How you came into your fandom (origin stories)!

[MetaKnight670]

Hi guys, this is my first thread and I thought this sounded like a neat idea to hear how people joined their fandoms. Haven't seen it around on the forums so here it goes.

The point is that you just tell a story of how you came into the fandom that you are currently a part of, or were previously a part of. It doesn't matter what fandom it is (Adventure Time, Doctor Who, Littlest Pet Shop, Walking Dead, MLP, your fervent watching of the NFL, whatever you desire) but please try and keep the stories on this side of tasteful. You know, PG-13 or whatever (not that I imagine they could be all that bad anyways.)

Anyways, I am going to start it off with a bang and go with the story of how I became part of the fandom of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
One of my friends began watching it (don't know how he found it) and told me that it was extremely good and I had to give it a shot. So I trusted him and gave it a chance although I had preconceptions about what it would be like (as I am sure most fans did). He came over and we watched the first two episodes because the deal was that if I didn't like it after those we could stop. But I found my self enjoying it, and asked if we could watch more. So it wasn't long until I had watched the rest of Season 1 and would consider myself a brony.

I believe that Season 2 was still a couple of months away at least, but I don't know the date that I started watching (and enjoying) the show.

Would love to hear from my fellow Escapists!

 

[hotsauceman]

40k.
I used to collect Star Wars miniatures(Now Extinct). But they where those Minis that are random in a box. I payed 20$ for one set to only get the same thing again. So i saw 40k, The store owner explained how you would buy your miniatures you want and you would paint and build them. Instantly captivated. I got the starter set and got to building. but never around to playing much until now.
It changed my life, I lost quite a bit of my social phobia and that stuff, I used to be afraid of meeting people for games, but not anymore.

 

[Darken12]

I got into D&D after stumbling upon a series of old 2e jokes (like the gingerbread golem) and not getting a single one of them. It was all downhill from then.

I got into World of Darkness after hearing about Vampire: the Masquerade (don't even remember where), but by the time I joined the fandom, the oWoD was history and the nWoD was all the rage. So nWoD and I fell into a whirlwind romance where I became greatly infatuated with many things, but then I slowly started noticing all the ways it was just flat-out terrible. We broke it off. We still see each other every so often, but I consider World of Darkness as a whole to be mostly "not my thing". I can dig about 10% of it, rarely more. But when I dig it, oh man do I dig it.

I got into Supernatural when I was young, watched the first two seasons religiously, then conflicting schedules made it impossible for me to watch it while I was in college, and then, by the time I moved out on my own, I never got a TV, so I forgot about the show completely. Then I was reminded of it recently and felt ready to do a massive rewatch starting from the first season.

I got into Teen Wolf back when it was still this really obscure MTV show, lured by the promise of a LGBT-friendly show with plenty of eyecandy. I stayed for the surprisingly smart plots (for an MTV show) despite the LGBT-friendliness being mostly queerbaiting (like Supernatural, but not as bad).

Agatha Christie: Shaped my entire childhood (like Sherlock Holmes), then I found out she was a horrible person and she tumbled off the pedestal I had built for her.

Clue: I became really attached to the movie (and by association, the board game) when I was a teenager. I still have a great fondness for everything Clue-related.

Resident Evil: Favourite game series of my childhood, took me a long time to realise it was actually really cheesy and not that good. Still fond of it.

Silent Hill: Always liked it from afar, but I only became a fan a couple of years ago, when I went on an LP binge of all the games. I like the series, but I became more enamoured of the concept of Silent Hill and the Otherworld (as a narrative device) than with any of the specific plots or characters.

Of all these, the only contact I've had with fandom has been Teen Wolf and Supernatural (and, to a lesser extent, D&D). D&D fandom is... not terrible. It's got its ups and downs, but it's mostly a geek club. There's endless squabbling over minutiae that just doesn't matter and a HUGE amount of sanctimonious, finger-wagging "you're playing it wrong!", but overall it just doesn't have the inherent horribleness to be a "bad" fandom. Supernatural is a terrible fandom. In general, most of the fans are crazy. I've stayed the holy hell away from them ever since my first brush.

