My First Five Gateway Fandoms

The totally cool Megan of The Nerdy Girlie and Kristin of Super Space Chick are teaming up to bring a weekly blog link-up for all geeks! Every Friday, now known as 5 Random Friday, is going to have a different theme that you can find on their respective blogs and this week is the first five fandoms that made you who you are today.

This was a challenging one because there were many fandoms I became obsessed with at once but I decided to list the earliest ones first. I also decided to omit Power Rangers because I've already talked extensively about how it turned me into a geek and want to share some other fandoms that I have fond memories of.

It's about to get nostalgic all up in here!

1. Age of Empires/City Building Games
I cannot even begin to explain my long, strange obsession with city building games--in particular, the games by Sierra (Pharaoh, Zeus, Caesar, etc.) and the Age of Empires series. My step-dad actually got me into it because he would play them. I'm also pretty sure this is where my love of strategy and planning came from as well as my fascination with ancient and Medieval history. So many hours poured into these games.

2. Star Wars
Again, another fandom introduced to me by my step-dad. My mom was only dating him at the time and he's a big time Star Wars nerd. This was also right around the time that Episode 1 was about to release and the hype was massive. He took me to see it and while I don't like the New Trilogy as much anymore it still bamboozled me with its explosions and space opera-ness. Star Wars kickstarted my love of sci-fi that went on to include Stargate, Dune, Star Trek, Lexx, and my ultimate favorite, Blade Runner.

3. Batman: The Animated Series
I am a HUGE Batman/Bat Family fan. I love the OG Batman himself but I also love Batman Beyond, Nightwing, Batgirl, and TAS is where Harley Quinn made her debut and became comic canon. I also had all the Batman movies on VHS and a five foot tall Batman plushie. We would go fight crime together!

4. The Lord of the Rings
The LOTR hype got me too as a youngin' like many others but it also led me to become an avid online role-playing writer. No joke. Dungeons & Dragons/tabletop found new life in the form of forum role-playing and chatroom role-playing and that became a big part of my life. It not only helped me with many of my future English classes but all that writing also helped me establish a professional writing career. Crazy, huh?

5. Pokemon
When Power Rangers became old news to me, I moved on to Pokemon like any respectable 90s kid. And man, it was a pretty big fandom for me. I dabbled in the card game but it was a little too confusing for me at the time but I did play the Gameboy games and had so. many. TOYS! Unfortunately, I've long since lost my Pokemon cards and gave away most of my toys.

And here are some honorable mentions I just had to include:

• Gargoyles
• X-Men Animated Series
• The Mummy (with Brendan Fraser)
• Mystery Science Theatre 3,000
• Nickelodeon

If you'd like to join up on this great blog link-up, all you have to do is talk about your five gateway fandoms on your blog, too!