Thoughts on the Journey

My week is off to a good start, I have plans for my interview tomorrow and am about to buy some new luggage for my trip at the end of the month. Think good thoughts for me tomorrow at 1 pm. Today's question for snowflake_challenge is one that I find interesting.

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?

Fandom's always been there for me even though I didn't truly understand what it was that I was connecting to until college.

As a little girl, I fell in love with Paul Creswick's Robin Hood, the N.C. Wyeth illustrations pulled me into a different world. Robin Hood is still that touchstone story for me, I get annoyed at retellings I don't like, but love talking about what works and what doesn't. At the same time and earlier, I was reading through and having read to me the Narnia books. There was a day camp I went to where a part of every day was being read to. This wonderful man named King who had a deep voice and a beard read the Narnia books, that was where I learned the love of sharing books with others. Also at this same time, I was watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, which combined with Robin Hood inspired my first works of fanfic. Will Scarlett ending up on the Enterprise and being friends with Wesley Crusher through weird magic. I used to write in the back of my school notebooks, have the notebook open, flip to the back and write stories there then turn to the notes when I needed to take them. In a box, I still have these old school notebooks and later all the journals people gave me full of words.

At the age of twelve, I went to this wonderful summer program, Longacre where another world of interacting and creating opened up to me through playing Dungeons & Dragons. My first character and still the only one I've ever played in D&D was a half-elf bard and I made up a backstory for her that my GM liked so much, she started at level 5. That GM taught me that its possible to step into a world with words and that dice and all are beside the point, he also lent me R.A. Salvatore books to show me how rich the D&D world was. I was also taking theater classes and thinking about the importance of background, how even if you don't hear the details, every character has their backstory.

By the time I started doing LARPing and entered the World of Darkness, the idea of being able to write a history for my character was natural. The World of Darkness showed me a wider way of interacting as there were rulebooks, novels, pins, all this wonderful stuff that came along with this world. Then the internet was there and I could see other fans, I once even tried RPing in the offical Star Trek chatroom like set ups.

In college, I found Harry Potter and then an amazing friend showed me how to find fanfiction and I had that moment of oh, this is home. In the midst of writing papers, I would spend time on the Sugarquill while I ran my own Changeling: the Dreaming LARP and tabletop game. In my creative writing classes, I tried to slip the fantasy of Changeling: the Dreaming into my work. It only partly worked, Fangirl perfectly captured how some teachers don't get fantasy or fanfiction.

From that same friend after college, I was told about milliways_bar and learned that I could actually roleplay my favorite fandom characters. I began with Will Scarlett and now play ten characters. Milliways brought me friends who shared where they wrote and suddenly I was sharing my own fanfiction, first on my LJ, then later on Ao3 and participating in Yuletide, Narnia Fic Exchange, Ineedmyfics and ficathons.

My user name ceitfianna was created my sophomore year of college, my partner at the time had an LJ invite code. I thought it might be a good way to keep in touch while studying abroad in Greece. Ceit is the Scots Gaelic spelling for my first name, Kate, and one of the few languages I've found where I can find my name as it is. I'm a plain Kate, where its not short for anything. Fianna is the name of a mythic tribe of warriors in Ancient Ireland and a werewolf tribe from Werewolf: the Apocalypse. I honestly don't recall exactly why I decided to combine them, but its stuck and is how I'm known on LJ, DW and Twitter.

On Archive of our Own, my name FiKate is a reference to my AIM screenname which was the name of a character from a Werewolf: The Apocalypse game that only lasted one summer; Fiona. In Milliways, a huge amount of interaction happens in a chat room and since my screenname is Fiona, I was dubbed Fi. Yet there are Milliways' people who call me Kate and when I was creating my Archive of our Own name, I thought that I would combine them.

My Tumblr name on the other hand is something different as I didn't know how much it would connect to other areas of my life. Its atthelamppost as I'm currently feeling at a crossroads while I try to figure out a way to do what I love and be paid for it. Its inspired by Narnia, which is one of my oldest fandoms and one that I'm still a bit weird about. I haven't read The Last Battle, because when I was about eleven or twelve, I decided I didn't want the series to end. I'm 33 and still haven't read even though a little while ago, my father read through the entire series for the first time. Maybe I will someday. I've also considered getting a tattoo of the lamppost as an iconic image for me.

The last name I have online is for my librarian/professional blog, that I really need to update which is called nurturingstories. This is because I consider myself a storyteller and a good teacher and librarian is all about stories. We all have our own stories and children's stories need to be nurtured to allow them to grow.

Since my last post, there's a lot to catch up on. I spent most of Friday walking around New York City, getting lost around Little Italy, losing wonderful amounts of time at The Strand's cheap book racks and then getting to go to the New Zealand mission to the UN. Also there was lunch with skygiants and more hanging out with arushindoll. I love being close enough that I can actually go and visit New York City again, because whenever I go, I end up feeling revitalized by how alive and active the city is. My feet weren't happy with me because I ended up truly footsore but I have good sandals so few blisters.

The alum reception for Victoria University was charming, it was very New Zealand; not too formal, great food and wine and an interesting lecture on climate change. It reminded me how lucky I am to have connections to New Zealand and that someday, I will get myself back there. I also have found a good way to get to NY and other points north from Lewes as with my car, I can drive to stations that have direct routes instead of navigating multiple transit systems. I plan on having more trips to New York and DC and Philly in the near future, some hopefully for interviews but mainly to see people.

Then Saturday I traveled back to have a nice dinner with my parents, older brother and nieces as we all prepared for my father's birthday on Sunday. The party went really well. I made a huge batch of my chickpea salad recipe and had lots of great conversations of people going what are you up to and how are you doing? There was only one talk that made me wince about libraries since there's someone who works with Johns Hopkins and they're removing all books from their library. The wince wasn't the person I was having the conversation with just knowing that such a large organization has made that choice to go fully online as medical journals as so expensive, that they're worth more than books. Its a tough turn of events and it worries me that such an institution has gone so completely to the only instead of looking for a place in between.

Monday was restful, I started the day by going to the local library to help with shelving books and talking to the youth director who's a mentor of mine. This Sunday is the first meeting of their LEGO robotics team so I'm going to go help her. Robotics is something I want to know about and it will be great to get experience with it.

Tuesday was my sister's birthday and we went to a pretty nature center and watched the birds. I took a lot of pictures then we had a quiet evening. This morning my mother had cataract surgery which seems to have gone well and I'm trying to get myself a looking for jobs routine.