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Challenge #5
Talk about what has improved in your life thanks to fandom. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
TW: bullying
The short answer: I talk now.
When I was a teenager, I lost all my friends. Overnight. At least, it felt that way to me. There were probably warning signs that I missed, in retrospect, but from my perspective I went home one night as part of a friend group of nine girls and then returned to school the next day as the Invisible Woman. No one spoke to me. No one. For two years. It wasn't just that, either. They wouldn't look at me, but through me. I didn't understand it.
(Actually, there was a ten-day long reprieve where some of my former friends and I went on a school trip to Greece together. They spoke to me then, gave me just enough hope to think things were fixed, and then went back to pretending I didn't exist as soon as we were home.)
Bear in mind this was an all-girls school in the early 2000s. Very cliquey place to be. I'd already been one of the alt/goth kids and now that they didn't want me? No one else did either. I'd earn an occasional insult from one of the more popular kids once in a while, but I kid you not: ten days in Greece and an occasional insult was the sum total of my interaction with my peers for two years.
I was sent to therapy. It didn't work.That was. A whole other thing. I stopped talking. What was the point? So by the end of the two years, I was selectively mute. I spoke at home but never in public.
Eventually, I left that school and applied to sixth form college. When I was dropped off at the open day, my mother gave me the challenge to talk to someone. One person. Just to say hello.
She was, by that point, very afraid for me.
Anyway, there was a girl in the archaeology classroom. She had a friendly face and I, by this point incapable of normal in-person interactions with people I wasn't related to, decided that if I had to try, it would be her. So like a fucking creeper I followed her out of the classroom and down to the lunch hall where she noticed me having a mild crisis behind a pillar like some kind of lunatic and actively took pity on me. She said "hi!" Invited me to lunch!Thought I was a complete weirdo off the bat, but what harm could it do? She clearly had no self-preservation skills, but okay!
Eventually, the topic of TV came up and that led to YuGiOh! and that led to fanfic and somehow after that we were talking about yaoi and pairings and exchanging numbers and my throat hurt so much but we kept talking.
Turns out, she was just as lonely and nerdy as me, just a little louder about it.
She called the next day. She'd forgotten my name, but she called anyway. And we've been friends now for eighteen years. Nineteen in June. We only rarely get into the same fandom, and we like very different ships and ship-dynamics, but she's been the sounding board for most of my fanfic since forever. (If you've ever read my ANs and wondered who 'R' is, it's her.) We're at the point where we have matching tattoos and if we go out in public together then people think we're married (although we've been scoring free desserts from that assumption for years now).
She taught me how to talk to people again. That people were worth trying to talk to. Without her, I wouldn't have made other fannish friends in college and dabbled in cosplay. I wouldn't have been brave enough to travel. I wouldn't have kept writing and kept putting my stories out there for public consumption - hell, I wouldn't even have finished most of them. She's done medical research into medical side-effects of necrophilia for a fanfic that I never finished and that whole conversation almost got us kicked out of Frankie & Benny's. Without her, I would never have attended meet-ups with some of the incredible people I've encountered over the years.
I wouldn't be me.
So yeah. This is - appropriately - some proper Heart of the Cards/power of friendship shit, but fandom brought my best friend and I together and, for better or worse, gave me back the ability to speak to the people around me.
Fuck. The matching tattoos should have been YuGiOh! cards. Ah well, too late now.
Talk about what has improved in your life thanks to fandom. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
TW: bullying
The short answer: I talk now.
When I was a teenager, I lost all my friends. Overnight. At least, it felt that way to me. There were probably warning signs that I missed, in retrospect, but from my perspective I went home one night as part of a friend group of nine girls and then returned to school the next day as the Invisible Woman. No one spoke to me. No one. For two years. It wasn't just that, either. They wouldn't look at me, but through me. I didn't understand it.
(Actually, there was a ten-day long reprieve where some of my former friends and I went on a school trip to Greece together. They spoke to me then, gave me just enough hope to think things were fixed, and then went back to pretending I didn't exist as soon as we were home.)
Bear in mind this was an all-girls school in the early 2000s. Very cliquey place to be. I'd already been one of the alt/goth kids and now that they didn't want me? No one else did either. I'd earn an occasional insult from one of the more popular kids once in a while, but I kid you not: ten days in Greece and an occasional insult was the sum total of my interaction with my peers for two years.
I was sent to therapy. It didn't work.
Eventually, I left that school and applied to sixth form college. When I was dropped off at the open day, my mother gave me the challenge to talk to someone. One person. Just to say hello.
She was, by that point, very afraid for me.
Anyway, there was a girl in the archaeology classroom. She had a friendly face and I, by this point incapable of normal in-person interactions with people I wasn't related to, decided that if I had to try, it would be her. So like a fucking creeper I followed her out of the classroom and down to the lunch hall where she noticed me having a mild crisis behind a pillar like some kind of lunatic and actively took pity on me. She said "hi!" Invited me to lunch!
Eventually, the topic of TV came up and that led to YuGiOh! and that led to fanfic and somehow after that we were talking about yaoi and pairings and exchanging numbers and my throat hurt so much but we kept talking.
Turns out, she was just as lonely and nerdy as me, just a little louder about it.
She called the next day. She'd forgotten my name, but she called anyway. And we've been friends now for eighteen years. Nineteen in June. We only rarely get into the same fandom, and we like very different ships and ship-dynamics, but she's been the sounding board for most of my fanfic since forever. (If you've ever read my ANs and wondered who 'R' is, it's her.) We're at the point where we have matching tattoos and if we go out in public together then people think we're married (although we've been scoring free desserts from that assumption for years now).
She taught me how to talk to people again. That people were worth trying to talk to. Without her, I wouldn't have made other fannish friends in college and dabbled in cosplay. I wouldn't have been brave enough to travel. I wouldn't have kept writing and kept putting my stories out there for public consumption - hell, I wouldn't even have finished most of them. She's done medical research into medical side-effects of necrophilia for a fanfic that I never finished and that whole conversation almost got us kicked out of Frankie & Benny's. Without her, I would never have attended meet-ups with some of the incredible people I've encountered over the years.
I wouldn't be me.
So yeah. This is - appropriately - some proper Heart of the Cards/power of friendship shit, but fandom brought my best friend and I together and, for better or worse, gave me back the ability to speak to the people around me.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-10 10:43 am (UTC)From:And I second that it's never too late to get matching YuGiOh! card tattoos! :D