Snowflake Challenge #2: Fannish History

Fandom started for me when I stumbled onto some reruns of Smallville Season Two (or three?) on ABC family. Clark Kent was exactly my type in High School - kinda nerdy, kinda shy, hick kid who worked on a ranch, totally heroic, longer brunette hair, blue eyes. SIGN ME UP. I also related a lot to Lana because of the nerdy country-girl-next-door with big dreams vibes. I immediately spent any extra money I had on VHS tapes and learned how to set our recorder so that I could record episodes of Smallville and rewatch them. I was very religious about setting the recorder once the new season came back on, especially in the event that I had an event or family dinner etc. I wrote labels on all my VHS tapes, and recorded over episodes I liked the least (and sometimes it was hard to choose which episodes to tape over).

My family definitely thought I was being too obsessive, but by that time we had a family computer. I found some Smallville forums and almost exclusively engaged in het 'ship talk (and was relieved to find other people who loved the show the way I did). Looking back, I realize that I was definitely one of those "bad" shippers, but over time I learned a lot about relationships, and how to be a good internet user and fandom participant (and I became much more tolerant of other people's ships). To jump to the end, I had a really rough break-up with Smallville when Lana and Lex left, but I am now a proud multi-shipper.

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