Teen Wolf started out as a nice fandom, but then it swiftly devolved into horrible (around Season 2, when the show became actually somewhat popular). They are still nothing compared to Supernatural, but they are well on their way. I foresee the fandom becoming more and more horrifying as seasons go by.

So yeah, I am very much not a fandom kind of person. Mob mentality (and the way it validates and enables psycho-crazy) is ungodly scary.

 

[Dangit2019]

Multiple stories here to keep it interesting.

Doctor Who:
I had heard good things from the internets for a while, so I started out with the revived series on Netflix. So with that, I watched the entire revived series in about 2 months. I started about a month before school started, and it got so engrossing that I brought my iPad to school just to stream the next episode after each test and during lunch.

My Little Pony:
MLP was always a bit of a Pandora's Box to me. My issue with it was that while I could understand the possibility of the appeal, I avoided it in fear that becoming part of the fandom would only make me even more of an awkward sperglord than I already was (and in hindsight, I was half-right). One night, I was browsing YouTube, and noticed a link to the first episode in full. I thought about it for a minute, and then thought, "what the hell? I'll probably just make fun of it." Big mistake.

To quote from a post i made the day after:
"Little did I know that I had gone too deep, and now I'm have to watch the next episode regardless of any feelings towards doing so. It seems that I've become a brony overnight, and I'm scared now. (hold me)"

And the rest is some gay-ass history.

 

[Bebop]

I am a fan of K-On. The weird thing is that its one of the only shows like that that I like. Something about it just makes me want to watch it. (Maybe it was the 50+ .gifs of the show that my friend had sent me before hand.)

 

[Little Woodsman]

Got in to Doctor Who waaaaaayyyy back in umm, want to say 1979, maybe '80 when the local PBS affiliate started showing
the series. Often times with episodes out of order, no explanation for history etc....I immediately bought the set of
Who books that was available in the US at that time...hooked in even further, Talons of Weng-Chiang still a great read (TV episode stinks in comparison to the novel)

Got in to Anime because as a rabid Dr. Who fan I went to Science Fiction conventions...at one a friend suggested we go in to the 'Japanimation" room....didn't think it would amount to much, hooked within *seconds* of seeing the first moments of Dangaioh (The original).

Got hooked on MLP when someone made a quite amusing thread about it right here on the Escapist. Checked it out and my immediate reaction was "So it's Sailor Moon, with *ponies*? Ha ha, well I guess we could watch some Sailor Moon with *ponies*." So my kid & I watched the first two episodes & I was all "Wait, what? The whole Sailor Moon thing is resolved
in the first two episodes? Well, then where do they go from there?" So of course we watched the next episode & my reaction
was "So *that's* where they go from there....coooooll." Been hooked ever since.

Hooked on Pen & Paper FRPG's when two schoolmates who I was just beginning to be friends with invited me to play D&D with them... this would have been maybe 1981, 1982...left D&D behind long ago but still play other table-top RPG's.

 

[thesilentman]

A few actually. Dark Souls, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, DOTA 2, and Pink Floyd all come to my mind.

I've read about Dark Souls here a bajilllion times in Gaming, and it sounded interesting from what I was hearing. Really interesting, especially with the promise of difficulty. I then bought it for PC and never looked back. I want more games like this!

Madoka Magica is an interesting one. I originally was recommended it as a good nice presented anime. I hated it. It felt... shallow. The visuals and the overall presentation just made it seem empty. But after I watched episode 6, all doubts were vanquished. This is certainly something I'll rewatch in the future.

The DOTA group here bolstered my confidence to learn the game, so I have to thank them for giving me some inspiration to continue to play. Much good for me, I suppose.

