Introductions!

[narceus]

So you've found your way over to openingyourselfuptojoy , I see.  That's great!  We're thrilled to have you.  Welcome to our communal madness!

Of course, that's the thing about communities: they only work because of their members.  So go ahead, guys, and introduce yourselves here.  Meet some of the people you'll be tossing squee and ideas around with.  Let us know who you are.

Comments

my "Glee" story

[jakia]

/waves.

I made a dreamwidth account just for this community. Ya'll should feel special. ^_^

I watched my first episode of Glee in November of last year because I heard Darren Criss, who I followed with a mild interest thanks to StarKid, was going to be in it, and I wanted to see how he did. So I watched "Never Been Kissed" and had never been more confused in my life. Why were they singing? What was with the dancing? Don't these people have jobs?

But then I got a hold of the first season of Glee, and marathoned through it. At that point Glee had become my guilty pleasure--I watched it casually, mostly for the catchy musical numbers, and I didn't really think too much about it. It was only after "Prom Queen" that I realized that, oh crap, I care about these characters. I am invested in this story. How did this happen?

I didn't actually join the fandom until after "New York" aired, and it was mostly because I wanted to see if the rest of the world was as excited as I was over Sam and Mercedes dating. (Answer: they were, but not to the extent I was hoping.) So I read the whole two Samcedes fanfics that existed at that point, and was a happy person.

Then I got a job (where I still work now, actually) that involve long hours doing absolutely nothing in front of a computer, and what better way to past the time then by reading fanfiction? So I read every Glee fic I could get my hands on, and eventually got turned onto the amazing meta this community produces.

And suddenly this shallow, guilty-pleasure show I was watching for the catchy musical numbers? Wasn't so shallow anymore.

In fact, it was actually sort of brilliant.

I just hadn't been paying enough attention.

Re: my "Glee" story

[needs_more_green]

Yay! First intro post. :D

(We have a similar sort of "discovery of Glee" story, hee)

It is most good indeed to have you here!

[crown_of_weeds]

Ok, intros, I can do this. Really.

Yo! I'm weeds. I'm one of your modmins, and I'm kind of antisocial sometimes but you shouldn't take it personally because I basically love everyone and am incapable of disliking things. I'm just not so great with words and real-time communication, sometimes.

SO. I make vids, and I write ill-advised stories, and I like reading analysis and discovering how EVERY SECOND LINE on this show is a popculture reference. I'm obsessed with Glee's parallel addiction, and I can offer Thoughts on disability in Glee and broader pop culture because of reasons. I collect headcanons when I'm bored.

Ok, journey to Glee............I got into fandom last Januaryish, and I've watched from the start. It's fun, and I also like to use fandom as a way to study humans and pop culture and writing more generally. I'm odd like that; indulge me.

I like pictures better than words, kind of like the writers. First person who figures out how to make a gifset work here wins my undying love and affection.

[likeasouffle]

Gifset test:

[narceus]

I met Glee in the most out-of-order fashion ever.

I was in grad school during S1, and knew it existed, but was thoroughly skeptical. A good friend of mine swore it was awesome, did really interesting things with queer stuff and stereotypes and disability, and at one point, the whole lot of us watched an episode.

Of course, that episode happened to be Wheels. Without context...yeah, I raised my eyebrows at the "awesome with stereotypes and disability" thing. And then I more or less forgot about it for a year.

I had a couple of friends swearing it was a good show, I saw it pop up in various multifandom recs coms on LJ, and I was bored out of my mind one Saturday while cable was airing a marathon of all of S2, through Special Education. Episodes I missed when I left for dinner? NBK and The Substitute. Special Education was so confusing.

After that it was just...one big mish-mash of fic and downloaded episodes all at once, and the new S2 episodes as they started airing. I figured my interest would go away (I don't stay in fandoms for longer than a month or two, as a rule), ahahano. I wrote 'Harry Potter and the High School Glee Club' because the idea wouldn't leave me alone, and nobody noticed, but now I had written fic for this insane fandom. And people were having cool ideas. And I was curious.

Probably it all would've come to nothing if I hadn't started talking with Weeds, and then also Needsmoregreen and Naderegen, and spent all summer metaing obsessively. It turns out that the more I talk about something, the more ideas I get. And then there is endless chatfic and AU universes and meta and meta and meta. And then there's a com.

Apparently we're all doing them now!

[needs_more_green]

So hi hi, I used to be Needsmoregreen, but I recently "levelled up" and now will only be known as Needsmoredragons...
But really I'm Emily, and the Down Under (as in Australia...) mod for this comm!

I got into Glee in a similar way to a lot of people... in that I initially hated it. Right from what I saw of the Pilot, I was immediately under the impression that it was vapid and ridiculous, and looked into it no further to find out. (If I had ever decided to watch to the very end of the Pilot and seen Don't Stop Believin' then? I imagined things would have been rather different...) Apart from Sue and Kurt scenes, I never watched it again.

And, again like a lot of people, I only became a part of the fandom because Klaine happened, and because I was familiar with Darren. I'm pretty sure OS was the first episode I watched in full (before that I'd seen BICO and just assumed they were together).

But, of course, it became so much more than that for me when the show picked up after the mid-season hiatus. I got into The Meta Thing, and started talking to Weeds and Naderegen and Narceus and many amazing people. Did song meta and discovered things about colours during the hiatus--and obviously never stopped. Glee has inspired me to do a lot of things, and to be a lot of things--and hence I've kind of become That Kid In Your Year who can't stop going on about That Thing You Don't Hate But Also Don't Really Care About. :P

I fic/meta when able, but I'm also midway through my senior year (I hear everyone else calls it that) and hence absent or incredibly busy a lot of the time. I will likely talk about colours a predominant part of the time. A lot of the time I will just flail about everything everyone else says and does because everyone here is the most amazing ever.

