Snowflake Challenge: Fandom, A History
Jan. 3rd, 2020 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
author_by_night In your own space, talk about your fannish history. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so. Timeline, narrative, bullet points, tell us your history as a fan!
Oh boy. The deer is teal with this one. Some of it's things a lot of you've heard before, but I tried to mention things I don't think I have, and/or a little extra insight.
It all started the summer of 2000, when I got an AOL account. I was fifteen. I immediately found a bunch of messageboards for my favorite book series at the time, Harry Potter. I found the teen forum first, but they annoyed me, so I went to the adult fandom. The presence of so many people my age there would cause a lot of consternation in subsequent years, but that's a whole other story. (Being an adult now, I can see both sides. On the one hand, I'm sure all of us using purple font and saying LOL while quoting lines got annoying. On the other hand, from what I remember anyway, some of them could be a little mean.)
Also in 2000, I found forums for another book series I loved, Earth's Children. Contrary to the massive fandom Harry Potter would become, Earth's Children - always small - would only get smaller.
Back to the Harry Potter fandom, the boards I found fanfiction.net and a few other sites. The Leaky Cauldron was my main "news site" (I even remember when it was HP Photos! Or at least I think it was?) but I never really got into the subfandom for TLC. I instead moved to Fiction Alley, Sugar Quill, and Phoenix Song much later on.
And yes, I was a Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny shipper, although the latter more so after OoTP. Before that, Harry/Ginny was kind of like Remus/Sirius to me, a ship that I could get on board with but didn't necessarily go out of my way to read fic for. The only real "conflict", and it wasn't much of one, is that I initially thought shipping was about predicting what might happen in canon. I didn't even realize until a bit later that there were people who purposely sought things that weren't. Which on one hand kept me tolerant of shippers I felt just interpreted the text differently, but on the other hand made certain ships really confusing.
Ship wars pissed me off, though, and there was even a point where I was annoyed with my fellow shippers. I'm not saying this was even close to all Ron/Hermione shippers, I really don't think it was, but many of them were very smug after the sixth Harry Potter book in ways that made me deeply uncomfortable. Like calling Harry/Hermione shippers "delusional" - in the company of JK Rowling, no less. Nope. Not cool. I also heard that some people made fun of Harry/Draco shippers during a Harry/Draco panel at a convention, which... seriously? I never got into Harry/Draco, but killing people's joy is just unnecessarily petty. I never got into shipping in future fandoms either, and I honestly think Harry Potter fandom just wore me out when it came to shipping. I mean, I still have ships, but not SHIPS. Does that make sense?
I had two and a half waves of LJ. I got into LJ first in 2002 or 2003, but we don't talk about that account because I was seventeen or eighteen and it was the most butthurt, emo piece of filth ever. In my very objective and not at all embarrassed opinion, of course. :P I came back in 2004. I didn't do a lot with fandom on LJ initially, LJ being more of a space to keep in touch with people I'd met online than anything else. It was sort of the Facebook of fandom to me, as well as a place to relay fandom thoughts that were too tl;dr for forums or for comments in other LJ posts. I liked LJ a lot though, it was a great way to meet other fans in a way that was a bit harder on forums. Before LJ, I only met a few people from forums. (By "met" I mean we talked on IM, although I did eventually meet a few IRL.) LJ allowed me to get to know more of them better, and of course I met even more people from friending memes.
I tried to get into the Heroes fandom between 2006 and 2007, but I didn't fangirl Sylar, which seemed to be an entry level requirement. Plus, I stopped liking the show, so that was a bit of a problem. :P I tried joining the Firefly and Buffyverse fandoms, but I found both way too late. Now I pretty much just dabble in everything - I'd say I have more fannish interests than fandom, although what I do might still be considered fandom nowadays. I don't think fandom is really as contained or communal as it used to be.
I probably would've done better in certain classes without fandom, though. Kids in the audience, fandom's great, but you have to remain on top of your responsibilities too.
Oh boy. The deer is teal with this one. Some of it's things a lot of you've heard before, but I tried to mention things I don't think I have, and/or a little extra insight.
