When listing five of the authors whom I most admired in the early years of the
X-Men movie fandom - the ones whose work I am most likely to recommend to viewers experiencing those first movies for the first time - I ended up sourcing some links from fanfiction.net and LiveJournal, because some of these authors had their Moments before AO3 became the fandom hub that it is today. Also, I'm referring to all of these authors by the gender pronouns that they used when I knew them; if anybody has more recent information, please feel free to share it.
1. AndrasteAndraste’s love for and fascination with Charles Xavier – not as a saint or a monster but as a well-intentioned, flawed individual – captured my attention even when I still thought I hated that character. She’s written in both the movieverse and the comicverse, but my favorite of her works will always be “Ten Thousand Candles,” a character study of Charles after the events of
X2.
2. MinisinooI talked about Min’s
An Accidental Interception of Fate in
a previous TT5 entry, as an example of what make her writing exceptional. (I will refrain from making the obvious “X” puns. You’re welcome.) Her characters and their world feel multidimensional and immediate, whether she’s writing high drama and action (which find their way into
Accidental Interception, as well as
Climb the Wind, Special, and
Grail), or slice-of-life vignettes like “Of Teletubbies and Mutants on Saturday Mornings.” The latter is not only funny and sweet, but also stands as an interesting time capsule of fannish attitudes toward queer interpretations of characters.
3. Penknife(Most of this author’s work is locked to AO3 users, so you need to have an account and be logged in if you want to read it.)
All of Penknife’s fic is wonderful, but I am usually most likely to recommend “Children’s Crusade” and “Twenty Random Facts about Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.” (Are “Twenty Random Facts” fanfics still a thing? I’ve always liked that format.) Both works – like Min’s – portray daily life at Xavier’s School in really compelling, believable ways. She’s another one of the writers who made me appreciate Charles as a character (and Charles/Erik as a pairing) more than I might have otherwise.
4. SionnainSionnain sold me on Magneto/Rogue, a pairing that I would never have considered if we hadn’t gotten to know each other. When I watched
X-Men ’97, in which that pairing is very much canon, I hoped that she felt some lingering sense of vindication.
5. Trismegistus/Vagabond SalEighteen-year-old Nevanna was absolutely stunned by this author’s command of descriptive language and dialogue, which I might have tried – with varying degrees of success – to emulate. Of the stories that I’ve been able to find,
Wayward, which was actually co-written, was the first one that I remember reading;
Infinite Regress was the most intellectually engaging and made the most intriguing use of a character from the comics, and
Caducity (to which I should add a content warning for physical and mental decline due to illness) show how skilled and inventive Trismegistus could be when writing telepathy.
What are some of the most memorable stories from your early days in fandom?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
