First Fandom

[eruthros]

Not so G-yIP. Battlestar Galactica was the first television I was ever fannish about. I knew the canon, I loved the characters ... and I wrote my very first fanfiction.

So my first fanfiction was written before I knew fanfiction or fandom existed. It was a godawful 127K-word epic drawer-fic AU. Lots of names with apostrophes, noble sacrifices, honorable enemies, complicated schemes, and exclamation marks. Starbuck's colony was still destroyed by Cylons when he was a child, but he was never rescued by Colonial warriors. He hooked up with pirates and smugglers, instead, and kind of turned into ... Han Solo with an M.D-Ph.D. (I would feel shame, but I was eight.) Dialogue like this:

"You know that my people could kill you," said Jeneko. "I could be tricking you. Starbuck could be fine."
"I don’t care. I need to make sure that Starbuck will live. This is all my fault." Apollo rushed to his shuttle.

"What the hell are you doing here, Apollo?" Starbuck asked. His breath hissed, and his breathing was labored. "You can be such an idiot sometimes. You know what they can and probably will do to you. What are you doing here? You promised to stay safe. ... Just make sure that you leave here alive. I don’t care, you can use me as a scapegoat. Use me as a hostage! I don’t care! Just get the hell out of here, safe and preferably alive! Go back to your friendly Colonial warriors and Serina and live happily ever after!"

That there is damn bad writing. But at least I got my melodrama from a very good source: this was the show where Apollo confronted Satan because Satan was trying to take over the fleet (so not kidding). And then Satan killed Apollo (still not kidding). Apollo gets picked up by a deus ex machina (and I mean that literally, and I'm still not kidding). And then Starbuck gets picked up by same, sees Apollo lying dead on a bier, and immediately goes into a whole "I'll give you anything you want, just bring him back." I haven't seen the episode in ages, but I think he may even fall to his knees in front of the angels. And Apollo, naturally, is resuscitated and, naturally, remembers nothing. See? The melodrama is definitely canon.

And I wrote slash-without-the-sex, because I couldn't imagine Starbuck and Apollo not wanting to live together. There was a lot of "I'd give my life for him." I had a whole chapter where Starbuck worrying that Apollo's father wouldn't like him.

Oddly, when I wrote in my second fandom, I wrote Mary Sues up the wazoo. Star Wars was the first fandom in which I discovered that other people wrote fanfiction, and the first fandom where I read other people's fanfiction, and instead of writing proto-slash, I wrote unforgivable Mary Sues. I don't know what this says about what I first got out of fandom, but it can't be good. *g*

Comments

[niqaeli]

Okay, you make me need to go finish watching my DVDs of BG. Because oh how I love that show. Melodrama and cheese and all. *hugs it tightly*

And now I am horribly tempted to write that melodramatic fanfic wherein Apollo gets seperated from the fleet for, like, a year, and Starbuck adopts the kid, and. Um. Then Apollo comes back. And Starbuck turns into a woman. Metaphorically. And he gets pissed with Apollo about it. And. ....yes. I so don't need to be writing that. *sits on plotbunny*

[eruthros]

I still have "War of the Gods" on tape. Somewhere. And some other episodes as well. Because I loved that show so much.

There should be more melodramatic BG fiction! Okay, maybe not with Starbuck turning into a woman, metaphorically or otherwise, but still. Everything I've seen has been crap. Even well-written Starbuck as a woman would be a step up. *g*

[m-shell.livejournal.com]

i'm sure i told you about my unforgivable star trek: the next gen drawerfic (written on the macintosh at my elementary school) in which i was a mary sue-like version (skinnier, older, cuter, smarter...) of myself and captain picard wanted to sleep with date me, right? (cmdr. riker did too, but of course i liked capt. picard better.) ST:TNG was definitely the first show i was fannish about.

and i had no idea there was such a thing as fandom till college, but i've been an inveterate rewriter of everything i read/watch since before i can remember...