Did the memory change, or did my taste?

[cimorene]

Every now and then I get a craving like,

"I wish I could read [fandom] the way it was before [subsequent bad canon/creator behavior]."

The thing is, all the stuff I enjoyed the first time I read it is still there, but... it never feels the same. All that Avengers tower fic from 2012 and all that season 1 Teen Wolf fic, for example, actually don't taste the way I remember them tasting.

This is true of a number of foods that I liked as a kid, too. The smell of bacon or hamburger cooking are slightly nauseating to me now that I haven't eaten them in 20 years, but sometimes I still wake up from a dream wishing I could have the bacon cheeseburgers I ate at age 19 from the college dining hall once a week.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

This happens to me too. I have no explanation for either phenomenon but it happens to me.

One thing for sure: Ding Dongs. They are just not the same.

Fic, I could go on and on. The frame of mind I was in apparently can't be duplicated.

[cimorene]

My big candy one is Butterfingers. They used to be my favorite, and always first choice, and then when I was 24 or so they started tasting underwhelming enough that I actually wondered if the recipe changed. But it happened with Reese's cups, too.

But I really frequently miss early Avengers tower fic and I've tried to find some to reread with the aid of my bookmarks quite a few times over the years. I've gone back to MCU and Avengers fanfic more extensively several times since 2012 too, but the tower fic never works the same.

[yvannairie]

I do think that's kind of what people mean, though, they want to be share alike in the experience as-you-remember-it instead of the more complicated present tense experience of it. My "benign" example of this (which has, uh, become increasingly Not That) is Homestuck -- you can't really recreate the real-time reading experience and the social space that reading took place in. Naivety is something you can only have with a lack of context.

[cimorene]

Huh. I actually read Homestuck slightly late. Or, well, before the last few updates were released but at least a year after it felt like everyone around me started talking about it. But maybe that isn't late enough to have destroyed the original context experience.

[yvannairie]

I definitely don't think so. I got into Homestuck right in the middle, but I was way out of the fandom by the time the Gigapause officially ended, and I definitely wasn't there for either Collide or Act 7 on release day. That discourse stayed hot for several years, but I don't think people right now getting into it really understand the experience from back then that well.