2025 Snowflake Challenge Day 10

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Challenge #10

In your own space, talk about one of your fandom firsts.

So, I am re-wording this as 'In your own space, talk about one of your fannish firsts.'

I have stated before that I did not understand the concept of fandom in the sense of a group of people who are interested in one phenomenon (piece of media or literature) and make and share transformative works about that phenomenon until I was 36. My interest in fandom then began as a celebrity crush on Benedict Cumberbatch based on his performance in the BBC Sherlock TV series but Cumberbatch was not my first celebrity crush.

My first celebrity crush was about 25 years earlier, maybe around the age of 9 or 10 or 11, and it was a boy named Alasdair Gillis who performed in a kids' sketch show called "You Can't Do that on Television." Originally created in Canada, it was picked up by Nickelodeon in the early days of cable TV. It was full of gross kid humor. There was a diner, and a nasty cook named Bart served up hamburger with boogers in them. And if one of the performers said 'I don't know' green slime would come down on them suddenly.

I wrote my first fan letter to him and received an autographed glossy photo in return. And that was that until Cumberbatch many, many years later. I can't remember liking any celebrity between the two.