And mother flipping Pink Floyd. Currently some of the greatest musicians in my book. I really love those guys.

That's all for me.

 

[Ldude893]

In some shop with my parents, I saw a VCD cover of these weird cartoon people parodying a scene from Star Wars. A month after watching the CD and several other episodes, I asked my mom to buy me a Simpsons themed bedsheet.

Someone in my class recommended me this sci-fi series, and said that it was awesome. The day after checking Doctor Who out, I started making random doodles of the TARDIS.

Some Escapist thread convinced me that this certain cartoon fanbase wasn't exclusively full of assimilationist furries trying to consume the internet, and told me to give their show a chance. I did, and I watched every episode of My Little Pony FiM in three days.

While on vacation, my cousin left the TV on to the Disney Channel, and allowed myself to watch the next program that came up. Gravity Falls is now tied with MLP as my favorite animated show,

 

[Neverhoodian]

My Little Pony:
MLP was always a bit of a Pandora's Box to me. My issue with it was that while I could understand the possibility of the appeal, I avoided it in fear that becoming part of the fandom would only make me even more of an awkward sperglord than I already was (and in hindsight, I was half-right). One night, I was browsing YouTube, and noticed a link to the first episode in full. I thought about it for a minute, and then thought, "what the hell? I'll probably just make fun of it." Big mistake.

That's pretty much my MLP story as well (though I don't really identify with the fandom itself all that much).

Dan Vs.:
I saw a few of FluffyMixer's crossover videos on Youtube:
I started watching the show after that and the rest is history.

Star Wars:
Not much to say here. My parents showed me A New Hope on VHS when I was seven years old, and I've been a fan ever since (less so in recent years though, what with the prequels and EU nonsense).

The Neverhood:
This one would have flown under the radar completely if my aunt hadn't introduced me to it. I played it at her place once, and I enjoyed it so much that she decided to let me have the game.

Team Fortress 2:
I actually bought The Orange Box back in 2007 with the idea that Portal was going to be my favorite of the bunch. After one quick playthrough, I fired up Team Fortress 2 on a whim and never looked back. Now Portal occupies some dusty, abandoned corner of my Steam library while I still play TF2 at least twice a week.

DC Animated Universe:
A good friend of mine showed me a few episodes of Batman: The Animated Series on DVD a few years ago (I somehow missed watching the show as a kid when it originally aired). I enjoyed it so much that I bought my own copy. I then started watching Superman: TAS, then Batman Beyond, then the Justice League, and so on and so forth.

Fruits Basket:
A friend of mine let me borrow a few of his anime DVDs, and this was one of them. I'm not a huge fan of the medium, but this particular show struck a chord with me. Figures the one anime show I really like stopped in the middle of the story after only one season. Fortunately the original mangas delivered proper closure with the final volume.

Warhammer 40,000:
I bought the original Dawn of War almost on an impulse. I saw the box cover and half-remembered reading a positive review of the game, so I decided to give it a go. I remember my initial impressions were bemused incredulity ("are those orcs with guns?!"), but I quickly learned to embrace the absurd awesomeness of the setting (and I also learned to spell "ork" with a "K").

 

[Agent of Fate]

Let's see...

I got into Doctor Who during the gap between the classic series going off-air and before the TV movie. Our school used to have a small library, and the librarian said something along the lines of 'You like space stories? Try this one.' and handed me a copy of Doctor Who and the Daleks, a novelization of the first episode 'An unearthly child' coupled with the original Dalek story. I followed that up by reading the rest of the (unfortunately few) Doctor Who books in the library, and was thrilled when the movie came out. Though, I watched it again recently... McGann is great, the movie itself, not so much.

I got into gaming, and specificity Sonic the Hedgehog at the same time. I was visiting my cousins house and was watching him playing Sonic 3 on the Mega Drive, when he handed me the second controller. Which was followed by an amusing 'Hey, I can fly!' revelation as my random button mashing produced results.