Once a Stranger

an old post on tumblr that's my most popular post there, for archiving purpose:

I think one of the most interesting thing about the way Xavier and Magneto contrast is how you can root their difference of attitude from their background.

Like, Xavier comes from a very privileged background and is idealist and optimistic, and Erik is has lived through the Shoah and is cynical and pessimistic. But there’s much more to it than that.

Xavier lived in a dysfunctional family, in which he felt very out of place. He found respite in school - an institutional environment. He saw first hand in Cain how people can turn from victims into abusers because of that abuse. His concept of evil - and of how to fix it - is very personalised. It’s something individuals do, because they’re wrong headed. It’s also something that’s rooted in unbridled force, and in lack of self-control; so Xavier tends to stress the importance of self-control a lot in the way he sets up the school, and he picked Scott - the one who absolutely needed to be in control of his power at all times - as leader.

Erik grew up in a very loving and functional family unit. He has a very solid sense of self and ego despite everything else he’s lived. The evil he’s suffered is institutionalised. It’s not something done by individuals, it’s done on large scale by society as a whole, fostered by indifference, and orchestrated by the use of excessive control. There’s no simple appeal or polite request that can stop it. Only violence was able to counter it. So he’s not interested in fixing it, only in uprooting it.

(from razielangelofsecret)

I feel there’s another side to this.

Charles has always had the benefit of his powers. Not matter how many times he can pledge he won’t use them on someone, we’ve seen he doesn’t always keep his word. He’s had the benefit of foresight through mind reading. He has multiple different view points depending on who is around him.

Erik has only ever seen through one view. The view of the oppressed. The view of the mutant. The view of the downtrodden. He doesn’t see any other way because he has grown up with the one way. He doesn’t think about the people who are putting him down as individuals. He doesn’t sympathize with human beings because he isn’t, was not, and will never be the same as them in his eyes. He has one view, and one method to fix it.

Charles is a man who would use diplomacy to open doors.

Erik is a man who would rip the door from it’s hinges.

Yeah, I think their powers also inform them to a great deal. The power that Xavier has means constant awareness. It’s both a potentially overwhelming burden and, as you say, a constant advantage. The constant knowledge that help is a thought away. It also forces him to consider different point of views - literally that’s what his power is - to see people in their individual personhood. And, of course, it’s a constant temptation (again, the importance of self control).

And Xavier had his power since a very early age, and grew up hiding that fact, knowing that he had to hide that fact in fear of repercussions. And in comics, Xavier kept the fact that he himself was a mutant hidden - even as he was presenting himself as a mutant rights advocate and expert - for a ridiculously long time, and was only outed by Cassandra Nova pretending to be himself.

It’s not like Xavier only embodies the idea of passing, because he’s also (most often) disabled in a very visible way; but it’s something that is a much larger element of his makeover.

Erik grew up as a visible minority (by law, visible and stigmatized and soon enough segregated in ghettos); then was a visible refugee (by accent, very probably, at the least) who had to suffer from it; and only then came onto his power. And from then on Magneto spends very little time passing. And when he does, it’s very much being undercover.

There’s a lot of things in the movie about passing/being visible; to a large extent because they lean the most on the LGBT metaphor; of course.

Erik’s power is also, overwhelming, about being powerful. It’s how his character is built around, much like Xavier’s built around thinking through different point of views, communicating and being subtly manipulative. It’s also built onto his survivor’s guilt: He survived so he could be prevent the same things from happening to mutants now that he has the power to do so. He’s the man who can now rip the doors from his hinges (like he couldn’t when he was a child).

Erik’s rejection of humanity is also something that is very interesting to see in the frame of his background. Because for a lot of people, what happened during the Shoah was something that lead to deeps questions about humanity. What does it say about us that we are capable of this, and to let it happen? Does Humanism mean anything in the fact of complete orchestrate dehumanization? and so on.

And Erik was capable to deal with that by rejecting completely on humans, to the difference of mutants. Mutants are new, they provide a tabula rasa, and opportunity to build a revolutionary society where such injustice would not happen. That’s the core of Magneto as a radical figure of mutant supremacy. That’s what he says to Magda when she questions what he is: “You… are not human” – “Far more than human, I suspect. Better than human, I vow.” From the observation of factual difference to the framing this different as an ethical project funded on fundamental othering in one sentence.

So I agree he thinks he isn’t, was not, and will never be one of “them”.

