sholio | How I fell into SGA fandom

How I fell into SGA fandom

I wrote this up for a comment over at

abyssinia4077's LJ -- and it ended up being horribly long; I didn't mean to spam her LJ quite as badly as I did! But I figured I'd post it here as well -- I don't know if this will be of interest to anyone but me, but I've never sat down and really thought about the chain of events that got me here.

I watched the original Stargate movie when it came out, when I was in high school. I found it horribly disappointing for a very specific reason. Back then, even though it would still be years before I discovered fanfic and fandom, I was just the same h/c "friendshipper" that I am now, with a particular fondness for May-December friendships. Jack and Daniel had all the potential to be exactly the sort of friends that I adore, but in the movie, they just never connected -- I remember being especially frustrated with the climactic scene where Sha're dies and Daniel brings her back, because I wanted that to be Daniel and I wanted it to be O'Neill bringing him back; the parallel between Daniel and O'Neill's dead son was so very, very close to being there, but the movie just didn't go that way. Oh well...

Then I went off to college, and didn't have a TV for awhile, but around the time I got out of college, I started seeing promos for the Stargate show. My memories of the movie weren't warm and fuzzy, but on the flip side, I used to have a massive, MASSIVE crush on Richard Dean Anderson in MacGyver -- my first and biggest fan crush, in fact. In the late 80s/early 90s, I taped every episode I could (and wore out the tapes watching them), joined fan clubs, wrote fan letters to him (augh, so embarrassing!) and pretty much behaved exactly as every pubescent girl does with her big fan-crushes.

I was over the crush for the most part, but I still wanted to see what he was like as a different character. But since I wasn't that interested in the show, I poked around online for awhile and found some episode transcripts and clips. (Which I downloaded over dial-up! The pain!) This was about the time that the show was in the middle of season 2.

After finding bits from "Serpent's Lair" and "Need" and "Fire & Water" (the one where Daniel is presumed dead?), I was in fangirl HEAVEN. It looked to me like the show had done exactly what I had been so bitterly disappointed that the movie hadn't done, and taken the Jack and Daniel friendship right where I wanted it to go. I watched all the episodes I could get in syndication on my crappy, tiny little TV in the apartment I shared with my roommate, and the others I found on a website which might have been the precursor to Gateworld -- I remember that for a while, until the studio caught them, they had all the episodes as really crappy-quality WMVs (they were like, 20 Mb each for a whole episode!).

Besides Stargate, the other thing I was significantly fannish about at the time was various anime -- my friends in college had introduced me to Ranma 1/2, and my current roommate had a friend who had a ton of anime on VHS tapes. It was anime that had gotten me started on poking around online fandom and fanfic, otherwise I probably wouldn't have even thought about looking for that sort of thing for Stargate .. but with Stargate it really took off -- I believe that I read every gen fic on Heliopolis, although in 1998 it really wasn't *that* big.

I was all about the Jack and Daniel; I liked the rest of the cast fine, and I enjoyed team fic, but it was Jack and Daniel h/c that I was really after. I first discovered slash in SG-1 fandom, and I was completely freaked out by it -- it doesn't help that the first slash story I ever tried to read was a Teal'c/Daniel in which the symbiote gets involved; I think it would creep me out NOW!

I kept watching SG-1 through getting married and moving across the country, but I was falling out of fannish love with it, as other, shinier things took more of my interest. I've always been sort of a fannish butterfly -- in fact, my involvement with SGA fandom is probably the longest that I've been actively fannish about something since I was a teenager. I still remember, vividly, the last SG-1 fanfic I ever read, the one which not only burned me on SG-1 fanfic but on fanfic in general for awhile. It was a Daniel-whumper, and it was one of the ones where the hurt and comfort and more hurt and more comfort just drags on and on and on and ON with no end in sight. I'd already lost a lot of my fannish interest in the show, and I reached the point on that fanfic where I sat up in my chair thinking, "There is no POINT to this." I think that was the first time I ever realized that what gets me with h/c is the push-pull of never quite going there -- like with many people's approach to romance in TV and movies, if you actually get the resolution to it, then it's no fun anymore. This fanfic was like that for me, and it made me realize that to some extent, ALL fanfic is like that ... you can write whatever you want, push the characters whereever you want them to go, so what's the point?

I was losing interest not only in SG-1 but in online SG-1 fandom. This was around the season 4/5 area, and it was a nasty vicious time for the fandom -- ship wars galore, and het/slash wars, and massive amounts of fannish resentment of TPTB. At this point in the series, there was a significant segment of the fandom that believed TPTB had "distanced" Jack and Daniel in season 4 as a direct reaction to slash, cutting back on their interaction to avoid giving the slashers fodder. The gen people were pissed off about that and blamed the slashers for it. Meanwhile, Michael Shanks was unhappy with the way his role on the show was shaping up, and he wanted to leave -- so not only was the fandom unhappy, but the behind-the-scenes on the show was unhappy too!

