sholio | Meme answers: How I got into fandom

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Meme answers: How I got into fandom

wraithfodder asked:

How did you come to be in fandom and what do you like about it?

The timeline goes something like this:

1995 and earlier - In typical teenage-girl fashion, I was massively fannish about various actors and shows, but had no clue that organized fandom exists -- I suppose I'd vaguely heard of sci-fi conventions and such, but I really never thought about going to such things, and I didn't have anyone other than my sister to talk to about it.

1995-1998 - Went to college, discovered the Internet. I never really did fannish stuff, though, aside from looking up fan pages on actors and the like. I was pretty active on various mailing lists, but they were writing and art-related.

1999-2000 - Discovered fanfic and fannish mailing lists. Oops. *g*

2000-onwards - Decided to try writing fanfic. Oops again!

Ever since 1998 I've been in one fandom or another, to greater or lesser degrees of involvement. A partial list of fandoms that have sucked down my brain for notable amounts of time, in something vaguely resembling chronological order, include: Ranma, Stargate SG-1, All My Children, Trigun, Invisible Man, Dragonball Z, Saiyuki, BtVS, indy comics/webcomics/small press comics, X-Men (and sundry other Marvel and DC comics), Harry Potter, Fullmetal Alchemist, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Star Trek: TOS, Forever Knight, various book fandoms ...

In some fandoms I've written fic but haven't really interacted socially; in some I've been on mailing lists or message boards but haven't written fic; in some I've administrated mailing lists or message boards. LJ, for me, has changed my style of fannish discourse by bringing it all together and giving me a central forum for posting fic and interacting socially. (I know that some of the mailing lists did that too, but they were invariably mono-fannish -- as someone who switches fandoms frequently, at least in the past, the all-in-oneness of LJ is a huge draw for me.)

At this point, it's difficult for me to imagine my life without fandom in it, since it's been a major component of pretty much my entire adult life. The majority of my social circle is composed of people I met through fandom, in one way or another (counting both fanfic people, and comics/small press/'zine people, which is its own kind of fandom). I've gained a lot of creative inspiration and honed my writing skills, and I think I've also learned a lot and gotten a lot better at discussing touchy topics with strangers than I used to be.

Thanks for asking -- it's a fascinating topic! I thought about how much detail to put into this and decided to go for the bare-bones, because really, I could practically write a book. A very dull book, and one which is probably similar to that of most online fans in most ways. :D (Aside from having started out doing original writing and THEN trying fanfic ... I gather most people tend to go the other way, so I'm unusual in that respect.)

And how did all of YOU get into fandom? What was your first fandom? I'd say my first obsessive, "read every piece of fic" fandom was probably Stargate SG-1, back when there was only a season and a half of it! I never would have guessed, when I started falling out of that fandom, that I'd fall so obsessively into its sister fandom almost a decade later.

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my very first addiction?
probably battle of the planets when i was about 7 or the hardy boys also around the same time...

i was really in to the a-team when i was about 10, and the original starwars movies

first proper fandom... was probably roswell, then andromeda... i am slowly backing out of the atlantis one

and really having gone though all the bad stuff i have with that one i am really reluctant to join another fandom...

my new love is supernatural
but i don't go on the boards... i go to some of the live journals to snurch pics.. and i post a bit in the threads on gateworld.. but thats as far as i will go

i don't want to get burned again. Fandom can sometimes ruin a show for you. Though its not 100% to blame it sure doesn't help.

that being said i was really really sad when andromeda ended, i felt that because the show was ending so was my friendship with a lot of the people i had met. Luckily that wasn't true.

I have met some of my best and dearest RL friends through fandom and i have also met many out and out hurtful horrible people.

fandom can change you

really the question is .. can you be a fan without the fandom? And should you be?

Fandom's definitely a thing that enhances my enjoyment of a lot of shows (and books). It's wonderful to be able to discuss them with people, and my flist has introduced me to many things I wouldn't otherwise have seen. But I would still enjoy them without the fandom, though maybe not as deeply or obsessively. Having fic available to read definitely helps keep the obsession going during hiatus and after the demise of the series.

oh man i love reading fan fic..but i guess i just shy away from the discussions and boards now... I mod an andromeda board but its really quiet.

