#formative influence

Is this... inspired by the sorcerer’s apprentice?

If you mean specifically the issue of automated cleaning systems going out of control? That’s inspired by my roomba, who needs supervision whilst cleaning because he gets trapped in the bathroom or caught on the internet cord and has to be rescued.

Which might be seen as defeating the purposes of a robotic vacuum. He’s more like...a weird pet who does one chore with mild competence.

On a more general note, I watched our VHS copy of Fantasia way too many times as a kid. My favorite bit was the Pastoral Symphony. Color-coded soul mates, weird forest fashion, mythical beasts--it had everything I could have wanted as a wee creature. (Uh, the racist bits were censored out on the tape, so I was blissfully unaware of that nonsense.)

The death of the stegosaurus and Night on Bald Mountain were both unsettling for a small child, but I could cope. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, though? No, uh-uh, that shit was not on.

It had to be fast-forwarded through, with my eyes averted, every time. I was irrationally, intensely terrified of the whole bit. Not the brooms, mind you--Mickey and the sorcerer. It was a story about messing up and getting in trouble with authority, which was way more frightening a prospect than rogue magic.

So in summation: not particularly? From Beauty and the Beast to Alice in Wonderland to Harry Potter, there are plenty of other sources that have informed my love for what I call “animate objects” in a way that Sorcerer’s Apprentice never particularly did.

God help me, I am doing a weekly recap for a reread of Transmetropolitan, the comic series that predicted, among other things, the current political unpleasantness. Back in the 90s.

60 issues (plus some bonus materials). 60 weeks (plus some overtime).

Share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

The Pokemon cartoon aired on Saturday mornings when I was in junior high. This was back when the game first came to the US. While I technically must have known what video games were, I had never played one.

Because I loved the show, I begged for one of the combo packs being sold at Costco: a Red or Blue cartridge plus a Gameboy Color with a matching body.

Because I loved the game and had pictures of Pokemon on my class binder, I had something to talk about with the girl I met on the first day of 8th grade.

She asked me what other anime I liked. I had never heard the word before. She showed me Magic Knight Rayearth, and webrings whose domains are lost to the mists of time, and scanlations of manga and doujinshi. She showed me my first ever fanfic--a Gundam Wing/Yu Yu Hakusho crossover, because that was absolutely the marvelous nonsense I rolled with back then.

Because I loved anime, I started reading A LOT of fanfic. I was, as mentioned, a struggling reader growing up. This made me care about stories again, and made them feel accessible. Maybe accessible enough to write my own.

Because I loved fanfic, I started writing that and original fic, and I kept with it even when high school writing assignments tried hard to beat that love out of me. I also found in it the first words for my orientation and a series of communities where queerness was (insert boring caveats about fandom problems here) celebrated.

Because I wrote, I heard about NaNoWriMo, which was how I found my mentor, which was how I learned to write well. Which eventually led me back to writing fanfic again.

In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

(Warning: goddamn, I got longwinded today...?)

Canon is...weird for me. Marvel and Mad Max have been the exceptions for me, in that I’m actively engaged with both canon and fandom.

Growing up fannish, I read and wrote for anime that had not yet been brought to the US, which generally meant you couldn’t have it, because I am an old. Canon might as well have existed on the moon; you learned the details by reading enough fic to figure out the constants. (There is no fear like that of waiting to watch the first dubbed episode of a show. Especially when you taught yourself Japanese to read the manga of it.)

The movies, tv, and books I consumed didn’t hit me as fandoms--at least not while they were active. (I read Buffy fic long after I stopped watching, frex.)

Being able to, like, do scene analysis for a live fandom I’m writing in is...weird. Good! But weird.

Anyway! So here’s a canon thing.