Work Text:
You know those stories where someone finds a portal
Into a magical land full of wonders?
With heroes, and villains, and amusing talking animals,
Full of drama, and heart-stopping romance, and love.
I didn’t find the portal when I was young.
People do these days, with college friends, with schoolmates.
It’s easier now, there are portals everywhere.
My portal hadn’t opened then. After it did, I was busy being an adult,
Working too much, reading unsatisfactory books,
Watching unsatisfactory TV.
I was older than most when I stumbled on my portal,
Poking about in tangled internet thickets.
I wonder where this goes, I thought,
Pushing open the door to a strange new land
And falling in love.
I’d never crushed so hard before—I was high for months,
Learning my new love’s language in bed, like you do.
PWPs! Lemons! NC-17! Kink!
Up all night reading, exploring, finding treasure.
Come for the porn, they say, stay for the people.
I blundered about at first like any new traveller
But friends taught me etiquette and I soaked up the culture,
Got residency, then citizenship, and learned to love gen.
One day, I realised I could write stories too.
I’d written poems in high school, wrote a novel later on,
A hilariously unpublishable Mary Sue thing, but still.
Before my first fanfic, I'd been lost in a wilderness of policies and reports.
I hadn’t painted for twenty years when I started making fanart.
Fandom held me when my childhood home was shattered by earthquakes,
When my father died slowly from dementia and my mother from Parkinson's.
It held me as I lost beloved cats, lost my youth,
Lost contact with friends in the so-called real world as we drifted apart,
Held me through this past, frightening year.
Fandom cradles me with tropes and tickles me with crack.
It comforts me with fluff and educates me with meta.
It’s my team, my found family.
You are. All of you.
I stepped through the portal, and now I live here,
In the magic land.