chapter one
Greetings, and welcome to Special Interests.
Special Interests is a blog that exists to serve two purposes:
1) We are here because we are two very opinionated people whose special interests (woah, it's the title of this thing) take up such a large portion of our daily internal monologue that we wanted an avenue to share what we thought and simply put it into the world.
2) We want to foster a community where people know they aren't alone in these fandoms and that these fictional worlds and characters mean just as much to other people (us!) as it does to them. Special Interests is about discussing fandoms, books, and all sorts of fiction in a safe, inclusive way that let's people feel and explore all thoughts and emotions that fandom has helped Lucy and I sort through as humans.
We each have a little intro post (you can find Molly's here and Lucy’s here), and there's a little about us on our 'us' page, but we thought we'd share a bit more about ourselves as the dynamic duo we are here to help you get to know us and our corner of the internet.
lucy's side of the story: i got on tiktok during the first covid lockdown, and it took me a minute but i eventually found myself on booktok and picked up sarah j maas' a court of thorns and roses. around the same time, one of the accounts i followed - a shop, m.c. studios - was posting about the series, and so i did something incredibly out of character for me...i instigated a conversation with a stranger. talking about sjm turned to talking about marvel, which turned into talking about the grishaverse, fanfiction, books in general, real life...without really noticing this stranger on the internet had become my best friend, the only person who i have ever been able to fully be myself with, and the rest - as they say - was history (except this time, they really were roommates).
Molly's Version of Events: I was hesitant to join TikTok at the beginning because I thought I was too old for it. Then when I did cave in and join, I began to make videos about my fandoms - opinions, jokes, all of that fun stuff. The silly little clock app quickly became one of the first places I talked so openly about being into Star Wars, Marvel and all of the things that were such a large part of who I was. Then it evolved very quickly into the first place I started really sharing my designs once I launched my shop. I started to meet people that were in the same fandoms as me and started to get recommended new fandoms to join. Cue the Maasiverse fandom. I started sharing where I was at on my reading journey when I got a random message from someone I had never met. Then another. And another. When I responded I came to realize that it wasn't just that we both enjoyed the same characters and fandoms. We are two sides of the same coin and it brings me so much joy. Fast forward some time and now she's my best friend, and a project like Special Interests just made too much sense to start.
In summary, we're two adults who ignored every warning about talking to strangers on the internet, and to spare some of the people in our life the endless stream of consciousness about our special interests we thought we'd take it to the internet for people like us who either share those interests or are looking for recommendations/critical thinking on pop culture/silly nonsense posts/all of the above.
Welcome, and we hope you stay awhile.
