December talking meme - 7th Dec

[amberdreams]

Requiring some cudgelling of the old brain cells...so much so I started this post yesterday, then forgot to come back and finish it!! For milly_gal
What was your most memorable fandom moment in the last ten years?

For those of you who don't know me very well, I need to mention that I've always had a dodgy memory, but that in recent years it's got worse. So whatever I pick here, there were probably 100 better and more fun moments that I should be choosing instead but that have been swallowed by one of the holes in my Swiss cheese brain.

Moments I can recall (right now) would include

• meeting a rather lovely German lady called Purple Nurple (aka Christine aka technicolour66 on tumblr/twitter aka loveinadooway) in a queue in Rome and becoming friends immediately - one of many lasting queue and convention friendships I've made to date, and one of the reasons fandom is so frigging ace. Friendships including dizzojay, katwoman76, sigrundora, xlittleangx and adrenalineshots to name but a few...


• meeting Jared and Jensen for the first time in Chicago - that moment of holy FUCK! they are exceedingly, overwhelmingly attractive in person but even though I'm shaking and stuttering from nervousness, I'm still going to follow through with my plan to feel Jared's pecs and give Jensen's waist a quick squeeze to see if he's still got love handles. (He hadn't, he was deliciously trim)


• last year's Christmas get together in London and finding I'd lucked out in the Secret Santa by landing two trays of the most tasty SPN themed gingerbread baked by our charming theymp. Looking forward to next Saturday, chaps and chappesses!


• meeting up with my oldest SPN friends for the first time in Chicago. I'd got to know them on Facebook, and although the AMerican con idea was to see the Js, the main reason was to share the experience with these lovely peeps. So I attended the convention with two of them, and then we three met up with two more on the Monday and Tuesday after the convention

And that last event is the lead in to the moment I'm choosing (finally, I hear you cry!!) as my most memorable moment - because while we were sightseeing on Chicago's main drag (I forget the name of the road), taking touristy photos of this waterpump station now an art gallery, some inconsiderately tall bloke got in the way of my friend's photo. Yep, it was Jared, out shopping with Genevieve. So we stopped and had a really nice chat with them for a few minutes. They were both really charming and lovely. Of course one of the reasons I remember it so well is because I asked Jared if I could take a photo of them both and he said he'd rather not - so no pics of them and us dammit. Which doesn't rankle a bit, of course not ha ha ha!!

Geeze that ended up quite a ramble, didn't it? Sorry about that!

Comments

[milly-gal.livejournal.com]

There was nothing but awesome here hun, no rambles, just awesome! thank you for sharing. I understand the swiss cheese brain issue, my head drops words, I can *see* the image of a thing, can't find the word for it in my head anywhere O_O

Wow, you met Jared and Gen, that's lovely, absolutely lovely. I don't blame them for saying they'd rather not get a pic but what lovely people to just stand and chat, bless them, and you!

I love the whole meeting people from Fandom thing, it's uplifting and amazing :D

Seriously, thanks for the answer hun ♥

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

oh the losing words thing is just horrendous. Thank Chuck for the built in thesaurus in Word or my writing would be even worse than it is!

I didn't blame Jared for saying no, but I think he would have done photos with each of us if we'd wanted - but of course after he said no to the idea of a pic of him and Gen, we didn't dare ask for anything else! Dopey how star struck we are in their presence LOL!

[heavenli24.livejournal.com]

Talking of losing words - that happened to me in Jared's M&G at JIB last year :P.

I asked him a question about stunts, mentioning that my brother was a stuntman, but I wasn't prepared for him to say something back... he said, 'I don't know what you're brother is like...' The response was in my head, but I couldn't think of the right word to describe him... I was trying for 'fearless'.. but my brain wouldn't cooperate and what came out was... 'pretty much unafraid of anything' :P. Afterwards I was like 'why couldn't I just have said fearless?'.

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

At least you could think of right words to get your point across though - when this happens to me now, I lose everything for a few moments - long enough for it to be embarrassing. Cue lots of hand waving to cover.

[milly-gal.livejournal.com]

I imagine he wouldn't of minded that, I think he sometimes gets a little protective of Gen when out and about and being asked for pics, which is as it should be. such a sweety, I'm still so glad you got to meet them though. What a cool experience :)

I end up handwaving and pointing at things, it's kinda hilarious, if you're not me!

[quickreaver.livejournal.com]

Aw, so much happy, Amb!

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

Yes yes! :D

[heavenli24.livejournal.com]

Loved reading your fandom experiences :).

I've been involved in various fandoms for a number of years, but SPN is the first one that I've really got involved in personally :). Before SPN, I was very private in fandom (my first fandom, I completely lurked for 5 years, never interacting and not alerting a single soul to my presence there!) and never would have considered actually meeting other fans in real life or even letting them know my real identity, but in the last couple of years since I started watching, the Supernatural family, with its incredible conventions and lovely, friendly people, not to mention the massive social media influence that has become so prevalent now, my life has changed so much and I've made some wonderful friends through it :).

I'm really looking forward to the meet-up in London this weekend :). It will be great to see you guys again and to meet some new people too :).

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

I never really knew fandoms existed before SPN, and I certainly wouldn't have imagined the kind of community we have going here now, it's so good!

[heavenli24.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the community here is amazing, especially with Facebook groups and Twitter now, as well as places like LJ communities.

My first fandom was back in 1999 and the fandom consisted of mailing lists, personal fan websites (hosted by Geocities!), archives of completed fics (which you had to send to the admins to be posted), and a couple of Yahoo!Groups. We barely even had dial-up internet then, so I could only spend a few minutes online every day because we were charged by the minute.

I got all my fanfic updates by email - the new chapters were just sent straight to my hotmail inbox from Yahoo!Groups - and if I wanted to leave feedback on stories, I had to either sign someone's 'guest book' or I had to send them a personal email via a 'Feedback' button on their website, so there was no real community feel or group discussion. I never had the guts to leave any feedback (I barely even knew how to write emails back then), so my fandom life was spent saving new chapters to floppy disk (I could only get maybe 8 chapters of a story on one disk), transferring them to my personal desktop PC which had no internet connection, and reading everything offline :P.

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

Ah floppy disks...I've still got some and have no idea why I'm keeping them as I don't have a computer that can read them any more!