I quit watching the show after Daniel died. I watched sporadic episodes in Season 6, but I really didn't care about it anymore.

When SGA premiered, I had just moved again, and I was living alone for the time being since my husband was still finishing up his degree in the state we'd left. Even though I still didn't have any interest in getting back into SG-1, I was vaguely curious about the new spin-off (actually, my thoughts were more like, "I wonder how much this is going to suck?") and I asked a friend who had the Sci-Fi Channel to tape it for me.

So I watched Rising and didn't like it. The only character who interested me at all was McKay, and I found him sort of annoying. Oh well. Move on.

Couple of years later, I was back to being actively fannish online -- which is sort of cyclical with me. I had started the

friendshipper LJ so that I had a place to be fannish; I just didn't really have a fandom. I'd gotten back into "Forever Knight" for awhile (a fling from my teenage years), re-watched the series on DVD and read all the fic I could find, and I was looking for something new. At the moment, I was doing this by downloading vids for shows I was curious about, because I wasn't just looking for something to watch; I wanted something to fan on. This is how I found

derry667's vid page and watched her Sheppard & McKay fanvids. And oh, I LOVED them! Between the bouncy, happy vids and the talking clips at the beginnings of the boys mouthing off to each other, it looked like I might've dismissed the show too early. And I had just seen the first season at Blockbuster, so I bounced off to rent it.

Rented out.

Dammit.

We rented "Dead Like Me" instead (very good show, but I *wanted* SGA!). In the meantime, I poked around for fic to see what the fic was like, and stumbled upon Tipper's Failure to Communicate. Well, that did it. I was head-over-heels with fan-love at the very idea of this show -- if it was anything like the fic, I wanted it bad! We finally got our hands on the first disc of Season 1, and while the premiere still didn't do much for me, "Hide & Seek" and "38 Minutes" did it. I was gone.

And that's the point where I met most of the rest of you ... *g*

What are your stories?

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

*laughs* In some ways you got into SGA the way I got into SG-1 originally...I had seen the movie (had similar reaction to you; I liked it a bit more mainly because I was amused by how blatantly it wanted to be Star Wars, but was frustrated by the unexplored Jack & Daniel potential.) And then I heard about the show, and was intrigued, but didn't actually watch it, until the sis was looking for an h/c fandom, and I knew SG-1 was one of the big 'uns, so we started reading fic having seen the movie and maybe two eps of the show...and got rather obsessed, and found a way to get hold the show itself. It can be interesting watching a show post-fic-reading, because your interpretations are so very colored.

SG-1 was one of my shorter-lived fandoms - in part because we got into it 4th season, when it was on the downhill slide. Though ironically, it's actually the fandom that got me reading slash, since there were so many authors who wrote on both sides of the fence...(or both ends of the gen-to-slash gradient, more like, when it comes to Jack-Daniel).

As for SGA, at first I wasn't interested because...spinoff without my favorite chars, ehhh, whatever. And then when it started swallowing fangirls whole I got scared! :P Now...will haveta see how it shakes out. I'm a fannish butterfly myself, though lately I've been doing more multi-series simultaneous fanning, so SGA might join the list. Thus far, anyway, SGA's 4th season doesn't seem to be sliding like its predecessor...anything but!

I got into SG-1 about the same time Farscape got canceled...but mostly I was reading fan fic here and there not really into it actually I never really got into SG-1 the way I got into SGA or Supernatural for that matter but I enjoyed what I did read and the show was okay. (it was so much better the first seasons when it was on showtime)

So I was kind of prepared and a bit interested in seeing what they'd do with the spin off. I LOVED Rising. I liked the set up, I remembered liking McKay from SG-1 and well Sheppard was kind of hot. But I wasn't really feeling fannish for it until the Storm/Eye episode arch. And then I found

astolat's Oblivious and Transcendental fics and I was hooked and the fandom fed into my love of the show. And basically all of season one wowed me and the fan fiction was really good.

It can be interesting watching a show post-fic-reading, because your interpretations are so very colored.

Yeah ... there have been several fandoms that I got into that way, and it does have an odd way of influencing how you see canon itself. The oddest one for me was Harry Potter, because in that case, the fic has completely gone off in its own direction; every time a new book comes out, there are a lot of writers who just keep right on going with their own personal canon, which means that a lot of the fic bears only the most passing resemblance to the condition of actual canon! I was confused as hell, but it was really fascinating to see how some of the major events in canon had been run through a fic-lens, and I'd gotten completely the wrong idea from reading fic about them...

