#thefandomicaopens

Hello, and welcome! :D

So the girlfriend and I are actually high school sweethearts! Our story often gets described as lesbian enemies-to friends-to lovers highschool AU, and - what can I say? It kinda fits. XD 

Her name is Jill. She’s nine months older than I am. I was born in June 1987, she in September 1986. 

The school year starts in September for us, so often children who are born in September get to stay in Kindergarten a year longer than others, which was also the case for her.

So I started high school in 1999, at age 12, alongside Jill. We didn’t know each other previously. I came from a background with a very strict abusive father, and high school was...how can I say? It was the place where I could escape his supervision, where I could let loose. I was a pretty bright kid, so I showed off like crazy, tried to make friends real fast, and to have fun in general. I was super annoying tbh. XD

Jill had been more like that in elementary school, so she had decided since she was joining the Grown Ups™ (pfffft), she would become all serious and study hard and focus (mostly) on only that. 

I was the art and language kid. She was the science kid.

We clashed like waves on a rock. We hated each other during that first year; we even got into a legit fist fight with each other, in which she trashed my glasses, lol.

She failed that class and had to retake the year because she was shit at French...and I failed the following year and had to retake it because I was shit at Maths, so we ended up back together in the same class. That was when I was fourteen, and that was when the teacher put us next to each other, and we pulled out the very same book out of our backpacks to read during recess.

We bonded over Star Trek and Harry Potter. As soon as we noticed that we had common interests, we began opening up to each other - reluctantly, but still. Come spring, we were already inseparable friends, and she invited me to visit her father in Switzerland.

Turns out she likes modern art, and French poetry (poetry in general), and traditional Chinese music. She approaches cooking with such a scientific scrutiny that she was, for a while, convinced the Rules Of Cooking were never to be broken, lest the kitchen might explode (adding more spice than written on the package? Add salt to taste? Unthinkable! Also I like Arabic cuisine and she can’t handle spicy stuff, so yeah).

Turns out she has warm eyes and does laugh much if you know what jokes to pull.

(That was the year we became a couple, on a school trip to Germany. She wore her hair short and dyed red back there, and I was way slimmer, lol. I was fifteen, she was sixteen.)

Now the year after, when I was fifteen, things changed. Our high school was an all-girls school (they do accept boys too since a couple of years), and many of the girls were early bloomers and had their first boyfriends and crushes, picking them up after classes. She and I, we were still single, and joked around that we could still date each other, if we wouldn’t find a boy for us to date. We didn’t think much of it at the time.

If I was already feeling something back then, I was totally oblivious. No idea at all. If she was already feeling something, she never let it transpire.

Then we went on a short trip to the Netherlands in February. She, her mum, her cousin, and me. The cottage had two rooms with a double bed in each, and her cousin shared a bed with her mum, and Jill shared a bed with me. We proceeded to talk until the wee hours of the morning each night.

The night before we were scheduled to drive home, she asked me whether I had ever thought about kissing a girl. I replied that I had not, and that I had, in fact, never kissed anyone in my life. She asked if I would be willing to try. I said: “Sure, why not?”

We both hesitated, but she was bolder than me, and kissed me.

I - it’s hard to describe what happened. It’s as someone had flipped a switch, and everything fell into place, as it always should have been. It’s like I had seen the world in black and white only, and suddenly everything was bright and colourful and saturated. That was when I realised I was in love, and that’s when she did too.

It was the morning of February 17th, at around 02:15 am, 17 years ago as I am typing this in June 2020.

We were both...unsure about how to proceed, but we decided we would just let everything run its natural course. If this was to end in a month, so be it; if it was to last longer, so be it. I was terrified to let anything show at home, because my father was that kind of person who told me to my face that “people like that” should be, in his opinion, “lined up against a wall and shot one by one” - he died before he could find out. There were definetely things we had to learn, like - we used to be glued at the hip in the beginning, but I sometimes need some time to myself, just to think and reflect and breathe. In the beginning, whenever I requested that time, Jill thought I didn’t enjoy her company, or that I was angry with her. It took a while for her to realise that she was allowed to request time on her own, too. These days, we do many things together, but not everything. Sometimes we sit in the same room, and do wildly different things at the same time. I can completely be myself with her.

I’ve never looked back. Never regretted anything. I fall in love again and again each time we meet.

There aren’t many pictures of the two of us together, for reasons we both cannot comprehend, but  there’s a selfie of me, and below it there’s a picture I took of her last September, on the train to the Steampunk Festival (hence the costume). It’s one of my favourites.

“I am freezing,” Albus complained.

“We’re almost there.” Gellert grabbed his arm and pulled him into a small street. “Besides, this was your idea.”

“Well, you never told me austrian winters are *this* cold.”

“It’s not much colder than on your isle, you wanted to see where I grew up.”

They were stepping through the streets of Vienna, which were covered with 10 inches of snow.

“I thought it would be nice, if we’re here anyway.”

Gellert turned around, walking backwards against the icy wind and grinned at him with reddened cheeks. “And? Is this nice?”

“It’s cold,” he replied dryly.

Gellert rolled his eyes, took his hand and lead him to the door of a narrow, fancy looking building. It was made out of white stone with soft patterns covering the facade. It looked warm and welcoming and it felt almost like home.

Gellert held the door open and he entered a hallway with bright red carpet, great chandeliers and a marble reception desk on the left. Gellert talked to the young woman behind the desk in German, but in such a way that he couldn’t understand a word.

“Is that how you speak around here?” Albus asked, when he collapsed onto the wide bed in the middle of their room.

“Yes, that’s the dialect here. Did you understand anything?” Gellert kicked off his shoes and lay down next to him.

