snowflake challenge #3

[disc0_volante]

Challenge #3: Love Letter to Fandom

Write a love letter to fandom. It might be to fandom in general, to a particular fandom, favourite character, anything at all.

wow. that is a ... very loaded prompt compared to the two before it , haha . i don't really think this fills the prompt considering how it's more me mindlessly reminiscing over all the fandoms i've been in , but oh well !


"Dear Fandom,

I was born right around one of the huge booms in internet fandom popularity, so I've always been around you in some capacity. I was allowed on the internet at an age far too young which did, in many ways, affect me negatively. But there were also many ways it affected me incredibly positively; and almost all of them were because of you, fandom!

My first encounters with you was with the game Five Nights at Freddy's, as was the case for many children my age. It's weird to really put into perspective for me, but I must have gotten into FNAF around... what, 2016? 2017? So it's always, always been in my life, even before I had the mental capacity to even want to engage with online communities. I remember I would always roleplay as the Puppet or Mangle on the school playground with my friends, always talking about the game, always watching the Game Theory videos about it.

Then, in around 2017-2019, I was into another indie game called Bendy and the Ink Machine. I can't remember a ton about this game considering how young I was, but I still remember roleplaying it on the playground, making scratch projects about it, and drawing my own fan OC who I believe was named... Luna? Sadly, all of this art has, as far as I'm aware, been lost to time.
Including the drawing my sister made for my birthday of her and posted to her now deleted deviant.art, haha... fandom is a generational affair for me, it seems.
I still own a funko pop from this game; specifically Alice Angel. She sits on my desk and reminds me of just how personal fandom is to me every time I look at her.

Around the same time, I also became completely consumed by yet another indie game: Undertale. I think it's impossible to put into words how important both FNAF and Undertale were to my development as a child. I was so completely and utterly consumed and enamored by Undertale and its community, and for the first time in my life, I really began exploring the community of this game online. I never ended up joining any community for it outside scratch and roblox, which was good, but I did feel both FOMO for the people posting on platforms like YouTube and Tumblr as well as a deep admiration for the fan content created before then. I attribute my love for internet fandom to this game, more than anything else.

Then, Covid happened, and I, by random chance, found a super small Vocaloid series called Stars Below. It's had many names over the years--I knew it by Vanishing World at that point in time--but it became the first fandom I ever actually participated in. It was the fandom that led me to trying to figure out how to draw. I created an entire series of original characters for it, called Blissful Lies, and it was the love of my life for a long time. I can't recall how much I discussed it with those I knew in real life (from what I remember, younger me had a lot of overlapping interests and fandoms, and because this one was so niche, I can't recall it ever seeping into my conversations with other people) but I talked about it all the time on platforms I was... far too young to be on, and at some point the creator of it even drew one of my Vani (the "big bad" of the series) OCs, Koyankomaa!
Sadly, the Vocaloid songs have since been stopped, but I still highly recommend anyone reading this listen to the music on the creators YouTube, as well as look through their toyhou.se.

After that, I briefly got into Cookie Run: OvenBreak (I was in this fandom before and during when Kingdom came out, which was a bit hard to process) and Dream SMP (which I surprisingly don't have any horror stories for, despite the fact I was a Ghostbur fan.), but neither of them really took over my life in the way the rhythm game Friday Night Funkin did shortly after it came out.

To say I loved FNF is a bit of an understatement, really. While I was still into other things at the same time as I was into FNF, it was the main thing. I was past roleplaying on the school playground age at this point, so my main outlet for talking about it IRL was with this one kid I'm still friends with who made shitty FNF mods and by harassing my other IRL friends about it, but it was all I would talk about. But more than just FNF itself, I was enamored by an OC I made for it: Lemon Kid. He was originally a ripoff of some baby Lemon Demon mod (I believe this one, but I'm not sure), but then I began roleplaying with him on the FNF Corruption mod discord server, and, well... one thing led to another, he had an axe stuck in his head, and I was apart of my first roleplay group: Dragon Pico and Co. Sadly, I either left, was kicked, or the server was deleted, but I remember adoring this roleplay and the group with it, as well as... probably being horribly cringe, considering my age and all. This group died and was revived maybe 3 times, and each time I was there, with my shitty original character and even shittier writing skills. Stars Below may have been my introduction to you, fandom, but FNF was where my fandom mind really blossomed. I believe the first fanfiction I ever read was for it, even!

Then, I got back into Undertale, specifically because of the Undertale au Underswap and its version of Papyrus. I can't quite remember why he specifically called to me so much, but he did, and I very vividly remember roleplaying with a Classic Sans roleplayer using screenshots from Gacha Club. It was a very wild but incredibly fun experience, and ever since then I've had pockets of adoration for Underswap. I am also including Deltarune here, because the second chapter of it released around this time, marking when I fell in love with that game as well.

Then... well. Sadly, you have not always treated me the best, fandom. For two years, I was absolutely obsessed with an analog horror series. I don't like associating myself with it anymore, so I won't name it, but any guess you have about which one it might be has a good chance of being right. I became so unbelievably immersed in this fandom in a way I never had before. I was in every discord server I could find, posted tons (well maybe not tons, but more than I have before or since) fanart and fic about it, did nothing but talk about it to whoever would listen. It became not just my fandom but my main, sole identity. And then I was burned. Hard. I was evicted from what I thought would be my permanent fandom home, and it hurt a lot. Still does sometimes.

But then, in 2024, I found Team Fortress 2. It was almost the complete opposite of what I had been into before: a large cast with great, recognizable, animated designs, a fandom so large and so expansive that's been around for almost two decades, and shippable characters. Many, many shippable characters. It, at that point in time, was exactly the thing I needed. I met so many incredibly people via this fandom, had so many great experiences, and I rekindled my love for you via it, fandom.

Finally, there's House M.D. If TF2 was the remedy to the break in my heart, House is what has finally been healing it. TF2 was something I found out about more intimately because of my friends at the time, but House is something I got into purely for and because of myself. None of my other fandoms really included my special interest for the medical, either. I know that with every fandom I become fixated on, it feels like it's something I've "never experienced before", but I truly believe I haven't experienced anything quite like my adoration and all-consuming love for House. It's led me to truly discovering my love not just for fandom but its history. It's led me to truly discovering my love for fanfiction; for other fans; for my friends and the people around me both in real life and off of it. It even led me to discovering LiveJournal and Dreamwidth, funnily enough!

I love you, fandom. I always have, and I likely always will. So much of my life and my persona has been around and revolved around you, and I really don't think I'd have it any other way. You and the people who make you are so integral to me as a person, it's sometimes a bit hard to find where I start and you end.

Thank you for reading. Thank everyone who has made fandom and the communities I've been in surrounding it what it is.

Disco."