thefourthvine | Poll: Distraction Is Good

omg, 22 people have been in fandom for 20 years or longer. *stares*

It is good to know what my future will be. Whee, here I zimmer towards a fandomfilled nether age!

That sounds painful!

I am clearly a magpie, mmmm shiny! I love your classification btw.

I checked that I write stories, but it's been a long time since I've completed anything. I have written in more than one fandom though, so I went ahed and checked it anyway. I also like checking things in polls, yay polls!

Thank you for including the "fan of fandom" option, because that's totally how I describe myself to those few people who I talk about fandom with. My real involvement in fandom is really reading, and in that I'm totally a mapgie - I read all over the place (except Stargate, which I am pretending doesn't exist), but I don't have the energy to become involved in fandom. Instead I like to watch it - see the cliques and the rivalries and the bonding and all. I am a fandom voyeur.

Hrm: had to go back and change how many years I've been in fandom, because I totally forgot about my non-interactive participation, when I lurked on mailing lists and boards.

I suppose it could be even longer than that, since I tend to obsess and go kind of voracious crazed more more more! for things; it's just that before a certain point I didn't know that fandom existed, so I'll say I was proto-fannish then.

Aaaalso had to change from magpie to gorilla. I'll undergo a major fandom shift every so often, and turn almost all of my attention to the new one, but still. If somebody wrote a really good Ramses Emerson fic, I'd be all over it.

Great. Now I'm trying to figure out how to get Ramses and Daniel Jackson into the same decade. Argh.

-I'm more polyamorous than a polygamist. No balls and chains here. I loved "Carmen" and I love "HP" to death,but I was always seeing "Redwall" or "Simcity" or something behind their backs. I'm a good but fickle lover.

-I'm somewhere between "Magpie" and "Camel". Somedays I'm traversing my own "fictional world" and sometimes I'm on the lookout for shiny new things to add to the nest. Sometimes I find the shiny back my old fandoms,like never-before-seen episodes or new books. Depends.

-I usually do the "read fic,do feedback,join new comm for shiny,fill quota of shiny,disappear,come back 6 months later needing shiny." How obsessive I am when I need my quota filled depends on how good the shiny was last time.

-Are you counting years spent on internet fandoms? 'Cuz I know I've been a 'Carmen Sandiego' fanatic and done 'Walker,Texas Ranger' shipping for longer than 6 years. 6 years is how long I've been aware of the internet,truly.

My fannish behavior goes like this: I've accumulated a few fandoms that I'll always love. I may not be active or read in them for long periods of time, but I usually cycle back to them, at least to read favorite stories. I occasionally pick up new fandoms. Sometimes new fandoms do get added to the magpie nest. Other times I just lose interest, or something happens to actively kill the squee. Occasionally one of the dead fandoms will rise again-- it turns out that the squee has only wavered. *shrug*

I have two primary fandoms, in which I produce stories and icons, write meta about, and consider myself part of the fannish community. I have, oh christ, probably about ten smaller fandoms, which I occasionally produce fic in, squee over, and read and leave feedback in. There are probably over twenty fandoms which I will read and leave feedback, but won't participate other than that. (There's one fandom I'm actively trying not to get involved in; damn you SGA with your pretty geniuses and your bombs and your things that go really really fast and your Harlequin challenges!) So, um, gorilla with two pairs of wings, magpie and swallow? Yeah.

I'm somewhere between a magpie and a gorilla - I tend to only read in a small group of fandoms at one time, but do pick up new ones and discard old ones as the fancy takes me. It's just that the fancy takes, like, a year to change at minimum. When I think back to starting in fandom, it was Star Trek (via a.s.c.e.m. and if you know what that means you're old-ish in fandom), and then Buffy brought me onto the web. But neither one of those kept my attention for all that long. Since then I've wandered through Hercules, The Sentinel, Due South, Harry Potter, and a slew of other smaller and larger fandoms. SGA probably claimed my attention fastest of any conversion, and I think that was just due to the sheer mass of highly entertaining content.

