I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.
This week's topic isn't strictly book related — it's about fandoms we're part of. For me, I'd say the line between "This is a thing I like" and "I identify with this fandom" is whether I'd be willing to spend my own money on something that references or represents the fandom (e.g., a T-shirt, a decal, a boxset). So for example, while I enjoy watching the show Sherlock, I am not at all part of the insanely huge fandom that has sprung up around it.
Here are some fandoms I am part of (or was):
1. Belgariad/Malloreon
I think I've mentioned before that my friends and I were such big fans of this series in middle school that we assigned everyone in our group a different character and one Halloween all dressed up as our respective characters. It's been years since I've read the books (I need to embark on a reread!) but I've successfully gotten a number of other people to read them, including my normally non-reading husband. Also, these books forever ruined me on most fantasy because of how high they set my standards.
2. Doctor Who
My husband and I started watching this series (from the 2005 reboot) after we moved out here in 2012, and we haven't looked back. Two years in a row now we've gone to see the Christmas special in theaters, which I highly recommend if you've never done it before. For our son's first Halloween we dressed him as the TARDIS and went as the Doctor and River Song.
3. Harry Potter
I have no shame in being on this bandwagon. I didn't read most of the books until college (I'd read the first two when they came out and didn't fall in love enough to seek out any more), and it was surprisingly my husband who got me to pick them up again. I've reread them multiple times now, and I proudly wear the Ravenclaw shirt I got for Christmas. My special reading area has our hardcover set on a shelf above my reading chair.
4. Homestar Runner
I was a big Homestar Runner fan in high school — I owned multiple shirts and at least one Strong Bad CD, and I think I might have had decals on my car window but I can't remember for sure. My friend and I were in a web design class second semester of our senior year, and our semester project was a Homestar Runner-themed website that we had a lot of fun building.
5. KonMari
Yep, I'm one of the weirdos who followed the process in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up to a T and fell in love with it (also known as becoming a "Konvert"). I just recently had to pare down the number of related Facebook groups I'm part of. (Irony?) I've recommended this book to so many people, and I got the sequel (Spark Joy) as soon as it was published last year.
6. Lie to Me (R.I.P.)
It's pretty rare that I watch TV, and it's ever rarer that I become obsessed with a specific TV show, but this was one of the few. I knew it was doomed from the beginning, because Fox kept changing the time of the week it was on, randomly skipping weeks and even showing two episodes out of order. By the time it got to the third and final season, they'd abandoned the cleverness that defined the first season and just made it super-violent and repetitive. Nonetheless, I watched it until the end and spent way too much time on the TWoP forums for the show speculating about whether the two main characters were ever going to get together.
7. Nerdfighteria
This is probably the fandom for which I am most committed and which I most consider a big part of my identity. I started watching the vlogbrothers videos in the summer of 2007, which at the time was considered "jumping on the bandwagon" since the "real" Nerdfighters had been watching before Hank was featured on the front page of YouTube. That seems hilarious now that they've been going for 10+ years and generated a whole new bandwagon with The Fault in Our Stars. The fandom tends to attract middle school and high school students as new fans, which can make me feel old within the fandom sometimes but also can be a fun way for us (my husband and I) to bond with new freshmen in our residence hall.
8. Pemberley Digital
Few web series can match the perfection that was The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, though I also really enjoyed Emma Approved. I own the boxset of LBD and I keep wanting to host a LBD marathon in our hall, but I'm afraid no one would show up to watch the whole 7 1/2 hours with me. Someday it will happen! Unfortunately it doesn't seem like Pemberley Digital is planning to do any more projects, but who knows — maybe the right story will come along.
9. Settlers of Catan
In our board game-loving family, this is the game we come back to most consistently. I know I'm not as hardcore a fan as some (I've never played any of the variations other than the expansion pack), but when I thought about fandom-related merchandise I thought of the Catan onesie a friend got for our son when he was born and the Catan-like serving dishes with associated cookbook we got our friends as a housewarming gift. I love how every game is different but the basics are pretty simple once you understand them.
Which fandoms do you identify with?
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