A Cloud of Nerdom

It's the day after July 4th. Most people are nursing firework hangovers, real hangovers, and some are even dragging themselves to work. I'm one of the ones who was able to somehow go to bed before fireworks started and woke up bright and early even though I didn't have to go to work. Consequently, I've spent my morning in a cloud of nerdy working out. In other words I was catching  up on Nerdist podcasts that I have I missed while running/walking through the woods for close to three hours. My favorite out of all the Nerdist podcasts that I listened to was the one featuring Misha Collins.

For those of you who don't know, Misha plays the character of Castiel on Supernatural (aka my favorite show out of the Whedony world). On this podcast not only does he go into his experience of the 6 years on Supernatural but also a worldwide scavenger hunt that he's created called GISHWES. Now I've heard of this via twitter before but I never new the magnitude of this scavenger hunt. Basically over 150k people around the world spend a week doing crazy tasks, documenting it, and sending it in to the GISHWES judges. For example one task was to have an "awkward first date" with a mannequin operated by someone in all black. Yeah - next year I'm thinking I might have to get involved in this. Then at the end all the top winners were invited to a castle (yeah a CASTLE) in Scotland for a weekend with Misha and the other GISHWES sponsors.

As cool as GISHWES is, the thing that stuck out the most in this podcast was what they were talking about when it comes to Fan Fiction. Most of you know in some way or another was Fan Fiction is: fans who write their own story lines for shows/books/movies/etc. What I learned on this podcast were two things. First was the difference between cannon and non-canon fan fiction. Cannon fan fiction is when you follow the same ideas/plots of the production and non cannon would be making up your own. An example of non-cannon would be slash fiction (which involves romantically involving characters that otherwise wouldn't be, usually involving same-sex relationships). The second thing I learned was what the first evidence of slash fiction was actually from Star Trek: Captain Kirk and Spock.     

Now of course it's time to expand the nerdiness that others see and confess to you all: I write fan fiction. Most of mine would be considered cannon as I follow closely with the plots but I throw in my own characters (though some would argue that this in itself makes it non-cannon). My productions of choice range from books to movies to shows. The full list of my fan fiction is below and most of it no one has ever read. So I leave you this morning thrown into my cloud of nerdom with the following fan fiction series I write/have written:

• Supernatural
• Harry Potter (books)
• LOTR (books)
• Buffy
• Angel
• Firefly
• Veronica Mars
• Four Brothers
• Charmed
• Friday Night Lights (movie)
• Scarpetta (books)
• Boy Meets World
• One Tree Hill

Image Courtesy of techcircuit.net of Chris Hardwick from Nerdist Podcast.