This is not a game of Who The Fuck Are You.
-Eddie Izzard
a.k.a. Pointless and Completely Self-Indulgent, Just Go With It

So who the fuck am I?

Panthea, a.k.a. Pan, a.k.a. Maya, a.k.a. You With The Hair. I first discovered the magic of fandom at the tender age of 14 when I stumbled across some Daria fic, of all things. Normal people, I'm sure, find fanfic and think, "Who the hell does that?" I find it and think, "Hey, neat!"

And in which arenas have I been wasting my life since 1997?

I started out in Buffy fandom just after the first season ended, then wandered on to Forever Knight. I liked vampires, Ben Bass and Lisa Ryder are pretty, it was a thing. My inexplicable but fervent fondness for Greg Kramer led me from there to the cracktastic Once a Thief, then on to Due South, where I fell truly, madly, deeply in love with Callum Keith Rennie (as one tends to do), which I'm pretty sure makes me the only DS fan in the history of ever to come into fandom via Adolph Kuzma. Fraser/Kowalski was my first, and to date only, real OTP.

Up to that point, my fandom progression was more or less a straight line from one to another. After Due South, I pretty much exploded all over the map. Early follies include Highlander, Sliders, and The Sentinel, among others, and I'm not too proud to admit it.

I will never, ever forgive Kevin Sorbo for fucking up Andromeda. Or for existing and wasting my air.

I took a brief detour into the world of anime and manga a couple years ago, but I'm mostly recovered by now.

I'm currently most enamored of Supernatural, Burn Notice, Life, Stargate: Atlantis, Doctor Who, and Torchwood (as of April '08), but my attention does tend to wander. For a complete list of fandoms and shows I've dabbled in, check out the sidebar in my Livejournal.

And I write, too! You may have noticed!

I've been writing ever since I could hold a pen and form complete sentences. My first completed fanfic was probably "Jenny", and yes, it's a songfic. I was 14. Don't judge me.

The first slash I ever wrote was a Due South fic, and holds the dubious distinction of being published in a 'zine. I posted it to the Serge mailing list back in '99, and the chicks in charge of the 'zine apparently liked it enough to include it. That story is not on this site. Neither is the only other Due South story, also slash, that I wrote back then, because frankly I think they're both pretty crappy, and I may not have a lot of shame, but I do have some. I think the non-zine fic is still up on Hexwood somewhere, if you're morbidly curious enough to look. Happy hunting, suckers.

I mostly write slash and long, plotty gen. Sometimes I like to mix things up a bit and write long, plotty slash. I think I've written maybe five het fics in my life-- "Respite", "Black Days", "Remembrance", "Putting The Damage On", and the above-mentioned "Jenny"-- and those last three don't count because no one actually gets to have sex.

I may have grown out of the urge to write songfics, but most of my titles come from songs, and I still like to put lyrics at the beginning of my stories. If you hate 'em, skip 'em. Page Down is your friend, people.

I have a debilitating infatuation with crossovers.

My OFCs are almost always lesbians. I don't plan it that way, it just happens.

So what the hell's up with the name thing?

I've been going by some variant of Maya for as long as I've been in fandom. "Maya" means illusion; I know this because Christopher Pike told me so. It seemed an appropriate pseudonym for a writer. I started out as Mayan Rain, then just plain Maya, then briefly Maya Phelia, until my mother pointed out-- quite rightly-- that "mayaphelia" sounds like some kind of STD. Though she put it rather more delicately than that. Now it's Maya Tawi. I've lost all ability to tell whether or not that's actually a good name, but I'm keeping it.

I picked up the name Panthea a couple years ago, just because I found it in a baby book and I really liked it. (The fact that it's also a poem by Oscar Wilde doesn't hurt.) I didn't want to have to go back and change every damn thing I've written, so I decided, hey, I'll have two names! Panthea is my pseudonym. Maya Tawi is my pseudo-pseudonym. This stroke of genius has caused me far more trouble than it's worth, but I'm pretty much stuck with it now. Call me any of the above and I'll eventually respond.

I'm Panthea on Journalfen, and yes, I'm one of the Fandom Wank mods. Don't ask me how the hell that happened. It must have seemed like a good idea to someone at some time.

Anything else you want to know?

I'm first generation Arab-American and nominally Muslim. On very rare occasions, I tend to strap my bitch on to that effect.

I'm an Aquarius. I'm not really an astrology wonk-- I don't believe in horoscopes or anything-- but I am excessively Aquarius. This is me, to the letter. Well. Except for the "psychically intuitive" shit.

I'm an antisocial introvert with self-esteem issues. No, really. Stop laughing at me. Why do you think I'm addicted to the Internet? Because I can type at people instead of talking to them, that's why.

Despite the above, I find myself utterly fascinating, and you should too.

Are we done yet?

Yes. Yes, we are.

Email: panthea@populli.net

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