my fannish origin story
Jan. 4th, 2025 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naushikaI'm going to (attempt as much as possible) doing this year's ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
snowflake_challenge. So here goes, challenge #2:
In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story.
For some backstory, I grew up in a nerdy, tv-loving household in the 80s and 90s. From a young age, I was sitting next to my parents watching all sorts of stuff on tv, though my parents' main interests were scifi and crime dramas. (And that has pretty much ended up my main interests, which brings in a good nature vs nurture brain exercise.) As a youngin (and I mean young, starting at like 7 years old), I watched the following shows with my parents:
Doctor Who
Red Dwarf
Star Trek
Law & Order
Homicide Life on the Street
The Commish
VR.5
The Pretender
Profiler
Sliders
and most significantly:
The X-Files
The X-Files is where my fannish journey really began. I started watching it in season 2, when I was 11 years old. And I became obsessed. Like, obsessed doesn't even begin to cover it. I covered my walls with X-Files stuff (I do have photos, but they're buried in a box somewhere). I watched it religiously. I made my parents buy the episode cassettes as they came out (because in the 90s that was the fastest and best way you could own something and watch it at your leisure). I wrote about it in my diary. Endlessly.
I have never ever shared the following images before. They are incredibly embarrassing, lmao. Please note I was 12-13 years old in these entries:
(The date is 10/14/95, it looks like an 8 but it is a 5)
"Dear diary.. I'm attracted to older men. Anyway, his name is David Duchovny." Lmao I am dead.
A strange mix of middle school politics with thirsting over Mulder and Harry Kim in the middle of it.
It wasn't all lusting after David Duchnovny. The X-Files was one of the premiere shows that actually helped me think more than surface level about things. And so here is a 12 year old girl's deep thoughts about God just starting (this would be a struggle I would go on to have for a while). I love these entries because you can really see the genesis for how I would end up talking about tv online, in years to come.
Couple things I'll point out here:
- My use of the phrase "x-cept" in place of except. THAT is how obsessed I was.
- Me losing my fangirl mind over this ~risque photoshoot of Gillian Anderson and David Duchnovny.
- "It's terrible suspense waiting a whole week till the next X-Files. And then the episode flys by, so when it's over, it only seems like 10 mins." I feel you, girl.
- "Avid X-Files fans are called X-Philes" lmao just reporting the facts, ma'am
Shotgunning a series of entries to drive home what my childhood diary turned into: weekly ramblings about The X-Files. Again, some strong proto-online-journaling vibes.
So there's a lot, lot.. LOT more of that. But here's one final entry of note:
The X-Files is what started what would be one of my major fandom interests: WRITING. I was writing fic before I even knew what it really meant. (Btw all of my school notebooks were covered in X-Files stuff at this point and I was known as the weird X-Files girl.)
Soon after this, I got on the internet. I found other fans in a chat room and I talked to them every day, about The X-Files and then life. We had a multi-way phone call every week to watch The X-Files together. We emailed fanfic to each other. In fact, fanfic was a big thing - I discovered The Gossamer Archive and I read so, so much fic!
I even posted some. These fics are terrible btw - looks like I posted them in 1998, so I was 15. I posted under the name Gabrielle Elfman (because I liked Gabrielle from Xena and I liked Danny Elfman). I also made an X-Files fansite around this time, but that's a long gone geocities site.
This was my first fandom, and I felt so known and so seen, so much a part of something, that felt much more meaningful and better than anything that happened in real life. So after that, being part of fandoms was basically ingrained in me.
Soon enough, The X-Files ended, and I moved on. There was shows in and out all along that I watched and loved, but my next biggest obsession: Stargate SG-1
Stargate would go on to be my next major phase of my life, one that's lasted a long longer than the X-Files one. I'm still arguably in it. I'd heard of SG-1, but it didn't sound interesting to me - until in 2002, the SciFi channel announced that the show would be moving there. (And I watched a lot of the SciFi channel.) And the way they prepared everyone for this was showing the entirety of the series, in order, on the channel until the new season (season 6) dropped. That's how I - and I suspect a lot of people - became a fan of the show. And whew, did I become OBSESSED. I lived, ate, and breathed SG-1. Fic was there, but around this time I got heavily into Livejournal, and so I also got into icons, meta, discussions, everything, you name it. At one point I volunteered for the Stargate Novel Archive, formatting stories that people emailed in to get posted. I hung out in other circles too - the Doctor Who reboot came about a few years after, and really, the early 2000s was an incredible time for TV - there were dozens of shows at any given time that I adored and gushed about. And then Atlantis came about, and my obsession doubled down. I even joined a Yahoo group to talk about it - the group that would coin the Sparky name.
