I was looking through my Deviant Art file for a picture I used to have of myself in cosplay, but I seem to have gotten rid of it. Anyway...
Fandoms.
Yes, I've been in the online fandom-game for a long time... over ten years, actually.
My first was Pokemon. - Specifically, the Pokemon anime. I didn't have access to the games until Gold/Silver. The anime was the first thing I did fan fiction for (though my very first fan fictions were crossovers with The X-Files, which I was also a huge fan of at them). I'll still consider Pokemon my "First Fandom" because it was the first one I really interacted with people with/ went to disscussion boards for and really got heavy into doing art and fiction writing for. It's strange... I was already in community college when I discovered it, a bit "old" for the Pokemon-set, but as I'm fond of saying, age doesn't keep me from what I think is fun. I actually met my fiance' in this fandom - he's older than I am and was doing some very epic and rather mature (not porn you pervs, heavy-themed!) Pokemon fan fiction. He actually created a "Black Lugia" before it was canon.
Pokemon was my gateway drug into other anime... and then I discovered Trigun. Goodbye 7-8 years of my life. I really got HARDCORE into Trigun. I fell in love with the anime, did lots of fan fiction and fan art for it.... collected all the manga in English (and Bob got me a few of the mangas in Japanese, including one he got signed by the author at a convention)... I paid a friend to make me a cosplay coat so I could CROSS-play Vash the Stampede (Crossplay is when you cosplay a character of the opposite sex). I got that coat signed by the Trigun anime's director at Anime Expo 2003. Did I mention I was *seriously* into Trigun yet?
-- I'm actually kind of still into it, just not as heavy. What I mean by that is that I still enjoy the source-material. I still whip out the anime to watch every now and again, and I re-read my mangas. However, this is the fandom that nearly killed me on "fandom." It is a testement, I think, to how awesome the source material is that I still like it. The "fandom" (interaction with other fans on the Internet) almost made me hate it. I had a VERY rough time in this fandom... between a "friend" who latched onto my coat-tails because she liked my fanfiction and got me into trouble with people who didn't like "dark" fic... to getting myself in trouble with these people... to stupid fights over shipping.... to trying to tell people, "No, Vash being in the same picture as an empty ashtray does *not* mean that I have to believe that he and Wolfwood are shaking up in canon as some super secret yaoi conspiracy," to having my name bandied about as a byword on Fandom Wank (mostly because of my unfortunate friendship), to having this "firend" turn on me like a rabid dog and drag my guy through the mud over a fic he wrote as a present to me... Gah... *Tears hair out.* Seriously, this fsking fandom is why I was very *shy* at first joining Zelda Dungeon or involving myself too heavily in Zelda fandom. I was so scared that it was going to be another Trigun fandom experience for me. As it is, this is one of only two message forums I go to on a regular basis and the other one is tiny and largely inactive. On the plus side, some of my closest online friends (AIM buddies) were people I met in Trigun fandom, so it wasn't all bad. Some of them suffered the same wounds that I did.
And now, I'm into The Legend of Zelda as a fandom and am pleased and surprised by just how GOOD it's been for me. You people are awesome, just the best! Thank you for the much-needed healing! My fan fiction and fan art can be found at the locations in my signiture.