Fopinions February: First Fandom

[extrapenguin]

Today's Fopinions February is for maggie33! I was asked to talk about my first fandom. But first, two things:

1. space_swap sign-ups have started! They'll be ongoing until next week's Sunday, but please sign-up early if you can.
2. That Guardian post on the cast list is ... started. I wanted to check episode 1 to get one person's name, but ended up rewatching + screencapping alot, oops.

Now, without further ado: My first fandom qua fandom was David Weber's Honor Harrington series, a very loyalty kink-y MilSF book series where the author holds some hilarious/terrible opinions that seep through into the writing but writes an engaging battle scene nonetheless. While he is surprisingly okay with remembering that black people exist and putting women in his space military, there are zero queer people. However! There was one place where he specifically compared two dudes to an actual canon (het) couple, and those two dudes were pretty shippy in any case, so I went and googled.

Lo and behold, I found philomytha's A Commissioner's Duty, which was shipfic for the pair I'd been googling about. As I'd had some brushes with fandom beforehand*, I wasn't completely lost, and eventually ended up diving into AO3 and then DW and then diversifying my fandom portfolio. The rest is history.

(This post's icon from the French cover art for Flag in Exile, which is an amazing piece of art. The French cover arts are in general awesome, eg this one for Honor Among Enemies. Especially compared with the typical Baen cover art, lol.)

* Starting with writing fanfic of Walking With Dinosaurs at the age of 5-ish, and including squeeing over some now-forgotten animes together with friends in high school.

Comments

[asya_ana]

Ooh goodie!! I love love love that you are including the Chinese characters for both the actor and the character, pinyin both with and without tones. And an annotation!

Also I was working on a fic yesterday and needed to know the names of 2 very minor characters and I was like... I suffered. Because they weren't even listed on IMDB.

This is a huge gift.

[extrapenguin]

You're welcome! The original wish was for an annotated list that told who those random characters were, instead of just the name. I chose to include the hanzi because that's how the characters and actors are actually named; pinyin is just a transcription.

Which two characters? I might be able to help, if you haven't already found their names.

[asya_ana]

Thanks so much for the offer! I did find them, but it was a PITA. Having a list would have made it much easier, and I'm sure I would consult such a thing frequently \o/

[extrapenguin]

Actually, since I have reached the limit of people I recall offhand or wrote about in my notes – were they any of these people listed below? (Feel free to PM me with the description if you don't want to spoil your fic in public.)

高天宇 Gao Tianyu Gāo Tiānyǔ (宁桓宇 Ning Huanyu)
谈啸 Tan Xiao Tán Xiào (陈伟栋 Chen Weidong)
王子强 Wang Ziqiang Wáng Zǐqiáng (贾东东 Jia Dongdong)
家辉 Jia Hui Jiā Huī (李严 Li Yan)
季小白 Ji Xiaobai Jì Xiǎobái (买龙 Mai Long)
来苏 Lai Su Lái Sū (吉志威 Ji Zhiwei)
丁顿 Ding Dun Dīng Dùn (赵俊伟 Zhao Junwei)
小全 xiao-Quan xiǎo-Quán (全康伟 Quan Kangwei)
郑中原 Zheng Zhongyuan Zhèng Zhōngyuán (高贵根 Gao Guigen)
郑意 Zheng Yi Zhèng Yì (许烁 Xu Shuo)
高劲风 Gao Jingfeng Gāo Jìngfēng (周杰 Zhou Jie)
包老三 Bao Laosan Bāo Lǎosān (马斯 Ma Si)
安松 An Song Ān Sōng (许家程 Xu Jiacheng)
丹丹 Dandan Dāndān (刘家辰 Liu Jiachen)
波比 Bo Bi Bō Bǐ (胡博 Hu Bo)
小杰 xiao-Jie xiǎo-Jié (李信鹏 Li Xinpeng)
卫蓝 Wei Lan Wèi Lán (张蓝心 Zhang Lanxin)
吕织 Lü Zhi Lǚ Zhī (杨雪莹 Yang Xueying)
刘浪 Liu Lang Liú Làng (孙秋生 Sun Qiusheng)
金浩 Jin Hao Jīn Hào (程魏 Cheng Wei)
朱豪 Zhu Hao Zhū Háo (窦全忠 Dou Quanzhong)
孔鲸 Kong Jing Kǒng Jīng (李佳伟 Li Jiawei)
郑大钱 Zheng Daqian Zhèng Dàqián (吴宣 Wu Xuan)
茵茵 Yinyin Yīnyīn (王心予 Wang Xinyu)
米露 Mi Lu Mǐ Lù (黄雅洁 Huang Yajie)

Anyone else who recalls who these people are is free to reply as well.

[asya_ana]

Unfortunately not. :( Maybe you could crowd-source it in a G Doc and share with sid_guardian/Discord? I'll try to keep my ears open when I'm watching 23+

[extrapenguin]

I'll attach the list to a post here once I've rewatched a few more episodes for names! I have suspicions about who a few of these people might be/which episodes they come from, but must confirm.