This was probably my peak fandom time. There was the Fanlistings - a network of fan sites for literally anything - shows, characters, episodes, whatever. I owned MANY. Including the one for Sam Carter! I also became a staffer for The Fanlistings, helping to organize and run the community.
Then, there came landcomms. I loved landcomms SO MUCH! Livejournal communities focused around games and activities and fandom. I joined many, and found a lot of friends through these communities. A big one of these was the Harry Potter landcomm (as I also went through my HP phase around then).
Eventually, that all faded. The landcomm buzz started slowly ebbing away. Livejournal was bought by the Russians and everyone left. We went to dreamwidth, but I don't think most of us stayed. (I was barely around for a long time). I think the magic was broken. I went to tumblr next, and I was very active on there for a long time. But eventually that interest faded too, mostly because I didn't feel as connected to the fandom community on tumblr. And I still don't there, although I have recently gone back and enjoy posting and consuming content.
I was fairly fandom silent for a while, but over the past couple years I've really wanted to try and recapture a part of that, so I've stepped up my efforts to be present here on dreamwidth (and tumblr). I've continued writing fic through all of it but I even went through a pretty long dry spell with that (from 2015 to 2021, I didn't post anything to AO3). Some of it was due to my own real life stuff - in the swing of adulthood, I found a career, and I was just busy. That combined with the overall cooling off of fandom caused me to wander away.
That concludes a pretty long story. I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of things, too. I'm old now and I've been a part of fandom one way or another for 30 years. (!!)
But that leads me to here! Occasionally writing some fic and doing some icons, reading fic, watching tv I love, and talking about it now and again. Lately it seems like dreamwidth is having a bit of a resurgence, and I'm excited for it. I know DW will never be what LJ was in its heydey, but I've found icon communities, meta communities, and of course, there's still lots of fic out there, so I'm enjoying my time.
snowflake_challenge. So here goes, challenge #2:In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story.
For some backstory, I grew up in a nerdy, tv-loving household in the 80s and 90s. From a young age, I was sitting next to my parents watching all sorts of stuff on tv, though my parents' main interests were scifi and crime dramas. (And that has pretty much ended up my main interests, which brings in a good nature vs nurture brain exercise.) As a youngin (and I mean young, starting at like 7 years old), I watched the following shows with my parents:
Doctor Who
Red Dwarf
Star Trek
Law & Order
Homicide Life on the Street
The Commish
VR.5
The Pretender
Profiler
Sliders
and most significantly:
The X-Files
The X-Files is where my fannish journey really began. I started watching it in season 2, when I was 11 years old. And I became obsessed. Like, obsessed doesn't even begin to cover it. I covered my walls with X-Files stuff (I do have photos, but they're buried in a box somewhere). I watched it religiously. I made my parents buy the episode cassettes as they came out (because in the 90s that was the fastest and best way you could own something and watch it at your leisure). I wrote about it in my diary. Endlessly.
I have never ever shared the following images before. They are incredibly embarrassing, lmao. Please note I was 12-13 years old in these entries:
(The date is 10/14/95, it looks like an 8 but it is a 5)
"Dear diary.. I'm attracted to older men. Anyway, his name is David Duchovny." Lmao I am dead.
A strange mix of middle school politics with thirsting over Mulder and Harry Kim in the middle of it.
It wasn't all lusting after David Duchnovny. The X-Files was one of the premiere shows that actually helped me think more than surface level about things. And so here is a 12 year old girl's deep thoughts about God just starting (this would be a struggle I would go on to have for a while). I love these entries because you can really see the genesis for how I would end up talking about tv online, in years to come.
Couple things I'll point out here:
- My use of the phrase "x-cept" in place of except. THAT is how obsessed I was.
- Me losing my fangirl mind over this ~risque photoshoot of Gillian Anderson and David Duchnovny.
- "It's terrible suspense waiting a whole week till the next X-Files. And then the episode flys by, so when it's over, it only seems like 10 mins." I feel you, girl.