I used to write tons of fanfic.. but i don't really anymore
i am writing other things... i love reading it though

its the people themselves i avoid more now

My first fandom was Digimon, but I wasn't into the fanfic side of things at all. I had a website which focused on the Japanese show and I spent an embarrassing amount of money on magazines and stuff so I could scan stuff for my site. I also had a section where I translated Japanese Digimon cards (also spent way too much on those), which I really, really loved. I wish the wiki format had existed back then, that would have been so awesome for my Digimon encyclopedia. I also translated lyrics and did a lot of fanart and had a huge-ass messageboard.

But I really had no interest in fanfic until a few years later when I saw Queen of the Damned and started re-reading Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. It was actually six years ago this month that I started reading VC fic, and a couple weeks after that, I started writing.

I was really active in the fandom for about a year before starting to drift away when I got sucked into The Establishment, an RPS RPG on JournalFen. I really had no interest in RPGs or RPS, but my frieds were all doing it, so I couldn't resist. :p I was mono-fannish with the game as my fandom for a while, then slowly started becoming more and more multi-fannish, to the point where I've written six fics this year in six different fandoms.

One of the cool things about fandom is how many ways you can get involved with it, and how many different levels you can get involved at. I've done a number of things over the years -- RPGs, running websites, running mailing lists, fic, vidding, discussing, lurking -- and it's a slightly different experience in every case.

If fanning means 'obsessively rereading favorite scenes of books' or 'imagining yourself living on fictional worlds' or 'getting a special tingle in one's chest when Spock goes "Jim!" in "Amok Time"' or 'psychoanalyzing the characters of Disney Afternoon cartoons', then I've been fanning for as long as I can remember.

If fanning means interacting with a community of fans other than my siblings, then, having failed to make it into the lone ST con I went to before its numbers maxed out (even though the bro got in and got to see a bunch of the TNG cast, for which it took long years to forgive him) I didn't really start fanning until I got online in college, with X-files in early '97. I devoured unhealthy amounts of fic (mostly in the computer labs, as my PC didn't have a net connection) and then started writing and posting it (on newsgroups. Under my own real name. Which means it's all still out there and I can never escape it - damn you, Google!), and found feedback is its own special sort of addiction. (Funniest part of the X-files craze? I just found out that

rhymer23 was one of my favorite writers of the time, back with a different name. Fandom's a small world!)

Oddly enough, I was writing fanfic a good year before that, mostly for Gargoyles and Alien Nation, in a journal for a creative writing class (we could write anything, as long as we wrote). I'd read ST novels but didn't realize how extensive the amateur community was for such things.

And I'd been actively writing original SF and fantasy for several years before that. Still do, though not as much as I should. OTOH, fanfic has honed my writing abilities a 1000%, so it's all good, far as I'm concerned.

Ha, yeah, I've been getting obsessively fannish about things ever since I can remember. My sister and I used to draw Star Trek comics and make up our own stories about Kirk and Spock and McCoy (and other characters on other shows) at an incredibly young age; we shared a room so we'd stay up late at night putting ourselves to sleep by making up what we used to call "funny stories" (although there was frankly at least as much pain as "funny" in them!).

(Funniest part of the X-files craze? I just found out that rhymer23 was one of my favorite writers of the time, back with a different name. Fandom's a small world!)

It is a small Internet, isn't it? I keep occasionally running across people I met years ago in other fandoms, too -- especially with LJ and ff.net bringing me into contact with more fandoms than the ones I'm specifically active in.

*laughs*

Well, see, this one time - in an IT lesson, in my all girls Catholic convent school - I typed in Mulder/Krycek, thinking I'd get information about Mulder or Krycek.

I've been a slasher since the age of 13.

heeee! I was so much more innocent than that. I was in fandom for awhile before I even became aware of the existence of slash, though admittedly I was hanging out in fandoms where it wasn't very common.

I wrote Mannix fanfic when I was 11 or 12 - very bad Mannix fanfic, didn't know it was fanfic of course.

In 2003 my twin sister Lyn started telling me she'd been writing The Sentinel ( a show I'd never heard of) and SG fanfiction for 3 years. She gave me some videos of TS and some of her stories then dared me to write a story. I fell madly in love with TS and it's remained my main fandom ever since. Wrote my first TS story which is absolutely awful but got feedback (positive for it) and kept going. Now I write in 7 fandoms and have written well over 200 stories and had around 15 stories published in zines as well.

Looking back, I am so glad my sister made that dare with me.

Sisters are evil! :D My sister and I have gotten each other hooked on all kinds of things -- I got her into SGA (and NCIS!) but she's reciprocated plenty of times.

heh. I was a RL fan long before the internet. I guess you could say that I've been a fan since I could read--I swiped all my parents S when I was 6 or so, and created a little library, with spine tags and everything. Poul Anderson, Asimov, Ellison, I literally read a book a day for about 20 years.

Then It Was Trek, the original series. when I was 13, I wrote Mary Sues of the worst kind. I went to see William Shatner at an appearance in Houston when I was 16 or so. I wrote a Trek script and got so far as having auditions in the high school auditorium (Man, in retrospect, that was so embarrassing!) Then in '76 it was my first Trek convention, one of the home grown variety, and I was hooked. 6 World cons, many NASFICS, ran a SF club, put out newsletters, helped run local conventions, attended a ton of local cons, joined a fannish 501(3)c (or whatever that is), and then sort of fell out after 89 or so, and in 93 or so later got online in Babylon 5, and did a lot of RP stories for about 4 years. Then it was The X-files, and the other characters portrayed by Nick Lea in a variety of incredibly Rare fandoms. Helped run a ML, did two Zines, wrote the bulk of my fiction, ran an archive for same (still do, actually). Then it was Smallville, and I got sucked in to LJ. SG1 and then SGA, and I guess I'm fairly well entrenched. I'm not as prolific in SGA as I would like, but I do a few other things.

Why no, I don't have a life, why do you ask? *g*

Like I've sometimes said to my sister ... I *do* have a life, it just revolves around TV. *g*

I totally missed out on the fanzine/APA heyday, which I sometimes regret. By the time I got into organized fandom, it was more of a fringe interest than the main driving force of fannish creativity. On the other hand, I guess I can't complain about having instant access to searchable archives of fanfic either!

It's a little surprising to me in retrospect that I didn't get more involved with fannish stuff in college. There was an anime club and various science fiction and fannish cliques, but my social circle was a totally different brand of geek (art and computer/engineering people, mostly), and I was far too shy to attempt to actively insinuate myself into any of the organized clubs on campus.

I refuse to name my first "official" fandom out of fear that everyone would lose respect for me. You could Google my name if you're really curious (but for the love of god, don't Google me!), my only excuse is that I was thirteen and the internets had just gotten big. By the time I got into high school I had expanded my focus and dipped my toes into other fandoms. I think it went something like... Highlander, Dragonball Z, Megaman X, very briefly Star Wars (the Jedi Apprentice subsect), Rawhide, disappeared altogether for my senior year of high school, then resurfaced with Bonanza, until finally SGA took a hold of me and never let go.

And to think, the only reason I started watching SGA was some guy in New York was handing out chapstick and sunblock with the logo on it.

I just realized that I'm in this fandom because of chapstick. I think I need another cup of coffee.

I refuse to name my first "official" fandom out of fear that everyone would lose respect for me.

And yet you publicly admit to DBZ, so now I'm curious what the heck it was. *g* (I was big-time into DBZ, too, which makes me wonder what the timing of your involvement was, and whether we ever crossed fannish paths. Does "Ki-Blind" ring any bells?)

And yet you publicly admit to DBZ, so now I'm curious what the heck it was.

Let's just say there's only one "Greywolf Lupous" out there, and it never occurred to me to change my name. I mean, uh, I plead the fifth. Most of my DBZ involvement was within IRC chatrooms/RPGs. I never wound up posting that fanfic I was writing... thank god. I wish I could say yes to Ki-Blind, but I have the feeling I missed that one.

My first fandom was ... um ... Blake's 7 but you won't find any fic by me under this name (or even under my own name ... well, perhaps one poem ...) 'cos it was pretty bad stuff I was writing back then!

I then went mad on Dr Who (mainly Peter Davidson, 'cos I loved his companion Turlough, and quite liked Tegan too). After that I went mad for The Man from UNCLE (ah, Ilya) and then the A Team (Murdock, and maybe Faceman a little) and The Sentinel (Blair, oh Blair) - which is when I started writing fic again - and then SGA (Rodney, Rodney, RODNEY! Squee!).

Ah, I remember saying to

jayne_perry before 'clicking' with SGA (it was during season 2 that I became obsessed with it rather than just someone who watched it) that I'd never ever be able to write Rodney and his snark ... I swear those plot bunnies took that as a challenge!!!!

I've always had love affairs with TV shows, starting with Buffy and Due South when I was still in elementary school, followed by Highlander, DS9 and the X-files, but I think my first fannish involvement was when my best friend started writing and printing out her BTVS fanfic for me to read when we were about 13.

Then in high school, I got the internet at home and went looking for stuff about Harry Potter, and the first thing I found was a collection of Harry/Draco stories, and my love of both fanfic and slash was born. I wrote (bad)stories in both HP and the West Wing fandom, and then I got obsessed with SG-1 in its 7th season, which quickly progressed into an obsession with SGA once it came along.

I found there was such a thing as fandom through The X-Files, back in 1995, before we ever had an internet connection at home. (So I found fandom the first time I used the internet. Literally. Because the name of my favorite show was naturally what I thought of to type into the search engine! *g*) And I lurked and lurked all through my fannish love for XF - and then I got into The Sentinel.

Which was in... 1996? A while before

xparrot got into it, but not much. Luckily for me, by then, I'd stopped lurking, and was happily participating. I had a crappy webpage and wrote terrible fic (which has been erased from the internets forever, to my great relief) and had a blast talking about the show with people. I even worked up the courage to mail some of my favorite authors with feedback - which is how I met

xparrot! The Sentinel is were I really started getting fandom. I learned about its history from talking to older fans who'd been around in the days of cons and zines. I learned about fanvids when a fandom friend sent me a couple - this was when people still vidded on actual video tapes! I experienced my first Save the Show campaign, and got my first (and last) official fan magazine, and... yeah.

I'd been fanning without knowing about fandom forever, and I'd been lurking, but The Sentinel will always have a special place in my heart because that's where I joined fandom. ♥

My first true over the top, can't sleep, can't eat, and breathe in everything they do fandom was Duran Duran. Oh, I had loved T.V. shows (some mentioned above...Battle of the Planets, Rawhide, Star Wars{not technically a T.V. show but a movie}...) but with the Fab Five, I collected everything I got my hands on. Had...wait...still have that folder from a 12 year old girl's fevered dreams.

But online, it was Gargoyles where one of the writers would chat on AOL about the episodes, talk about exciting. Oh, AOL and my 2600bps modem brought me the boards for X-files and all those who knew the morse code for "Blood". That was thrilling because that Mac was my first computer and got to chat with others who liked these shows.

It seems I've been fanficcing since I was a teen, but only in my head. AUs for Star Wars apparently and Thundercats...truly a scary thought. But I really fell for it in 2005 because I was bored with the Smallville story lines and yes wrote a Smallville story. And then the glory of SGA...and whump or H/C...big smile.

My first true over the top, can't sleep, can't eat, and breathe in everything they do fandom was Duran Duran.

Oh man, I'd forgotten my total obsession with the Moody Blues until right now! My sister and I were massively, massively obsessed with them in our early teens, to the point where I wrote what was basically (looking back on it now) very thinly disguised RPF with the names changed. AAAAAAAA! I wrote bandfic!

I was a Star Trek fan. I went to a convention and everything

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Meme answers: How I got into fandom

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