A brief fandom history
My fandom history, that is. The following is part of an assignment I did for my Women and Popular Culture class at school. I would love it if you posted your own stories of fandom in the comments. Fair warning though, I did submit the url to this post along with the assignment, so my prof might be looking in at some point :)
The main difference btween this version and the other one is that this one doesn't have footnotes. Otherwise the text is pretty much the same.
Pretty please post your own stories of fandom in the comments. How did you discover fandom? When? Why do you enjoy participating in it?
Don't feel like you need to be as verbose as I was. I'm pretty sure I could have gone far more in depth into how my fannish experiences have shaped the person that I am too, however then no one would probably want to read it, I had a word limit, so I'm just going to let you at it.
Field Notes: Stories of Fandom
When I was 11, my family got the internet. That sentence provides the lead in to several stories about my life. This particular story is the one about how I got involved in fandom. So, we’re talking 1996 here. My parents both work in information technology, so we always had a computer in the house. That we got the internet before pretty much anyone else that I know isn’t really surprising. A couple of months past the internet arriving in our house, I had the unfortunate experience of getting whooping cough. I ended up missing approximately a month of school. 11 year old me was not too heartbroken about the situation as she got to watch her favourite television show, “Sailor Moon” every day while eating lunch.
Much has been said of the internet’s ability as a procrastination tool. You click one thing, and then three hours later you find yourself reading about 10 other completely unrelated things.
While trying to entertain myself by doing things that certainly weren’t all the homework I was missing, I decided to look up Sailor Moon on the world wide web. I scoured the web looking for information on my new favourite show. Pictures, episode guides, interviews with the creators, and MIDI sound clips... these were the days before YouTube existed after all! It wasn’t long before I found a fan fiction archive site where fans of the show wrote and posted works of fiction (fic) about the characters or settings from “Sailor Moon” . From there it was a short hop to finding fiction relating to everything under the sun that I was interested in at the time.
In this new wondrous world of fandom there was always a lot going on. So what if you didn’t understand the funny combinations of letters in the headers on the stories? You learned fast once reading a fic that had squicked you out before you learned. I discovered slash fiction independent of the historical context of Kirk/Spock, and made a brief foray into the “Gundam Wing” fandom with its many male characters. Next on my plate of discovery was RPF/RPS fic. I read a story which paired people of two of my favourite bands of the time together. Putting aside the ethical questions involved with writing about “real people” rather than fictional characters, I highly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the story was incomplete, so I joined the mailing list advertised on the website to stay apprised of any updates. It was there that I found my internet niche. On the list I made friends with fellow fans. We took our interaction off-list and talked nonstop through instant messaging platforms. It was one of the friends that I made there who introduced me to LiveJournal.
My LiveJournal was created on April 15th, 2001, and I am still posting away almost nine years later. By this point I’ve been on the internet for five years, I’ve made a few friends, and I’ve tried my hand at creating fan works. I’ve been involved in several fandoms. Over the years the ones that weren’t strongly associated with LiveJournal fell by the wayside. I had thought to list all the fandoms that I have been involved in over the years, but the list is long and varied, so we’re just going to stick with the greatest hits. Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing, La Femme Nikita, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Firefly, and Supernatural.
My involvement in the Supernatural fandom brings us full circle to today. While I enjoy the consumption of fan works, to me the ultimate goal of fandom is not to provide an arena where that can take place, but to bring together like minded individuals (mostly women in a lot of cases) to form communities and a place for discourse. I have met several people through my travels online who I count to be dear friends.
Some of them long ago, some of them more recent. Hopefully my future fandom involvements continue to have as positive an outcome.
Fandom tends to be predominately women, and much of it is devoted to “adult” themes such as sexuality. Perhaps it is because of these topics or that the demographics are primarily women that it is often dismissed as trivial. Fandom was around before the internet was. I’m sure that it will be long after is it gone as well.
The main difference btween this version and the other one is that this one doesn't have footnotes. Otherwise the text is pretty much the same.
Pretty please post your own stories of fandom in the comments. How did you discover fandom? When? Why do you enjoy participating in it?
Don't feel like you need to be as verbose as I was. I'm pretty sure I could have gone far more in depth into how my fannish experiences have shaped the person that I am too, however then no one would probably want to read it, I had a word limit, so I'm just going to let you at it.
Field Notes: Stories of Fandom
When I was 11, my family got the internet. That sentence provides the lead in to several stories about my life. This particular story is the one about how I got involved in fandom. So, we’re talking 1996 here. My parents both work in information technology, so we always had a computer in the house. That we got the internet before pretty much anyone else that I know isn’t really surprising. A couple of months past the internet arriving in our house, I had the unfortunate experience of getting whooping cough. I ended up missing approximately a month of school. 11 year old me was not too heartbroken about the situation as she got to watch her favourite television show, “Sailor Moon” every day while eating lunch.
Much has been said of the internet’s ability as a procrastination tool. You click one thing, and then three hours later you find yourself reading about 10 other completely unrelated things.
While trying to entertain myself by doing things that certainly weren’t all the homework I was missing, I decided to look up Sailor Moon on the world wide web. I scoured the web looking for information on my new favourite show. Pictures, episode guides, interviews with the creators, and MIDI sound clips... these were the days before YouTube existed after all! It wasn’t long before I found a fan fiction archive site where fans of the show wrote and posted works of fiction (fic) about the characters or settings from “Sailor Moon” . From there it was a short hop to finding fiction relating to everything under the sun that I was interested in at the time.
In this new wondrous world of fandom there was always a lot going on. So what if you didn’t understand the funny combinations of letters in the headers on the stories? You learned fast once reading a fic that had squicked you out before you learned. I discovered slash fiction independent of the historical context of Kirk/Spock, and made a brief foray into the “Gundam Wing” fandom with its many male characters. Next on my plate of discovery was RPF/RPS fic. I read a story which paired people of two of my favourite bands of the time together. Putting aside the ethical questions involved with writing about “real people” rather than fictional characters, I highly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the story was incomplete, so I joined the mailing list advertised on the website to stay apprised of any updates. It was there that I found my internet niche. On the list I made friends with fellow fans. We took our interaction off-list and talked nonstop through instant messaging platforms. It was one of the friends that I made there who introduced me to LiveJournal.
My LiveJournal was created on April 15th, 2001, and I am still posting away almost nine years later. By this point I’ve been on the internet for five years, I’ve made a few friends, and I’ve tried my hand at creating fan works. I’ve been involved in several fandoms. Over the years the ones that weren’t strongly associated with LiveJournal fell by the wayside. I had thought to list all the fandoms that I have been involved in over the years, but the list is long and varied, so we’re just going to stick with the greatest hits. Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing, La Femme Nikita, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Firefly, and Supernatural.
My involvement in the Supernatural fandom brings us full circle to today. While I enjoy the consumption of fan works, to me the ultimate goal of fandom is not to provide an arena where that can take place, but to bring together like minded individuals (mostly women in a lot of cases) to form communities and a place for discourse. I have met several people through my travels online who I count to be dear friends.
Some of them long ago, some of them more recent. Hopefully my future fandom involvements continue to have as positive an outcome.
Fandom tends to be predominately women, and much of it is devoted to “adult” themes such as sexuality. Perhaps it is because of these topics or that the demographics are primarily women that it is often dismissed as trivial. Fandom was around before the internet was. I’m sure that it will be long after is it gone as well.