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How I fell into SGA fandom
I wrote this up for a comment over at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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 thefriendshipper 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?
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?
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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!
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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.
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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
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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
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!
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Oh, you have lots of wonderfulness (is that a word?) waiting for you in season 3, you lucky person, you!
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Heh. It was somewhat similar for me... just as I was burning out on 'Bones' fandom and looking for something new, I stumbled over
obsessionlove. 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*
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To make a short story long, pt 1
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
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?
To make a short story long, pt 2
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
...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!
Re: To make a short story long, pt 2
Re: To make a short story long, pt 2
Re: To make a short story long, pt 1
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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 :)
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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!).
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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.
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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. :)
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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. :)
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It's all Tipper's fault!
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.
Re: It's all Tipper's fault!
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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!)
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:)
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.
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And wow, if you're only going to watch one SGA episode to get you into the series, Tao is probably the one to watch!
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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...)
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It's too bad you're falling out of the fandom, because I've enjoyed having you around! But there are always other things to fan on ...
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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!
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Well, I might stay in this one for awhile! So far, SGA has done a really amazing job of hitting all my fannish sweet spots. I love the show, love the characters, love the fic, and the fans are really awesome too! This is probably the most socially engaged that I've ever been in fandom; previously, my social interaction was mainly on message boards or mailing lists devoted to a specific show, and I was really more of a lurker than a participant. There are only a couple of people that I'm still in touch with from my earlier fandoms. This time around, I suspect that I've made friends I will probably stay in touch with even after I leave the fandom.
It's telling that I've probably written at least twice as much fic for SGA as in all of my previous fandoms combined! Prior to this, I'd written exactly two really long (~100,000 word) stories in two different fandoms. I'm well beyond that for SGA! In fact I'm starting to need a better organization for my fic page because there are so many stories on it! I just can't seem to get tired of writing in this universe; if the characters fail to hold my interest, or if the show covers territory that I would have covered in fic (honestly, what's left to do with Sheppard and McKay at this point?), then the universe itself is so fascinating that I can wander off to explore one of the alien cultures instead. This may, of course, change in the future, but right now I can't see myself getting tired of it unless I need to put a damper on the fic in order to work on my original stories.
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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!
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Season 4 is wonderful! I had no idea at the end of season 2 (which was where I came in) that the show would ever deliver as much h/c and friendship as it's given us over the last season-and-a-half. Yay!
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This is fascinating - so many different angles on getting into the fandom. Like you, I was completely underwhelmed by the film, which felt full of potential that it never quite reached. Of course, that's my feeling on subsequent viewing, as I was only 13 when it came out, and mostly thought 'ooh! Pyramids! Cool!' I was just starting to get an interest in Egyptology, so it fed that nicely.
Then SG1 came out and I was there. We didn't have the internet, and none of my friends were into sci-fi remotely, so I just watched and watched them, recording them, buying cheap videos off market stalls and generally indulging my habit privately. I fell in love with Daniel, then fell out of love with him in Seasons 4 and 5. Fortunately, I fell in love with Jonas, and am therefore extremely grateful that I was only on the fringes of online fandom at that point. It must have been explosive. I more or less stopped watching once Daniel came back, although I did buy ALL of the DVDs for seasons 1-6 when they were £4.99 each in HMV.
Then I got into writing (original stuff) and started scouting round the net for interesting writing. My first exposure to fanfic was The A-Team (believe it or not) and from there I discovered ff.net, where I found Stargate fic. That lead me to Livejournal, which led me to the House fandom and I starting writing fanfic. Then Torchwood came along, and I realised I was a proper fangirl and should probably do something about it. I threw myself into the comms and writing more fic than is probably healthy.
Then one of my betas,
And was completely and utterly hooked. I didn't have a clue what was going on, couldn't follow the story or the context and who the hell was the guy with the black eye? But it didn't matter. The characters felt like friends right away, and I just wanted more. And more. And more.
I have to say that for someone who got into the Torchwood fandom as it started, and the House fandom when it was still kind of little, SGA fandom is intimidatingly huge. So I asked people on my flist where I should start, and
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Dead Like Me - have just discovered it. And while it will never be a fandom thing, ohh, it's good!
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Dead Like Me is so fantastic! I adore the characters. It's really a shame that it only ran two seasons.
(p.s. about your icon, which cracks me up -- a recent issue of National Geographic had a mini-featurette on an emperor penguin that they'd radio-collared, and it so happens that they had dubbed this particular penguin ... Rodney. I couldn't explain to my husband why I was laughing so hard!)
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I moved and got a satellite dish which had SciFi (this would be around S7). I caught an episode of it and fell in love. This was back during Stargate Mondays. I taped every show that came on (and the ones that aired daily) so I watched the series completely out of order. I became a monster Daniel fan (and I'm a whumper at heart - but I had no idea that there was actually a term for it). I had never heard of fanfics, LJ, Gateworld, anything to do with fandom. I've never been involved before. I ran across Gateworld one day trying to find out some info on SG-1. I lurked for a LONG time before joining in.
I started watching SGA at the premier, but I had never read a fanfic until this year. And it wasn't until I found the links on Gateworld to fanfics that I ventured that way. The further fleshing out of the characters is what really captured me and brought me all the way into fandom. I find I actually watch other shows differently these days based on my involvement in SGA. I'm still discovering all the marvelous writers out there since I typically only read those that have been recommended by people I trust.
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