Snowflake Challenge, Day 2
snowflake_challenge Day 2: In your own space, talk about your fannish history.
Let's see...
Well, in one sense I have always been fannish, by which I mean I get really into some stories and want to both expand on them/embroider around their edges/play the what-if game (creative fandom), and to know and organize everything about them (curatorial fandom). But I didn't know fan-communities were a thing until I was in college, and I got into them by way of Harry Potter fanfiction, so I have always "done" fandom in online media-fandom/fic-writing style rather than more old-school convention-attending style. To this day I don't think I've met another fan in person, in the sense of getting to know someone online and then meeting up. (I have met people in brickspace and discovered that we were both fannish, but that's different.)
Anyway, around my 20th birthday I was having a depressive episode and had been blocked on my original writing for a while, and I accidentally fell down an internet hole and discovered fanfiction. I believe it was by way of googling stuff about LotR, which led me to Cassandra Claire's Very Secret Diaries, which led me to her HP fic, which led me to HP fandom more generally, and it kind of spiraled on from there.
I wrote my first fic in April 2002 sort of as a meta argument, on the theory that the best way to criticize a badly handled idea is to do it better oneself, and never really got out of the habit. That spiraled into other fandoms as well, obviously.
My first fannish sites were LiveJournal, ff.net, FictionAlley, Yahoo Groups, and... oh god, that was back in the day when there were still half a million personal sites and tiny two- or four-author archives all scattered around the internet. Not that we're all that much more consolidated now, but at least there's AO3. *wry*
I have done my best to sit out most fandom convulsions, since I have long been of the opinion that if any community is making you unhappy, you should move to sections that have fewer assholes.
Eighteen years on, I am still having fun, so I think I'm doing all right. :)
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