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kirei_dakara2010-01-18 11:42 am
annapeace.livejournal.com) wrote in kirei_dakara2010-01-18 11:42 am
Entry tags:
Recollections
I Remember when the main interests in my life were Sailor Moon, Ronin Warriors and Gundam Wing. This was when Cartoon Network showed them in their Toonami lineup, and it made up my evenings Monday through Friday, from five to six - I didn't watch Sailor Moon on Cartoon Network, other than the marathon specials. I watched Sailor Moon before school on UPN.
If you ask any American anime fan in my generation, you'll find out that Sailor Moon was a guiding force in their forays into anime. Sure, eventually they would get into other shows, or perhaps lose interest altogether, but at the time anime was scarce, and Sailor Moon was our main staple.
What's interesting is that my sister never got into anime, and eventually fandom, the way I did. We both liked Sailor Moon, but I was the only one who wanted more. I wanted to see the Sailor Scouts in different situations, I wanted them to crossover with other shows, I wanted to see what would happen if I took the girls and made them dinosaur hunters, or ninja. Terms like "alternate universe" had not yet been introduced to me, but that was what I wanted.
So I wrote little stories in my notebooks, and as this was around the time the internet was starting to catch on, I joined mailing lists. I found fansites, which led to fanfiction sites, and suddenly I found a whole group of people who were just like me! I made my first penpal, a girl who liked Ronin Warriors, and we exchanged letters for awhile. It was amazing that fandom could lead to such things.
My father, of course, warned me of the dangers of the internet, but I really couldn't find any danger in talking to people about my shows. We rarely exchanged any kind of personal information. All we had to know about the other was that we shared a love for these characters. Everything else was simply not important.
I never posted any of my first horrible attempts at fanfiction anywhere online, which I am extremely grateful for now. But even though the writing was terrible and the plots contrived (half of them were Mary Sue, the other half based off of books I'd just read), I'm still glad I wrote it. It opened a gateway to something that, ten years later, has been a profound influence in my adult life.
If you ask any American anime fan in my generation, you'll find out that Sailor Moon was a guiding force in their forays into anime. Sure, eventually they would get into other shows, or perhaps lose interest altogether, but at the time anime was scarce, and Sailor Moon was our main staple.
What's interesting is that my sister never got into anime, and eventually fandom, the way I did. We both liked Sailor Moon, but I was the only one who wanted more. I wanted to see the Sailor Scouts in different situations, I wanted them to crossover with other shows, I wanted to see what would happen if I took the girls and made them dinosaur hunters, or ninja. Terms like "alternate universe" had not yet been introduced to me, but that was what I wanted.
So I wrote little stories in my notebooks, and as this was around the time the internet was starting to catch on, I joined mailing lists. I found fansites, which led to fanfiction sites, and suddenly I found a whole group of people who were just like me! I made my first penpal, a girl who liked Ronin Warriors, and we exchanged letters for awhile. It was amazing that fandom could lead to such things.
My father, of course, warned me of the dangers of the internet, but I really couldn't find any danger in talking to people about my shows. We rarely exchanged any kind of personal information. All we had to know about the other was that we shared a love for these characters. Everything else was simply not important.
I never posted any of my first horrible attempts at fanfiction anywhere online, which I am extremely grateful for now. But even though the writing was terrible and the plots contrived (half of them were Mary Sue, the other half based off of books I'd just read), I'm still glad I wrote it. It opened a gateway to something that, ten years later, has been a profound influence in my adult life.