Magpie/gorilla with partial zoologist leanings. I have two fandoms that I've followed for 12 years - ever since I heard about fandom existing outside my own head ("you mean other people follow these shows obsessively too?"), two that I've followed since their inception, one which I can blame entirely on you :) , five which I follow pretty closely, one relative new one, nine that are really small and don't have much life in them anymore, and six others that I haven't looked at in a while but I can still tell you who the major participants are and which are the most recced fics. Oh, and a couple of fanfic writers who could be considered their own fandom (the source text is fairly irrelevant to my level of interest in what they've written).

(That summary would have been nigh on impossible without well organised bookmark folders.)

Most of my "participation" is reading, so a fandom dying out won't make me dump it, so long as the fic doesn't disappear. I have about 9 current fandoms (in which I'll read anything), but I'll go back to the others whenever the mood strikes. It's also why I pick up shiny fandoms - I'll follow any rec if the story looks interesting and well-written.

I am trying harder to participate though - it turns out I have a very good memory for single lines from random fics. Ficfinder communities are my new playground :)

I picked chimera. I used to be a turtlecamel, but since my conversion to Due South, I think I may have become a human. It's only been 1.5 years, so I'm waiting to see if my love for the Mountie & Rays show stands the test of time!

Your wish = my command.

i'm a day late and a dollar short, but i'm also a chimera creature of fandom - i'm a fan of the social structure of fandom, and a gorilla - 3-6 fairly stable fandoms that i'm loyal to. occasionally, i'll read a rec outside my usual circle, but rarely.

and i said i 'made art' as a contribution, because turning screencaps into xstitch patterns is a kind of art (::turns head completely upside down like a bird::) - isn't it?

unfortunately, all the patterns i worked on are on my old comp.

-bs

So. My fannish archetype. I do love the shiny and usually pick up new fandoms at the rate of one big one every few years, one or two tiny ones every year. Though I checked serial monogamy, I never entirely abandon any of my fandoms; my selection was based more on the fact that, at any given moment, one and only one fandom absorbs nearly all my energy and attention. (Currently? SGA.) These exclusive relationships can last from years to weeks, and they're always... rather intensive. Especially the first time around. Mostly, I think, because my personality tends toward meticulous obsessiveness.

This quality is also why the size of the fandom affects how much time and effort I spend there. I have a number of small fandoms I love dearly but, without new things to read, watch, and do or people to interact with, I set them aside. To, well, occasionally return to and snuggle for a week or so. Maybe a month. Or two.

I think my constant renewing of affection for all my fandoms creates the impression that I have the attention span of gnat. But, truly, I feel I remain devoted to my fandoms for a long, long time. (Looking like forever, really.) Shifts between large fandoms go very slowly, and I do experience droughts when I'm simply not interested in fandom at all. Usually because real life isn't kind enough to leave me enough energy to pursue my affair with fandom.

Definitely don't have one true fandom. During an average year—that is, barring my discovery of a HUGE new interest—I stick with one larger fandom and two to three smaller ones. On rotation. Serial monogamy for months and months at a time.

Um. I feel complicated. ^^;;

As for my other answers, I find I come up short on the creative end of fandom. Though I have lots and lots of fanfic ideas—have, indeed, even written a bit—I don't have the talent to craft the stories I hear in my head. I suppose I also have some artistic ability, but... well, I'm not sure why I don't draw something. Clearly, I'm secretly embarrassed. Absolutely no aptitude for digital anything.

Yep. I'm best known (to the extent that I can say I'm known at all) for those lengthy posts about, you know, time passage in SGA's three-parter "The Siege." So on and so forth.

My first fandom was SW. In 1994. Which I had to struggle with because... Let's say I didn't even know SW existed until 1994. XD

At any rate, a fascinating poll. I don't meta about fandom in general, but I do often think over my own behavior, so this was a good exercise in introspection.

