Dept. of Fandom Snowflake

[kaffy_r]

Welcome - Let Me Talk About Myself!

In 2020 I decided I'd take part in snowflake_challenge , in part because I wanted to keep active in fandom, tell people how much I value them and, (probably more than) occasionally, talk about who I am and why I do what I do. 

The first challenge asked me to introduce myself to people. So here goes, but I've put it under a cut because it goes on and on and on.

Hi! I'm kaffy_r , or as non-fannish life knows me, Kathy. I'm a 69-going-on-70-year-old cis bi white matronly type with poor eyesight, a pretty decent imagination, and ever leftward politics. I live in Chicago. I'm Canadian, born in Ottawa, Ont., and raised in Nova Scotia by my mother and maternal grandparents. I've always loved fantasy and science fiction; my first memories of reading were of reading and loving a book of fairy tales from my grandparents' shelves that I'm reasonably sure was illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley, even though I can find no evidence of that.

My mother never called my desire weird, possibly because she was a fan even when she didn't know it herself. She bought me the books I wanted, and the only books she didn't want me to read were Fanny Hill and My Secret Life. I did anyway, because they were in the house and why on earth she had them is not something I'm interested in investigating. Nonetheless, everything else she saved up scarce money and bought for me.

In short order, I discovered and loved Burroughs' Tarzan and John Carter of Mars (don't judge), then anything stfnal from the school book sales that came around each year, and then Theodore Sturgeon, who got in there with his "A Touch of Strange" collection of short stories and Cordwainer Smith, whose strange and wonderful stories and personal history are still fascinating, problematic, and beautiful to me.

Then I hungered for SFF on television. I saw Dr. Who in 1965 when the CBC bought the rights to it from the BBC, and oh, how I loved it. When the CBC stopped paying for it, around the time the Second Doctor arrived, it disappeared from my screen. I looked elsewhere and was rewarded with My Favorite Martian (I said DON'T JUDGE, OMG, I WAS A KID DESPERATE FOR SFF) and Star Trek. I promptly fell in love with Mr. Spock. Didn't everyone?

I discovered traditional SFF fandom in 1976, by reading about science fiction conventions in the back of Analog magazine. I went to my first one in 1977 - Suncon, the World Science Fiction Convention, because when you live in eastern Canada (New Brunswick by this time), it costs a lot to go anywhere else by air, so why not go to the biggest one? Within minutes of deplaning, I'd met other fans, and knew I'd found home. 

So much so, in fact, that after four years of going to three or so cons a year, including all the worldcons between 1977 and 1982, I decided that all the friends I wanted to be closer to lived in the U.S. So I quit my job, emptied my retirement account, sold my furniture, and planned to go find a job in California while I stayed with one of those fannish friends. I stopped for three days to visit another fannish friend in Chicago. I met my husband. I never left. I remembered Dr. Who because Public Television in the states kept playing Four's and Three's and Five's adventures, cementing my love for Pertwee. I watched the movie with Eight, and would have continued watching Eight had the movie spawned a series.

I was online relatively early, in 1994-95, haunted rec.arts.sf.fandom, and used that as my fannish continuation, since relative poverty and parenthood had curtailed my in-person activities. Ah, gafiation when you didn't want to gafiate. 

Then came 2003 and the revived Battlestar Galactica, and 2005/06 when the revived Dr. Who hit my screen. I loved both, went looking online for a community in which to discuss both, found Television Without Pity's Who and BSG boards, was introduced to the idea of fanfic, decided I could write some, because I'd tried writing original fiction and got enough personalized rejection notices to keep trying, before I somehow stopped doing it when I moved to the U.S. and the rest is history. Especially once I discovered LJ and Dreamwidth.  And anime. Forgot that. And I shouldn't, because goodness, I love it.

Oh, and I was a reporter for decades (that started in Canada in 1975). And my editors used to tell me I wrote too long. And they were generally right, although my long writing won some awards. And I became active in my union. And I used to be a chick singer in an unsuccessful rock and roll band with my husband, our attorney, Dr. Gonzo, and others. 

If you're interested in my fic, I have two master fic posts stickied up top. My profile also has a bit more about other interests of mine. If you'd like to friend me, feel free to, and I'd probably love to friend you back. Right now, though, I think I'd like to go and see other folks' introductions. 

And there's an end to this extremely long intro, with too many sentences starting with either "then" or "and." Way too many starting with "and."  

Comments

[beccadg]

Woah. I've been feeling more and more like I'm not looking forward to turning 45 in February. I handled 40 all right and thought 42 was kind of cool, but. I sort of understood that you're older than me, I did not, however, realize that you started as a reporter the year I was born. I'm very glad to have you as an online friend. *Hugs.*

[kaffy_r]

Goodness, I thought I'd responded to you, and I hadn't, which is probably a sign of my inability to organize even post responses. Sigh.