I've never been monogamous with fandoms, but I only seem to be able to maintain a really active fandom presence in one at a time. I am honestly not sure how long my SGA fixation is going to last, because obviously it has to start fading sometime, but this show just pushes so many of my fanning and my ficcing buttons, both.

I think the fanfic is a big part of why I've stayed fannish about the show for so long, because the fic is good enough (and extensive enough) to carry me through the dry spells of hiatus or when the show's not meeting my personal needs. I've definitely been this heavily fannish about various shows before, but usually there either isn't much fic to read, or I'm not that interested in what's available (as is the case with me for Supernatural -- there is lots of fic out there, but I'm not really interested in most of it).

*waves*

I just friended you recently, ~~so I swear I'm not a crazy stalker who is rootling through your garbage and auctioning off napkins you've discarded on e-bay or anything...~~

It was so fascinating to read all the responses on

abyssinia4077's journal - especially what it was about the fandom that sucked us in to participating here on LJ, and not just fangirling at home.

SGA is relatively new for me. I of course came with SG-1 and was excited for the spinoff when it finally aired. I think it was really the team vibe that hooked me, as well as the slightly off kilter sense of humour that the show revels in - it speaks to my crackishly inclined nature.

I've been toe dipping in the fic - and my, is this fandom productive! The sheer amount linked on the noticeboard and newsletter each day is enough to make the mind boggle. Thus far I have been hunting out the Gen, teamy fics to get a better feel for the characters and setting (your own excellent fics are a source of joy there) and I've skimmed over a few of the slash and het ones, but I've not really read all that many, unless they're recced to me.

Alas, I have only seen to season 2 - and so much of the more recent fic can simply be too puzzling for me to figure out what's going on. But, bookmarks! I have many a gen fic saved for when I finally get my hot little hands on those DVDs!

I wanted something to fan on. This is how I found derry667's vid page and watched her Sheppard & McKay fanvids.

Heh. It was somewhat similar for me... just as I was burning out on 'Bones' fandom and looking for something new, I stumbled over

lim's Sheppard/McKay vid 'My Brilliant Idea' and was hooked to the show and the characters instantly. Downloaded an ep, and started hunting for fic the second I finished watching it. Incidentally Failure to Communicate was one of the very first fics I read, and it just cemented my budding ~~obsession~~ love. Then I found your stuff by browsing Tipper's favourites, IIRC and, yeah. There was just the kind of fic I love, and it was there in abundance. Bought the season1 DVD set after having watched my second ep. :)

I kick just myself that I haven't discovered this show earlier. Ah well.

*off to check out derry667's vids*

Hee~! This timeline feels really familiar - and then diverges when you found SG-1 through fandom, and I caught a horribly bad ep of id dubbed in French. XD

But - um. Yes. The RDA thing... Let me just say that I understand. And that I'm now vaguely grateful that, living in Sweden, I didn't even think about the possibility of fanmail or anything like that. I was also a couple of years younger than you, and didn't really have VCR-access. I can't for the life of me figure out why now, because I know I taped anime off French TV when I was that age, but... I think it was the fact that MacGuyver seemed to be on everywhere, all the time. The anime (not that I knew the name for it then) was only available in Switzerland - MacGyver was on tv in every single country where I watched tv, reruns and new eps both, and I think it just never occurred to me that one day he might not be.

Anyway - Stargate! I watched the movie when it came out - went to see it in the theatres, because my American friend M had a bit of a crush on James Spader. I didn't know what to expect, and to be quite honest, I think I suffered from the same disappointment that you pinpointed - all that potential, and then no acting on it! Very frustrating.

Back when SG-1 started airing... I'd gotten internet access (14.4 modem!), and discovered fandom. I was heavily into The Sentinel, which was actually on in Sweden. Whoo! But I heard about SG-1 through the fannish grapewine... Unfortunately, it didn't get picked up by any of the three Swedish channels I had access to, and while I'd gone the fanning-through-fic route before (Highlander, I'm looking at you!), I had really mixed feelings on the idea of SG-1. Obviously, RDA being in it made me want to watch it like burning, just because. But there was no James Spader! And there were lots of gates, and the movie creators didn't like it, and - I have no idea what was rumour and fact, back then, but the fact that I couldn't check out the source material (oh, the advances we've made - BitTorrent, ILU!) made me steer clear of the show's fandom. It's kind of painful to be desperately fanning, but completely unable to get new episodes. (Most shows tended to air here about a year behind the US schedule.)

Anyway. I was aware of it, and when I was in Switzerland and saw it in the TV listings, I decided to check it out. And landed right in the middle of Thor's Hammer, which... oh, dear. Basically, if a good ep can pull you into a show, a bad episode can repel you. There was so much wrong with it - I've grown up with Norse myths, obviously, and this was a travesty (a travesty dubbed in French!), and. Just - worst first impression ever.

