merydian

I first got super into fandom because of a show that will always be special to me, The Secret Saturdays. I was about 9 when it dropped and I was OBSESSED with no one else to talk to about it! I would think up stories for it in my head as I fell asleep and just reread the Wikipedia page in lieu of actual discussion. Eventually I found other people who liked it on Youtube through their AMVs and other really creative projects! One person in particular (Mytokyokitty, an absolute legend) had a bunch of vids featuring fanart of their OC and other people's OCs, and linked to their DeviantARTs, so... I joined DeviantART in 2011.

DeviantART was where I really started getting to experience the social scene of fandom because it was all in one place: journal entries, art posts, polls, etc. I made SO many amazing friends and with their encouragement I kept on learning how to make better art and writing. I'm still in touch with a few of these people 14 years later, wildly. I do miss a lot of the others and I miss the overall environment of the dA fandom at its height, but the impacts of it will always stick with me. And I still ADORE the show it was all for! I've been slowly rewatching it yet again and revamping old fanon for it as I cyclically do, and making new lovely friends each time, but I've moved from FFNET and dA to AO3 and Tumblr/Dreamwidth. 

Some other notable periods were when I joined Tumblr in 2014 and got really into the Legend of Korra fandom on there, which prompted me to dive deeper into art for Kyalin and Suvira ships... andddd introduced me to some ship discourse toxicity due to the nature of those ships, but we won't linger on that. Even though I was motivated with art, I hit a wall with vidding and writing. Vidding was an issue because Windows Movie Maker and Youtube downloads weren't really cutting it anymore, lol, but I got so into Alex/Astra from Supergirl in 2016 I made myself adapt. My fanfic block was because of low confidence in my writing, which makes sense because I was so young! But I got into a few old sci-fi shows without much of a modern fandom out there--Earth 2 and Terra Nova--so to make the things I wanted to see (fics, gifsets, vids, art), I had to be the one to make them. I started posting fic again in 2017, got some kind responses, and kept on with it.

I don't always have the time for fanon creation these days (part of why I'm trying to hang out on Dreamwidth more is to focus more on inspiration than doomscrolling), but I'm so grateful fandom has let me meet so many wonderful people AND that it encouraged me to teach myself SO many cool skills that I probably wouldn't have stuck with otherwise. :) 

I want to include some of my old works here out of appreciation for where I started, but I also very much to not expect anyone else to look through them. That said, the videos below map out my vidding milestones! I started compiling this with the intention of only including a few to see progress, but it turns out I have a LOT of videos I've forgotten about so this is still... a small fraction of them... 

• The Secret Saturdays Munya AMV from 2012, made for a friend I'm still close to! Had to reupload because Youtube has it partially blocked now... screenrecording from iTunes was not my brightest idea. This is the earliest one I have access to still since I deleted others out of copyright paranoia and didn't save them first, but still a pretty early one for me! (I mostly remember making Elfen Lied AMVs before this and making nightcore edits too.)
• Alex/Astra fanvid from 2016, focused on (re-)learning the tech side of it all so it's not very engaging
• Earth 2 | Curing Devon from 2016, a fanfic-type edit fixing the ending through a Julia/Devon lens which meant spending a summer studying the show to a frankly insane extent 
• Terra Nova | Wash/Mira from 2017, a ship video for two characters who really never interacted, which meant spending another summer mining through the actresses' other work 
• The Secret Saturdays - Sometimes Spiders from 2017, my favorite of the memey edits I made when I rejoined the fandom
• Sanctuary | Helen Magnus from 2018, started learning coloring, putting effort into my thumbnails, and I think masking practice but masking didn't make it into this 
• Houseki no Kuni | It's Alright from 2018, the first actual AMV with anime I made in years
• Nowhere King/Mysterious Woman - Story of the Phantom from 2021. This one pisses me off because I spent HALF A DAY ON IT AND IT GOT OVER 250K VIEWS. I made it because of a joke a friend made! It wasn't even good and yet it became my most popular edit on my channel by hundreds of thousands of views! What the hell! I uhhh kinda got uncomfortable with all the attention my channel got from it so I had to reupload it to Vimeo to share here. 
• Seventh Sister/Kanan Jarrus from 2022, expanding into effects with a lot more file knowledge and control over software + moved channels. This started my intention of never posting publicly to Youtube since I had gotten so many rude comments over the years I felt it would be better to only post to AO3 while hosting on Youtube. 
• Yellowjackets | Animal, from 2023 more in-line with the style I started with and prefer :) Also my first time participating in Festivids, though not at all my first time vidding for an exchange.

I still edit but haven't had time to actually finish anything I've started in forever. Hoping to change that with another go at Festivids this year, haha.