Flashback Fandom Promo Post

[hekateras]

Fandom Promo Post

Some of you have already gotten a head start on this, but here's an official spot for you to talk about the fandom(s) you'd like to create for and, if you like, reminisce a little.

Here's a completely optional template you can follow:

What's the fandom? How did you first discover and get into it?

Why this fandom? Why is it special to you?

Do you already have ideas for the kind of work you want to make? Medium, genre, ship, etc.

Comments

[22degreehalo]

soooo I don't know for sure if I'll be signing up for this fest just yet, but I'll definitely be participating at least in spirit because I've been revisiting a lot of my old fandoms this year and one has definitely stood out as being so incredibly worth the present-day revisit: Fruits Basket.

It's a bit of a weird one to bring up in 2024 because it actually got an anime remake a couple of years back?? That was long over by the time I took a peek into the ao3 tags and unintentionally launched myself so far down memory lane it's become my hyperfixation for a few months straight already :'D And by god do I feel. some certain ways about the fact that one of my fandoms of yore got a huge reawakening and became relevant all over again to a totally new generation, and I fucking missed it only to show up 2 years late holding Starbucks blinking wide-eyed at all the new posting sprees that lived and died before I could ever take part in them. <3

BUT, it's not just that Fruits Basket still holds up to this day, though it totally does: I only realised on watching the remake, but it really is just straight up 'Hurt/Comfort: The Anime.' Literally the entire premise is that there's a bunch of incredibly traumatised teenagers with abusive pasts who slowly learn to love themselves and feel joy again with the help of another traumatised teenager whose coping mechanisms involve giving to others what she can't do for herself, and it is Glorious. All the repression and trauma meta and anxiety and pining and self-destruction and brief moments of stolen intimacy you could ever ask for!! And for all its angst, during at least the first half of its story it does impressively well to avoid collapsing under the weight of its own misery; it's also just a really goddamn funny manga with some incredibly likeable goofy characters, lol.

That is to say: I'm not just enjoying it because I loved it back then and have found it still very good now. I'm on top of the world because one of my most ardent and strongly-held rarepairs - a ship that I promoted everywhere I could, read absolutely anything for that I could lay my hands on, and wrote my first typo- and glomp-filled longfic for back when I was all of 14 years old - has been motherfucking VINDICATED BY HISTORY to a level that I could never have believed possible.

Yuki/Kakeru - that old rarepair ship between the main character nobody liked and a side character who never even showed up in the original anime - currently has OVER 200 WORKS ON ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN DOT COM. Keep in mind that back in '08 I once wrote a length rant into my high-school livejournal because that same ship had LESS THAN A PAGE of fanfics on Fanfiction.net!!!!! And those ao3 fics are so. goddamn. good???????? Fit Back In alone got immediately catapulted into one of my favourite fanfics ever, and that's just one of a grand glorious number I've barely even begun to dive into.

Look this is all getting very long when all I originally intended on doing was linking to this longer piece I wrote up on tumblr about the whole thing, but how can I not gush just a little bit when the teenager inside me is still so giddy just thinking about it?! n.n

And just. God. GOD. but it makes so much fucking SENSE, like: everyone in Fruits Basket is pretty gay (right up until every single one ends up in their neat little hetero ending couples, and yes it's every bit as ridiculous as it sounds lmao), but Yuki in particular is just such a queer coded character, from his angst being all about having to uphold this public image he hates but also feels absolute terror at the idea of breaking, to his inherent femininity and prissiness, to the whole-ass plotline about him having a legion of girls who are in love with him which he absolutely dreads (but, again, can't seem to stop acting out his expected Princely Role for!!), to - and I'm not even joking here - straight up... confessing to the main girl, only to take it back, because he realised he never actually felt that way for her?? But just felt like he should, because he's a boy and she's a girl and it was too embarrassing to admit that he didn't feel anything romantic for her???? All delivered to his best male friend, who constantly flirts with and teases with girly nicknames for him, a chaotic force of energy with an earring and a girlfriend who already fought back against the parental pressure Yuki's still bound by and who Yuki at first clashed with but who soon became an irreplaceable friend, someone who tries to understand Yuki's feelings when nobody else cares to, who aforementioned main girl openly says Yuki smiles more around than anyone else, and he just listens to Yuki give this speech about not feeling 'that way' about Tohru right after they've spent a whole glorious afternoon together just having fun like the teenagers they're supposed to be and right afterwards he fuckin flirts with Yuki again and Yuki is so used to it at this point that he shoots back that he'll break up with him like it's just a natural thing to say and do and - I'm just!! I'm fucking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ANYWAY, the upshot of this all is that I have actually already posted a Yuki/Kakeru fic in the wake of all this, but I certainly don't expect that to be the last. That was kind of a fever dream, written up because I literally just could not stop thinking about those two long enough to, like, refamiliarise myself with a canon I haven't actually consumed since I was back in high school?! (aside from the reboot, but. it's not like I even made it to Kakeru, haha.) BUT, I am now in the process of re-reading the manga and I'll probably just skip up to season 2 of the reboot to speed things up. but. okay. the point. the point is just that I'll probably do more, once I feel more actually qualified to write about them, hahahaha.

And old habits die hard so I couldn't keep this comment from turning into another 'please ship these two I'm begging you it's RIGHT THERE' unhinged rant, apparently. :'DDDD and I'm done :') 🙏