It's kind of funny how that turned me off the show for a long, long time. Wasn't even curious about the fandom anymore. But

xparrot and

gnine marathoned a couple of seasons, their squee was infectuous enough that I checked out some fic, but... I thought it was one of those shows there was no way I could ever really fan on. Especially since I still couldn't get to the source material! (Oh, how I don't miss the bad old days with NTSC/PAL divide... DVD regions are abominable, but much easier to get around!)

As is usually the case with these things, I was always vaguely aware of the fandom - news of major SG-1 events would reach me through some kind of osmosis, and when I found out Ben Browder and Claudia Black had joined the show I was really intrigued. (This was after watching Farscape, obviously.)

Still - I had some pretty intense prejudices against SG-1, and it didn't help that I kept getting the impression that large chunks of the fandom hated their show...!

When SGA showed up on the scene, I decided (sight unseen, because I'm a bad person like that) that it was probably more of the same, and what were those Stargate people doing to the mythical city of Atlantis, really?

But then, all of a sudden, it seemed I couldn't open any fannish discussion thread without coming across these two "McKay" and "Sheppard" characters. I had no idea who was who (still true when I first watched Rising - it was kind of funny to finally be able to go, "OH, so McKay is the scientist!"), but I knew they were from SGA. And I knew they had a large and enthusiastic fan base.

I was eventually worn down by a slow process of all that squee once or twice removed from my own circle of fannish friends, and by

oakfairy's love of the show in general, and David Hewlett in particular. I think I could have kept on resisting if

xparrot hadn't pointed me to a certain

friendshipper for Dresden-squee, and the squee that had once been removed ended up much closer. *grin* With icons and fic posts and... and all of a sudden, I was honestly intrigued by the show. Obviously there was more than just slash potential to it - there seemed to be h/c! And characters with a habit of saving each other's lives! And

oakfairy was right there with her DVDs and enthusiasm for sharing the SGA love, and Doctor Who had ended and I was missing a fandom...

...and now, here I am. I've rarely been so happy to have been wrong about something in my life! ♥ SG-1 isn't horribly bad - it can be cheesy, sure, but it has all the adorable teamyness and h/c! And SGA is just... wonderfully fun show, amazing fandom. This is definitely somewhere I want to stay for a while. (For the record, once I started watching, I'd decided it would be great if I did like it. And I liked the pilot! And then they had "Hide and Seek" and "38 Minutes", and I was hooked. ♥)

Um. Way to make a short story long. ^^;;; But - you asked!

Also - is it some kind of universal rule that the first slash fic you happen across must be HORRIBLY SCARRING? XD Because I had no idea what the word meant when I clicked on a fic in the early days of X Files - and ended up with an orgy of characters played by David Duchovny. Granted, the symbiote kind of beats that by a mile, but I was so confused. Especially since the only other character I recognized was Dennis/Denise from Twin Peaks... It's definitely a fic that would still weird me out today!

Your story sounds so much like mine!

My brother got me into SG-1. We watched the Stargate movie together when we were kids (well, I was still a kid, he was several years older) and I thought it was pretty good, but like you I missed the h/c and friendship aspect. It could've been so much more!

Then when SG-1 came out, we were both curious and when we heard RDA would be in it (we were both MacGyver fans) we decided to give it a try. And were hooked! Like you I adored how the Jack and Daniel friendship was being explored, and I found myself turning into a Daniel-whumper. I liked Sam and Teal'c, but Jack and Daniel made the show for me.

Until season 4/5. It really did seem as though they were steering Jack and Daniel away from each other. I felt that Daniel was being wallpapered and Jack wasn't being much of a friend to him anymore. When MS left, I stopped watching the show. When he came back in S7, I came back too, but it just wasn't the same anymore. I kept watching till season 8, but I was losing interest fast because I missed the team moments and character interaction of the first 3 seasons. They just didn't seem to care about each other anymore. When RDA quit the show, I watched the first 6 or 7 eps of season 9, because I wanted to give it a chance without RDA, but I felt the show was going downhill and stopped watching after that.

I'd heard about the spinoff, but refused to watch it because I doubted it could hold my interest without my favourite SG-1 characters in it. A friend of mine, who was an SGA fan, practically begged me to watch it and lent me his S1 DVDs. I didn't feel like watching it at all, so they lay in my room, gathering dust, for about two weeks. Then one day I got bored (which doesn't happen often), my eye fell upon the Atlantis DVDs, and I thought, what the heck and popped the first dvd into the player.

