Snowflake Challenge - Day 5

[mistressjinx]

Day 5: In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story. How did you come to fandom, why did you choose your fannish name, do you have more than one secret identity?

Well my story is relatively short! I found fan fiction like a decade ago, but was only mildly into reading it. I would just sort of pop over to ff.net and read a few stories at bedtime reading when I didn't have anything interesting to read. I think I mostly read BtVS, QaF and BSG. I wouldn't have even considered myself fannish at that time. Like a casual reader and I never commented or engaged in conversations in any shape or form.

I was actually massively active on a gay porn website/forum for years and years and can say I didn't know what being fannish was, but that I was in fact being super fannish about porn. If you go to brokestraightboys.com you can still see my interviews at the model events up on the site. I actually went on tour to a bunch of gay pride events to hang with porn models/friends I met in that online community and I sort of see that as the equivalent as when we go to Conventions. 

Then in 2012 I was laid off from my 60 hour a week job, and suddenly I had all this time on my hands! So I sort of delved into finding fic to read to pass the boring hours and found Archive of our Own which I didn't even know existed! At that time I was really into Spartacus and those were the first fics I went to immerse myself in on that site. I also started living a really healthy lifestyle around this time and would spend hours working out everyday and reading became a huge part of my day. It was one day on the treadmill at my gym, that I had just finished listening to a bunch of Torchwood radioplays and I thought wouldn't that be dope if someone recorded audiobooks of fan fiction?? So I went and googled it and found out that BAM there was a whole culture of it out there!!! So I just threw my ass right into the fandom pool and I have sort of never gotten out of the water!!!

I realized that I wanted to start commenting on fanworks, even though I have a lot of social anxiety, and decided to become more active on twitter and start leaving comments on AO3. I would find people I really like and follow them and try and work up the nerve to talk to people and I was able to make a sort of base of fannish friends that I could interact with on a daily basis. 

When my invite for AO3 finally came through after like 6 months on the waiting list, I decided that I wanted to get away from my porn lifestyle name, which was MissDeidra, and find something that would/could define me in the fandom world. So I didn't have to look far, and decided to just use my actual RL nickname which is Jinx. I have this triangle of porn friends, Queen Bee and Jester and we were this gay porn trifecta and Queen Bee's nick for me was always Jinxy. So I went with Jinxy because it just felt right. Also I love the icebreaker when people say "HI JINX!" to me. lol hijinx:)))

I also made a tumblr and found my way to new fandoms because of seeing a bunch of Teen Wolf shit all over my dash, and now I live like 90% of the time in that fandom. And it's been years and I keep not being able to find my way out! I'm barely involved with the podfic fandom, but I still produce stuff regularly and have some core friends there that make my life so rich! 

It's funny when I look back, because I didn't know what fandom was really until a few years ago, but without a doubt I have been fannish for decades. I just didn't know it had a name and a community! I often wonder what I missed out on before I found out, but I wouldn't trade in my life experiences and the cool shit that happened to me before I found fandom.

As far as other secret identities, nope. The only thing I do is help out with 2 twitters with some other people making updates, but that isn't an identity, that's just me participating in something to bring info to people. I only go by jinxy, jinxyreads or mistressjinx. I don't have any other names. Don't really need any others tbh. 

So these be my fandom origins, yo! <333

Comments

[akamine_chan]

I have always been fascinated by your gay porn fannishness. I mean, not the gay porn part of it, but the fannish activities part. Just, I don't think I could do that - my embarrassment squick would kick in and I would die.

[analise010]

WAIT, HOLD THE FUCK UP. THERE'S A GAY PORN FANDOM?????