Well hello,
everybody!
I am sorry that I
have been 100% off the grid lately. The past year has been....just
freaking nuts. Husband and I bought a house, I started a new job, I
finished book 2 of The Overlord Rising. Yeah, it's been a crazy year.
I won't pretend that some of my silence hasn't been due to my old
friend depression, but I am still here and am going to make a
concerted effort to post more regularly.
Ok, so today I want
to talk about my intro to fandom.
To get into my
relationship with fandom, we kind of have to get into the kind of kid
I was.
I was a bit of an
odd duck. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, but as many of you
know, that can suck for a kid. I got bullied a lot when I was
younger. I had trouble relating to other people my age. I had an
easier time talking to my teachers than I did to my peers. I was that
kid. I was also an avid reader. I read in the car, waiting outside
ballet class, every spare second at home; if you gave me a book, I
would devour it. However, I wouldn't say I was in a fandom.
That being said,
there were authors who I read assiduously. I read Boxcar Children,
Sweet Valley High, and Babysitters Club. And then, I kind of found my
niche. I stumbled upon Werewolf of Fever Swamp by R.L. Stine and then
proceeded to devour pretty much every Goosebumps book that existed.
From then on, I was a full-on horror reader. I gobbled up the Scary
Stories to Tell in the Dark books (and spent probably an unhealthy
amount of time looking over the amazing illustrations). Despite the
urgings of my godparents, I read Pet Sematary when I was way too
young and was completely hooked on Stephen King by about age 11. The
opening of Cujo is still the reason that open closet doors freak me
right the fuck out as an adult.
However, none of my friends
were big horror readers, so this wasn't exactly something we could
share.
Fortunately,
we soon got the chance to share something special. In the fourth
grade, my dear friend Elena noticed my love of animals and shyly
introduced me to the Animorphs series by
K.A. Applegate. Welp. That
was a problem. Problem in the sense that I read the first one and was
completely, irretrievably hooked. She was very kind and let me borrow
her copies, which I devoured but was an absolute BEAST about
returning in a reasonable manner. (I only just returned a Dragonlance
anthology to Kevin that I've had for about 10 years (sorry again!)).
Well, this led to countless hours of talking about what our different
animals would be if we had encountered Elfangor. We had lists (btw,
guys, I still have those) talking about what our North American
morphs would be (I was a wolf, obviously), African, Australian,
Ocean, River, Prehistoric (Utah
raptor, obviously). There may have been fanfiction, although I can't
find proof of that anywhere.
We
obsessed about the series, coming up with our own theories about what
would happen next, plugging
ourselves into the stories, and generally just getting really
creative with the fun ideas that Animorphs gave us. We
learned a lot about each other during this time.
We learned how we saw ourselves within the group dynamic, which of us
favored head on confrontation and which favored diplomacy, we learned
who wanted to operate within the rules and who was ok being outside
of them. We had charged debates about the merits of our “morphs”
within the greater context of saving the world from alien domination.
We even talked about what we'd want our friends to do if we were
infected by a Yeerk and they knew. We talked about our weaknesses and
how they would be reflected in the animals that we chose. These
conversations gave me a whole lot of insight into the person that I
was and how that might not
exactly line up with the person I wanted to be.
For
example, Cassie is the one who I wanted
to be. She was kind and good with animals, lived on a farm, and was
the estreen, the one
with the natural gift for changing shapes and doing it beautifully.
Realistically, I was a lot more like Rachel, the one who's battle
form was an elephant and consistently threw herself headlong into
situations without all the way thinking them through. Some people who
know me might be inclined to say that I still
operate more on passion than sense, though I certainly hope I've
gotten a little more steady as I've gotten older.
As
you can probably guess, Animorphs
had a huge impact on my relationship with reading. It was the first
time that I really got personally invested in a series and
the first time that I really engaged with “fandom”. I had never
really put myself in the place of the characters before. I'd never
considered the idea of “what if I could actually make a
difference?” before, but Animorphs was the series that actually
made me start thinking about that. Granted, this very idea has lead
to some embarrassing self-insert Mary Sues in my own fanfiction, but
we'll get to that in time. Maybe. If I don't burn it.
Thank
you for your patience and for reading!
Love,
E.W.
