Biscia

Describing my fannish history? Well that's going to be complicated because I had never had one since two/three years ago, so I don't know where to start. I was aware of and followed fandoms from afar since a bit earlier, tho I didn't participate or interact with other fans just yet. Just like basically 90% of the younger fans of this millennium, I had an instagram where I followed people who made music edits of tv series, but nothing more.

The tipping point for me was Good Omens. I read the book I think in the summer of 2018?, or maybe earlier, and I instantly fell in love both with the story and with the fandom. That's when I made my first fandom related blog and when I started posting my own content, and you know what? It was fucking amazing! There were people --actual, real people all over the world!-- interacting with my content, laughing at my jokes, sharing my headcanons and agreeing or disagreeing with them. All of this was entirely new territory for me, so I was already psyched, but what really changed everything for me was the Chaos Crew.
Now, nobody calls it that anymore, but it was a group of mutuals over on tumblr who were extremely active in the GO fandom two years ago. As a reference, since GO is literally everywhere now, it was that weird period when we started hearing some actual news about the TV series that made the already existing fans stir, but it was still such a small fandom that it felt more like a cult, and if you said "Crowley" people around you would instinctively go "Supernatural".

And I... I admit I was a little bit lonely back then. I had just changed school and I knew one (1) person in my new class, my friends had all left for the other school in the inner city area, an environment completely different from the ones we grew up in (we're countryside kids) and by the time we reconnected they had changed so much they were irrecognizable: some for the better, some into the same cruel people we always despised. It was unexpected. It was terrifying. It was... isolating and just plainly, bitterly sad.
So when I saw this group of internet friends making ridicolous headcanons and AUs for nobody's sake except for having fun in that silly, loud way that at first makes you blink, but then makes you go "God, I wish that were me", I thought you know what? Fuck it: I made a joke about their latest crack AU (it was weed omens, of course) and I tagged them, mentioning in the tags how much I'd love to join them in their shenanigans because I thought they were super cool people. Y'know, on a spur of the moment.

Best. Decision. Ever.

They basically said "That was funny, but please don't ever call us cool we're just a bunch of idiots, you're welcome to tag along" and then I did! I started talkig with them on a daily basis, making dumb hcs of my own and sharing more of my own stuff. I started writing meta. I started posting art. I never wrote fic, unfortunately, the jump from Italian to English is still too big for me now, but I made an AO3 account, I started leaving comments on other people's works and making friends there. In fact, the reason I started posting on here is that one of these mutuals left tumblr for other sites, dreamwidth being one of them, and I didn't want to lose contact (hi Mir!).
Since my first experience with fandom had been a great one, it gave me the courage to try to join the one for the Sherlock Holmes stories, a fandom I'd been a silent member of for even longer than GO. I got to know some of the biggest fic writers around, I posted some art of my own, I joined for my first year at Holmestice and had the pleasure to draw a gift for one of my favourite artists in the fandom, and now we follow each other and chat about Holmes adaptations and how frustrasting it is to work at a 10h+ drawing that only gets a handful of notes because people don't reblog art anymore.

So fandom has been an incredible experience for me, and I'm glad I can hang around all these incredible people. I'm glad I went from a scared queer "not cis" teen in fuck-knows-where Italy to discussing how gender identity and sexuality intersect and interact, from being aware of Jewish people in a "they were persecuted in ww2" sense and nothing more to having a basic grasp of their holidays and recognising antisemitic dog-whistles at first glance. From being disinterested in politics to informing myself on human rights activism and the concept of mutual aid. Fandom made me a more mature and educated person through the people I met, and it sure as hell made me a happier one, too. (You don't need to worry about my social life: I have a group of friends in this school too, now. Turns out the one girl I knew really loves fandom as well, so we get along tremendously ^-^).