[mimiheart]

Hi!

Me, singing something. And that was meant for kids, so, um, it's a little... silly. Less silly.

So, I do musical revues, but I hardly ever watch TV. So when Glee started, some of the other people in the group I do revues with said, "We HAVE to do 'Don't Stop Believing'!" And I'm totally confused because... well, usually we stick to songs from musicals. So they then inform me of this show called Glee that I apparently HAVE to watch. And then I'm on Cakewrecks, and they post the thumbless cake from one of the first few episodes, along with a link to Hulu. So I watched all of the episdes that had aired up to that point in one sitting. (I think it was only four.) And fell in love with it. But I was HEAVILY into Harry Potter fandom. And I can't multitask fandoms well, so I just made sure I watched each episode.

And then I started falling out of HP fandom... and I joined Young Justice fandom, and I still like it, but unlike HP fandom, it's fairly quiet, and I have this thing for hurt/comfort fic. And I read a fic that I found via someone I casually knew on a non-related comm at the beginning of summer that promised to be heavy on the comfort part of the h/c (which is where I like it... I want the comfort...) So then I devoured a ton of fic over the summer and started writing some.

I don't meta well. I have a headcanon idea and it pops out in a line or two on my lj. Also I'm a teacher, and my students found my lj, so I keep it locked. I'll friend anyone who isn't a student, though.

[likeasouffle]

Hello! I'm likeasouffle. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I was heavily involved in Buffy fandom under another name. I wrote fanfic and poems and songs and played Andrew Wells in a couple of RPs. (But now I can't find any of the stuff I wrote. Weird.) It took up embarrassingly large portions of my time and ended up becoming quite stressful, because I felt like people were always waiting for my replies in RPs and like I was constantly letting people down, and the time commitment wasn't worth the pleasure I got out of it anymore. So I quit. Especially since Buffy had been off the air for a few years and the fandom wasn't so active.

One day my partner was very excited over the pilot of Glee. He said it looked like it was going to be a really good, funny show about outcasts, and that I'd probably like the singing and dancing. Which I totally did. And then I waited and waited and waited for the rest of the episodes to come out. (It seemed to take a very long time.) And then I fell madly in love with Kurt, and wanted nothing more than for him to get a little action. And meanwhile my partner got more and more disappointed and annoyed with the show getting further from what it had looked like in the pilot.

During season two, my partner stopped watching, and I started saying "ZOMG WHO IS THIS DARREN CRISS PERSON AND WHY IS HE SO AWESOME?" (And I watched the Very Potter Musical and bought Human and watched ALL the live concert YouTube videos, but that's neither here nor there.) Ok back up a little. Because I remember seeing the Teenage Dream scene before the episode came out and thinking it HAD to be a fantasy sequence because there's absolutely no way Kurt is getting serenaded in public by a hot flirty guy and his synchronized step-touching choir of cute uniformed a cappella schoolboys. No. Way. But then it happened and it was awesome.

Then I realized Glee characters had taken over all my sexy fantasies, and I was assigning random fetishes to all of them (Blaine had a foot fetish, for example, and Kurt liked kitty play) and I was all "Hey, you know what was fun? Fanfic. That was totally fun." And the season ended and I wasn't distracted by actual episodes anymore, and my metamour encouraged my crazy plan to write stories about Blaine's foot fetish and Kurt's kitty tail and things. So I did, and I got comments! And I was all "I REMEMBER HOW ADDICTIVE COMMENTS ARE!" And season three started, and the smut continued, and I had many many feelings about Blaine and Dave and Kurt and Burt and Sebastian and Mike and Tina, and there we are.

Sometimes the show makes me frustrated, and sometimes fandom makes me frustrated, but I prefer being happy and having fun, so I tend to blissfully ignore the bad bits and focus on the hot people and the singing and dancing. Yay!

[mzminola]

Hello!

I wasn't into television when Glee first aired, and only really know about it through people who complained.

While season 2 was airing, I had a roommate who watched it. I caught pieces of episodes over her shoulder, and was quite confused, but also busy and just kind of ignored things.

Then this fall I was playing follow-the-links on some blogs, and came across some meta by crown_of_weeds, and got fascinated, and marathon'd the entire series to that point in late December.

Glee ate my brain. I looked for fanart, and fanfic, and started making notes for my own eventual fic, and reading meta, and found crown_of_weeds' journal again, and read more meta, and wrote meta...

I tend to lurk for a while before saying anything, but I made a Dreamwidth account because of this comm.

Hi!

[biichan]

I started watched Glee when it first came out, never got past Acafellas, and then the Klaine Kiss happened and I went and watched Original Song to see if they really WERE kissing as long as they were in the gifs. Then I started watching backwards in the episodes that were up on the site so I could get a feel for how shit changed over the year and a half and I kept watching until then end of S2.

I haven't seen much of S3 because of being busy with school--I've gone back to get a BS--but I try to keep up with stuff by following Weeds, Needs More Green, RM and a couple other people on tumblr.

(Reading Weeds' meta made me realize how cleverly Glee was put together, by the way. I am glad I discovered her stuff.)

Anyway, I like just reading people's meta thoughts and I get really frustrated by people who react to anything that the show does unless it's scenes for [Insert Favorite Ship Name Here] by getting pissed off and complaining and going LOLGlee. (I mean, dude, if you're watching a show only for your OTP and nothing else, you are probably doing it wrong.)

