fajrdrako | Aragorn....

On Sunday I was at a meeting with a group of people, all of them local writers, all of them women. There was nothing fannish about the group or the meeting, but one of them had already learned what a fan of The Lord of the Rings I am, and she shares my love of Aragorn. Another just happens to be a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, specifically of Spike. She rolled her eyes at us. "There's a limit to how many times you can watch The Lord of the Rings," she told us firmly.

I blinked. "No, there isn't."

I'm ready to prove it by example.

Later on, a group of us went out to dinner together. There were a couple of highly successful professional writers, several who are just starting to go professional if they can, and a few like myself with a smattering of professionally published work behind us but not a lot. They were talking about their publishers, their agents, their contracts, things like that, and I was listening avidly but mostly keeping my mouth shut.

Till someone turned to me and said, "Are you still writing, Elizabeth? What are you writing these days?"

I said (sheepish mumble), "Mostly I'm writing fanfic."

I thought they'd just change the subject but they were all right into it immediately. "Oh? What fandoms? What pairings? Where do you publish your stuff?"

It was weird: suddenly it was as if I was the successful one, the one doing interesting work, and there was our best-selling winner of multiple Rita awards sitting across from me and smiling proudly for my sake.

Fandom is a powerful thing.