Ageing in Fannish years

Again stealing things from other people's memes, I found a topic from this post about fannish growing up where the poster is asked to write about how life and age and experiences has changed his/her taste in fannish stuff.

It fascinated me enough that I have to write about it myself.

I probably have been fannish my whole life, because I remember obsessing about books and Chinese drama like Justice Bao, but the age in which I remember being fannish in a significant life-style changing way was when I was 12. That was when the wave of Japanese manga/anime started becoming prevalent in my country, probably starting with Sailor Moon. They were all pre-dubbed/translated into Chinese.

The interesting thing about being where I live is that the Taiwanese version of translations came out the fastest. That meant that I got translations in a) my mother tongue, b) with the traditional script that I wasn't as familiar with, because I grew up with the simplified form of Chinese.

That was why when I first became "fannish", I was predominantly reading and writing (!!!) in Chinese. I wrote my first fic in Chinese. I also somehow managed to overcome the barrier and actually read traditional script (when I learned simplified), which is still pretty useful now. (I don't know why I didn't extend that power to Japanese boo hoo).

( Watch me morph over the years! )