(I have a couple ideas for silly crossover fics that I may never write, but mostly I'm just hear to read what other people post.)

[yourtinseltinkerbell]

Hi! I'm Rebecca (amoralnostalgia over at LJ).

My descent into the world of Glee was gradual. My best friend kept telling me over and over before season two started that, "Kurt is getting a boyfriend this year! Kurt is getting a boyfriend this year!" and I was like, "...I don't know who Kurt is." Then she was squeeing over Britney/Brittany when it aired, and made me watch some of the performances, and I was like, "That's nice, now let me go back to my obsessions". Then Never Been Kissed happened, and she made me watch the assault (which hit me just as hard then, having no knowledge of the show, as it does when I watch it today), and Teenage Dream ("I don't even watch the show, and I ship that. ... Wait, isn't that Harry Potter?"). Then she made me watch Baby It's Cold Outside ("Yes, yes, it's lovely, now please let me go back to my fandom").

After the hiatus, she made me (using the worst puppy-eyes imaginable) download The Sue Sylvester Shuffle and watch it with her. I was so confused during the entirety of that episode. Same with Silly Love Songs and Comeback (I'd heard they were doing MCR). I watched Blame It On The Alcohol by myself because I'd heard they were going to deal with bisexuality...yeah. It took me a long time to come around to Kurt after that. Sexy, though, and Landslide, was the moment I was in, completely. Original Song and The Kiss made us squee so hard that my mom asked if we were being butchered in there, and the rest, as they say, is history.

(There's this hilarious thing where I couldn't read porn about Kurt for the longest time, and I'd call my BFF with "I got through a handjob today!" and "I'm getting better, I'm almost there" and she'd do nothing but have hysterics. Finally I could only read very vanilla Klaine, which made me say things like "I read Klaine breathplay today! *proud*".

You can all rest assured that, nowadays, nothing is too dirty for me. It was a long, hard road, but I made it.)

I was in the lol-Glee camp for a while, but I am so glad I left that behind. It's funny, because. Well, I sort of went about it the opposite of what I usually do:

Supernatural:

1. The writers are gods.
2. The writers are human.
3. ...get me out of here, I can't stand it anymore.

Glee:
1. ...what the hell am I doing here, this is shit.
2. Okay, so they might have some idea of what they're doing.
3. The writers are gods.

I'm really glad this comm exists; I watch an episode and come away thinking, "That was the best ever! How could anyone hate this?" and then I go on Tumblr and everyone is like, "That was even worse than I imagined" and I get sad and frustrated and bewildered.

So, anyway. Hi. :)

[likeasouffle]

Teenage Dream ("I don't even watch the show, and I ship that. ... Wait, isn't that Harry Potter?")

LOL! A friend of mine who never watched Glee at all had heard that there was an awesome gay kiss on the show and found the Original Songs clip on YouTube, and then went "OMG It's Harry Potter!" Hahaha.

There's this hilarious thing where I couldn't read porn about Kurt for the longest time, and I'd call my BFF with "I got through a handjob today!"

BWAHAHAHAHA. :D

I'm really glad this comm exists; I watch an episode and come away thinking, "That was the best ever! How could anyone hate this?" and then I go on Tumblr and everyone is like, "That was even worse than I imagined" and I get sad and frustrated and bewildered.

Me too! I have the exact same feelings. :D

[stultiloquentia]

Glee on Dreamwidth! New Glee people to play with! Eeee! Hi! *kermitdance*

I am likely to be quiet for a week or two, because I'm neck-deep in fic-writing, but I'm so hopeful about this community. Tumblr is beautiful and hilarious, but I'm old school; I like conversation.

I fell for Glee against my will. I'm a real snob about television (I watched the pilot when it aired, and said, "Oh, lord, I would love to love you, but no."), until some random clip or vid or emphatically recced piece of fanfic snags my attention, and then I gobble everything. The random whatsit usually involves a prettily angled shot of some guy's deltoids.

I do find the show exasperating (except when it's brilliant), but I'm not interested in gnashing my teeth at it. I want to use it as raw clay with which to make my own stories, and natter about art and culture and storytelling.

I kinda love the balance of squee and nerding in your weekly itinerary here. :o)

[wowbright]

I joined Dreamwidth a month or two ago, and then didn't do anything. Then I saw this community was opening and I HAD to come here.

NO WANK, YAY!

My mom got me addicted to Glee when I was visiting her for Christmas during Season 1. Then she stopped watching it because of a conflict with her favorite murder-and-mayhem show on another network. Well, I kept watching. Can we please all take a moment to remember in awe the brilliant trainwreck that was Will's marriage to Terry? That might have been what pulled me in. Plus the Queen and Journey songs. Then I fell in love with Kurt and wanted him to be happy. I'd rewatch some episodes 4 times the next day on Hulu ("Sexy" - I cried at ALL the cry scenes EVERY TIME.)

"Baby It's Cold Outside" - I almost fainted. I could not have, in my wildest dreams, imagined seeing such a thing on network television back in the day when I was a queer teenager. If I had, I would have chalked it up to utopian fantasy. Even though I had my reservations about Blaine's eyebrows, I wanted him to fall in love with Kurt because Kurt is awesome and deserves love. And if he didn't, I wanted someone else to show up soon because Kurt is awesome and deserves love.

My boyfriend teased me for being so infatuated with the storyline of two characters who are, like, half my age. My defense was that, if they'd been 30, I'm sure I would have been infatuated, too.