And fell in love. I adored Sheppard, loved McKay, Teyla was awesome, and Ford was great. I loved the character interaction, the friendship and the team moments. Sheppard and McKay were (and are) my favourites, but unlike with SG-1, I was interested in all of the team members. When an epi centered more on Teyla or Ford, I still enjoyed watching it.

Now that we're in S4, my fangirl-ism for the show is only increasing. The episodes I've seen so far just totally blew me away in terms of character moments. For me, SGA's characters care more about each other than SG-1's characters ever did. In the end, the character interaction between the core team (and especially between John and Rodney) and the team moments are what drew me to the show, and so far they're keeping me glued to the show.

So there you have it :)

To begin with, you must understand that the only television I grew up with was what we could manage to pull in with a pair of rabbit-ears. So pretty much just NBC, CW (then WB), one 60's-70's rerun station (which is now gone, woe - no more Hawaii 5-0), and a public television station. Oh, and Fox. I think Fox is where I first saw SG-1, but it was only occasional reruns, so I had no clue what was going on. Just that there were aliens sometimes, and the military was saving the day on a regular basis (even if they were usually the ones who created the mess in the first place) - a combo which always makes me happy.

And then one summer we (my family, that is) went to my aunt's house at the beach, which has air conditioning and about a million channels, and we spent pretty much a week inside, watching an SG-1 marathon. Which was loads of fun.

So we got back home, I mentioned to a co-worker that we'd discovered SG-1, and she loaned me the first four seasons. Which we then proceeded to devour, four or five episodes a night.

So we were pretty much SG-1 fans all the way at that point. We'd seen an episode of SGA during that week at the beach, ("Condemned", if I remember correctly), but it had seemed more like a lame spin-off, so we pretty much ignored it.

And then a friend started getting the Sci-Fi channel, and began making us tapes of all the shows he thought we'd like, and suddenly there was SGA in all its team-y glory! So now my whole family are big fans of both shows (I think it helps our fannishness that we've seen only pieces of each, and that we tend to watch them multiple episodes at a time).

I don't remember how I fell into fandom, though. Probably stumbled across it late one night at college, unable to sleep because of a party going on in the hallway outside my door.

Oh, this is fascinating. :) Like you, I started with Stargate-the-Movie, and I loved it. I even liked Kurt Russell as Jack, and I adored James Spader as Daniel. But the movie seemed 'unfinished' to me at the end and I had hoped for more. But when I heard about Stargate-the-Series, I wasn't sure I wanted to give it a chance; I just couldn't see 'MacGyver' as Jack. But at the (literally) last minute, I turned it on to watch. I was hooked the moment the Daniel Jackson character appeared and I was a fan from that moment on. I was totally involved in the fandom and the show up until S4, when that love began to falter. Then mid-season 5, I just stopped watching because it wasn't the show I loved anymore. As you say, it wasn't a good time for fandom either. The SG1 fandom had become a battleground and I needed to get completely out, so I did. (By this time I had already been in fandom some 20 years, so it wasn't like I hadn't come across other fandom kerfluffles, but there was something particularly vicious about the SG1 fan wars.)

When SGA aired, I was determined to give it a miss. I blamed the writers and producers on SG1 for a lot of the problems on that show, and since they were the same writers and producers on SGA, I didn't want to put myself through that again. Then someone recommended a songvid to me (It was 'Stress'), and I was knew I had to see McKay on this show. So I got the episodes from a friend who had been trying to get me to watch, and I was hooked as soon as they set foot in the City. And I have loved every character they have given us in the series. Something SGA does very well, I think, is give us that 'family vibe', something I have needed in every single show I have ever loved. I also think the producers and writers have avoided a lot of the mistakes they made on SG1, and the show is simply getting better and stronger with every season.

I have also found SGA fandom to be a particularly nice place to be, and the fans are generous, creative, talented and very prolific, for which I am very grateful. And that is pretty much how I got here. :)

Actually,

tipper_green is the one who brought me into the SGA
fandom. I'd been watching the show, but had resisted reading fanfiction for it, since I was already into fanfic for a few other shows. But it seemed at that time like fanfic had pretty much dried up for Magnficent 7 and SG-1. It's more likely that I just didn't know where to look, but anyway. When the changeover happened and Mitchell and Vala came on, I started looking for fic with them in it, and really couldn't find any I liked. And my growing disillusionment with the show made it really easy to switch allegiances to Atlantis. Really, I hadn't been happy with the show since sometime in S7. I was excited that Daniel was coming back, but the team was never really the same again, even with him back. There wasn't the same sense of closeness that we had in the early seasons, and that we have in SGA.

