV show that was on when I was five or so has all the answers or something. It's that I was looking for a metaphor, an idea, an identification to strengthen me. And for some reason I know partially but not fully, this is what ended up happening. I get obsessed with art I love, but I don't stay with it for longer than a year. But this, I did -- because this was something I needed in a time of growth. I could have latched onto anything, really. It happened to be this.

I've seen people talk in a few places about how I take it all too seriously. I don't mind them saying that. I even agree, in some ways. But I think the importance is what the identification means to me, and that's personal, and not something anyone has to understand, really.

So -- labels. We talk a lot about them, and whether they're useful, and the consensus is generally "Labels! Ewww!" But I like that one, even though it's one I can't really explain to people outside fandom and have trouble explaining to people in it, too. Because it's not something external any more. It's something that I made my own, and that's why it matters to me.

Massive, massive thanks to akamine_chan and glitteryv for creating this! I liked some days better than others, but on the whole... this was amazing. Thanks for putting it on!