Hey there! Just filled out this poll so that you could compare with the other poll asking my flist what they think of my fannish archetype.

Anyway, to explain my "Chimera" answer. I think I'm actually a cross between a Gorilla and a Lone Wolf. I have what I call my one primary fandom and my two secondary fandoms. It doesn't quite fit Lone Wolf, though, because my two secondary fandoms are even smaller than my primary, which is of average size. In fact, given that I write almost exclusively crossovers between my two secondary fandoms (and with a crossover pairing, even), one could say that I really have a primary fandom (NCIS) and a single, cracked out combination secondary fandom (Numb3rs/CSI:NY crossovers with a Don Eppes/Mac Taylor pairing).

Amusingly, before I got into NCIS and then Numb3rs/CSI:NY, I never had more than one fandom at a time. Ever. If I started getting into a new fandom, that was always the death knell for the preceding fandom. So up until about a year ago (when I added Numb3rs/CSI:NY to my repetoire), I was most certainly a serial monogamist. I still think of myself that way, due to an interesting bit of mental acrobatics resulting from an AU I write which has somehow convinced my brain that my Numb3rs/CSI:NY stories are actually part of NCIS fandom, which is why I checked serial monogamy. Yes, my brain is broken in many ways. *g*

I am, at the moment, deeply amused by the fact that so far the leading answer in the poll on my LJ is "magpie". That is one of two answeres (the other being Canadian goose) that I most definitely am not. I have to wonder why they think that--do they think that three fandoms are a lot?

I also think it's significant to note that of all the non-writing fandom participation I do, of eight different types I do all eight in NCIS fandom, but only two in Numb3rs/CSI:NY. (It would be three, but no one else in the LJ universe writes Don Eppes/Mac Taylor, so I can't read it even though I'd love to.)

And that was way more info than you needed, I suspect. *g* I'll stop now.

I chose magpie... But shiny doesn't catch me at first sight, it has to be a very intriguing shiny ^_~

Oh, and... I was surprised at how many have only been in fandom for about 5 years... O_o
I was in fandoms for as long as I can remember. Always thinking up fics (used to dictate them to my mom, when I was little), always fanning very fannishly, and always sticking with the good old fandoms...

Behold my oldest fandom, coming back to life *points@icon* ^_~ (Though mom would never write any of those fics down for me. I wonder why... XDDD)

I guess I'm a magporilla. I love looking into new fandoms and carry the shinier ones home, but I have three or four fandoms I've stuck with for a long time -- namely Digimon 02, Gundam Wing, and Harry Potter.

My first "real" fandom was Sailor Moon way back in the day, so I chose eleven years of fandom... but I did re-enact episodes of other anime and scenes from books I liked when I was five, so I've always been ~~an obsessive~~ a fannish kid.

Also, I hope you hand's alright. Burns are b*tches.

Found here via

sorion, btw -- great poll!

Hello. Hope the hands are ok.

On the subject of fandoms... well I picked human though I could have had smatterings of others too but, I like to stick to one. Fell in love with Saiyuki 6/7 years ago and haven't looked back since. Scans, Zero-Sums, Wards and artbooks,it has been and will always be Minekura Kazuya forever I think. I have dipped fingers into GetBackers in the form of one lonely fic. and some Samurai7(the anime version).

Well sorry to ramble there.

I am a closet crime series fan as well...All the CSI's, L&O:SVU, Criminal Minds, Without a Trace, Touching Evil(British one), Inspector Morse. etc.

Off already *exit stage left*

I suppose I'm some sort of combination of magpie, turtle, and gorilla. I do accumulate new fandoms while keeping the older ones, but I do so very slowly, and I don't have a lot of fandoms by most people's standards. I used to be entirely serially monogamous about shows, i.e. I loved my older shows but could really only think about one at a time, and this is still more true than not; but now I'm watching three shows that are currently on the air, and I'm actively planning vids in several different fandoms, even though I only actually work on one at a time.