So in a moment of boredom I decided to try some of Tipper's SGA fics, since I knew her writing from Magnificent 7. I was instantly an addict. After reading every single one of her fics, I started hunting down more. I don't remember the exact process, but I know I found your fics pretty quickly. And well...now I'm completely lost. :)

One thing about SGA that's been different from SG-1 is that while Rodney and John are my favorites, I'm interested in all the characters, Teyla, Ronon, Elizabeth, Carson, Zelenka, Lorne.... With SG-1 it was always pretty much Jack and Daniel. Even though on the show I enjoyed Teal'c and Sam (pre-S7), I was never really interested in fic focusing on them, with a few rare exceptions. I'm not sure why. *shrugs* But SGA is fun in that I'm invested in all the characters, so it opens up the fanfic field a lot more. :)

Yes, I was happy with my one fandom, M7. Happy as a clam. Then tipper_green tells me to watch this SGA thing. I was kinda 'meh' about it. I'd never been interested in SG1. It just never caught me. Part of that might have been an annoying acquaintance (not Tipper) loved that show, so I was biased against it.

So, Tipper told me to watch the next Stargate Atlantis, and that she wanted to know who I liked best in the episode, to see if we agreed on the same character. So, I watched the next show, "Home", which isn't a great one for getting to know the characters - because everything is 'wonky' in that episode. But, I decided that liked that scientist guy and would try it again. She was pleased, which frightened me.

Then, she asked me to beta "Hidden Resources". Needless to say, I was totally sucked into the show (how could anyone NOT want to watch after reading that story?) What followed was a midnight marathon of SGA episodes at her place to 'catch me up' and suddenly I had a new fandom

I curse her name.

I didn't watch Stargate the movie when it came out, even though I was utterly intrigued by the concept. I'd watched some sci-fi (original Star Trek, possibly some TNG) but not that much, read some Asimov and Clarke, so the concept of the pyramids being built by aliens was fresh and new. However, the reviews over here were bad, so I didn't. Years later I borrowed the movie from a friend and fell in love with it.

Then when SG-1 came out I was sceptical. But then I watched it, and while the new O'Neill freaked me out slightly, I loved it, and after the second viewing prefered it to the movie. I think I managed to see another episode, but due to Uni or my parents being there or something I missed a lot. I managed to pick up again and watch some episodes out of sequence somehow, much later.

Then when I moved to London there was cable TV and Sky One and re runs....yee! A year or two later I started to rent the seasons, fell in love with Jonas to a level equal to my Daniel Love (I now prefer Daniel again), then started to buy the seasons. (BTW season 4 is my absolute favourite season and I see no real difference in the relationship between Daniel and Jack in season 5, apart from in certain episodes - but I always felt they patched it up for the most part. I'm not anti H/C but it's not a big draw for me. Sparky, snarky conversation and humour is.)

I'd seen the trailer for SGA on the SG-1 DVD and wasn't impressed. For some reason my mind was thinking it would end up being like "Seaquest DSV" (?!) and I was not impressed by Teyla, the Wraith, the new Weir, or Sheppard. Yes, there was a time when I didn't think JF was attractive....

When it finally aired (on terrestrial - the cable hook up not being accessible during prime TV times), my work shift meant I couldn't see it from the beginning (my patchy watching of SG-1 taught me to only ever watch new episodes in sequeance). So I thought I'd rent it. "Rising" didn't excite me that much, apart from the effects and the sense of awe at discovering this huge city, but it was better than my expectations (I was by this time a huge SG-1 fan, though not writing fan fic, and not reading that much either) so I kept watching. Despite Jinto, "Hide and Seek" captured me (the balcony scene - come on!) and "38 Minutes" was surprisingly compelling. I watched the disc a second time, and by the end was beginning to find that Major guy really quite attractive and charming (which is ironic, because when I watch those shows he's actually quite rude!). I ordered the remaining disc, and then started to find fan fic. Second 2 had aired stateside and probably on UK cable, so references to Ronon and other things kept turning up. Volume by volume season 2 arrived and my love grew stronger. I finally caught up on season 2 (and had betaed an AU fic) between "Misgotten" and "Irresistible", got an LJ sometime around that, and in a while started to write a little.

Why do I like it? Shows I like are intelligent and funny. Shows I love stimulate me mentally, have sparky, snarky dialogue, moments of deep touching friendship and emotion, and writers who aren't afraid to poke fun at themselves/their characters or write about writing. SGA, SG-1 and The West Wing provide this and more!

I've fallen harder for SGA because it is still being aired. There's buzz and squeeing and fresh material, whereas as much as I love SG-1 and adore Vala I felt it was getting tired. Oh yeah - and I've fallen big time for John, and Rodney, then Ronon, and now Teyla, and Dr Z, and Dr B, and this amazing city, and conversations about pop culture and TEAM and...