It all started the summer of 2000, when I got an AOL account. I was fifteen. I immediately found a bunch of messageboards for my favorite book series at the time, Harry Potter. I found the teen forum first, but they annoyed me, so I went to the adult fandom. The presence of so many people my age there would cause a lot of consternation in subsequent years, but that's a whole other story. (Being an adult now, I can see both sides. On the one hand, I'm sure all of us using purple font and saying LOL while quoting lines got annoying. On the other hand, from what I remember anyway, some of them could be a little mean.)
Also in 2000, I found forums for another book series I loved, Earth's Children. Contrary to the massive fandom Harry Potter would become, Earth's Children - always small - would only get smaller.
Back to the Harry Potter fandom, the boards I found fanfiction.net and a few other sites. The Leaky Cauldron was my main "news site" (I even remember when it was HP Photos! Or at least I think it was?) but I never really got into the subfandom for TLC. I instead moved to Fiction Alley, Sugar Quill, and Phoenix Song much later on.
And yes, I was a Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny shipper, although the latter more so after OoTP. Before that, Harry/Ginny was kind of like Remus/Sirius to me, a ship that I could get on board with but didn't necessarily go out of my way to read fic for. The only real "conflict", and it wasn't much of one, is that I initially thought shipping was about predicting what might happen in canon. I didn't even realize until a bit later that there were people who purposely sought things that weren't. Which on one hand kept me tolerant of shippers I felt just interpreted the text differently, but on the other hand made certain ships really confusing.
Ship wars pissed me off, though, and there was even a point where I was annoyed with my fellow shippers. I'm not saying this was even close to all Ron/Hermione shippers, I really don't think it was, but many of them were very smug after the sixth Harry Potter book in ways that made me deeply uncomfortable. Like calling Harry/Hermione shippers "delusional" - in the company of JK Rowling, no less. Nope. Not cool. I also heard that some people made fun of Harry/Draco shippers during a Harry/Draco panel at a convention, which... seriously? I never got into Harry/Draco, but killing people's joy is just unnecessarily petty. I never got into shipping in future fandoms either, and I honestly think Harry Potter fandom just wore me out when it came to shipping. I mean, I still have ships, but not SHIPS. Does that make sense?
I had two and a half waves of LJ. I got into LJ first in 2002 or 2003, but we don't talk about that account because I was seventeen or eighteen and it was the most butthurt, emo piece of filth ever. In my very objective and not at all embarrassed opinion, of course. :P I came back in 2004. I didn't do a lot with fandom on LJ initially, LJ being more of a space to keep in touch with people I'd met online than anything else. It was sort of the Facebook of fandom to me, as well as a place to relay fandom thoughts that were too tl;dr for forums or for comments in other LJ posts. I liked LJ a lot though, it was a great way to meet other fans in a way that was a bit harder on forums. Before LJ, I only met a few people from forums. (By "met" I mean we talked on IM, although I did eventually meet a few IRL.) LJ allowed me to get to know more of them better, and of course I met even more people from friending memes.
I tried to get into the Heroes fandom between 2006 and 2007, but I didn't fangirl Sylar, which seemed to be an entry level requirement. Plus, I stopped liking the show, so that was a bit of a problem. :P I tried joining the Firefly and Buffyverse fandoms, but I found both way too late. Now I pretty much just dabble in everything - I'd say I have more fannish interests than fandom, although what I do might still be considered fandom nowadays. I don't think fandom is really as contained or communal as it used to be.
I probably would've done better in certain classes without fandom, though. Kids in the audience, fandom's great, but you have to remain on top of your responsibilities too.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-03 07:24 pm (UTC)I've only ever been tangential to that fandom, but being in the front row as it were must have been awful.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-03 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-03 07:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-03 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-04 12:38 am (UTC)I just know how Dramatic I was as a teen, and I'm sure I'd have been a flouncing, emo drama queen. LOL
no subject
Date: 2020-01-04 04:47 pm (UTC)Oh my god, it would! :))
"I tried joining the Firefly and Buffyverse fandoms, but I found both way too late."
(:
No, sure, I see your point, the really active days of Buffy fandom *are* long past.