Poll: Distraction Is Good

[thefourthvine]

I'm kind of - not too bright sometimes. For example, when I grabbed an oven rack to move it around without, um, checking to see if it was hot? That was a "not so bright" moment in my life, right there.

Also, ow.

So I want distraction, with a minimum of typing involved. It's time for a poll! With, ideally, lots of comments! Come on, people - please. Distract me.

(I do actually have a place I'm going with this, by the way - except for the last question, which is there solely because LJ is crazed tonight. I'm trying to find out what fans do and how they do it. Assuming the ice does its job, I'll have a meta post on this sometime in the distant, murky future. Probably.)

[Poll #830222]

Comments

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

Just to note, I picked 20 as years in fandom because my first fandom was Danger Mouse, WAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY back in the day. Though, technically, I've been fannish since I was a wee thing. One of the first unfinished stories I ever wrote was a sequel to The Last Unicorn. I think my parents were a little unnerved when I spelled "Schmendrick" correctly at the age of four without actually having read the book.

Ahh, I remember that story. The opening line was:

"The Red Bull is back!" cried Schmendrick.

And thus began my foray into the world of fanfic.

[brownbetty]

Wheat is indeed fluffy and tempting. Are you familiar with puffed wheat squares? Celiac Death in Cubic form.

[norah.livejournal.com]

Can I be a magpie zoologist?

Also, OW. Your poor hands! I was thinking of you today - I will be down your way mid-October if all goes well. *flutters around you helplessly* Oh, your poor hands!

[joandarck.livejournal.com]

In the long term, camel, in the short term, human, although I've been drifting into gorillahood, but I'm pretty conflicted and stressed out about it.

I don't know if this would be of any interest to you, but I did a similar poll recently, although somewhat different set of questions:

http://joandarck.livejournal.com/101569.html

[anoel.livejournal.com]

I love polls that feature classifications based on animals :) I am lucky enough to have the Vidding Fandom that spans and includes all my other fandoms.

[luminosity]

I'm a Phoenix. I'm long-lived and golden, and I self-immolate, only to rise again from the ashes, brand new and shiny, containing all that I was before. I've noticed this behavior in my three major online fandoms: Highlander flamed out (magnificently) into Jossverse which fell from the sky like a meteor into Farscape which burned like a gigantic pinwheel sparkler into Supernatural, with its flames flickering and gaining strength and its wings spreading, brilliant in the sun.

Or? I sit here and brood.

[abbylee]

I tend to go through moods/phases of one primary fandom at a time. But I've yet to move out of a fandom once I'm in it, I just might spend (considerably( less time with it.

Most of my fandoms are a combination of show watching and reading meta and excessive amounts of fanfiction. But some shows that I consider myself fannish about, it's more that I have a certain way of watching the show and not necessarily that I interact with (or eavesdrop on) a community.

[malnpudl.livejournal.com]

I'm a chimera -- I'd say part turtle, part human, and part gorilla.

Um. That's not a very pretty picture, is it? *winces*

I get very deeply invested in one fandom at a time (each for a year or more), during which time it absorbs the great majority of my fannish time and passion, but even when I move on to the next (I'm on #3 at the moment with due South, which appears to have tremendous staying power) I retain a very deep attachment to and at least a modest involvement in its predecessors (Buffyverse and Gateverse). I'm also involved more peripherally in a couple of other fandoms (most notably NCIS), but they don't own my heart in the same way.

Which is probably more than you wanted to know, but hey. There you go.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

I chose "magpie" because it's the most nearly true, but I'm actually sort of like a magpie who grew up thinking she was a turtle (cf. Queen Latifah in "Ice Age 2") -- it takes a while, customarily, for me to be persuaded by other people that a thing is shiny.

:-)

[etben.livejournal.com]

I am sort of a magpie and sort of a gorilla - I'll read in pretty much any fandom, following good authors and recs by people (like you!) whose taste I trust. I'm really only fannish about a couple of fandoms, though - or, well, fine, four. Five. Whatever. Point is, my reading tastes and my writing-watching-squeeing-thinking-obsessing tastes are not the same things. I am a butterfly of reading and a gorilla of everything else.

...and that's a bizarre mental image, so I'm going to go drink some peppermint tea. Don't touch hot things! and make sure the oven is empty before you set it to preheat (that's the one that always gets me...).

[e-clare.livejournal.com]

1) Forgot to answer the "how long" question -- mostly because it's hard to say. I didn't start reading fic until about 5 years ago, but I was always a fannish kid, from an early obsession with The Wizard of Oz to the Redwall books, and my brief affairs with Power Rangers and the X-Men cartoon.

