You all know I’m a Loki fangirl and that I rave about Alydia Rackham’s writing. So, this month, I decided to talk about just those things. I’ll be reviewing four of Rackham’s books and talking about her amazing fanfiction–as well as interviewing her at the end of the month about her writing process!
I’m so excited, when I first began planning this in January I had no idea if I’d even actually be able to interview Alydia. I had planned to do a lot of reviews for her books, since I talk about her almost as much as I mention Tom Hiddleston, but I thought that hoping for an interview was too much. Despite my doubts, my friends encouraged me, and I sent off the interview request spur-of-the-moment.
AND ALYDIA ACTUALLY SAID IT WOULD BE LOVELY.
I was so excited I started shaking. I sent her the interview questions and she returned them with her answers. I can hardly wait until the end of the month to share that with you!
But, today I’m going to talk about how I first discovered Rackham and how that in turn led into my becoming the obsessed Loki fan that I am today. Because yes, they’re all intertwined. Just as there would be no Loki without Thor, there would be no Tom Hiddleston obsessing and Loki-loving without Alydia Rackham.
She’s the one who started it all.
Some of my readers probably already know this story, but for potential new readers who don’t, here’s how it all began.
A long time ago, back when the only thing on Young!Windy’s mind was the conclusion of the saga of The Hobbit that she both loved and despised because of All of The Film Discrepancies if you compared the trilogy to the novel, she was browsing her Pinterest and somehow went from Sherlock and Smaug (she admits that she initially got into The Hobbit films because of Benedict Cumberbatch, aka Sherlock Holmes in BBC’s modern Sherlock series) to. . . Marvel and superheroes.
Most of the posts were fan-discussion threads from Tumblr, several dating back to 2011 and 2012, respectively (the current year was 2015). And one of them featured heated conversation about the much disputed over villain-or-is-he-not called Loki, apparently the brother-but-also-not of Thor. Young!Windy knew all of these names from her childhood of staying awake to all-odd hours of the night reading things like the children’s adapted version of Beowulf and other Nordic-based folktales. Her interest was piqued.
She decided to learn a little more, reading commentary and fan-critique, and looking up interviews of this British Actor Tom Hiddleston (who she didn’t much care for; he seemed a bit ridiculously giddy, and, to be honest, a little. . . weird) talking about the character Loki he’d portrayed on screen.
At the same time, she saw this fanart on Pinterest, with a link back to the creator on deviantart:
posted to Tumblr by LA-Knight; link and image provided by Alydia Rackham to Windy Darlington
Curious, Young!Windy followed the link to the deviantart page, and there found the creator gushing about a certain piece of fanfiction called “Fallen Star” written by a Alydia Rackham; this creator raved about how great the fanfiction was and that everyone needed to read it to really understand the fanart made for it.
I decided that before I got invested into this fandom of superheros and etc (which had never in my life been my thing if you exclude the period from year 8 to 9 wherein I absolutely adored Spider-Man) I’d dive into this fanfiction realm and give it a go. Because if anything is a marker to how much quality exists among fans of any fandom, it’s the fanfiction.
Well, this story was actually phenomenal, with all sorts of references that Young!Windy knew were going right over her head (seeing as they were to do with the film franchise), as well as many from Norse mythology that she knew and ecstatically cheered over.
Reading this one story wasn’t enough, and, as was Young!Windy’s habit (and even more so since then has become grown Windy’s habit) she looked into this ALydia Rackham’s Fanfiction.Net bio. She as immediately hooked and had found another favorite author. ALydia Rackham had written about literally everything, from Sherlock to fairytale retellings. This was a goldmine if ever there was.
Young!Windy decided that she need to learn more about this Marvel CInematic Universe to which Loki belonged, because this fanfiction by Alydia, and her obvious love for the franchise was epic. So she started to watch the movies, and her Loki obsession was born from that moment onward.
And then she got curious about that British weirdo again and decided she’d go chase down his filmography and see if he was in anything else worth watching. And she nearly died when she discovered that HE was the lanky blond soldier in War Horse who had reminded her of Ashley Wilkes from Gone With The Wind.
And that’s the end of Windy’s Fangirl Tales.
I tell you, I started looking at my life with a new perspective after I discovered that he’d been in War Horse. That was really a shocker. I’d totally not expected that at all. It was such a left-field weird thing.
And, so, yeah, that’s pretty much it for this post. I’ll see ya’ll sometimes soon with a review of the actual fanfic, Fallen Star. (Because WHOA YES, is that an amazing story and just because it’s fanfiction doesn’t mean I’m not gonna praise it to the Nines and back again to Midgard.)
Until next time,
Windy Writes 