You are still very young, although I am manfully resisting the idea of calling you "my child," because that would be really awful of me. I remember thinking about my 40s with a certain amount of side-eye at the time. Now I look back on them as if they're in the distant, be-fogged past.

And all that is to say - I, too, and very glad to have you as an online friend! *many hugs back*

[beccadg]

If it's any consolation, my parents had children relatively late so that my mother, if she reaches her next birthday rather than dying from Alzheimer's and-or Diabetes first, will be 75, and my father God rest his soul would have been 73 this past October if he hadn't already died from a stroke. You may have a couple of decades on me, but you still aren't as old as my parents.

[perspi]

Hello, it's so good to meet you! Your fandom story was a WILD RIDE and I started my online fandom exploration with TWoP, too!! :D

[kaffy_r]

Hello there! Mind if I friend you?

Yeah, my entire life has been a bit of a wild ride - then again, I've discovered that most people's lives are entertainingly wild rides when investigated. Heh.

What boards did you haunt on TWoP?

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, and welcome!

I was pretty active on the Joe Millionaire boards, first, but I'd read a lot of the Amazing Race recaps and boards before that. And then I got into the House boards, and from there it was a fairly short leap into LJ. :D

[perspi]

Sorry, this one was me -- I hadn't realized I'd gotten logged out!

[kaffy_r]

Heh. I figured it was you.

[kaffy_r]

So you liked Miss Alli's recaps - I was one of the folks who loved Jacob's Doctor Who and BSG recaps. He was highly polarizing, but I was a bit of a stan of his, because he just wrote so beautifully. Ah, the old days. I sure as hell miss TWoP.

[dewline]

Pleased to "meet" you anew, friend Kaffyr!

[kaffy_r]

*nods, smiles*

It's good to "meet" you as well, friend Dewline!

[ragdoll]

I feel like I should know you because of the Chicago/DW connection. I used to be on Chicago TARDIS staff as well as the early year of Visions, am still close to a lot of Chicago DW people etc. My first fandom was Star Trek TOS back in the dark ages, went to my first con in 1975 (the last of the 5 year mission cons in NYC), and have been a fan of many things over the years including the new BSG (a friend of mine was the scientific advisor on the show!) Friends?

[kaffy_r]

Hi there! Definitely friends!

I feel like I should know you because of the Chicago/DW connection.

Yeah, that would be a reasonable assumption - sadly, I didn't discover the Who con connection until well after until I was so gafiated that even getting to a convention in my home city wasn't going to happen' the mid to late 90s were my rec.arts.sf.fandom period. That's sad, because both Who and anime had/have really great conventions.

The fact that you were staff for both Chicago TARDIS and Visions is impressive, because, while I've gophered and even done security for large and small traditional SFF cons, I wouldn't be able to handle the responsibility of higher up work.

You've been in organized fandom, via Trek, longer than I've been; I salute you!

(a friend of mine was the scientific advisor on the show!)

Whoah! That is cool!

[ragdoll]

eah, that would be a reasonable assumption - sadly, I didn't discover the Who con connection until well after until I was so gafiated that even getting to a convention in my home city wasn't going to happen' the mid to late 90s were my rec.arts.sf.fandom period. That's sad, because both Who and anime had/have really great conventions.

That's honestly a bummer because Chicago has always been a huge hub of Doctor Who fandom, going back to the 80s. WTTW got the later Tom Baker episodes before New York did, and they got "The Five Doctors" even before the UK. My friends (who are also now higher ups at CT) had a well known fan club, made fan videos, went to a lot of cons in the 80s and 90s while I was mainly stuck in NY, then Philly, not doing much of anything fannish. If not for my now late best friend, I wouldn't have been involved with Visions or CT. There is a chance that we (me plus the other friends) may be running a different kind of con in future. It was in the planning stages last year, and the best friend (who was spearheading it) got her diagnosis, and a month later she was gone. (Sorry to be so depressing here!) The rest of us are trying to figure out where to go from here.

In any event, if you get the chance to go to CT, do. I have some issues with some of the staff (it's a long story which has to do with fandom politics) but the friends still involved are awesome and it's still a generally good con.

I wound up staffing for cons if I felt like I could contribute or help in some way. Plus the perks of free membership and occasionally other things (CT really treated their staff fabulously when my BFF was in charge). It can be exhausting though.

