Intro Post

[hils]

Hello! I'm Hils (She/Her)

While I do check here regularly I can mostly be found on Twitter hils_k. I'm also on AO3 hils and Tumblr hils79.

Transformative works policy
Blanket permission is given to use any of my stories to make podfic, translations or other transformative works with proper credit. It would be awesome to have a link to anything created, but there's no need to ask for permission - please go ahead!

About me
I am an IT professional, although these days I work in a management role rather than a technical role so please don't ask me to help you fix your computer (I will try if you ask but it's been a few years since I did tech stuff).

I live in York, UK and have done since I came here to attend uni in the late 90s.

I share a house with Jacqui (asphodellast), who I met in the Buffy fandom in the early 2000s.

Fandom is my main hobby (more on that in a moment) but I also love to travel (or I did in the pre-pandemic times) and to take photos.

Fandom
I mentioned above that fandom is my main hobby but really it's a lot more than that. It's more like a lifestyle. Being in fandom is a core part of who I am. It shapes my day to day interactions, it's genuinely changed my life for the better over the years, and it's given me some once in a lifetime experiences that I wouldn't change for the world.


I would say I've always had a fannish personality, even before I knew what fandom was and way before I ever got online. When I was young I'd collect stickers of my from my favourite soap opera (Neighbours was massively popular over here in the 80s) and cover my wall in posters. When I was a little older I got into Take That (a British boyband) and collected anything I could get my hands on. There's photos out there of my bedroom in the 90s and you can barely see the wallpaper for all the posters and merchandise.

Back then I didn't really have anywhere to channel this though. I just holed up in my bedroom reading any books or magazines I could get my hands on while obsessively listening to their music.

Of course, as is the way, I grew out of it and got into TV fandoms around the time Buffy and the X-Files started airing. I had no idea what fanfic was back then because we didn't have the internet but my best friend from school and I used to write cracky X-Files and Buffy stories to amuse each other.

We got the internet in 1997 and that opened up a whole new world for me. Now I could engage with other fans of the things that I loved and it didn't matter where I lived! I started off on roleplay mailing lists (where we were all either assigned or chose a character and posted as them).

I was in my first year of uni when someone on a mailing list asked me if I wrote fanfic and I had no idea what it was. I wandered over to ff.net to investigate and wow. The stories I'd been writing in my head had a name and there was a place I could publish them.

I published my first Buffy fic in 1999 and have never looked back. Fun fact my ff.net account still exists even though I don't look at it.

Buffy was a big one for me. You never forget your first fandom, and this gave me a lot of firsts. It was my first fic, my first time meeting an actor (James Marsters, seemed nice at the time in retrospect was kind of skeevy), my first convention (which was also my first time flying overseas by myself), my first fandom award (I ran a Buffy/Spike site that won an award for best archive). I met some truly amazing people in this fandom, several of whom I am still friends with all these years later. As I mentioned above I met my housemate in this fandom. We used to write fic together, we met James Marsters together and then eventually we started living together.

It was because of Buffy that writerconuk came into being. I was on the founding committee and still do the social media for them. This year is the first year it hasn't run since we founded in 2007.

But, as is the nature of fandom, things change and people move on. The show ended and eventually I drifted into new things. I spent some time in the Pirates of the Caribbean fandom where I met one of my dearest friends drbillbongo. I have had many fun visits to Germany to see him, and he's been to visit me a couple of times too.

My next big fandom was Lord of the Rings, but weirdly I spent more time in the RPF corner of the fandom than anywhere else. This was my first RPF fandom (I know it's not for everyone don't judge me). It all started when I read a (probably fake) article about how Sean Bean's girlfriend at the time had broken up with him because he was spending too much time with Orlando Bloom. How could you not be interested after that. Much like you remember your first fandom, I remember my first RPF fandom too.

I've always said that you don't choose your fandom, it chooses you. I've never set out with the intention of trying to find a new fandom it just sort of happens. There's media I will happily consume with no interest of getting into the fandom, and others where I want to read fic before I've even finished watching it.

After Lord of the Rings I almost accidentally fell into the Smallville fandom (way after it had started airing). Jacqui was really into Supernatural at the time at the time I was still poking around in the Lord of the Rings fandom. She wanted to buy Season 4 of Smallville because Jensen Ackles was in so I suggested we watch it from the start. Literally after the first episode I was obsessed. I'd always been a big Superman fan. I still have a very clear memory of learning how to ride a bike when I was about 5 and humming the music from the Superman movies because it felt like I was flying.

