Prisca's Home

Talk about what has improved in your life thanks to fandom.

Oh, that's a great challenge. Just give me a moment to sort out all the thoughts crossing my mind.

Being in fandom helped me overstepping my lines once. I am a very introverted, not very sociable 'girl' (okay, the girl I left behind a long time ago, but woman sounds so lame), but fandom helped me to open up against others. I chatted on various internet platforms, met people in real life, and finally visited my first convention.

It's about 20 years ago that my fandom life started, but I am still in contact with some online friends, even when our fandom interests began to differ. My best RL friend is Baumberta (her nickname is based on the German name for Treebeard); we meet now and then a year and go on vacation together once a year.

What has also improved over the years is
1. my English skills
I am from Germany, and I learned English at school. When joining Livejournal (my first English fandom forum = I was sooo nervous, and barely dared to post or comment. But people were nice, so I got more and more self-confident. I started to read fanfiction and comment on it. Finally, I began to write myself.

Today, I know my English was awful back then (Thank you to everyone who stayed around anyway) This is about 20 years ago now, and without even noticing it, my English improved with every fic I read and/or posted. Today, my English is (hopefully) better then before, but I am still learning more with every day.

2. my writing skills / my graphic skills
Similar to my English, when I started writing fanfiction and sometime later creating icons and other graphics, I was a complete newbie who barely knew what she was doing. And even if I've long accepted that I will never be a famous writer/artist, I still love doing it, and I hope to improve a bit more with every year.