OTOH, he’s perfectly capable of viewing humans as individuals (witness many of his relationships with humans). He just doesn’t do it as part of the ideological construct through which he view the world.

Another meta on tumblr I'm reblogging, about the ending of Journey into Mystery from a meta perspective:

( spoilers, duh. )

and it was the closest thing to meta I wrote in years so I thought I might as well repost it here:

cleromancy asked: this isn't an assumption so much as something you've explicitly stated, but you're really into fucked up/self destructive relationship dynamics, romantically and otherwise; i'm actually pretty interested in your thoughts on why that appeals to you in fiction, also your thoughts on jealousy/possessiveness of the self-destructive type? :D

Why it appeals to me… oh boy, you’re in for a novel.

I think there are three big axis that make me mainly intrigued by fucked up relationships: power, self-destruction & deconstruction/liminality.

( Read more... )

Sooo... if I had one resolution last year, it was to make review of series I was watching as I go; and I did that pretty systematically for anime series; and kind of not at all for Live-action TV shows; and books as always but limited by the fact I haven't read much this whole year... and since writing review, with my Muse down to lalaland, wherever Muses go when they aren't demanding fics from ficcers, has been my main fandom activity lately, I was kind of wondering how much it was appreciated and how to improve them (and hopefully the number of comments I get on them ;))

So,
( Poll time! )

I've been thinking about intent and interpretation, in communication and art especially, seeing a lot of things popping on my friendlist and journal related to the same thing.

Writer's intent is why people like thecorbie think there might be a case against fanfics.

Intent is something that might be or might not be gotten, with a responsability that may or may not be rested on the writer, as per mithrigil's question here.

Intent is what shippers who ship a non canonical pairing are entirely disregarding when they ship still, as per a_white_rain criticizes here. (NB: spoilers for Avatar the last airbender's final at this link)

Intent of deconstructing the "Nice Guy" was probably part of what Dr Horrible was about, as curtana points out here, but which I've seen a lot of people misinterpret as a genuine nice guy whose manpain is oh-so-tragic. (NB: spoilers for Dr Horriblle at this link)

Intent is what doesn't really matter when people say they hadn't mean to be racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, ableist, elitist... if this is what is read by the people who have the best reason to complain of it. Intent, there, is only a way to claim their own priviledge, very often.

In terms of information, when we communicate, there is
1/ what we mean to say, what we intent
2/ what is actually said, in words, in text, in ink on the page, lines on the paper
3/ what is heard and understood by other people, how they interprete it, text and subtext - which is of course as multiple as there is different people.

2/ the text does not have intrasec meaning. There is a platonician ideas tied to it, of pure meaning, of true message. Information is only information because it's interpretated by someone with a brain and there is always always variations, minsinterpretation of intent within it. Because context is something that always infer on the interpretation, and nobody's got exactly the same context at the same time.

1/ intent I think doesn't matter all that much. In our culture, perhaps because of its moral value under Christianism, intent tends to be extremely valued in terms of responsability. However intent is something way to fickle to judge by : first because we don't know other people's intent, we just have to trust their word for it (in which there is yet another pitfall of misinterpretation), second because people may not know their own intent entirely, third because regardless of intent harms can be done as a result in any case. Also, for all of that, it is rude and disrespectful to presume of someone else's intent. It also shifts any discussion of blame from discussion of action/text to discussing a person themselves, which is offensive and often results in wank much more quickly as a result.

So we're left with interpretation.

Are all interpretation equal? Are some more legitimate than others? What makes one interpretation more legitimate than any other? And who's to blame for possible unfortunate (racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, classist, elititist, etc.) interpretations?

For all that all interpretations are in parts subjective, I don't think they are all equal. If you've spent any time in fandom, you'll have noticed that some extremely extravagant interpretations are sometimes brandied (with or without seriousness). For all its subjectivity, any interpretation is still based on the text, so there are criteria to judged how acurate to the text it is. (No, I'm not going to go at length about the tools to judge that accuracy.)

However the nature of an interpretation also matters. Not all kinds of interpretation pretend to accuracy. Some are merely humouristic (crackful parodies and the like) for example.

Narrative interpretations as in fanfics are also something very different. They don't usually pretend to accuracy (since they're obviously not the original author). Narrative interpretation's legitimacy is based on its own artistic worth. Is it a compelling interpretation. Does it lend itself to a complex, rich, aesthetically-worthy story? This is what gives a fanfic, as interpretation, its legitimacy - the sheer richness of a culture of narrative dialogue and artistic creation.