PS (If it weren't for all the other wonderful things/characters in the show, Joe F would keep me coming back, because of the Sheppard combo of charm, intelligence, snark, cool, dorkiness, strength, vulnerability, mystery, gorgeousness that he brings week after week. If I could pick anyone to play Faramir it would be him, even if I can't imagine him with an English accent!)

The first slash-fic I remember clicking was Skinner/CSM, so, uh...yeah ^^;;;

(I honestly don't think SGA is any better - or worse - than SG-1 at the teaminess and the cheesiness both. Actually, even for a spin-off it surprises me how alike the two shows are in feel - I think SGA had a stronger first season, because they weren't starting from scratch; but once they hit their stride they're pretty evenly matched. The chars and relationship dynamics are different, but equally fun - and the fandoms are similar too, from what I've seen. SGA feels like a bigger fandom to me - it seems like every Western show fangirl has some familiarity with it 0 but I'm trying to figure out if that's true, or just an illusion because SG-1 in its prime was pre-lj or ff.net, so the communities and fic were somewhat more scattered. Hmmm...)

The first slash-fic I remember clicking was Skinner/CSM, so, uh...yeah ^^;;;

Interesting! Obviously XF fandom was pretty scarring...

The way things stand now, the only major difference for me between SG-1 and SGA is that I'm fanning on SGA. SG-1 is fun and has lots of good stuff, it just... hasn't hooked me. Who knows why one works better than the other - fannish alchemy, it just works. ♥ But also - SGA isn't wreaking havoc on Earth mythology and cultures. (...it's making up its own that make no sense. I know. But! One annoys me - the other I can ignore. Yes, I know it's totally random. And, no, it doesn't make sense. But that's how it is.)

I do think SGA is bigger because it started later. Like I said - I couldn't have gotten into SG-1 when it started airing even if I'd wanted to. Now, with region free DVD players and BitTorrent and YouTube - well. The source spreads much more quickly and easily. And fandom was way more scattered - it's still very much split into different groups, but most of them are much more easily accessible now.

I'm new to LJ, but NOT Stargate.
I'm only 20 - so when Stargate came out in 1994 i was only a little kid> However it came on TV one day and I, an evil little monster, watched it and thought it was good. 1997 - I fell in love with SG1 and absoultely adored the Jack-Daniel friendship. Stargate SG1 became that show i that associated my childhood with - it was the one my family would sit down and watch.
Fastforward - High school. People didn't quite understand the crazy stargate fangirl's excitement over 'Stargate Night'... or how wonderful McKay was...
Like frienshipper, a causal internet surf landed me on Derry's website - and my life was forever changed - fanfiction and vids. Wow - here were people that understood what it meant to be an Atlantis fan.
I only just found LJ, previously i'd been lurking around fanfiction.net. I've just started up and i am very ready to start yapping to everyone about SGA - which i just adore.

It was easy for me. Having gone through all of

queenzulu's fanfic in fandoms I love, especially House, I suddenly noticed one of her fics was extremely popular on del.icio.us. Deciding to trust hose who had voted with their bookmarks, I read The Physicist Bride (http://community.livejournal.com/sga_flashfic/167394.html). I stopped in he middle just to read the character summaries from wikipedia and to watch one episode (Tao of Rodney) to get a feel for their voices. And that fic was just SO MUCH LOVE, I went and searched for more, overdosing on the various AUs this fandom is so fond of, and finally worked my way into catching up on episodes, which are very fun, even though the quality of fic is generally better. This is the first season I've been following live, as it were.

I saw the Stargate movie sometime around in '97, I think-- just before SG1 started. I can't remember if I watched the movie because I knew there was a series coming out about it, or if I watched the series because I had seen and liked the movie, but in any case I enjoyed them both. I stuck around with SG1 for two or three years, but kind of faded away after that-- because honestly, I liked the plots, but none of the characters were hitting my buttons. (They still don't.) So I kept watching random episodes for the next few years, and then gradually forgot about it.

Fast forward to 2004. I was visiting my dad, had nothing to do, and turned on the TV to the SciFi Channel. Hey, SG1's on-- I remember liking that. So I kept watching, and it turned out the be Heroes part 1, and I was hooked again. (Poor Janet!)

Then I heard about this new spin-off; watched a few episodes when it came out, and, like 95% of the fangirl population, loved McKay. And then I went to Italy for four months and had no access to TV. My only recourse was the fanfic (mainly Tipper, NotTasha, Kodiak Bear), which was superb, and I spent the entire semester mainlining fic. And that was that for me-- I was in love with the show. (Of course, recently I've been mostly falling out of SGA, but that's another story...)

Whoa. Don't mind me, I'm just going to smile gleefully in the corner for a moment.

So, so cool.

