Challenge 13.

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, wild times with fellow fans (whether on-line or off-line), a lovely comment you’ve received or have left for someone. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

This has taken a long time because I'm trying to come up with a fandom memory that's not about dead people.

It's not that most of my fandom memories are about dead people. But those are the memories I hold on to hardest, the ones I want to share because I can't make more of them.

...But there's plenty of morbidity going around, these last few years, so I've been trying to find something interesting or meaningful to share that's not, sigh, all tangled up with a person or people who aren't around anymore.

Think I'll go with the "lovely comment you received" idea. Several years ago at Yuletide, I wrote a story about The Martian. That's not the fandom I matched on - I wanted to offer The Martian, but you can't offer less than two characters, and Mark's the only one I felt comfortable enough to be sure of writing.

Their request in the fandom we matched on was very nice, and I poked at it a bit, almost had a fic idea... but their request about Mark just snapped into my head as a story-thing. (And then I realized that I'd only seen the movie, not read the book, and the request was technically for the book fandom, so I had to go track that down and see if it had any details that clashed with what I wanted to write, which was "Mark has been very very traumatized by potatoes and he hates them but also some very deep part of him knows he can't survive without them."

Anyway, here's the fic: Hunger Strikes, G-rated, 3200 words, no warnings. I'm very happy with it. It is my most-kudosed work and was hauled into a collection called "If you only read one fic in this fandom" (Originally it my fic showed up right next to some Papyrus smut by Maximum Overboner; I was SO PROUD. ...I think MO removed their fic from the collection.)

The recipient was even happier; I got an absolutely wonderful comment that quoted favorite parts, praised me for my character voice skills, and found Deep Insights in my fic that I didn't deliberately put there (but I am totally going to take credit for).

I go back & reread the comment when I'm wrestling with a writing project and fretting about "am I any good at any of this?"

Comments like that are what keep me participating in Yuletide after the couple of years when the recipient didn't comment on their fic at all. (Other people did. I get nice comments every year. But I think twice, I haven't gotten a comment from my recip.)