But that's not all there is to Glee for me. I've never watched a show where, on multiple occasions, I've had to squint my eyes and squeal/shout at the screen because the emotion was just so much, because whatever the characters were going through hit so close to my heart. I don't know how Glee does it, but it does it wonderfully.

I started writing fic this past fall, when I realized it existed and could be beautiful. It meant I could write all the random thoughts I had about the characters and someone else might care to read them. No longer did I have to bore my friends with long expositions on Blaine's wardrobe, just to have them go, 'Which one is that again?' And no longer did I have to be frustrated that the creators didn't spend this much time on a certain character or plot twist - because I could go there, if it was important to me, and the creators could do what they wanted to do with their show.

I have two fic/gleecentric homes on the web (and now I guess dreamwidth will become my third): wowbright.livejournal.com and wowbright.tumblr.com.

I look forward to getting to know you all better and loving on Glee together!

[likeasouffle]

You're here! Hi!

I love the rule that wanking is only for the characters. LOL. It sure is. Awwww yeah. :D

Then I fell in love with Kurt and wanted him to be happy.

Me too.

"Baby It's Cold Outside" - I almost fainted. I could not have, in my wildest dreams, imagined seeing such a thing on network television back in the day when I was a queer teenager.

Me too.

No longer did I have to bore my friends with long expositions on Blaine's wardrobe, just to have them go, 'Which one is that again?'

LOL Me too.

:D

[rougaroux]

I'm always nervous about doing an introduction thing in case I do it wrong (to which everyone is asking "how can you do it wrong..." and that's... not something I'm sure about...), but I thought it might be fun to follow this comm and I love reading so that's good! Anyway! I'm Amy, and I use too many exclamation marks.

I first heard about Glee the summer before it first premiered on TV. I was scrolling through Hulu and they were showing advertisements for it during some of the commercial breaks, and then they put the first episode online before they put it on TV, and I was so excited. How could a show go wrong when they had the kids singing Journey songs? I was in love before the show was even on TV. I was telling my roommates about it, but no one knew or had heard of it, so it was just me gushing and telling everyone they needed to get into it, because, yes.

Glee was a bright spot in my life for a lot of dark days. Sometimes it's still the bright spot, but now I get to share it with other people. Fandom might be crazy sometimes, but I love that everyone loves the show for the same things, and for different things. When I moved in with my current roommates, we all discovered that we had a love for the show, and now it's one of my favorite things, to watch Glee on Tuesdays with my roommates. My favorite character is Artie. Ever since I saw him with those dorky glasses singing "Sit Down You're Rockin' The Boat", I fell in love with him, he's always amazing. I think what I like the best about the show, though, is that every character is relate-able. I might not like what I see in them, just like I don't like what I see in myself. Sometimes they do things that are absolutely nuts, and just a little bit unrealistic, but the way they think, and the way that they react to new things in their lives? They are me. They had to go through the things in high school and beyond that I did, and sometimes, they handle it much better then I did. And sometimes they don't, but that's okay. No one's the same.

Is that corny and sappy enough? I tend to do that sometimes. Sometimes I like to write stories! Mainly I like to roleplay. I like taking characters and making them expand and grow, and see what they do in situations outside of their canon. Other then that, I'm a big mental health advocate, especially to help bring awareness to it for kids in high school. I'm very open about the things I went through, so long as it's going to help someone else who may be going through the same thing, but be too scared to say anything.

I read everything, though. So if you write it, I'll read it, and sometimes I'll even leave a comment, if I don't psych myself out first. I'm really glad to be here, and I can't wait to see the things that come out of it!

[yutaya]

Hello!

I'm yutaya; nice to meet you. Disclaimer: I'm something a huge lurker (it's an "if you have nothing important to say don't say anything at all" issue that I am working to overcome) but I made a dreamwidth account just for this, so, there's that.

So, glee intro story!

I was one of the many people who saw all the publicity for glee back when it was first gearing up to air the pilot and got super excited: a show about teenage misfits finding a place to belong with lots of song and dance? Count me in! I waited with baited breath for the Pilot which met all my expectations and then some (especially when On My Own happened; I have a history with Les Mis) and then all the "I want to be here because I love it" and meeting in spite of the teachers and the school and the town and unlikely groups being bonded by something, and that something being show choir, was this show tailor made for me to love it? and then Don't Stop Believing and the vastness of my feelings rendered me immobile in my seat for several minutes afterwards and there was No Turning Back.

I could stop here, but instead you get the rest of my story.

Unlike a sadly large amount of those aforementioned many people who loved the pilot, I obviously did not become "disillusioned" or think "this show just keeps getting worse" or whatever it is they say. I did, however, undergo my share of fandom struggles to get to where I am today (a person who would love to be in a comm like this.)

My issue was, oddly enough, that glee was so popular - I met actual people who liked glee, who I could gush about it with and get excited about upcoming episodes with and such. Glee ended up playing a strong role in my social life - something very unusual for me, because I've always been that kid who gets the "you're doing it again, talking as if these things are real, books and the like are fictional stories don't you think you're too old for this how are you ever going to get friends or a boyfriend if you are talking about childish things all the time" speech.

I got used to watching Glee with other people. And then I got used to their comments.

Unlike me, those people stayed on the other side of that line I am perpetually over: they treated glee like...well, like a tv show. One they all enjoyed, but a tv show none the less. (I know glee is a tv show; it's a great tv show that I love, I don't... I think I'm not wording this very well.)

