Snowflake Challenge #10

[hils]

Challenge #10

In your own space, write a love letter to Fandom in general, to a particular fandom, to a trope, a relationship, a character, creator, episode, or it could be your fandom friends. Share your love and squee as loud as you want to. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.


I suspect this is going to end up being quite long so I'm putting it under a cut


Dear Fandom,

You are a lot of different things to a lot of different people but to me, at the heart of it, you are part of who I am. You were there when I collected toys from my favourite cartoons as a kid, to when I started talking to friends at school about our favourite tv actors and pop stars. You were there when I made a sign for my first concert, and started writing fic with one of my best friends even though we didn't know it had a name back then.

Over the years you have taught me a lot. You taught me about community, you taught me how to make friends, you taught me how to be brave enough to share my writing with others. As we grew up together you taught me how to listen and learn, how to appreciate difference and diversity, how to be respectful of things I didn't understand.

Thanks to you I have travelled to countries and cities I had never been to before, met up with people I had never spoken to in person before who opened their homes to me like I was family. Because that's what fandom is. I am closer to friends I have met in fandom than I am my own family. When I spent the Christmas holidays alone last year I facetimed with my parents for an hour, but my fandom friends were the ones who regularly checked in and made sure I didn't have time to feel lonely.

I don't think I would have got through the last year without you, fandom. At a time when everyone was struggling emotionally (and still is) we came together as a community, and supported each other through it. Several of us have been through multiple fandoms together in the past 12 months and it's been wonderful.

Thanks to you, fandom, I learned organisation and leadership skills through organising conventions and other community events. These skills led to me getting promoted into a management position in my paid job.

I would not be the person I am today without you, and 'thank you' seems almost insufficient, but thank you

Love Hils