- "Avid X-Files fans are called X-Philes" lmao just reporting the facts, ma'am
Shotgunning a series of entries to drive home what my childhood diary turned into: weekly ramblings about The X-Files. Again, some strong proto-online-journaling vibes.
So there's a lot, lot.. LOT more of that. But here's one final entry of note:
The X-Files is what started what would be one of my major fandom interests: WRITING. I was writing fic before I even knew what it really meant. (Btw all of my school notebooks were covered in X-Files stuff at this point and I was known as the weird X-Files girl.)
Soon after this, I got on the internet. I found other fans in a chat room and I talked to them every day, about The X-Files and then life. We had a multi-way phone call every week to watch The X-Files together. We emailed fanfic to each other. In fact, fanfic was a big thing - I discovered The Gossamer Archive and I read so, so much fic!
I even posted some. These fics are terrible btw - looks like I posted them in 1998, so I was 15. I posted under the name Gabrielle Elfman (because I liked Gabrielle from Xena and I liked Danny Elfman). I also made an X-Files fansite around this time, but that's a long gone geocities site.
This was my first fandom, and I felt so known and so seen, so much a part of something, that felt much more meaningful and better than anything that happened in real life. So after that, being part of fandoms was basically ingrained in me.
Soon enough, The X-Files ended, and I moved on. There was shows in and out all along that I watched and loved, but my next biggest obsession: Stargate SG-1
Stargate would go on to be my next major phase of my life, one that's lasted a long longer than the X-Files one. I'm still arguably in it. I'd heard of SG-1, but it didn't sound interesting to me - until in 2002, the SciFi channel announced that the show would be moving there. (And I watched a lot of the SciFi channel.) And the way they prepared everyone for this was showing the entirety of the series, in order, on the channel until the new season (season 6) dropped. That's how I - and I suspect a lot of people - became a fan of the show. And whew, did I become OBSESSED. I lived, ate, and breathed SG-1. Fic was there, but around this time I got heavily into Livejournal, and so I also got into icons, meta, discussions, everything, you name it. At one point I volunteered for the Stargate Novel Archive, formatting stories that people emailed in to get posted. I hung out in other circles too - the Doctor Who reboot came about a few years after, and really, the early 2000s was an incredible time for TV - there were dozens of shows at any given time that I adored and gushed about. And then Atlantis came about, and my obsession doubled down. I even joined a Yahoo group to talk about it - the group that would coin the Sparky name.
This was probably my peak fandom time. There was the Fanlistings - a network of fan sites for literally anything - shows, characters, episodes, whatever. I owned MANY. Including the one for Sam Carter! I also became a staffer for The Fanlistings, helping to organize and run the community.
Then, there came landcomms. I loved landcomms SO MUCH! Livejournal communities focused around games and activities and fandom. I joined many, and found a lot of friends through these communities. A big one of these was the Harry Potter landcomm (as I also went through my HP phase around then).
Eventually, that all faded. The landcomm buzz started slowly ebbing away. Livejournal was bought by the Russians and everyone left. We went to dreamwidth, but I don't think most of us stayed. (I was barely around for a long time). I think the magic was broken. I went to tumblr next, and I was very active on there for a long time. But eventually that interest faded too, mostly because I didn't feel as connected to the fandom community on tumblr. And I still don't there, although I have recently gone back and enjoy posting and consuming content.
I was fairly fandom silent for a while, but over the past couple years I've really wanted to try and recapture a part of that, so I've stepped up my efforts to be present here on dreamwidth (and tumblr). I've continued writing fic through all of it but I even went through a pretty long dry spell with that (from 2015 to 2021, I didn't post anything to AO3). Some of it was due to my own real life stuff - in the swing of adulthood, I found a career, and I was just busy. That combined with the overall cooling off of fandom caused me to wander away.
That concludes a pretty long story. I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of things, too. I'm old now and I've been a part of fandom one way or another for 30 years. (!!)
But that leads me to here! Occasionally writing some fic and doing some icons, reading fic, watching tv I love, and talking about it now and again. Lately it seems like dreamwidth is having a bit of a resurgence, and I'm excited for it. I know DW will never be what LJ was in its heydey, but I've found icon communities, meta communities, and of course, there's still lots of fic out there, so I'm enjoying my time.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 04:01 am (UTC)This sounds exactly like something I would have written in my diary back around when I was 11-13 or so, and your xfiles is my buffy, just a couple years later and essentially the same story, although to be fair Buffy was never taken over by anything else truly. I wish i had watched Stargate during high school, i think i would have loved it (there were definitely some flashes in the pan though, Teen wolf etc). I made my parents come home early from a trip we were on because Buffy was on maybe a sunday night (what a stupid night) at like 7.30, which doesn't sound right because Buffy was definitely an 8.30pm show.