The people around me started saying things that started out sitting uneasy with me, but brush-offable ("I think Wheels was my favorite episode so far, probably because Finn and Rachel weren't in it") and got more and more disheartening ("Did you hear? Darren Criss is going to be on Glee; I can't decide if he's not good enough for it vocally or it's not good enough for him in everything else", "Are you serious right now [insert 'insultingly unrealistic detail' here] ugh I can't even believe this show anymore", "I wish they would do good songs they're the only reason I even watch this thing and btw have you noticed how sexist and racist and homophobic/only about the male gays this show is and all the character assassination I mean oh my god this show used to be good.")

By the latter half of season 2, I was drowning.

I had never really agreed with anything my friends (my oldest friend in particular, the one I could always watch tv and disney-esque movies with when all the rest of our group from back then would roll their eyes at us) said about Glee. Every time they said something derisive about it something discordant would jar inside me. I began to be grateful for having class when it aired, because then I could watch at least the first time on my own, even over the school's awful internet connection. I got really silent and withdrawn whenever someone would start in on it. Sometimes I put up feeble defense attempts ("it's always been this way, though; don't you remember in season 1 when they start singing and then pan over to reveal a random band in the library? I loved that.") but eventually it became easier to just hush up and wait for it to be over. I never joined in on the hating, and I kept a firm stance of "fine if you feel that way, but I still like it," but that got chalked up to my "liking things thing". "I just like liking things. It's been a 'problem' all my life."

Summer hit, and I was relieved for the opportunity to curl up away from my peers and spend my weeks at the internet-less beach rewatching all of the first two seasons and my weeks at home with the wi-fi submerging myself in fanfiction, which had never let me down.

Except. A lot of the fanfics were saying the same things that I kept hearing in the "real world". They weren't supposed to do that! That's why I only read fanfiction and avoided any other discussion or reaction sites where I knew the haters would run rampant - I could usually weed through and content myself with the gems of the fic world pretty easily, and I did that here too, but... so many of even some of the most thought-provoking, character-insight fics would have little things in their author notes, or a background line character-bashing, or something else that would make me frown when I read it.

I'm pretty sure some small part of me started wondering if maybe everyone else was right after all, if I was the one being wrong again, letting my weird story-obsession thing blind me to the "faults" that so very many other people seemed to see. I tried to ignore that doubt, to just bask in my own feelings and forget everyone else. Told myself there's nothing wrong with a difference of opinion and me enjoying my pre-season 3 marathon wasn't doing any harm to anyone. Away from the "real" people and with plenty of experience rolling my eyes at the internet, I mostly succeeded.

Near the end of the summer, something amazing happened. I stumbled upon naderegen's tumblr. (And yes, this is the point where I start name-dropping people who will actually see this post; hope it's not too weird.) I hadn't even really been aware of tumblr as a website, but. There was fanart (which, fanart. *_*) and more than just that, you could really see how much love for the characters went into each piece. It was beautiful. I scrolled down though every single post and kept the tab open to refresh it everyday. And shortly after, she started posting meta. Meta. Analysis with "textual support" and overwhelming positivity for the characters and the plot lines and all the subtle things and there were also so many things I hadn't ever thought of and it was so interesting and supportive and just, the hugest relief in the world, because here was an actual, existing, someone else who thought that Glee was amazing.

With my heart so much lighter, I went back to school and within the first two weeks, ended up following a link from naderegen's tumblr to crown_of_weeds' livejournal, where I read all of her meta, and it was beautiful and gorgeous and touching and I actually ended up sitting on the dorm couch full-on sobbing because Glee just became so, so much more amazing than I even thought it was before.

I passed the fall semester like that, with both pages open to refresh every day and carrying the revived confidence to love Glee proudly with me like an armor. I started arguing the people around me in favor of Glee again. I paid more attention to all the little things in the show, newly assured that it wasn't actually too odd. I loved Glee even more than I had originally, which I hadn't realized was a possibility until these feelings swooped down and carried me away.

(I got a tumblr of my own to like and thus save naderegen's posts with a week or two before Christmas, and now I am happily spamming every one of my followers (4/7 of which are IRL friends, hah!) with "glee is awesome" posts all day, every day.)

And that's my glee story until now.

(Wow I'm sorry that become so long; maybe I should have stopped after the pilot fangirling after all. Hahaha)

[likeasouffle]

I just wanted to let you know I really enjoyed your introduction post. :)

Every time they said something derisive about it something discordant would jar inside me. I began to be grateful for having class when it aired, because then I could watch at least the first time on my own, even over the school's awful internet connection.

Yes this! I stopped watching it with the person I used to watch with because they would point out all the offensive/unrealistic/confusing parts with such disdain and it really bothered me. The person I watch with now still has trouble with some aspects of the show, but also is happy to squee with me over hot people and singing and dancing and adorableness and OMG what will happen next?! So it's all good. :)

"I just like liking things. It's been a 'problem' all my life."

LOL!

[secretagentlaura]

Okay, I'll de-lurk as it's hard to resist an open invitation to engage in meta ...

