The Nerdy Girlie and SuperSpaceChick are running a two-month long community building project ( ? ) called Five Fandom Friday!  You know I love to play these wicked games and I couldn’t resist joining in on the fun!  If you do, too, please comment a link to your post as well!  I look forward to seeing everyone’s creative answers!

The first topic of tackling is Five Gateway Fandoms That Made Me Who I Am Today.  What is a gateway fandom?  I’m really not sure, actually.  Which makes me all the more excited to read everyone else’s answers!  Here’s what I though of when I interpreted the question:

1.  Historical Fiction  when I was a kid, I was obsessed with the American Girl books.  I loved reading about the past, and, when I was ten, I begged my parents to take me on vacation to Colonial Williamsburg.  I think my parents believed that when I grew up, I’d run away from home to become a historical re-enactor there or at some Renaissance festival.  Today, I give ghost tours for a living!  It’s pretty much the closest you can get to living the childhood dream!  Er, with all the benefits of indoor plumbing.  My fascination with the past has probably had the most impact on my life today.

2.  Harry Potter  …and I have the same birthday!  No kidding!  I actually totally did this one wrong, reading the third book (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) FIRST, then listening to the first two books on tape and later that summer, attending the midnight release party for the fourth book!  True story:  Harry Potter is the reason for my deep and abiding fear of spoilers.  Spoilers ahead, FYI!  After the midnight release party for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I came home, heated up some leftover pizza and cracked my copy open…and it fell open to a random page in the back, and my eyes lighted upon the phrase “…Dumbledore’s grave…” and I dropped to my knees and wailed in agony!  Ruined!  The whole book, ruined!  Since then, I have a terrible fear of spoilers of any kind.

3.  The Twilight Zone  is where I grew up.  Literally!  I come from the same small town as Rod Serling, the show’s creator: Binghamton, NY!  And many of the episodes are based on Binghamton.  Which means that, as a proud Binghamtonian, whenever SyFy channel is showing a marathon, you must watch even if you already know all the episodes by heart.  Yes, even if Talky Tina gives you the ultimate willies.  And don’t get me started on that hitchhiker!  My love of The Twilight Zone has made me appreciate good storytelling, GOOD Sci-Fi, and really really shitty special effects.  Hello, classic Doctor Who, I’m looking at you!  Which sort of brings us to…

4.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer  is indirectly the reason I chopped my long, long hair off in eighth grade.  Buffy looked great with a bob, what can I say?  When the show premiered, my friends and I were hooked.  We’d all gather at one home (usually the home whose mom made the best snacks, nachos FTW) and follow the foibles and fights of the sassy teenage heroine like crack.  After Buffy graduated high school, I fell off the bandwagon a bit until my own sophomore year of college, when I discovered how to steal cable from the downstairs neighbour and began watching seasons 4-7 in syndication early in the mornings before classes. 

Play along with me, The Nerdy Girlie, and SuperSpaceChick for the next couple months!  I want to see what everyone else comes up with!  And can you believe only ONE WEEK until Comic Con??  Here are the next topics in line for discussion so you can study up and come prepared to class: