Fandom Snowflake Challenge: Fannish Origin

[rogueslayer452]

Challenge #2: In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story. [...] Whether you've been in fandom for a while or just discovered fandom, we'd love to know how you came to fandom!


Officially I got into online fandom through LiveJournal, although technically it was a little before that.

During my preteen/early teen years I discovered the Internet. This was, of course, back when we still had dial-up and could only be on for about half-an-hour to an hour maximum. I remember being able to search online for anything that interested me (back when corporations didn't fuck everything up) and I found a lot of fansites dedicated to certain shows and media that I was into at the time. I visited forums and message boards, and it was during this time that I discovered FanFiction.Net as well, along with individual websites where people uploaded their own fanfics and fanart there. While my fannish interests at that time were scattered, Animorphs, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dark Angel, and Harry Potter were the main ones that I remember searching for a lot.

And then I discovered LiveJournal, which I lurked at first because this was when you still needed an invite code to create an account, but it got me a taste of what the place was like. When I did finally create my account there in 2003, it's where I discovered so much of the online fandom community. Before I had mainly just lurked on different websites and forums and the like, but this was the first time I actually got to actively participate, from joining in the conversations on communities to sharing my love of fictional worlds and characters on my journal, and befriending other like-minded people to share in the squee.

So yeah, I would definitely say my early teen years were my first introduction to fandom. In general my teen years weren't great to say the least, so online fandom was where I escaped to a lot, which in many ways I'm grateful that I did. Fandom has genuinely been a lifesaver for me.

Comments

[gingicat]

I'm glad it's been a generally good experience for you. Thank you for sharing.

[trobadora]

I was on a few mailing lists pre-LJ, but was 99% a lurker, so LJ was my proper entry into online fandom as an active participant, too. And I'm so glad we found it!

[lebateleur]

Weirdly, I was more active on pre-LJ message boards and MLs but I lurked on LJ like a pro. It also did an awesome job of exposing me to new fandoms, which was an added bonus.

[rogueslayer452]

I remember being sporadic at first, but then I became very active on LJ, and the discovery of newer shinier fandoms was a big part of that.

[svgurl]

I only got to LJ in 2007 so I didn't know that it once required an invite code! I'm sorry your teen years weren't so good, but it's great that you had fandom as an escape and that it sounds like it has been a mostly positive experience. :)

[rogueslayer452]

Funnily enough, had I waited some months I wouldn't have needed an invite code since they discontinued having them at the end of 2003. It's interesting seeing which notable sites back in the day had invite codes to start with.

Yeah. I mean, there were a lot of ups and downs in fandom too don't get me wrong, but for the most part it has been, and continues to be, largely positive.

[haebin]

Your entry brings back a lot of good memories when it comes about LJ. But sadly there was always drama to find, too. But I had a lot of good times there :)

[rogueslayer452]

Oh yes, the drama over there would get rather wild, especially when the site reached its height in popularity. Thankfully, it wasn't shoved in your face like social media does nowadays because unless you were following certain accounts that reported on it, you wouldn't have known otherwise what was going on. That's the beauty of online journaling, such places are able to keep certain things contained.

So yes, there were some not so great times on LJ (drama, the ups and downs of the site as a whole over the years) but I'd say the positive far outweighed the negative parts, at least for me.

[potentiality_26]

Interesting fannish origins! Lot of fandoms I'm nostalgic for mentioned here (especially Dark Angel lately, for some reason).

Ah, the limits of dial-up. I got into fandom when I was living at school, but at home we had dial-up and the summers were long. I usually had maybe fifteen minutes? My mother did not like having the phone line tied up.