Likewise with shipping. Historically the biggest backlash against specific non canonical ships (Harmony in Harry Potter and Zutara in Avatar the last airbender) have been because some of their shippers were pretending to some kind of accuracy. I don't think there's anything wrong in itself to make the pro Zuko/Katara interpretation a_white_rain mentions in the link above, however if such an interpretation is done while saying it is more accurate than any other interpretation there is a problem.

Of course some fanfics do work as criticical interpretations - only done in narrative form. They function as a meta commentary pointing out gaps in the text, or exploiting specific themes. (Some works as a commentary of other fanfics too! Ongoing dialogue that it is). When that is done, accuracy becomes again a criteria.

So what about the moral responsability? Who's to blame for dodgy interpretations? Well if an interpretation pretends to accuracy, and can judged as mostly accurate in consideration of the text, then the responsability sides more on the author's side. If an intepretation pretends to accuracy, but is mostly not accurate with the text, then the responsability is more on the side of the reader. If the interpretation doesn't pretend to accuracy, the author's responsability wasn't ever called in question in the first place.

This is not taking context in consideration, and context matters, does it ever.

First, I've been talking about what an interpretation pretends or does not pretend, but that pretension isn't always made explicit. That is to say, for example, most fanfic writers know they are not pretending to accuracy and know that most of their readers used to fanfics know this as well so they don't usually bother spelling it out. Which, I think, is in parts why outsiders seem to be much more worried about misinterpretation due to fanfics and mistaking the writer's intent for the fanfic. However a lot of fanfics do have a tradition of disclaimer, usually done in terms of "therse characters and settings are not mine". Close enough for me but I haven't been an outsider for a long time.

Second, of course, there's how context infers any unfortunate interpretation. Having a story where a lesbian dies and her girlfriend goes crazy isn't in itself homophobic. It is because there's a history of the very same trope being used overwhelmingly any time lesbian characters are featured, and because of the history of institutionalized homophobia that has been going for a long time in Western culture. So in terms of responsability the quest is, is the context from which the text originated is similar enough to the one from which this interpretation is done? At least it seems to me that this way that can work.

Done now. I hope that wasn't too anvilicious.

Usually when your interest in a fandom turns sour, why is that?

[Poll #1213954]

Drop a comment if you have anything to add!

Still from Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, interview of R. Scott Bakker, about the Prince of Nothing epic fantasy series which I reviewed here.

- The genre exhibits a strong (albeit recent) tradition for subverting gender stereotypes by presenting worlds in which strong, independent female characters are plausible or even expected. Yet your world is as patriarchal as the reality that inspired it. I expect that this theme makes up for a good part of the discussions you have about your creation, possibly detracting from what you actually want to talk about. Is it difficult to resist the temptation to put something like a bad-ass tomboy warrior-princess with snappy dialogue and a heart of gold into the books?

First, let me say that I think I should be called out on the carpet on this issue, simply because I cover some pretty troubling ground. I certainly don’t believe in "quota characterization," either to be politically correct or to broaden the "gender appeal" of my books. Leave this for the after-school specials. I also don’t think that depiction automatically equals endorsement. The question that people should be asking, it seems to me, is one of whether I reinforce negative gender stereotypes or problematize them. If the books provide enough grist to argue this question, then the answer, it seems to me, automatically becomes the latter.

But the fact remains that a lot of people get hung up on my female characters: On the one hand, I self-consciously chose the harlot, the waif, and the harridan for my female characters, yet some seem to think a kind of unconscious moral defect chose them for me. If so, it would be a truly colossal coincidence that I would happen to pick the three misogynic types - I mean, isn’t it obvious that I’m up to something critical? On the other hand, I wanted my fantasy world to be realistic, to temper our yearning for premodern times with a good look at how ugly things got, particularly in times of war. When bad things happen to my female characters, it’s the circumstances that are being criticized, not the characters themselves!

But people get hunches while they read, and once they do, confirmation bias goes to work (and this is simply one among many reasons why we always buy our own bullshit), and the text, I think, possesses more than enough ambiguities for people spin any number of self-validating interpretations. It’s when they insist their interpretation is the only interpretation, or even worse, that it captures what’s really going on in my bean, that I become baffled.

