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Fandom Beginnings
So, this is something I've wondered about for a while, and have wanted to ask my flist:
How did you get your start in fandom?
Did a friend show you? Where you surfing the internet and stumbled upon it? Did you start in RL?
What aspect of fandom did you first discover?
Was it meta? Message boards? Fanfic? Cons? Vids? Actor interviews? Other?
When do you consider your "start" in fandom?
I ask this question because I have quite a few "starts" in fandom. I've been experiencing fannish behaviour for as long as I can remember, but I have a few milestones but I think it's a very personal thing.
So, to be fair, here are my answers (in a non-specific jumble)
As I said in my last question, I think people's "starts" in fandom can be very vague. If anyone were to ask me right out, I would say my start in fandom was in 2003, when my new friend and room mate![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
raxhel got me hooked on the TV show Queer as Folk. As I began to obsess about it, she talked about these things called fanfics, and showed me some vids. I didn't get fanfic, but I totally fell in love with vids. For my first couple months in fandom I surfed the internet looking for vids. I think that maybe makes me unique. I would think that people would join fandom more through interviews, meta and message boards and then onto fanfic (although I have no data to back that up, hence this post). I know there are a lot of people in fandom who hardly ever touch vids. And although I doubt I could have articulated it as such at the time, I think back then, I was more in the QaF section of the vidding fandom, rather than the vidding section of the QaF fandom.
I don't know, are there many people who got their start in fandom through vids?
But then again, was QaF my first fandom? That's debatable for me. Throughout most of my teenage years, I was completely in love with the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. I remember spending time haunting the Ladies of Lallybroch message boards. I remember my excitement at reading my first meta there (although I didn't recognize it as that at the time), I could still tell you what it was about. Why don't I consider that my "start" to fandom? Maybe because I didn't actively participate over there. Maybe because it was just a fleeting moment. Maybe because most of my fangirling was done in private, I'm not sure.
And before Outlander, I fell completely head over heals in love with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I started watching that in it's first season and it was pretty much the only TV show I watched in my teen years (any other TV I watched was an hour here an hour there, there weren't any shows I followed). I used to watch every single episode and then would squee with my friends about it the next day at school. It was also the first fandom I read fanfic for, although it was the official book kind. And boy did I have a lot of the official books. I remember one year, all I wanted for Christmas was The Watchers Guide. I never read magazines as a teen either, unless I saw there was an article about a Buffy actor. I would go and see movies, just because an actor from Buffy was in the movie. That sounds like it was a fandom for me, but again, I don't really consider it my first, maybe because for me fandom is a *community* thing, where you interact with others, and my fangirling of Buffy was mostly solitary.
And before Buffy, I remember back when I was in grade 5, my best friend at the time got me hooked on Sailor Moon. I don't really remember much of that obsession, but I know it was a big one. I might even possibly *maybe* remember some of the songs from the official sound track *cassette* *tape* I bought and listened to a gazillion times :P
I can't really remember any specific obsessions before Sailor Moon, although I spent a lot of time as a kid pretending to be the Little Mermaid and other Disney princesses.
So yeah, I consider QaF to be my "first" fandom, but really, I think all this just goes to show that I'm one of those people to whom "fandom is a way of life". You could take the internet away from me, and I would still be a fan. I would still try and create the fandom atmosphere, just with people in RL instead (not that I don't currently talk fandom with RL friends *waves at RL friends on flist*).
In conclusion, fandom rocks!
How did you get your start in fandom?
Did a friend show you? Where you surfing the internet and stumbled upon it? Did you start in RL?
What aspect of fandom did you first discover?
Was it meta? Message boards? Fanfic? Cons? Vids? Actor interviews? Other?
When do you consider your "start" in fandom?
I ask this question because I have quite a few "starts" in fandom. I've been experiencing fannish behaviour for as long as I can remember, but I have a few milestones but I think it's a very personal thing.