Following the loose pattern for these intros:

1. I met this show when I was on holidays in Australia in July 2009, and the pilot was airing (and I was smitten - I am such a sucker for showtunes, covers, and a capella). I live overseas, and I watched half of season one via iTunes and half when the channel we had from Singapore starting showing it in the spring of 2010. I sort-of opted out of Season 2 b/c I decided that iTunes as too pricey and didn't see any of season two until there was a marathon of the eps in May 2011. I wasn't paying a lot of attention until I noticed that those appealing private school boys kept showing up, and that's when I got caught up in this show again. And then, I had to re-watch season again when the DVDs were released, as I discovered that gov't of the country where I'm currently living censors Glee, so there was some important plot-points that I'd missed in tv broadcasts. (The most current episode to air here was "The First Time" and the tv-censor folks chopped it in the most disappointing way and I'm sure that even with subtitles, the local audience was baffled). I'm following the current season courtesy of iTunes, again. I budget for this show, now :)

2. I fell into the fandom aspect of the show last summer. A freelance proof-reading/editing job came my way on the topic of fandom and social media. The writer of this research paper had no idea what he was getting into with citations/references/footnotes and the like, so I ended up diving into fanfiction and tumblr to try to tidy up the reference mess. When I had finished that job, I felt like I could either try to *unsee* all the crazy stuff I'd read, or just embrace it. And I loved the meta, so I decided to stay.

Anyway, that's me in brief. I really liked Monday's rec post, btw - I find it a bit challenging to find well-written gen fic!

[robotsfighting]

I was sitting earlier this evening, thinking about how nice it would be to find a place in Glee fandom that liked to focus on how great Glee is/can be. And then I found it. You guys. I think I might have magical powers.

Hi, I'm Robots, and I write a lot of Kurt/Blaine fic, but I multiship like a madwoman, and am a major lover of gen fic. I'm totally unironically a fan of the show. (Okay. Not totally unironically.)

I've been watching on and off since one weekend during Season One when I was sick and needed something to do. Hulu had a few episodes available, so I watched the latest (Sectionals) and was utterly confused, but already invested in the music and the characters. I watched back through the available episodes, and got ahold of the ones I'd missed, and more or less kept up-to-date.

Someone I knew from another fandom had moved on to writing about Glee, after Never Been Kissed, when Blaine showed up. I was interested, so I read her stuff, and I really loved it. (That person, by the way, was lookninjas.) I had no great compulsion to write about anything at that point, so I just enjoyed what she put up and went on my merry way. The only thing I really wrote was a story about Kurt during Grilled Cheesus, after I got some serious, sort of life-changing health news about a close member of my family, and I needed a method by which I could deal with it without actually, you know, dealing with it.

Kurt was (and is) my favorite character, and then more Blaine happened. And he was awesome! I liked him a lot, for Kurt, for the show, just as a character. He was great. I can honestly say I've never actually written a noncanon pairing, so I never really had much inclination to write about them. And then Original Song happened, and I realized that I definitely had things that I wanted to write about, because I loved the way the relationship was handled, and I loved how nice everything was, for all of the characters. That was, and still is, my favorite part of the whole thing. How nice it all is. It's all I ever want to write about: that, or the subversion of that.

So, now I'm here, with about twenty-two stories, and a lot of delighted fannishness, excited to surround myself with a bunch of other positive people, after the black hole of sadness and despair and indignation that is much of Tumblr. I mean, I love Tumblr. But. Sometimes it depresses me, how angry people can get about things I only hang around to love. So I'm grateful to have found this place while reading The One About Dragons.

[four_tens]

Oh wow, I totally missed this and feel awful now. Bad me!

Hello! My name is four_tens on livejournal and here, but you might know me better as PenroseParticle on tumblr? My real first name is Colton (It's in the intro for my tumblr, so much for keeping up a mysterious persona).

Nice to meet you all!

How did I meet Glee. Isn't that a question. I started watching it during Preggers, actually. A friend of mine said the show wasn't half bad and that I should check it out. Instantly I was hooked, and watched the first three episodes on Hulu so that I hadn't missed anything.

I wasn't big on internet fandoms at the time (I was mostly what one would call a forum lurker, and still mostly am really), and wouldn't actually start doing anything fannish until season 2 rolled around, when I started lurking TWoP forums.

In a way that informed my mentality for Glee- I thought it was fun and intermittently clever, but mostly a hot mess.

Oh how wrong I was.

I got into tumblr about... EMC time? Maybe? Originally it was for Avengers, and that's also what my early LJ was about, but then something amazing happened- on my quest to read more fanfic, I was on lookninjas' livejournal (Check her stuff out, it's awesome), and read a chance comment by one crown_of_weeds.

Intrigued, I took a visit to THAT livejournal. Then to her tumblr. Then I started reading any journal/tumblr tangentially related to weeds.

AND THEN I rewatched the first two season in one single marathon.

I started writing my own meta, did a review of the pilot for my own benefit, decided I liked it, kept writing. Tumblr was both a blessing and a curse- I loved the thoughts people had, gifsets, and all that, but now hated the LOLGLEE mentality (And that I myself held that mentality for a while).

And so of course this comm was right up my alley.

I love talking to people- seriously, don't be shy! Now that I'm not lurking, but actively contributing, I find myself having a lot more fun with fandom, and I don't bite I swear.

Looking forward to sharing this comm with you all!

[tiktok_of_oz]

I've been watching "Glee" since the pilot first aired and to date I have only missed the airing of one episode (which I later watched on DVD). It seems specifically tailored to so many of my interests: musical numbers every week, absurdist humour, revolving plot-lines, secret plot-lines that the general audience will never pick up on and the utter subversion of every Disney Channel script ever. Plus, "Glee" helps me stay on top of currently popular music, which I'd never keep up with otherwise. :)

To tell the truth, I started looking into fandom in early S2 and I could never really understand *why* so much of "Glee" was constantly held up to ridiculous standards. Isn't a fandom supposed to... I don't know... like things? Since then, I've discovered two things: 1) I was spoiled because the only fandom I've seriously belonged to before was the Oz books fandom, which is completely made up of very articulate people who actually adore the series; and 2) Most people don't get that "Glee" doesn't play by the rules.