Now, I'd argue with the form of the question (it's arguable whether it's a genre convention "to subvert gender stereotypes by presenting worlds in which strong, independent female characters are plausible"...), but the subject of females characters in that series is certainly interesting.

For those who haven't read it, the world presented is indeed inescapably gritty and brutally violent, especially against women and there's a strong sense of realism to it.

Of the three characters that Bakker mentions, though, I'd say that only Esmenet, the "harlot", is a real success, she's the only one that can be seen as sympathetic and strong, and her story is compelling. The two others serve more as plot device than anything IMHO. The "harridan" doesn't even have a PoV and is intensely creepy (not that creepiness is exceptionnal in those books ^^), and the "waif", Serwë, is victimised, shallow and stupid enough that despite the sympathy I felt for what she lived through, I would never say I found her interesting as a character.
I do agree about Bakker's point about "problematizing", which is worthy enough, although in this case one should also take into consideration the context of the genre, because if every story is one of gritty realism, then the problematization may be more of a reinforcement than he would think.
Then there's the issue which he fails to mention, which is the treatment of sex and sexuality, and of the bad guys of the setting utilisation of sex in extremely creepy way, and how it relates to his treatment of gender.

Thoughts?

Pat from Pat's Fantasy Hotlist (yes, the same who called Priviledge of the Sword chick lit ^^), re-posted a bit of an interview he did of Hal Duncan (who wrote Vellum and Ink - I reviewed Vellum over there - ETA: Hal Duncan also has a blog which you can check out) which really cracked me up :

Previous depictions of homosexual characters in fantasy/scifi books have always been somewhat clumsy and didn't ring true. And yet, instead of trying to get readers to "accept" it, you just went ahead and put Jack and Puck's relationship as a central storyline throughout both volumes. Was that intentional from the beginning? INK contains graphic sex scenes between the two, and I was wondering what sort of responses those sequences generated among readers and critics?

One of my pet hates is the fetishisation you get in certain types of fantasy, particularly vampire fiction, I have to say, where gay equals frilly shirts, sensitive pouts and lingering looks with doe-eyes. Man, at least slash is subversive in applying that aesthetic to straight characters, and at least slash has the guts to get down and dirty. That stuff is just softcore boy-on-boy goth porn. Even when it's not so deeply fetishised, there still seems to be a tendency to stereotype gays as refined rather than rough, fey rather than fiery, cats rather than dogs.

The second problem with gay characters in genre fiction is that they're generally marginalised as subsidiary characters, which smacks of PC tokenism. Yeah, so your heroine has a Gay Best Friend; big deal. So your team of heroes has a tagalong queer; I'm not impressed.

The last problem is that even when you get a fully-fledged protagonist they're generally just not genre enough. By which I mean, the writer feels the need to show that it's "normal" to be gay, so the characters are rendered in a Realist mode rather than as Romantic heroes. They're intelligent, sensitive portraits of gays as "just like everyone else". Bollocks to that. The fetishised gays are annoying. The marginalised gays are frustrating. But the normalised gays are just plain dull. I want a gay character who blows shit up. I want a gay James Bond, a gay Jerry Cornelius, a gay Superman, a gay Indiana Jones, a gay Clint Eastwood in Where Eagles Dare. Achilles wasn't normal. He was an uberfag, dragging Hector's body ten times round the gates of Troy for killing his boyfriend. Now that's what I call a hissy fit!

I see what he means about the first criticism (which one also finds in slash when people speak about "feminization" (sic) of characters), and I think the second exists in a few novels but not that many. I'm not sure I remember any instances of the third in genre fiction, but that may be because of the inherent blandness of such a character type. I actually think that there's a lot of interesting stories dealing with queer themes generally speaking in SFF but that's just IMHO.

It really amuses me when he says slash at least had the guts to get down and dirty ^_^ (I compared his work to specific kind of slash when I did my own review).

Thoughts?

So I'm reading RPG.net, which is a big and quality board about roleplaying games, and someone raises the idea of "Harlequin Romance... the RPG" as a possible licenced RPG to touch a previously untapped market. So I miggle in the discussion, and mention my view about the similarities between RPGs and fanfics, and freeform RPGs within the fandom community, and their potential as a RPG market. It's an interesting discussion.
Then there's this guy that comes and mentions the game he publishes, HeartQuest, which a game meant to simulate the Shoujo manga genre. Cool. Very fitting to the discussion. I google quickly the game (because I didn't know it before, does any of you guys do?) and find a blurb description (very cute) and a list of the writers :

Written by: Michael Hopcroft, Robert Pool, Dimitri Ashling, Ewen Cluney, Robert Boyd, Robert Bain, Ismael Alvarez, Travis Johnson, and Douglas Larke.

