Five Fandom Friday: 5 Times I Totally Fangirled (On the Inside)

That is how my fangirlisms roll. I'm also just not into,  like, going out? And going to places where I'd meet famous people? Or meeting famous people? Or making a spectacle of myself? But, y'know, we've all had those moments. And that's what this week's 5 Fandom Friday is all about.

5. Seeing Throne of Glass in my local Barnes & Noble

The Throne of Glass series was picked up (and selling like hotcakes!) before I really dipped a toe into the book blogosphere. I'm still not much of a book blogger, to be honest—I followed a few from #ArmchairBEA but I don't think I picked up any followers so I am mostly peeping in and creeping on all y'all—but more than one of the blogs I read (that are totally unrelated to each other, and to me, except that I read them) has lost their shit over this series.

Throne of Glass started life on FictionPress (LOL guys remember the 90s? Remember FictionPress?) and became a thing on the Internet, and that translated into a real-world money-making thing, and that's cool. But that's not why I fangirled over seeing it; I had never read it on FP and hadn't been waiting for like a billion years for it to come out in dead tree form.

I was excited because Sarah J. Maas was a fellow ENG CRW classmate from college and holy shit you guys someone I know and like wrote a book and published it and it's making megabucks and now the whole world gets to know and like her, too!

Did I just name drop? Yeah, I guess, and it's the only time in my life I'll ever get to name drop, probably, so whatever. I DO WHAT I WANT. I'm also legit happy for her and proud of her because she was definitely one of the best writers in our cohort. (Confession: when it was her group's turn to workshop something, I always put hers off until last, like dessert, because there was a lot of other stuff that was...less good. Her work was eminently readable in a way that a lot of my classmates' wasn't. SHE WOULD BE TOO NICE TO SAY SO HERSELF, but I'm an objective third party, so I can say it!) If you had me pick someone out of the group whose runaway literary success would not make me flip a table, she would have been on a short list—maybe even on the top, depending on my mood.


4. Seeing Joel Hodgson's "Riffing Myself" live

Mystery Science Theater is my one and only fandom. I'll be honest: I do not like fandom. I really don't. I don't like how inherently repetitive and unimaginative and consumerist most of it is. ("Shots fired!" I guess.) Even the word grates on me. Fandom. But the one and only thing that really triggers my obsessive fannish tendencies is Mystery Science Theater 3000. It made an impression on me at a young age, it did not grow embarrassing or cringe-inducing as I got older, and it is directly responsible for some of the most important stuff in my life. I may or may not have put off my departure to Sweden just so I could see Hodgson when he brought his show to my tiny college town.

For some extra bucks I could have had a chance to meet and greet, but what could I say? Did I need a photo with him? No, not really. I was just happy to have shared a room with him.


3. Seeing Ben Folds Five in concert (finally!)

I don't do live music that often. I should now that I live in a city and don't have drive myself places and park and so on, but I'm also broke!

I'm also a touch superstitious. One time in high school I decided to go for broke and purchase tickets to a Ben Folds Five show, only the tickets I bought that I swear were for a venue in Philadelphia on one day were actually for a venue in Atlantic City, NJ the day before and thus the gods laughed in my face. From that point on I was a little superstitious about buying tickets for any live performance—which worked out okay, since my hometown has one of the largest free music festivals in the East Coast every year and I can get more than my fill of great bands for free—but then when I heard Ben Folds was coming back to my neck of the woods I decided to try again. And I'm so glad I did.

I mentioned before that I usually fangirl on the inside. This was the one and only time I fangirled on the outside. When I saw him walk out on stage (I still remember the shirt he was wearing: a royal crayon blue) some bizarre, uncontrollable shriek fled out of my mouth, unbidden. Maybe that was the curse of the wrong tickets being lifted. Who knows?


2. Seeing a live Beakman's World show when I was, like, 10

Sorry Bill Nye, but Beakman was the TV science entertainer of my childhood. Well, him and Mr. Wizard. I remember getting so pumped when we had a "Mr. Wizard" assembly in elementary school, only to be disappointed that it wasn't actually TV's Mr. Wizard; I was afraid it was going to happen again with Beakman. But when my dad took me and my brother to the Discovery Science Center (now The Da Vinci Center), it was actually Beakman! It wasn't quite as whiz-bang-fantastical as the TV show was, but I was enthralled and I remember being disappointed I hadn't brought anything to be autographed, then wondering if he would sign my shoe. But we didn't stay for the autographs line so it was a moot point.


1. When my boyfriend saw Quentin Tarantino in a comic book shop in Stockholm

Sadly, said comic book store has since shuttered (it's hard to compete with the juggernaut that is SF Bokhandeln), but back in the day JV actually shared breathing space with Quentin Tarantino! On his (JV's) birthday!! He told me about it and he said that apparently Tarantino comes there a lot, enough that his boss was sort of nonplussed by it, and so he offered to tell QT that his girlfriend (that is, me) was a huge fan and also to ask him a couple questions, but I guess Tarantino was busy or something because he never came back to the store on that trip (at least, not while my boyfriend was working).

That happened when I was still a big fan of Tarantino's work. These days I'm a little less impressed and a little more disappointed, but back then that was a HUGE DEAL.

Are there any times where you've fanned the fuck out??