It was when I found crown-of-weeds's livejournal the day that "Asian F" aired that I finally discovered the side of fandom that I had been expecting from the start. Finally, I had found people who just knew things like "Mercedes's storyline isn't seriously about tots", and connected the dots that I missed, like "Brittany is intellectually disabled".

Anyway, I'm greatly looking forward to lots of meta discussions, because for this show, I need help figuring out character arcs and things. Let's do this, guys!

[tilia_cordata]

Hi! I'm a serial forum lurker; have been for just about every fandom I've ever been into. I wrote Harry Potter fanfic in early high school, stopping I think around when the 6th book came out. I started watching Glee with my college roommates from the Pilot and have loved the show pretty much since the beginning. I thought it was snarky and smart and there were an ever-growing number of queer characters and *omg* Kristin Chenowith and Lea Michele were singing Broadway duets.

I lurked on TWoP in the beginning, but the increasing negativity there started being more and more of a turn-off. I got sick of it, and my wonderful fiancee got sick of me complaining about it. Remembering how much I liked the analysis on "Letters for Titan" sent me on a fun journey from various tumblrs and livejournals, where I started reading crown-of-weeds' posts and that sent me here. This seemed like exactly the kind of online community I was looking for - small and smart and interested analyzing and not complaining that character X has had more solos than character Y and that means RIB hate us.

I'll probably still lurk for a little bit, though I'm writing fanfic for the first time since I was 15 (my writing skills are rusty but it feels really good), but I'm looking forward to having some new people to talk to this show about!

[sarahhgg.livejournal.com]

So, introduction then?

I'm not actually certain how I first found Glee but I have a feeling I initially looked it up online because people on the "So You Think You Can Dance" TWOP forum kept mentioning it as one and another alumni of the show turned up as background dancers. Having worked out what Glee was, I watched most (or possibly all) of series 1 in the space of about 2 weeks on the basis that I had free time and it seemed like something fun I could half watch while doing other things. People were dancing and singing, the comedy was fairly sharp and I found the characters interesting enough. I had no intention of becoming attached to it and truthfully I don't think it even occurred to me that I really would. Mostly I like books; tv doesn't often draw me in in the same way.

At some point during series 2 it occurred to me that there was more to each episode and each character than I'd thought to look for, so as I was already familiar with TWOP I opted to look on there for fandom thoughts and discussions. Like tik_tok_of_oz and tilia_cordata above, I quickly became disillusioned with the forum as a whole (though I do still look at it from time to time), partly because of the negativity and partly because nobody seemed to really *discuss* anything with each other so threads didn't tend to go anywhere and I didn't learn anything new, which I found dull. From there though I used the fanfiction recommendations thread to find livejournal accounts where people were actually talking, listening, thinking and analysing episodes, storylines and characters in a way that actually added to my experience of watching the show instead of taking away from it.

I often don't talk much, I'm very inclined to lurk and large fandoms tend to intimidate me (my "home" fandom is based around one message board for a series of fairly old-fashioned books and while it's fairly active, the Chalet School series still qualifies for Yuletide every year; we're small is what I'm saying!) but I really like the idea of this community and would like to try to contribute a bit because it's just so much more fun when you get to be properly engaged with something!

[magiccats]

My name's magiccats or Anna and I'm catsandfairies on tumblr.

I've been watching Glee since the Pilot and since then I fell in love with it more and more. During season 2 I decided to lurk around Glee fandom online (my first fandom was Harry Potter) and eventually I created an LJ account and a tumblr blog. At some point I became frustrated with the amount of wank and ship wars. Then I found Weeds' LJ and I'm glad I did because I just wanted to see some positive things.

I think I will like this community a lot!

[kshandra]

So, um, hi. Late to the party Koosh is late to the party. I tend to have a very strong negative reaction to anyone telling me that I MUST read/hear/watch something, even when it turns out the people telling me that were right along. It's how I missed out on Firefly until Serenity came out, and it's how I'm just coming to Glee now.

My first episode was Michael...so have a relevant audition number. (Yes, the lighting is shit, but what do you expect from karaoke night at a gay bar? For the record, the polo shirt really is pink, and was a nod to a promotional photo of MJ from the mid-80s. I was also wearing sparkly socks. End of digression.)

I'm probably going to do a lot of lurking here, with the occasional comment, or possibly a gif request now and then. But I look forward to lurking here. ;-)

[misqueue]

Hello fellow Gleeks! I've come to Glee a bit late, too. I started watching in November of 2011. "Pot O' Gold" was the first episode I watched live after having marathoned everything else the weeks previous to its airing.

I'm prone to social anxiety, lurking, and being slow to respond to stuff, but I'll do my best to participate; this comm seems like a safe, friendly, fun place to hang. Thank you mods!

I can't really talk too much about how I came to Glee because then I'd have to talk about the worst two years of my life, my father dying, a history of mental illness, and other bad things I just don't want to talk very much about (and I doubt anyone is interested in). The short version of how I came to Glee is that my favorite of my father's ICU nurses had mentioned it to me back at the beginning of 2011, and for some reason I remembered it (I don't watch much TV) on the blackest day of my grief. I decided to give the show a try, figuring anything named Glee might just distract me enough from my existential horror that I wouldn't end up dead.

Glee did more than distract me, it pulled me out of the abyss. It's magical. I love the show, how complex and quirky it is. I love the characters, the music, the production values, the attention to detail, and all the analytical hay it makes. I also love the other smart people who watch this show and write meta & fanfiction for it.