Hum? I think. I'm not sure about Travis and Ewen because I'm not that good with American names, but all of the others are very, very male names. That's an overwhelming majority (at least) of male writers to write a RPG to simulate the Shoujo genre.
So in the discussion I mention I'm surprised by that, and the guy asks me why, so I elaborate.

Quote:
Why should that shock you? It isn't like all shoujo stuff is written by women, nor is it's audience all young girls (despite being marketed to them). Just like the fact that all romance novels aren't written by women either.

Well, that not all shoujo is written by women or read by women is all well and good, and what percent of it is written and read by women? I'd be surprised if there wasn't a very big majority of women involved there, but I could be wrong, I only have my personnal experience to judge by.

I assume you've done market researches about that game? That you have some data about Shoujo audience in the US? The profile of people more likely to be interrested into that kind of game? With this game, I assume you're trying to tap onto shoujo readers (that's why you mention the next ed in manga form, no?)
I'm a shoujo reader. I'd especially kill for a game that'd let me play an unholy alliance of Shoujo Kakumei Utena and Princess Tutu complete with meta-narrative tools and fairy tale on crack ambiance. I'd probably also love to play X1999 RPG.

However I also remember a French amateur RPG which was called "Lycéenne" which was plain horrible. Shoujo seen by males and full of ill-adviced stereotypes at its worst. So I'm suspicious. And I'm Roleplayer so I know how sexist the average RPG scene can be, so I'm doubly suspicious. If I see a long list of male names as authors, I get even more suspicious. Doesn't seem like something for me. Seems like something for guys who are already into RPG and who wants to play shoujo for exoticism's sake, the kind who think Hina Love is a shoujo.

I don't know anything about the game, as I told you, I just googled it. And that's my first impression. Maybe I'm not typical of the market you're trying to touch either

Then the guy gets angry :

I find charges of sexism against my products made by someone who has not read them to be incredibly offensive. While the HeartQuest line was written before I owned the company, I still stand behind them 100%. I also find charges that they weren't written by knowledgeable individuals to not only be offensive but you are also veering into personal attack territory because at least two of the authors are members of this very board.

As a publisher I take allegations against my products very seriously and I strongly suggest that you rescind your comments, as they are based out of a lack of knowledge of the books. I do welcome anyone checking out the HeartQuest line but I find your comments to be ill-formed and offensive to both myself and the individuals who wrote these books.

I tell him he missed the point.

So he starts getting on how shoujo is totally not about women, and gender is irrelevant about discussion on RPG adaptations of Shoujo.

I don't see that shoujo or romantic fiction as being a gender issue. I don't think one gender "gets it" more than another, any more than I think that is the case for any other genre. Saying otherwise does a great disservice to those individuals, male or female, who are interested in those sorts of things.

And that's where we are.

Apart from the part where he's trying very hard to intimidate me, I find his exhuberant outrage very funny.

I had a long week end. 1st of May is Labour Day and a Holiday in France, and my work had given us the Monday free to make a "bridge" (not a free, free day, it's a free day among a specific number of free day we're supposed to have anyway); and I'm depressed because I didn't manage to do anything much during this time.

I went to the movie theater, though. We went to see "Life of Others" which was really, really good. Though I found it was slightly self-indulgent in parts, and I was a little bit uneasy about the thing about women, but overall a great movie.

By the way, the Earthsea movie was just as bad as expected. I didn't hate watching it as much as I should have because I read the books so long ago I was half remembering throughout without being able to compare, and because I love watching animation even when it's subpar, but it was really not that great.

And Sunday, I missed out Bog's game because I was trapped at a friend's house by a thunderstorm, but we finished watching all of Slayers : Next, which was great. (I'm in Xelloss withdrawal as I speak ^^)

While looking for Slayers fic to remedy to my withdrawal, funnily enough, I found a Snupin fic by amanuensis1 (of all people), and an mpreg fic at that, and I loved it, and I'm not a big mpreg lover.
Here it is : Random drabble
Read it and then don't kill me.