I really wish i had a fandom space still. I can't believe how enjoyable those landcomm times were (although i definitely got *too* into it at times. I loved being involved with people of like mind. It's harder and harder to find your people now. There are many people i wonder how they are doing/have lost touch with with the move from LJ to DW/Tumblr, and unfortunately so many people wanted to stay at LJ rather than migrating as well.
There are still good shows (i'm going to argue they are rarer and/or less frequent in the streaming world though) but without that fannish interaction, it's not quite the same. I also wish i could find that same sense of community elsewhere - i don't think you'll ever capture anything like it.
*nostalgia*
*give me a stargate reboot*
no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 07:08 pm (UTC)I love that you could have written something similar. I was hoping I was not alone in my embarrassing teenage behavior. Buffy was a big entry in my tv obsessions too, I was a year behind the scooby gang in terms of schooling so I watched the show in high school into college right in the same age group as them so I felt very connected to the show! I just never really did anything fandomy too much with Buffy. LMAO to making your parents come home early from a trip to watch!! Perfect!
Ooh I know, the landcomms were really something else, a very magical entry in fandom time that I miss a lot and I know there will never be a replacement for. I miss so many people! Hopefully we can all try to cobble together some other sense of community here at DW even if it won't be the same.
Yesss Stargate reboot!! There's so much more we could be doing in the universe!!
no subject
Date: 2025-01-07 08:05 am (UTC)I think it landcomms + pre-streaming age. There were shows every week! we watched them all at the same time! we wanted to talk about them with other people. I don't know how DW or other platforms can really re-create that. But i'm interested in seeing how things go, I guess the only benefit is there is tons of different ways to interact now.
But not many have the pretty icons LOL
no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 04:56 am (UTC)I only started watching X- Files a few years ago, but was waylaid from continuing by the movie that I couldn't seem to find in any streaming services right in between seasons. ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 07:09 pm (UTC)Oh noooo! I hope you can find it somehow!! The X-Files journey is worth continuing!!
no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 08:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 12:07 pm (UTC)Yeah, I agree. I had several phases of getting into DW for a few weeks before abandoning it. I do think it was a bit of a vicious cycle - not enough people up and left for a consistent community to form, so people kept giving up. I have a LOT of inactive followers. No shade, like I said I did the same thing several times before sticking to DW. Whereas when I found LJ, everyone who was there and stayed there for a while, so it was easier to make/keep friends and build community. I agree that DW has had a bit of a resurgence, at least!
I'm a late tumblr adopter. I feel it has many of the things DW could use more of, like meta, but I agree that finding community is harder.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 07:13 pm (UTC)I don't know what it is about tumblr but I find it hard for me personally to engage with others' posts. I think it's just the format! I don't think it's super conductive to the sort of community building like on DW style platforms. It is a great website though and I spend a lot of time there.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 02:25 pm (UTC)This line,
A strange mix of middle school politics with thirsting over Mulder and Harry Kim in the middle of it.
nearly brought tears I laughed so much. My younger self feels like it found a kindred spirit right there. ;)
I miss the heyday of LJ sometimes. It was very time-consuming, but it was also fun and it felt good to be connected. I do think DW feels similar, only less intense. Also, the fact that there are so many things out there to be fannish about means not as many people are watching the same things anymore. Which is sad.
Anyway, you are a treasure! *hugs* And I'm so glad you're still around these parts. <333
no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 07:16 pm (UTC)Yess, LJ was so time consuming. I literally spent hours of every day on LJ and related activities. But it felt worth it. And I think you've hit on part of the issue, fandom is spread so thin across so much stuff. Back in the day we had LOST and Fringe and whatever else specific landcomms because so many of us were watching these single shows. Now, good luck finding even half a dozen other people watching the same shows as you!
Aww thank you, I'm also glad I'm still around, and that you are too!!
no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 10:40 pm (UTC)Olha você é corajosa, não sei se teria coragem de mostrar algo do tipo, mas é muito engraçado e eu amei (meus textos são ainda mais constrangedores).
Parabéns por participar do desafio e feliz ano novo