So, to be fair, here are my answers (in a non-specific jumble)
As I said in my last question, I think people's "starts" in fandom can be very vague. If anyone were to ask me right out, I would say my start in fandom was in 2003, when my new friend and room mate
raxhel got me hooked on the TV show Queer as Folk. As I began to obsess about it, she talked about these things called fanfics, and showed me some vids. I didn't get fanfic, but I totally fell in love with vids. For my first couple months in fandom I surfed the internet looking for vids. I think that maybe makes me unique. I would think that people would join fandom more through interviews, meta and message boards and then onto fanfic (although I have no data to back that up, hence this post). I know there are a lot of people in fandom who hardly ever touch vids. And although I doubt I could have articulated it as such at the time, I think back then, I was more in the QaF section of the vidding fandom, rather than the vidding section of the QaF fandom. I don't know, are there many people who got their start in fandom through vids?
But then again, was QaF my first fandom? That's debatable for me. Throughout most of my teenage years, I was completely in love with the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. I remember spending time haunting the Ladies of Lallybroch message boards. I remember my excitement at reading my first meta there (although I didn't recognize it as that at the time), I could still tell you what it was about. Why don't I consider that my "start" to fandom? Maybe because I didn't actively participate over there. Maybe because it was just a fleeting moment. Maybe because most of my fangirling was done in private, I'm not sure.
And before Outlander, I fell completely head over heals in love with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I started watching that in it's first season and it was pretty much the only TV show I watched in my teen years (any other TV I watched was an hour here an hour there, there weren't any shows I followed). I used to watch every single episode and then would squee with my friends about it the next day at school. It was also the first fandom I read fanfic for, although it was the official book kind. And boy did I have a lot of the official books. I remember one year, all I wanted for Christmas was The Watchers Guide. I never read magazines as a teen either, unless I saw there was an article about a Buffy actor. I would go and see movies, just because an actor from Buffy was in the movie. That sounds like it was a fandom for me, but again, I don't really consider it my first, maybe because for me fandom is a *community* thing, where you interact with others, and my fangirling of Buffy was mostly solitary.
And before Buffy, I remember back when I was in grade 5, my best friend at the time got me hooked on Sailor Moon. I don't really remember much of that obsession, but I know it was a big one. I might even possibly *maybe* remember some of the songs from the official sound track *cassette* *tape* I bought and listened to a gazillion times :P
I can't really remember any specific obsessions before Sailor Moon, although I spent a lot of time as a kid pretending to be the Little Mermaid and other Disney princesses.
So yeah, I consider QaF to be my "first" fandom, but really, I think all this just goes to show that I'm one of those people to whom "fandom is a way of life". You could take the internet away from me, and I would still be a fan. I would still try and create the fandom atmosphere, just with people in RL instead (not that I don't currently talk fandom with RL friends *waves at RL friends on flist*).
In conclusion, fandom rocks!
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I think the first stuff I came across were humourous lists (e.g., "You know you're obsessed with the x-files when..." sort of stuff) and then I found fanfic from there.
I've been following fandom (sometimes actively and sometimes just lurking) since. The fandoms have changed over the years, but the love for fandom has remained!
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But I didn't start actively participating until I fell for Smallville in the summer of 2002 and then fell for Lex/Lana as a ship. I found a website online, contacted the webhost and she told me about a message board for them. There I posted on message boards, read lots of fanfic, chatted with people and...found vids. That's when I made my first vid, started finding a little bit of the larger vidding community and later got an LJ, discovered other shows and fell for slash (learned about Clex earlier though) and then around 2004 to 2005 started really getting into vidding fandom.
Other fannish experiences in real life would be falling in love with The Lion King when I was 6 or so, drawing fanart for it in school no less, creating fictional stories with the characters through objects and talking to friends who loved it as well. I also fell in love with Titanic when I was 10 or so and shipped Jack/Rose, read everything I could about the movie/event, had T-shirts and such about it and talked to friends about it. So really I've always been a fan, the internet just showed me the greater community.
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-Celtic-tigress!