Smallville was one of those shows where the actual show wasn't actually that good. The first two or three seasons they clearly had a decent idea of where they were going but after that it sort of lost its way. The chemistry between the two leads was undeniable though and I was shipping Clark and Lex from pretty much the first episode.

Merlin was a similar thing for me. I watched the first episode just because it happened to be on at dinner time and the chemistry between the two leads had me shipping it pretty much immediately. I had a fantastic time in the Merlin fandom. I went to regular fan meetups down in London, went to a bunch of filming locations around the UK, went to France with a group of fandom friends to watch the Camelot scenes being filmed and had a few days adventuring in Paris while we were there. Most importantly it's where I met lou_angel. We wrote many cracky fics together and I went to visit her a bunch of times so we could go to various filming locations near her (not while they were filming just to see various castles, lakes and woods they had used).

Funny story: as a lot of fandom friendships do we both drifted into different things but kept in touch on Facebook. Then, a couple of years ago I got a text out of the blue asking if I wanted to go on a Mediterranean cruise with her and her family free of charge. Obviously I said yes and we had an amazing time. Her family treated me like one of their own even though it had been a good few years since I last visited. I got to visit Rome and Florence both of which have been on my bucket list since I was a teenager. Fandom friendships are for life.


Getting into the Supernatural fandom feels almost predestined. When the show first aired a friend from school (the same one I used to write the Buffy and X-Files stories with) came to visit with the pilot episode on a disk and said we should watch it. I was not a fan. I didn't think the acting was that great, and plot felt very formulaic. I didn't give it much thought and went on with my life.

Then, the summer after the first season ended Jacqui came back from visiting a fandom friend in Finland, clutching the season 1 box set and insisting we'd been wrong about it and that I should give it another try. I wasn't entirely convinced but I listened and it did definitely get better. By the time we got to the car crash cliffhanger at the end of the season I was 100% invested.

While I enjoyed the show I didn't properly get involved in the fandom until season 4 when Castiel was introduced. I just found his character so interesting and his relationship with Dean was clearly something special.

Of all the fandoms I've been in I'd say Supernatural is the one that was the most life-changing but to explain why is something of a long story (like this post wasn't long enough already).

So, it all started the second time I met Misha. I was at a Supernatural convention in Chicago and when I went to get my autograph we got chatting. He asked where I was from and I said the UK. He got really excited and said he was going there in a couple of weeks for another convention. I said I was going to that one too and he said he'd see me there.

I kind of didn't give it much thought after that but fast forward to two weeks later and as soon as I saw him his eyes lit up with recognition and he joked 'fancy seeing you here'. It was all fun and we had a laugh about it.

Things came to a head during a meet and greet type thing that was happening. We were all split into small groups of 10 and placed (standing) around bar tables. The actors from the convention then rotated and came and hung out with us for a bit.

Now, it may not appear that way because of how chatty I am on social media but I am a pretty shy and introverted person. It just happens that when I'm in a social situation I get really loud and chatty as a coping mechanism. Anyway, I was having a really nice evening chatting away to all the actors (fun fact Fredric Lehne who played the original Yellow Eyed Demon from the first couple of seasons is super nice and really interesting to talk to. We chatted away for pretty much the whole time about the acting industry and stage vs tv).

So, Misha comes over to our table and literally everyone else clammed up. I mean they were a pretty shy group to begin with (when I'm the most talkative one you are dealing with some serious introverts) but when Misha got there you could have heard a pin drop. So, because we'd had a bit of a joke the day before and it wasn't my first time meeting him I broke the ice and asked him how he was enjoying the UK and basic small talk.

Finally another girl in the group piped up and asked him if he would follow her on Twitter. This was back in the days when Misha was pretty new to Twitter and had this really funny global overlord persona that he'd tweet with. At the time he wasn't following anyone on Twitter which was part of the joke.

Anyway, he told this girl that he would follow her on Twitter but he had no idea how to do that. I have no idea if he was being genuine (this was 10 years ago and Twitter was still pretty new back then) or if that was just something he told people as an excuse.

However, anxious unable to keep her mouth shut Hils offered to show him how. What I didn't expect was for him to just hand me his phone and tell me to do it for him.

I did it, of course. But then, in probably the most out of character thing I have ever done in my life, I posted a tweet from his account. Now, he was watching me the whole time to make sure I didn't do anything he wasn't comfortable with so he clearly thought it was funny or at least didn't mind.

It wasn't anything groundbreaking or particularly intelligent or witty but we'd been bemoaning the fact that the meet and greet location did not have any sort of bar.



