The dog days are done.
Feb. 17th, 2012 04:15 pmAccording to Gmail's archives, which I cross-referenced with Livejournal, as of today I've been in the Team Fortress 2 fandom a year. I don't normally keep track of anniversaries like this, but this once, to mark going once around the sun with this, seems like a good idea.
I remember this time last year being at the Y and going to Ellis and living with people whose guts I hated and generally being in a really bad, low place. I'm still resentful of the time I spent there if I think about it for more than a couple of minutes. Angry, too. It's not for me to talk about now, except to say that I needed an escape that just wasn't coming.
It'd been a bad day for a lot of reasons, and I was doing what I normally did on slow nights, which was poke around TV Tropes. I'd gotten to the Cold Sniper and Friendly Sniper pages, saw that the same character provided the main quotes for both, and decided to go check it out.
And it felt like getting hit by a train.
Just like that, I'd found the escape I needed. I was in love after just a few moments, and gobbled up the rest of what I could find, diving into the fandom and amassing my own personal art repository, finding this wonderful new community, getting myself a way out. Some of it was the pure, raw newness, that feeling of the shiny new fandom everyone gets when they dive in. Some of it was the sheer unbridled fun. Some of it was knowing the content would give the people whose guts I hated a cerebral hemorrhage if they watched it themselves. And some of it was suddenly seeing a direction I could take.
TF2 is a huge, sprawling online community with millions of fans all over the world, and the segment I found myself in - the fanart/fanfiction segment - makes up a small fraction of the whole of the activity based around the game. Even in this little area, there's a lot going on. There were, and there are, all sorts of people making some pretty nifty things. I looked around at what was happening, what had happened and what hadn't happened yet, what people were and weren't doing, and realized, "I could do something big here."
And then I realized just what I'd be doing. When I did, I sighed, put my hair up, and started going forward without looking back. I'm about 75,000 words into a sprawling story cycle which is probably only one-third done at this point in terms of ground covered. And when this is over, when I've finished the last of it, I'll know I can see large-scale projects through to the end. I'll know I can write anything.
It's uncanny for me to think how much I've changed in a year, especially how much I've changed as a person in that time. So much. If it wasn't for this fandom, I wouldn't be nearly as happy or comfortable in my own skin. I owe it - well, I just owe it. TF2 came to me at the right time, when I needed it, and I'm still so grateful to it, and for it, so much.
"There is life before Team Fortress 2, and there is life after. After is better." - quote
And just because, meet the Sniper here.
I remember this time last year being at the Y and going to Ellis and living with people whose guts I hated and generally being in a really bad, low place. I'm still resentful of the time I spent there if I think about it for more than a couple of minutes. Angry, too. It's not for me to talk about now, except to say that I needed an escape that just wasn't coming.
It'd been a bad day for a lot of reasons, and I was doing what I normally did on slow nights, which was poke around TV Tropes. I'd gotten to the Cold Sniper and Friendly Sniper pages, saw that the same character provided the main quotes for both, and decided to go check it out.
And it felt like getting hit by a train.
Just like that, I'd found the escape I needed. I was in love after just a few moments, and gobbled up the rest of what I could find, diving into the fandom and amassing my own personal art repository, finding this wonderful new community, getting myself a way out. Some of it was the pure, raw newness, that feeling of the shiny new fandom everyone gets when they dive in. Some of it was the sheer unbridled fun. Some of it was knowing the content would give the people whose guts I hated a cerebral hemorrhage if they watched it themselves. And some of it was suddenly seeing a direction I could take.
TF2 is a huge, sprawling online community with millions of fans all over the world, and the segment I found myself in - the fanart/fanfiction segment - makes up a small fraction of the whole of the activity based around the game. Even in this little area, there's a lot going on. There were, and there are, all sorts of people making some pretty nifty things. I looked around at what was happening, what had happened and what hadn't happened yet, what people were and weren't doing, and realized, "I could do something big here."
And then I realized just what I'd be doing. When I did, I sighed, put my hair up, and started going forward without looking back. I'm about 75,000 words into a sprawling story cycle which is probably only one-third done at this point in terms of ground covered. And when this is over, when I've finished the last of it, I'll know I can see large-scale projects through to the end. I'll know I can write anything.
It's uncanny for me to think how much I've changed in a year, especially how much I've changed as a person in that time. So much. If it wasn't for this fandom, I wouldn't be nearly as happy or comfortable in my own skin. I owe it - well, I just owe it. TF2 came to me at the right time, when I needed it, and I'm still so grateful to it, and for it, so much.
"There is life before Team Fortress 2, and there is life after. After is better." - quote
And just because, meet the Sniper here.
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