Yet I stumbled into a number of online communities that were more than welcoming at the time, and have changed shape, some radically, some less so, since then.
Seibertron.com is one of them, of course, for which I later became news staff, and have been for the best part of the past five years (holy shit). Twitter, Facebook groups, convention crews, are examples of others.
I have since become News Administrator, have met and keep in touch with professionals in the toy and comics industries, work behind the scenes at a number of Transformers-based events, and spend a lot more of the time I don't really have on something I find myself not always fully invested in.
I've dabbled in all of them; I have immersed myself, truly, in none.
If you've been active online in talks surrounding general science fiction material in the past year (from comic book movies to Star Wars to Transformers, too, though not as much) you might have encountered people discussing the difference between curative and creative fandom, denoting two different ways to enjoy and - dare I say it? - consume media which is part of a franchise. Curative fandom is the part more easily associated with 'wiki' style attention, curating an interest for information, references, knowledge seen as a collection of facts and trivia, assimilating the media offered by creators (official or not) of the franchise. Creative fandom is, on the other hand, the more hands-on interaction with a franchise: expressing your interest not necessarily through knowledge but generating new content, often unofficial, such as custom work, fan art, fan fiction, fan events, videos, shorts, even sh**posting, why not. Neither is the better way, of course, and neither is wrong, though both receive scorn from the other side despite a lot of fans finding themselves somewhere in between the two.