So I wanted to come play. I started writing a fill on the glee_kink_meme, made a tumblr (mentaltortoise) which I can't use any longer because tumblr is a gluttonous bandwidth guzzler and I live in New Zealand the Stone Age, and I made new accounts here on Dreamwidth and on AO3 (misqueue). The majority of my Glee related activity will be on Dreamwidth, so I'm trying to meet folks. Hi!

[likeasouffle]

Hello! I'm glad Glee is a source of distraction and fun for you! Welcome to the community. :)

[kacy]

Hi! I'm nature_aly at lj, but that shouldn't mean much to anyone since i'm really not very active in the Glee fandom. I like to read fic and leave comments (I'm new to leaving comments, but I'm trying really hard to not be a lurker anymore.) I want to spend time at this comm because I'm sick of all the hate on the various lj communities I used to like to visit.

I first watched Glee when they aired the pilot as a sneak preview in the spring. My boyfriend and I were so excited for the show and I liked all the characters, I think I went online to rewatch the pilot at least twice that summer. When the show started airing in the fall it was opposite Criminal Minds, which we had been watching for years already, so we taped Glee to watch later. I suffered extreme second hand embarrassment at the performance of Push It and my boyfriend watched Acafellas on his own when I had to work late and did not like it as much as the first two. When I continued to have to work Wednesday nights, we just stopped watching the show.

I did not end up getting interested in the show again until it was in its first huge hiatus and I decided to give it another chance and buy that season 1 part 1 DVD set. We watched all the episodes and I fell completely in love with Kurt. I found the fandom and shipped Kurt/happiness, with Finn and Puck and Mike, and Matt and whoever else, it didn't matter. I loved the second half of season 1, especially 4 Minutes, when I realized baby boy got tall.

Season two happened and Blaine happened and there was no way I was ever going to stop watching the show again. The first Glee album I actually spent money on was the Warbler album and I still listen to it while working out. (I also have a Chris workout playlist because he inspires me to keep going.)

My boyfriend has since quit Glee, around Asian F he just got sick of Glee not being funny anymore. I still love it, but don't watch it live anymore (he does the same for me and records Kitchen Nightmares, because I refuse to watch that show).

[likeasouffle]

Hi! Continuing to watch because of falling in love with Kurt seems to be a common thing. Gosh I love him so much. Also YAY shipping Kurt/happiness! I totally did that in season one as well.

I also have a Chris workout playlist because he inspires me to keep going.

That's lovely. :)

Welcome!

[angelicmousegirl]

Hi I am Heather (angelicmousegirl on tumblr angelicmousegrl on lj without the i in girl)

I don't think I've ever thought back to how I discovered Glee, I am using this post as an excuse to do it. In 2009 I was a huge High School Musical fan, and one of my friends told me she had heard about Glee from some promo right before it was on in May. I listened to her, but wasn't interested in the premise of the show because it sounded similar to HSM but in a dark, mean, and depressing way. So I knew people that watched it in May, but I didn't. Over the summer months of promotion and hearing how well the pilot did, I started to change my mind about giving it a try because of how I saw people talking about it. So I watched the Pilot online in September right before the second episode premiere and I have watched it ever since. It turned out I was wrong it this show was more amazing than I thought it was going to be. Kurt Hummel was my first favorite character and still remains my top favorite. Blaine is just the dreamiest thing to happen to this show possibly ever. <3 I also love Rachel Berry, and usually have a soft spot for Finn. I also love Emma. :D

I discovered this community through a rec of four_tens's crazy detailed recaps of episodes. (Which I have read all of and noticed they haven't been updated in a couple of months. ;_; I hope there will be more someday, they are so amazing!!) four_tens if you are around please, consider this request!

I wanted to join here because it looks like so much fun! Also it looks like a great community I could really use in this fandom right now, a lot of time I have to avoid most of the places in on the ineternet where Glee fans hang out because so many people seem to hate the show now, and I don't feel the same. I still love this show, I hope in this comm, I can still find some Glee love! <3 Excited to be here. :D

[likeasouffle]

Kurt Hummel was my first favorite character

It's amazing to me how many people I've heard say this. Some people have even said they kept watching just for Kurt even when they weren't so interested in the rest of the show. Imagine if Chris Colfer had never auditioned and they'd never invented the role for him!

a lot of time I have to avoid most of the places in on the ineternet where Glee fans hang out because so many people seem to hate the show now, and I don't feel the same.

I really agree! I tend to be very careful about who I friend so I'm not following complainers, and I have to limit my reading in comms. ie If people are angry, close the tab. I'm very grateful for this comm! :)

[peculiarcolour]

Hi, I'm Elisabeth, 18 from the UK.

My friend once asked me if I had watched Glee and I said I hadn't and she said she thought it was something I would like. I was actually on the plane looking for a TV show to watch and they had the first three episodes of Glee. When I got home, I finished Season 1 and now here I am, lol.

I'm not really part of fandom, this is my first account with something like this, and I don't have an LJ/twitter/tumblr or anything though I'm considering joining LiveJournal.

My favourite characters are Rachel and Santana, I'm more protective and defensive of Rachel although I'm very aware of her flaws and wrong actions but I more obviously like Santana.

Sometimes I make graphics but I'm not very good, but my favourite thing is writing. Quinntana is probably my biggest ship, but I'm open to most of them though i may not actively ship them.

Besides Glee, I like reading, writing, baking, playing hockey, animals and I actually quite enjoy my school work as well. /strange.

This is my first and only Glee community on here and I only have one friend so far so if anyone would like to be friends I'd be thrilled!

[likeasouffle]

Welcome to the community! :D