“Not a word.”

“Don’t worry, it doesn’t even sound nice and everyone will understand Hochdeutsch.”

“Well, we’re not very interested in talking to Gregorovitch anyway, are we?”

Gellert laced their fingers together and kissed his knuckles. “No.” He smiled at him. “Just one more night. We will possess a hallow. We will possess the most powerful in the world.”

Albus turned towards him, slid a hand under his waistcoat and kissed him. “Thrilling, isn’t it?”

*laughs softly* Thank you.

And yeah, the anti thing is... the sad part.

I’m aware that every fandom has its rotten apples. But I can genuinely not fathom why people who get their OTP as canon scoop this low? Like, you got the largest portion of fanfiction and fanarts to yourself, you can watch the show and get to see your OTP acted out, you can read the books and get to read them be together in there. You should literally be the happiest and most satisfied corner of the fandom.

So how do you go from getting catered to from all fronts to being so incredibly bitter that you have to ruin other people’s fandom experience? I just genuine don’t get it.

I’d get it from like... people whose ships are one-sided canon and the bitterness festers from having come this close to being canon and then growing bitter that another ship snatched your chance away. I would be able to identify the point where it started rotting. Yeah.

But this. It’s ridiculous. Literally no one else in fandom is that privileged to getting stuff about their ship, and on top of that you have all the tools of tuning out other possible ships that you don’t sail - contrary to those who don’t sail the canon ship and can’t tune it out.

How do they not all turn out as reasonable and happy people? How are there so many unnecessarily mean and bitter cunts? *throws hands up in the air*

I’m sorry. Went on a bit of a rant there. Just very frustrated about the topic in general because it genuinely baffles me.

It’s always nice to meet someone who sails a ship and can still admit to its faults. I think critical thinking is always a plus when dealing with any medium. And it’s even nicer to meet someone who sails this ship and is still a nice person who doesn’t wish death to all those who dare sail a different ship.

Are you a multishipper, or is this your OTP? Because if multishipper, I’d love to pick your brain about how you handle your own community then.

I just, I know it from the Voltron fandom. I ship the flagship of antis too, but I also ship some of the “”“problematic”““ ships that they harrass and threaten people for. And sometimes, it feels like walking on eggshells. Like, asking my self - “Am I reading the fanfiction of a Nice Person here, or of an anti?”, or “Is this person who just reviewed my story an anti who when they see I also wrote the Bad Ships will do a 180°?”. Because those are legic concerns I have about my own OTP there, since I know many who do ship it are not just mean but straight-up bullies and sometimes I fear that I’ll poke the bear and attract the kind of attention I’m desperately trying to avoid.

(for @thefandomicaopens | cont’d from The Spook Cruise | read on AO3)

Izzy and Alec made their way hastily through the Institute's halls, careful to not make eye contact with anyone lest they draw any more unwanted attention than they already were. It helped that they bee-lined straight to Alec's office - whatever they were up to, the other Shadowhunters figured it must be important. To Alec's frustration, however, it seemed a pair of Shadowhunters were in apparent need of an audience with the Head of the Institute. As they strode swiftly down the hall, Alec surveyed the pair of them as best he could, running through every excuse he could think of to try and convince them to leave. At first, he'd mistaken one of them for Lydia, what with the woman's blonde hair and eerily familiar air, but upon closer inspection he saw the features weren't quite right - her hair was shaved on three sides, for example - and her eyes gave off a golden shine rather than Lydia's blue. Beside her stood a small-framed boy, somehow wiry despite the roundness of his face, the fire-red explosion of hair around his head only emphasizing the anxiety in his green eyes.

If Alec hadn't been swimming in a world of panic, the truth of the situation would have smacked him full-force across the face. As it was, he fixed a glare upon them and irritably barked, "The Head of the Institute's busy. If you need him, you'll have to—"

"Is he?" the woman remarked with a raised brow, her arms folding across her hefty chest. "Cause I'm pretty sure I'm staring right at him." When Alec offered her nothing more than intense, panicking silence, she rolled her eyes and continued in surmounting exasperation, "Seriously? You don't recognize me at all?"

"To be fair," the man beside her chimed in, "You do look awfully different as a girl."

She passed him a sultry smirk. "But still drop-dead gorgeous, right?"

And when people reblog your graphics/edits ONLY for the conflicting reply? It drives me nuts

Yeeep. Yeah. I mean. That’s how I’ve been determining their age since that very episode. Jace 23, Alec 25 as attempted age and 27 as believable age. I just do not buy Matthew Daddario under 25. Though honestly, Dominic as under 25 is a very hard sell too. Especially when he’s unshaved.

There is absolutely no reason to be sorry, honey! I totally get you. When the fandom becomes too toxic, it’s really very important to remind yourself that it’s not all of the fandom and that there are safe and sane corners of it and venting to someone safe and (arguably) sane helps.

Though sadly I kind of have to disagree on one point. It’s not just this fandom. I feel like… it’s every fandom; every fandom has become unbearably toxic, unhealthy and filled with bullies. It was recently brought to my attention that in my main fandom Percy Jackson, shippers who break the canon gays apart get as much shit as in the Shadowhunters fandom. In the Voltron fandom you are literally called a pedophile for shipping two legally off-age characters with each other just because some whiny assholes headcanon the slightly older character as the Dad character. The Marvel fandom literally showed me its ugliest side just the other day.

Honestly, the internet has become a nasty place and real and honest concerns about rape, racism and pedophilia have somehow been stolen and plagiated by trolls to function as a defense against ships they simply don’t like and are grasping for straws to somehow make out as morally wrong so they can justify their hatred. And it’s incredibly sad.