Once I was done I handed the phone back and he issued a correction (but didn't delete the tweet - in fact it's still there now)



10 years later I still can't quite explain the series of events that followed. Back in those days Misha was pretty much using his Twitter as an RP sort of thing where he played an exaggerated version of himself who was bent on global domination and referred to all his followers as minions. As I mentioned above he didn't follow anyone and he didn't really interact with people either but over the next few weeks he kept... I guess fucking with me is the best way to put it.

First of all I tweeted him to inform him we were drinking while watching his SyFy movie Stonehenge Apocalypse (it's hilariously bad if you hadn't seen it) and enquired how much alcohol was appropriate for the viewing.



And it just sort of escalated from there. A few days later I was joking around with friends on Twitter as I often do and I was pretending to be mad about something and said I was going to delete my Twitter. I went to sleep after that and woke up to this



The conversation was nothing at all to do with him and I don't know how he got involved. It was a very strange time. It became a joke among my friendship group that Misha was stalking me and lived in the bushes outside my house. Again, he apparently got wind of this because



As is the way of the internet I started getting abuse after this. People accused me of spamming him to get attention, of hacking his Twitter account and tweeting myself, telling me I was an asshole because Misha was talking to me and not them/their friend. My Facebook got hacked because someone thought Misha and I were RL friends and they wanted to see if I had pics or anything like that of him. It was a pretty miserable time tbh and one of the many reasons I ended up retiring from the SPN fandom in the end. Again Misha got wind of this, so he drew a line under everything just before Christmas.




And that was it. Except it wasn't. The charity Misha runs, Random Acts, was looking to expand their volunteer staff so I applied and ended up getting a job as an events planner. It was definitely an interesting experience. Misha wasn't involved in the day to day running of things but he'd pop into Skype meetings occasionally and we stayed in his childhood home for a team building weekend (his mom is an amazing woman) but that was about it.

I learned a lot though. Organising events I could do having run conventions and fan meetups. That's how I got the job at Random Acts in the first place. But while I was there I learned a ton about management to the point where I got promoted into a management role in my paid job (Random Acts was entirely voluntary - not even the Director got paid).

And THAT is the very long story of how being in the Supernatural fandom genuinely changed my life.

Once I got promoted in my paid job I had to stop doing shift work, which meant I didn't have the time to dedicate to Random Acts that I did in the past so I stepped down. I'm still friends with just about everyone I worked with there though. An incredible bunch of women.

By the time I left Random Acts the Supernatural fandom had sort of lost its shine and I sort of settled into the MCU fandom after having fallen in love with the first Iron Man movie.


My time in the MCU fandom was pretty low-key compared to Supernatural. Being a big movie franchise there was no real scope to meet the actors or even really engage with them on social media.

Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson) is probably the only exception. He was a total sweetheart and engaged with his fans fairly regularly.




I had a brief but intense dalliance in The Man From UNCLE fandom which was a lot of fun because I grew up watching the show, and then the movie came out. I was so worried the movie was going to suck but it did the show justice perfectly and I went to the cinema to see it multiple times.

Then hockey happened, and it happened in a weird way. I have a good friend who I met in the Supernatural fandom and who is now very much a RL friend. We were on vacation together in New York and she was reading fic on her Kindle. I asked her what fandom and she said hockey. I didn't even know that was something she was interested in. Anyway, for about 3 years she kept badgering me to get into hockey and I wasn't interested because, ew, sport.

Then, one random day, I was bored and decided to read Check Please which is a webcomic I'd seen people on Tumblr talking about. It's about a men's college hockey team and the main character (a former figure skater turned hockey player) and the captain falling in love. It's wonderful and I highly recommend it.

Anyway, after that I got curious about real life hockey and it's like the friend I mentioned above was just waiting for a crack in my defences. She and another friend immediately started spamming me with stuff and the next thing I knew I was watching streams of games.

I started off as a fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins because that's the team all my friends were into so that's what I was exposed to first, but I became a fan of the Colorado Avalanche after seeing some fun content on their social media. I've been to Denver twice to see a whole bunch of games, I travelled to Sweden to watch the team play twice there, I've met a good portion of the players, and the (now former) social media manager is a RL friend of mine.

I'd never been interested in sport up until this point but I clearly just hadn't found the right one. I love this sport with my whole heart. It's not just NHL hockey, I've been to Europe several years in a row to watch the World Championship, I've found a team relatively close to me and go and see them play regularly.

