![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Day 15
In your own space, share a favorite memory about fandom: the first time you got into fandom, the last time a fanwork touched your heart, crazy times with fellow fans (whether on-line or off-line), a lovely comment you’ve received or have left for someone.
I had a hard time choosing just one memory to talk about here. I've been incredibly lucky to have so many of them. I've got memories of being in costume on a sailing ship, memories of wandering around Ren Faire with friends dressed as Will, Allan, and the Tenth Doctor, memories of meeting creators and actors, memories of hanging around with friends and discussing fandom and playing games in character and experiencing new canon together for the first time... in fact, I did a post similar to this just before OST came out for the PotC fandom, and it's here, and any of my Comic-Con posts in my memories will be filled with amazing things that I've been able to be a part of.
But... back before I got my livejournal, when I was studying overseas for the 2000-2001 school year, I was just barely getting into fandom. I was part of a big Wheel of Time rp site, I'd written exactly two fanfics, I was on a Magnificent Seven mailing list or two, and that was it. A few months into my stay in London, I started to see posts about various meetups that were going to be taking place all over the world one weekend, and one of them happened to be in England. Now, I was missing the fannish interaction I had with my best high school friend a lot, and my brain was full to the brim for love of M7, as I'd managed to fall in love with it all over again the summer before I went to London, and I desperately wanted to talk to someone about how awesome Chris, Ezra, Buck, JD, Vin, Josiah, and Nathan are. So, I contacted the organizer of the English group, she sent me her address and a picture of her so I'd know who I was looking for when I got off the train.
I had quite an adventure getting to her. Our school group had been on a field trip in Wales, and so instead of going home with the rest of the group, I bought a ticket from Cardiff to the city where the host lived. (I think it was called Chester... my memory is fuzzy on this point.) Now, this also happened to be a year that England had record amounts of rainfall, and it had been raining steadily all week. I don't remember how long the train ride was supposed to take, but it took a lot longer. I was incredibly worried that I'd get to the train station and she'd have left or given up on the train ever getting in, and I would be there by myself with my luggage and no place to stay.
Turns out I didn't need to be worried. She was at the train station to get me, as promised. I ended up going out to dinner with her and three or four other wonderful girls, one of whom had read my one and only M7 fic. This was proof that fandom was a small and wondrously connected world. During dinner, the other girls started throwing around lines from episodes I hadn't seen. This was back before the days that every TV show in the universe was available on DVD, and since my family didn't have cable, I'd only seen the episodes that were aired on CBS. I was lucky enough to have a couple of them collected on a video cassette, commercials carefully cut out, but my collection was spotty. So, when the other girls started talking about funny bits from "Achilles" and "Ladykillers," I was like, "What do you MEAN there's an episode where Casey hits on Vin and he screams like a girl? And there's an episode where Ezra plays cards NAKED? How did I miss this?" My lovely host replied with, "You're an Ezra fan and you haven't seen Achilles? We're watching that one." And we did. I think we stayed up most of the night watching several of the episodes that had only aired on cable for my sake, and a bunch of Chris-centric episodes for another of the girls. (We probably watched a good ten episodes or so...) Sure, I saw museums and castles and abbeys and monuments while I was in Britain. But this was up there as one of the most fun weekends I had while I was over there.
So, I have a sweet English girl (I think her name was Helen...) to thank for finding out about The Scene Where Only the Tablecloth Kept Things Decent. And for reinforcing my belief that fandom is, at its best, an amazing community to be a part of.