september's coming soon

D: What was the first thing you ever contributed to a fandom?

Rocketshipping fanfic. Like, I specifically remember one just coming to me and my going out and either buying a notebook or bringing one along for some outing because i had to write it down right this moment. It was an utterly OOC dumb romance, but to my defence, it was at least somewhat original in the take that James somehow wasn't in it at all.

I can't remember if it ever was posted anywhere, but I did contribute some fic to a TR-centred archive (TRHQ2), where I also spent some very formative time hanging around the forums.

I suppose it speaks for itself that I later found the fic posted there so embarassing that I asked for it to be taken down *g*

The fact that Goodreads has a reading challenge at all is proof that for a not inconsiderable amount of us, reading isn't just pleasure, but some variety of self-improvement project that's enough of a duty to be something we procrastinate about.

For some of us, of course, the question isn't the action of reading, but of reading the right things. I'll be the first person to admit that there's fic out there that have a lot more literary qualities than most of the what's given the best shelf space in physical bookstores around me, but that's no excuse for reading it instead of the truly good stuff you'll find in your library. The fact that you find the occasional gem on some old LJ account doesn't make up for the fact that fanfic is an extremely conservative genre what form and content concerns. It doesn't hurt anyone to read something that will surprise you, and in my personal case, there's that whole bit about all the classics of some three different literary traditions that I feel I should be familiar with beyond having classes on them.

I'm currently torn on whether or not I should add the No. 6 novels to my reading list on Goodreads.

The answer should be given, really: they're proper novels that have been published in some three different formats and were adopted into two other media. They're individually short and written for a young audience, but they're real books with ISBN numbers and stuff. They're as "real literature" as it gets.

But the part of me that rates my literary experience on whether or not it was at least deemed worthy of being published by a real publishing house at some point (just liek fifty shades!!!!11) keeps on insisting that it's cheating, because

1) I'm reading unofficial translations of unverifiable quality
2) I probably wouldn't have gone looking for them if I hadn't seen the anime and really liked it, meaning that
3) My motivation for reading this pretty much equals fanfic, and thanks to the notably literal feeling of the translations and how I'm already familiar with an adaptation, the reading experience is likewise a case of "well I'm not here for the pretty prose anyway"
(Bonus: 4) They're really short and adding all nine of them would feel like using comics and plays what the reading challenge concerns - it doesn't count if you can finish it off in one afternoon)

Who knew I had such staunch moral standards for my consumption of prose fiction. Certainly not me.