Exfanding New Horizons

When I wrote my first few posts for Exfanding Your Horizons back in late 2008, I had grand plans of introducing at least one new fandom per week. Over time, those grand plans mellowed into a goal of one new fandom per month--given the time and effort required to write a satisfactorily thorough introduction, and in the interest of not prematurely running out of fandoms to discuss, this seemed more reasonable. Once my all-time favorite fandoms were introduced, however, I found myself struggling to come up with new ways to exfand your horizons--most of the other fandoms I could talk about were ones I myself was still exploring, and I'm too much of a completionist to introduce just 60% of the Stargate TV and movie franchise.

Looking back at 2011, there's a huge gap between my introduction to Dragon Warrior and my last formal introduction before it, a post about Nabisco toasted chips (which, despite the subtitle, "A Legitimate Snack," barely feels like a legitimate introduction to me). I'd talked about other new fandoms in the interim, such as Axe Cop, but not in enough depth to feel like I was upholding one of the founding principles of this blog. I've been excited about expanding people's fandom horizons since Day One, and I've been feeling like a slacker the past two years or so.

However, it occurred to me last night that I haven't been thinking broadly enough. I recently wrote a guide to becoming a minor Internet celebrity; before that was an episode guide for Star Trek: The Original and Animated Series. Alex and I joined forces for another round of Gifts for Geeks, and back toward the beginning of the year, Alex produced a great guide to commissioning an artist. I've been too fixated on introductions to realize that guides and how-to's are just as much a way of expanding one's horizons about a fandom.

That being said, I'm now looking forward to a year of doing one of the things I do best: doling out copious amounts of unsolicited advice. There's a guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation and Mega Man tips and tricks in the works, but there's always room for more--what would you like to see this year?