I'm capable of participating in a lot of fandoms, but only do so for a small number. I also can get into new ones fairly easily but it will typically take me a while before I start to produce anything for it. So I picked zoologist because I wasn't sure how to classify my fandom habits and that one seemed most accurate.

Sort of a magpie-gorilla-turtle hybrid, I guess.

I'm very much a magpie, but I'm starting to lose track of the fandoms I've left in my nest. I still consider myself a fan of almost every series I've felt fannish about, but I sometimes end up struggling to remember what those fandoms *were.*

I've drifted farther away from some fandoms than others. My first three online fandoms were X-Men comics, Buffy, and Roswell. X-Men still caries a nostalgic glow; Roswell was a pleasant but unremarkable time in my fannish history; and BtVS is the only fandom I really and truly fell *out* of love with--not just drifted away, but began to actively *dislike* the show and characters. That said, the BtVS fandom is still in my nest, if only because it shapped so much of my early fannish experience.

Damn bras!

Latecomer through metafandom, who still couldn't resist going ticky all over this poll -- way too shiny a topic not to!

I clicked chimera in fannish archetype; I'm mainly magpie (boy, am I ever), but I've got a very strong streak of zoologist in me as well. This would be how I managed to keep my toes in when I went off being actively fannish for a couple of years: instead of gorging myself on fic, I gorged myself on meta. *hee*

Regarding #1, I was deeply involved in one fandom (Elfquest) for twenty years. For reasons having more to do with the stagnation of the particular group I was in with than a lack of interest in the fandom in general, about five years ago I gradually migrated over to BtVS fandom, where I confidently expect to stay for another twenty years.

Ha, okay. If we're going with the relationship metaphor, I'm kind of "serial monogamous", except that I tend to go hook up with another fandom before we've TECHNICALLY broken up. I'm still friends with some of my exes, though, so it's cool.

I've only very rarely beta'd stories, and I make art slightly more often.

And, okay, sometimes two or three at a time for longish stretches. In, you know, different cities*.

*Sites.

I went with magpie, although I started out more or less monogamous, became more polygamous over the years, and have been doing the lone wolf thing for the past year or two. But, yeah, 'magpie' seemed the most appropriate, overall, and more useful than ticking 'chimera', and then listing half the different options. I daresay that now I'm a magpie, I'll be a magpie for life. (It probably stems from my love of minor characters in small fandoms; if I don't keep collecting more of them, I have nothing new to read or discuss.)

Started off BtVS/AtS for quite awhile, then shared between that and Farscape for a bit, then became Farscape monogamous, then FS/X-Men... and then it kind of exploded into a million different fandoms. [/more than you wanted or needed to know]

As far as how long I've been in fandom, I went with how long I've actually been involved in interactive fandom, rather than how long I've been writing fanfic/reading tie-ins/et cetera (which would be 15-20 years).

Oh, and there are some old fandoms that are no longer in my nest (to borrow from

anenko above), because I came to dislike them. (Also BtVS, interestingly enough.) But for the most part, even when I'm no longer involved in a particular fandom, I will still click on the occasional fic link if it involves a favourite character, and will sometimes fall back in love. (I'm currently doing this with X-Men comicverse -- I've been reading the comics happily for awhile, but am just rediscovering my fic love. Probably because I've fallen for different characters within the fandom than I did on my first time around.)

Actually, that reminds me: my fannish participation is often inversely proportional to how much I actually enjoy the canon. Marvel comics? Generally loving those I read, and thus feeling little reason to read fic/discuss things. (Also, the characters I most like to read about don't tend to have much fic written about them.) DC comics? Majorly unhappy with the current state of affairs, and am thus taking every opportunity to read fix-it fic, or bitch with others about how much it sucks.

Shutting up, now.

Poll: Distraction Is Good

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Human...I think!

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