2) Since I don't comment often enough, I feel I ought to thank you for pointing out so many excellent stories, especially in the DCU category, that I'd never seek out myself. I've spent many a non-productive hour online thanks to you, usually when I needed to be doing something else -- and while that may not sound like a compliment, I meant it to be one. :)

[elfiepike.livejournal.com]

i possibly should have put human, but since my main fandom often changes after a period of time, i didn't really know. actually, the main reason i still see other girls fandoms is because my main fandom at the moment is high on "canon" as it were (it's an RPS fandom) and low on the quality of fanworks, and i don't write fast enough to satisfy myself. plus, i cannot resist a good rodney mckay, but who can?

but do you ever really stop loving a fandom? even if i never really participated in many of the fandoms i'm fond of & am now no longer really paying attention to, every now and then i like to dip my fingers in their fountains, as it were. my love stays there forever, unreasonably. XD

[thete1.livejournal.com]

It was hard answering the second question, because -- well, we've already talked about it. I started out polygamous -- though I only *produced* (fiction, meta, recs) in one fandom for a while, and I thought I'd always stay that way. That, you know, I'd have one primary fandom for about a year or so, and several other fandoms to dabble in. (You know, how I run my love life. *snerk*)

It continues to surprise me that I've *become* so monogamous. I mean -- even though I fully expect to write a few things in a few other fandoms this year -- just as I did last year and the year before -- it just doesn't *count*.

My heart, soul, and *brain* are in the DCU, and I see very little sign of that changing, even after nearly *two years* of actively avoiding the current canon. I got nothin'.

You were right -- even though I didn't know it, I *was* looking for my One True Fandom. And I appear to have found it.

So, yeah. I am a "generally monogamous fan who will occasionally do other things, but mostly those *other* things will be for challenges/as gifts to beloved friends."

Even reading/viewing outside my main fandom when I haven't been *asked* to do it doesn't feel like it counts. When I saw that someone had written an Olivia (BtVS minor character of color) story, I jumped all over it... but that was because of... hmm. "Intellectual" rather than "emotional" reasons. Just as my recent reading in SG-1 is "visceral" rather than "emotional." It's gotta be emo to count.

[dzurlady.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I hope your hands get better. :(
I'm a mix of a hummingbird and a turtle. I think I've said this to you before, but I tend to have long term single fandoms that I go on brief vactions from to other fandoms before coming back to them. And I tend not to mix fandoms up, but recently I've branched out into two long term simultaneous fandoms, SGA and then SPN to a lesser extent, but both at the same time. (Although, even now, I tend to stick to chuncks of one fandom, not jump from one story to another.)
Also, it seems longer than 3 years. (I think. I don't remember exactly when I found fandom. Woe!)

[sinsense.livejournal.com]

My description of my fannish style got a little wordy, which I apologize for. I hope you actually find this sort of thing interesting!

I clicked gorilla, though it's something more complicated than that. I shift main fandoms about twice a year or so, depending on whether or not the group goes on hiatus (NSync), or I get really sick of the fans (Gundam Wing, Weiss Kreuz, and Harry Potter), or I realize I'm not very good at watching the canon (SGA). I'll be very devoted and single-minded in my attention to my main fandom, but once the honeymoon is over it moves back into the harem to make room for a new principal fandom.

I'm really good at inferring canon from fanfiction, so I'll read my favorite authors (or favorite recommenders) in any fandom, and sometimes will go on reading sprees in a single fandom. For example, I recently zipped through all of the House fiction I could find, since I was recommended one House/Wilson fic that got me hankering for more, but since then I haven't read anything. I have about five or six fandoms I consider myself a solid fan in -- aware of canon, main authors, kerfuffles, etc. -- but only one or two main fandoms that I'm truly obsessive about.

I clicked five years, since that's how long I've been on LJ, and I think 2001 is around the time I googled "nsync slash" and found helenish's website. Let me state for the record, however, that I am still the most rabid Nat/Dan (Little Men, by Louisa May Alcott) shipper ever, and have been since I was eight years old. I wrote a long, elaborate story about their Big Gay Love at eight, actually. It was AWESOME. And full of h/c.

Fun poll! Thank you. And sorry about the comment babble, again.

[pollitt.livejournal.com]

I suppose my general fannish tendency is along the primate classification. I usually have one main fandom which I tend to focus the majority of my time and effort. And even if one fandom has surpassed the previous title-holder, those fandoms don't fade away. I moved from OZ to due South to SGA as my primary fandoms, but there were a handful of smaller fandoms that I do/have read and written in.