I wrote an answer to the question, but it got really long, so I went and posted it on my site. To sum it up, I saw the movie and SG-1, but never with much attention. I watched Rising on a whim, liked it enough to keep watching, then fell in love with Sheppard and McKay's banter in Underground. I dreamt up a fic when, the next week, they reran 38 Minutes on Labor Day weekend and I needed a fix. I wrote it, dragged a bunch of people from M7 into the show with me because I wanted them to beta, and then posted it. I then read what else had been written, and it took me all of a day. There was one other long fic on fanfiction.net, the rest were all short. Not good enough. I wrote more, strong-armed my friends who'd betaed into writing too, and went anywhere where I could find more fic. I saw the start of the SGA fandom, and loved it all first season, when everything was new and everyone was fresh faced and happy. Then Season Two happened, and...the vitriol started. And I participated less and less, until I stopped doing anything except posting fic. Because I'm a junky, I needed more gen, so, on Tazmy's suggestion (and encouragement), I joined LJ last year, and found this side of the fandom, and it's much nicer than the other side (the Gateworld side). It's still a bit rough, but not as rough. And...that's about it. Season Four has so far lit a fire under me, so all good. And with my track record, I'll probably be here for a few more years. But, ultimately, I'm more fic than fandom, though I know they feed into each other. Only thing that makes me sad is that I've already seen a bunch of people come and go, and I miss those who have left. I'll be very sad when you leave, for example. Nature of beast, I guess!

And, if I haven't said it before, thank you!

It starts with the movie--which I totally loved. Anytime it's aired, I watch it. Then promos for the show came out...but alas it was on Showtime...couldn't afford Showtime. But I thought, how funny, MacGuyver's on it. He's only ever going to be Mac. Oh how wrong I was. When it finally hit syndication (and the local station still does this) it was on at some ungodly hour and I never saw it.

Then Sci Fi happened. They started reruns and got the rights and then I started watching when everyone else was leaving in droves. I liked it...a lot. But it never captured my imagination like SGA has.

Fast forward to the promos for this little spin-off SGA. Amanda Tapping and Joe Flannigan sitting at a table interviewing people to Get into the Gate. My fangirl heart just fluttered for Joe. Saw in the special they put together the defib. scene from 38 Minutes and my whumper side just chomped into this show's leg and wouldn't let go.

Rising aired and I wanted more. Loved the dynamics of the characters. Loved the Wraith. Loved they were cut off. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!

Had been checking fansites for another fave show and discovered FanFic.com...then thought, I wonder if they have SGA? Well that would be a big, fat yes. One of the first stories I read was from Koschka. Then found LiketheRiver, then found Tipper, then found MNTalbert(Kodiak Bear), then found...well you get the idea. (Incidentally, when I first read That Which is Broken, I was gaga over the dynamics you had between the team. Gush.)

And here we are just lusting...um, loving Season 4 with a large spoon!

Heee! New people are always welcome! And thank you. ^_^

Oh, you have lots of wonderfulness (is that a word?) waiting for you in season 3, you lucky person, you!

Tipper is a terrible enabler, isn't she? Even when she's not trying! And, if you haven't found it already, here is a link to Derry's vid page.

heeheee! I remember you talking about the Stargate butchering of Norse myth, and the awful French dubs. I've certainly been turned off shows by silly little things -- and, worse, I'll decide I don't like a show just based on the first episode, which is usually not the best episode to judge by anyway! (SGA is only one example of a show that I put on the "do not care" pile based on the premiere -- Supernatural was another!) But I'm very glad you're in SGA fandom now! You are such a fun person to share squee with. ^_^

... and *hee* at the horribly scarring slash! I wonder if it's because, statistically, there is a lot of really weird slash out there, but slightly more savvy fans know better than to click on it. Or at least know some of the warnings and abbreviations to look out for!

It's really interesting to see from other people's responses that I wasn't the only one who fell out of SG-1 fandom at that time! I mean, I knew at the time that a pretty significant segment of the fandom were having the same problems with the show that I was, but it still makes me feel a little better about it to hear other people essentially tell the same story.

And I agree with you about loving the whole cast in SGA; I think part of my dissatisfaction with SG-1 came about because I was so very focused on Jack and Daniel, so when the focus of the show moved away from their friendship, I didn't have much interest in the show anymore. Whereas with SGA, while Sheppard and McKay are my favorites, I love the rest of the team enough that I wish they'd do more Teyla episodes and Ronon episodes, and I never felt that way about SG-1 (until going back to it in season 10; interestingly, my favorite characters are Teal'c and Vala now!).

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 3

How I fell into SGA fandom

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

To make a short story long, pt 1

To make a short story long, pt 2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

It's all Tipper's fault!

no subject

Re: To make a short story long, pt 2

Re: To make a short story long, pt 2

:)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Re: To make a short story long, pt 1

no subject