LOL! Well, I confess I was a Teenage Tolkien/D&D/Spiderman/X-Men/Bruce Lee Freak, so I guess that's approximately equivalent for male geeks :)
Is it odd to say a large part of my current fandom is nostalgia? And memories of the best summer of my life so far?
I imagine nostalgia accounts for a lot of fandom. I think for example that's true of Star Wars: I have huge nostalgia for that movie, but I've talked to older SF fans who can't understand what the fuss is. I suspect that probably also accounts for why I don't mind Rankin-Bass and Bakshi as much as some :) For me they're associated with nostalgia from when I first discovered Tolkien.
Mega dittos there!! I remember hearing about the premiere of the RankinBass The Hobbit...we were on our way back from Seguin and I made the family leave early so we could get back in time to catch it on the night it was played!! Made it JUST IN TIME to catch the commercials before the opening scene. I was in heaven.
All because I had been with my mother at a department store, bored out of my mind, and catching a rack of books where the Hobbit stood out, quite apart from the standard romance novels that were packed there. "What's this? The Hobbit? What the heck is a Hobbit?"
It's been a rocky road since!!