[auburnnothenna.livejournal.com]

I stuck with human because though I've been very loyal to SGA and don't see me running out of ideas or love for SGA any time in the future, who knows? Besides, my involvement as a participator (as opposed to lurking reader) has followed a rather relationship like progression. I feel into love with Alias and it was great until JJ and the writers betrayed me, and I'm nostalgic about it (more for the people in the fandom than the show), then I flirted with Due South and M7 but neither really worked for me, I had a really hot one story stand with Once Upon a Time in Mexico, spent six months writing the Thing That Should Not Be Read, and then fell head over heels for Atlantis. It's been all Atlantis, all the time since then.

Also, speaking from experience with stupidly grabbing hot oven racks (ow, ow, ow, your hands!): OVEN MITTS.

[minim_calibre]

I am a human gorilla zoologist with occasional camel sightings!

Also, I chose 16 years for my fannish duration, because, though not in Ficcish Fandom, I was in Con Going Klingon Party Attending RHPS Participating Fandom that long ago.

(Then I cameled off and on for a few years. Then fell ass over teakettle into Buffy fandom, and the rest, as they say, is history and a massive DVD collection. Plus, I could build an addition with my short boxes.)

[cad27.livejournal.com]

Stop making me read in new fandoms! I'm reading Due South now! Stop it at once!

I'm definitely new to the world of...well, fandoms, so I'm not quite sure whether or not I'm a hummingbird or a gorilla or what, so I picked the one that I thought was likely, because hey, a contribution is a contribution and this way I feel like a productive member of fandom. Go team me!

[destina.livejournal.com]

I chose serial monogamy and gorilla, and though that might seem contradictory...it's not. I may be participating in several fandoms at once to various degrees -- writing, posting, vidding, making icons, writing meta, etc -- but in my secret (or not so secret) heart, there's one fandom above all others, most of the time. Like right now, I'm still into SG-1, and I'm fannish to a degree about Rome and Brokeback Mountain and Nip/Tuck and SGA, but my secret heart belongs to Supernatural, and it's my true love.

[rhi]

I'm one of your chimera/mythical beasties: I have two main fandoms, and I write crossovers with lots of other fandoms, and occasionally a standalone story in the other fandoms... but mostly? My main two. Neat poll -- thank you!

wittering on and on and on...

[joannindiw.livejournal.com]

*wave* hope your hands get better soon. And, uh, I should be doing w*rk and instead, I am answering polls. And commenting. I picked magpie and checked all sorts of things for my fandom activity - but, really... I have two major fandoms that I actually write fic for, and then I have random hits of drabbles of the odd fic that I'll write in a different fandom... uh, ok. Magpie fits really well... *cough* Other than the odd spurts of fic, I mostly comment and read lots and lots of fic. I've flirted with actually watching cannon, but, ah, I've found that knowing cannon tends to disturb my enjoyment of actual fandom-produced fic. Which I enjoy much too much to give up. Which, then, leads me to not even attempting to write because I know I don't know cannon. (my two main fandoms, I started writing before I knew any better, got lots of encouragement, and at this point am pretty much banned from ever watching cannon since the last time I did that I was unable to write for months).

*cough* right, and TMI blather, but you did say you wanted to be distracted...

[snacky]

Hello! I picked "chimera" because I feel I'm kind of a magpie/human/camel combo. I do pick up other fandoms, but not terribly fast, and there are one or two I always go back to, but sometimes I do not feel fannish about anything.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I think I am combination human, lone wolf, and gorilla.

I have a teeny true fandom, so I supplement with other, larger fandoms, which results in me having a select group of 3 fandoms that I stick by, but I, um, see other fandoms from time to time, as well. :D

My main fandom is Jude/Ewan RPS, which is me, and occasionally my co-writer from the RPG in which we got started. But mainly me. It's nice for writing in (aside from the fact that there's hardly anyone reading), but there is nothing for me to read.

So, I also write in two larger fandoms, LotRiPS and HP, which gets me a larger audience (who I sekritly hope will be lured into trying the Jude/Ewan as well), and also gets me stuff to actually read.

But I also love all sorts of tiny yuletide-ish fandoms (my current "omg why is there no fic must write now!" love is Everything Is Illuminated, which I just finished reading) and write them here and there, as well as dabbling in Star Wars prequel stuff.

As for years in fandom, I put five, which is how long I've been active in fanfic fandom. Before that, I ran a popular Digimon website, but though it was fannish activity (fanart, canon discussion and speculation, interacting with other fans on a messageboard, translating hundreds of Japanese cards and keeping an encyclopedia of all Digimon, scanning Japanese magazines and books, uploading songs and clips from the show, etc.), it just feels so different from this sort of fanfic-centred fandom that I have trouble even thinking of it as the same thing. If I were to include that, it would be seven years.

[moosesal.livejournal.com]

I wanted to say that while I chose polygamy since that's the case in recent years, I was a serial monogomist for the first 5 or 6 years. I wonder if that's not the case for a lot of the multi-fandom people.