You've been in organized fandom, via Trek, longer than I've been; I salute you! I spent a lot of time on my own too -- I grew up in a very geek-averse area, so my only contacts were pen pals or friends from camp, later friends in college/grad school, and then friends I met at cons and on the internet. The science advisor friend was someone we knew from DW fandom when he was in grad school (part of a Michigan fan group). He later got a Ph D, got a job at Jet Propulsion Labs, and got friendly with important people via cons etc. I know he worked on BSG as well as Eureka, Defiance, and some other films, plus he's written books on science in tv shows and films. He's an interesting person.

[kaffy_r]

Your friend has worked on shows that I love - Eureka and Defiance (especially the latter) were serious loves of mine.

I grew up in a university town where there were probably SFF fans, but in primary and jr./high school, that was the subject of much mockery, and so I got mocked a bit. Didn't help that I was self-consciously and deliberately "weird," at least for the purposes of high school. I was lucky enough to have a very small group of friends (4, basically), who accepted and put up with me, and might actually have secretly shared my love for things like Trek. They never told me, but they didn't mock me, and they were great friends.

Maybe some day I'll get back to being able to afford cons, and I've wanted to go to Chicago TARDIS for some time.

[ragdoll]

Kevin definitely has done some incredible things, including working on the Cassini project etc. It's so funny he's this big deal now -- when I first met him, he was a Peter Davison cosplayer who wrote silly fannish plays for cons (I was even in one). :)

I grew up in suburbia on Longuyland, so I get ya. It's so weird because when I got to college and grad school I found other geeky people and they all had grown up with geeky friends etc. I can't imagine what that's like. I didn't even play Dungeons & Dragons until college, whereas other friends had groups from HS etc. I kept most of my nerdy loves to myself, although the music thing was "acceptable". I did have some other music crazy friends in HS at least, but they didn't like SFF at all so I couldn't convince them to see things with me. This is why I didn't see "The Empire Strikes Back" until it was re-released in 1981 or 82.

Most of my closest friends were long distance for a long time.

One of the nice things about volunteering for cons is that it's cheaper. CT really treats their staff well and usually picks up their hotel rooms plus their membership. Gally is membership only, but it came in very handy in the years that the con sold out in 12 seconds. These days it's not quite as bad!

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, it's nice to read this - I think most of it I sort of knew by now, but some of it not exactly.

And start a sentence with whatever you like! ;-p

It's always nice to see people doing snowflake_challenge - I'll look forward to the rest of your entries.

[kaffy_r]

I think most of it I sort of knew by now

Yes, I'm pretty sure anyone who's hung around me for more than a week or so has heard my stories. Heh ... still, it was fun to try to put it all together in a slightly different way for people who didn't know me.

This is my first year taking part in snowflake_challenge, and this first challenge has been really fun, because I've been able to dip into intro posts from more than 400 people. (I'm actually fighting my completist self, and telling it that I only have to cherry pick, and not respond to them all. I used to be like that ....)

[bibliofile]

Well heck, that's a lot of info about you. Nifty.

re: Aubrey Beardsley
Project Gutenberg has a handful of works that include illustrations by Beardsley. You might want to look in particular at The Art of Aubrey Beardsley, by Arthur Symons to see if any of the illos look familiar. Maybe you read Le Morte d'Arthur? But Under the Hill, and Other Essays in Prose and Verse by Aubrey Beardsley seems to list all of Beardsley's illustration work. (I didn't know he died at age 26.)

[kaffy_r]

Well heck, that's a lot of info about you.

Indeed, and there's more, much more, but even I balk at telling the entire story, at least in one sitting, and I'm trying to listen more to people rather than force them to listen to me. I am glad you thought it was nifty. Heh.

(I didn't know he died at age 26.)

Yeah, Beardsley was always a sickly kid, apparently. I've done a lot of searching, and haven't yet found concrete proof, but there does seem to be evidence that he illustrated some fairy tale books. I've checked out other illustrators of that period, to see if any of them did work that looked like his, and I haven't found anything. The pictures are very clear in my mind, although I' aware that memory is a faithless sweetheart, so my search continues. Thanks for the links; maybe I can dig something more up!

[maruad]

You think you know someone only to have them surprise you. I won't say I am gobsmacked but I had no idea you had been born in Ottawa. I was assuming you were originally from Nova Scotia.

[kaffy_r]

You are right in all the important ways. I was raised in Nova Scotia from the time I was a little over three years of age, in the house my mother grew up in, by her and her parents, in the town where my maternal line had lived for nigh on 150 years. I always considered myself from Nova Scotia.

[ljgeoff]

I thought Spock was interesting but my love went to Kirk. Because, well, me.

What a fun read! Thank you. <3

[kaffy_r]

Heh. You see, I always fell for the second in command; the best friend of the most popular kid at Bible camp; the hero's sidekick. It may be connected in some way to the manner in which I like to work. I prefer being the good and creative lieutenant to being the one in charge.