And I tried writing, but I don't think I managed to write more than two lines in one specific fic. No very much inspired.
I've been looking at all files of half-finished fics too. It's amazing the number of started-never-finished fics I have out there. (well not amazing, I s'ppose, but given how ot prolific I am...). I even found a Kotori fic that looked finished, and a Salazar/Godric preslash fic. And lots of other stuff I never finished... it's a bit depressing.

I didn't even manage to clean a bit. My sink is getting so dirty molds have civilizations building skyscrappers in it. I shall not mention my bathroom.

Otherwise I've been reading The Princess Bride. Wached the movies many times, but had never read the book before. It's pretty good. I like... how he talks about the way we look back at stories from our childhood. How they become mythical, you know. Filled with some sort of glamour and meaningfulness, but then if you look back at them later on, they're often not that much (or they are, sometimes, but you have to squint a little bit ^^) I've got books like that, of course. Well I had the Last Unicorn, except not the book, the movie, except not even that. I had a postcard of the movie, with the castle and the redbull and the unicorn and the big wave with little tiny unicorns on it. It belonged to m sister. I don't know - don't remember - if I actually watched the movie when I was little, but probably not. Even though I was obsessed with that postcard, with the story I wove from it. I was drawing unicorns everywhere (i know, not that's outstanding from a little girl), and to this day I feel this is part of the reason why I got into fantasy, science fiction, and mythology, and everything (it was much later when I was a teenager that I actually watched the Last Unicorn and realized I hadn't dreamed the whole thing! before nobody else had even heard of it, and TLU? doesn't even need squinting). There's also all these cartoons I used to watch younger (we ha some real good cartoons in the 80's in France, mostly Japanese and a couple of Franco-Japanese ones), stuff like the Mysterious Golden Cities, and Ulysse 31 (space opera + greek mythology, two great tastes that go well together), and Les Mondes Engloutis, and Cobra (not the one from GI Joe), and many others. Loved these stuff, growing up.
What was your own mythic story when you were growing up? The one that still fills you with nostalgia?

It also got me thinking (okay, this is going very very far from The Princess Bride), about one trope I've always loved, the one about the relationship between a young kid and an ambiguous adult figure, one who's half a mentor or a protector, and half an ennemy. You get that in the Mysterious Golden Cities, with Mendoza (who's one of the most kick ass ambiguous character from a children's cartoon ♥) and Esteban, and you got that in that Japanese cartoon version of Treasure Island (I don't remember if it was as strong in the book) with Long John Silver and Jim. And I was wondering how it related with the Snape/Harry ship. Because it's not relationships I particulary wish to sexualize, generally speaking, but I do find them pariculary fascinating, and I remember really loving them as a kid. I wonder, is it at least a little bit of a trope, generally speaking? Does it play a role about why I like Snarry (when I do like it)? Anyone has any imput about these kinds of relationships (wether sexualized or not)? (ASOIAF gets that in a way, with Arya and her various unsavory protectors : Jaqen H'Gar and Sandor Clegane, and Yoren a little bit. Arya really got a "boy's story", I think, I love that about her).

Anyway, to go back to the Princess Bride, I loved how the book played - even more than the movie - with the way we interprete things that we read. There's something very fanficcy about it. Take the good parts, and write around the missing ones, y'know. Except of course the aesthetics are very different.

There were some stuff I didn't like in the book, but they were mostly the stuff I didn't like in the movie, except in a way even more disturbing in reading them. You know, Buttercup's general uselessness. Part of the parody, but still get me meh. Did love the additionnal background about most characters though.

Oh, and, last Changelings : the Lost soon to be released cover. I'm so excited!

Have you ever been 'converted' to a pairing by a fanfic?

What fanfiction was it? (yay, rec)

In what circumstances did it happen? (were you already in the fandom, were you a newcommer to the fandom and that was the first fic that settled your taste, did the fic bring you into the fandom? etc.)

How did you find this fanfic? (big list of recs, personnal rec from a friend, a bit of a random event? etc.)

How much of a convert did you become (biggest OTP, one of your favourite ships, just one ship among others? etc.)

Do you still love this fanfic just as much, or did you tastes change once you were into the ship?

Has the opposite ever happened to you, has a fanfiction succeeded to repulse you from a pairing on a permanent basis (don't link to it! that could be considered wanky ^^ unless that was the objective of the fic, of course)