Obviously this year and COVID has kind of put a stop to that. The season ended early (about 3 weeks after I got back from this year's Denver trip) and no one knows when it's going to start up again. I miss it a lot, but at the same time I don't think they should resume until it's safe for everyone (arena staff as well as all the players) so we'll see what happens.

But, when a pandemic closes a fandom door it opens a fandom window. Hockey was over indefinitely, I was adjusting to working at home and not being able to leave the house except for essentials and I was pretty damn miserable.

So, about a month into lockdown, I decided I needed to find something to watch. Everyone on Twitter seemed to be talking about this show called The Untamed. I'd seen a few gifs and it looked relevant to my interests so I decided to give it a go.

I watched the whole thing in about a week. I stayed up until 3am multiple nights over the Easter long weekend because I needed to see what happened next.

Then I read the novel.

Then I started reading fic.

Then I started writing fic. It was the first time I've written anything substantial in about three years. It felt good.

After that I couldn't stop. I watched Guardian not long after that, and somehow that captured my heart even more than The Untamed had, so I started reading and writing fic for that too.

I was going to list all the dramas I watched after that but, honestly, there are too many. I have a substantial to-watch list and I'm currently alternating between Chinese and Korean dramas.

It's been wonderful to be an active participant in a fandom again. I was very active in the hockey fandom too, but in a different way. I wrote for a blog and spent a lot of time on social media talking about hockey.

K-pop is kind of a weird one because I don't know that I'd necessarily say I'm in the fandom.

So, what happened was this: After I watched The Untamed I started poking around other things the main two actors had done. Both of them were formerly in k-pop groups and later went on to be solo artists. So I started listening to their stuff and I liked it.

I have a RL friend who is super into BTS and, much like with my hockey friend, has been trying to get me into them for years. I'd seen a bunch of videos and listened to a bunch of their songs but it just never really clicked with me. I went back to them again after listening to some other k-pop and I liked them better, especially their older stuff.

I was in a Twitter group chat that was me, someone I worked with at Random Acts, and a couple of other friends who I met in the Supernatural fandom (here we go with it being a life changing fandom again). It was initially set up for The Untamed because we'd all just finished watching it and wanted somewhere to yell, but everyone apart from me was also into k-pop and when I started poking around they sent me a ton of different groups to try out. That's when I discovered that while I like BTS, there are other groups out there that I LOVE and whose music is much more my tastes.

It's not an exaggeration to say that listening to k-pop kept me sane during the months I was been stuck at home. There's just something about the beat and the tunes that's just an instant mood lifter.

I've been to several streamed online concerts and I've watched a bunch of different reality shows.

Does that mean I'm in the fandom though? I love their music and they are very pleasant to look at but I've got no urge to get into the creative side of it. I've read a couple of fics but I haven't written any, nor do I want to. I just like listening to it.


The biggest surprise has been the fandom I currently find myself in, because the source material really isn't that good.

Not long after watching Guardian one of the lead actors, Zhu Yilong, starred in a drama called The Lost Tomb Reboot. Despite the name it's not really a reboot, more of a sequel with the first episode giving an introduction to the characters if you didn't already know them.

It's kind of like an Indiana Jones/Tomb Raider sort of thing about three friends who have all sorts of adventures in various tombs. It's a pretty huge franchise in China. There's a whole series of books which the drama is adapted from, and this one is the fifth TV adaptation as well as a movie.

The thing is I can't really say they're good. The dramas are full of plot holes partially due to the Chinese censorship laws and partially because the novels are also kind of full of plot holes.

I can't really explain how I ended up here, but I just really love the characters, and the point of fic is to fix all the plot holes, right? Last year I wrote nearly 160k of fic and nearly all of it was Lost Tomb fic.

After I'd watched The Lost Tomb Reboot, I went back and watched all the other dramas and the movie and all of them have things I love in them (except maybe the movie which is bonkers).

I honestly didn't expect this to become my primary fandom when I watched The Lost Tomb Reboot on a whim because an actor I liked was in it but here we are. I'm now in my third year of writing fic in this fandom (I posted my first one at the end of 2020) and I don't feel myself slowing down at all.

The fandom is a lovely group. It's a pretty small fandom where all the English speaking writers know each other, and a lot of us ended up here via Guardian so we knew each other before. It's just a nice little fandom family.

And that takes us to where we are now! Honestly this was just supposed to be a brief introduction for anyone new to my DW and I have ended up rambling at length.

If you made it this far well done! You've earned a cup of tea or something stronger.