I'm glad you liked it; wordy, as always!

[ragdoll]

Let's hear it for Kirk fans! My first serious media crush.

[shipperslist]

It’s always such a treat to hear fandom elders retellstuff of how they found their path.

[kaffy_r]

Hi there! Can I say that I'm completely and happily croggled at being deemed a fandom elder? I love it! At least partly because it signals that I survived ... heh .... I started laughing in delight, and shared it with my Best Beloved.

How did you find your fandom path? It's always fun to ask, but I just remembered that's the second challenge, so I should wait to see what you say there.

[shipperslist]

Well, in a nutshell: I was bored and needed something to escape my miserable marriage. Fast forward six years, and here we are. :P

[kaffy_r]

Misery in relationships is heart-awful. I hope that finding fandom helped. ♥

[shipperslist]

It did indeed. 💜

[kaffy_r]

I'm seriously glad to hear it. Fandom can save lives in so many ways.

This is really weird to say, I know, but could you give me the coding for your beautiful large heart that comes in color? I used to know how to code that, but I lost my guide. Yep, I am bad about that sort of thing. Ahem.

[shipperslist]

Ah, sorry, I can't give a code. If I want to use emojis I reply on my phone...

[kaffy_r]

Not a problem in the least - it was a spur of the moment thing because I adore purple.

[melagan]

I decided that all the friends I wanted to be closer to lived in the U.S

I think it's so fantastic that you left everything you were used to, to live closer to your tribe. ❤️

[kaffy_r]

I sometimes look back on that and wonder that my cosmic stupidity was rewarded so richly and wonderfully!

And thank you! ♥

[st_aurafina]

Hey! I just got your Christmas card - thank you so much! I solemnly swear I will be more organised this year and get one back to you!

[kaffy_r]

Oh, I'm so glad it made it! And don't worry; you folks have a lot more to worry about than holiday cards. I hope you're alright?

[st_aurafina]

Yeah, we're all safe for now. Still have the whole of summer ahead of us, but we're not on fire right now.

[kaffy_r]

Good to hear. I won't say "stay safe," because Nature won't listen to something so presumptuous. I will say that I hope you stay safe.

[spikedluv]

I used to be a chick singer in an unsuccessful rock and roll band with my husband, our attorney, Dr. Gonzo, and others.

You've had an interesting journey through fandom ~and RL!

[kaffy_r]

It's still interesting, and I hope it continues to be; I suspect it will be.

(I've also learned that almost everyone has an interesting journey to talk about, both in fandom and in life!)

[gwenhwyfar1984]

Sci-Fi fan! Yay!

I really miss Television Without Pity. I never went on the forums, but I loved their recaps so much. I still go through the archives.

Well, I'm off to check out your fics!

[kaffy_r]

Hello, again - I miss TWoP a great deal. The last night it was open, there was a farewell party of sorts on the Doctor Who Meet Market Thread that went down to the last second. I downloaded the whole thing while I was still able to, but I haven't opened the file ... a combination of technical ludditism making me afraid I'll somehow make it disappear in a puff of smoke, and just not wanting to see all the good times again, because it would hurt.

And yes, Sci-Fi! Or as we call science fiction and fantasy and SFF fandom in general around our house - skiffy. Old joke, so old that I use the term skiffy without thinking that some people just wouldn't understand.

I hope you like the stories.

[minnehaha]

Bah. I cannot email you at [Bad username or site: rcnchicago @ com], nor at [Bad username or site: 21stcentury @ net] and so I cannot email you at all, and I would like to. Ideas?

K.

[kaffy_r]

Aha - I'll DM you. Here, I can tell you to ditch those emails. They're ancient and no longer operative.

[williamsnickers]

What an amazing intro! Didn't even notice all those sentences starting with "and" - I was that caught up in your story. :))

I admit I am not very familiar with any of the fandoms/titles you mention, but your life sounds wicked cool. Nice to meet you!

[kaffy_r]

I'm glad the intro kept your interest; when I look at my life with the eyes of a stranger (or as much as one can do that about oneself) I guess it is a bit unusual. Then again, I've learned that far more people than one might think with remarkable life stories. Sometimes they don't even think their stories are that remarkable.

I admit I am not very familiar with any of the fandoms/titles you mention

One of the things I love about fandom is that it's a huge country, with many different provinces and cities; there are a lot of fandoms of which I know absolutely nothing. That means I can enjoy the thrill of discovery, should I so desire.

(And if you ever want to discover a particularly lively and broad based fandom, Dr. Who is it.)

It's nice to meet you as well!