Day 2 Snowflake: fannish origin story

[tielan]

In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story.

I was maybe 10. We'd just watched Return of the Jedi on VCR. And I was idly drafting notes about a story where four young singers became a "dance group" of the 'boyband' type that was only just gaining popularity with groups like New Kids On The Block. That wasn't fanfic, that was original fiction (with the characters roughly patterned off various kids from school).

And the thought came to me:

What if Luke had turned to the Dark Side in the Emperor's throneroom on the seoncd Death Star, and it was left to Leia to save the Rebellion, the galaxy, and her brother?

I didn't have any concept of 'fanfiction' at that point. Timothy Zahn's trilogy that kicked off the 'Extended Star Wars Universe' was at least five years in the future. I can't remember whether, at this point, I'd written the short story of "me and my friends enter the realm of the Transformers, She-Ra (the 1980s cartoon), and 12th Century knight jousting" or if that was yet in my future. (My fourth-grade teacher was very impressed by my creative writing - an in-class exercise - and read the story out.)

But I really wanted to see Leia save the galaxy herself.

(Decades later, I was gifted a fic: My Brother's Keeper by rain_sleet_snow, and it is stupendous.)

In the mid-90s, I joined a bulletin board for fans of the Melanie Rawn Dragon Prince series. In August 2000, I met them in Arizona, then went to Disneyland with them. Made a friend or two that's lasted two decades and more.

In the late 90s, I met up with people from Terry Pratchett's Discworld fandom, back when 'fandom' involved email lists on Yahoo. Made a friend or two that lasted a decade and more.

My housemate got the Foxtel package which included Fox8, and I watched my way through all the (then) existing seasons of Buffy via 'Slayerfest 2000' - Season 1, Season 2, Season 3... I tried a few newsgroups, but didn't click with anyone.

And then in late 2000, in a new house, with a new job, and nothing to do...I started binge watching Stargate SG1.

The local Blockbuster Video had the first 37 videos of the series, which was just over 100 eps, most of the way through Season Three. I'd glimpsed the show before, but never actually watched it from the beginning. Now I did. And I was hooked. I watched my way through to the end of the Season 3 episode Shades Of Grey (which meant something entirely different in those times to what it did now). And I found an email group about the characters and pairing that I liked best...and they posted this thing called...fanfic.

Stories about the characters I liked doing things that the show didn't show! Ideas made up by other people who thought the same way about the characters I liked! A WHOLE ARCHIVE OF STORIES.

And from there it was a hop-skip-jump to writing fic myself, then the advent of journalling, getting a name for writing well (if the 'odd' characters and pairings), until we hit the supercharging of fandom care of Game of Thrones and the Marvel movies.

I haven't been very fannish lately; still chugging along on older fandoms, pre-Endgame MCU movies, stuff like that. But I do miss it quite a lot - or I miss the joyful interactions I had. Not sure I'll find that again - certainly there's not really any places for megafandoms anymore, or centralised fannish experiences. We're all spread out everywhere, and with everything out in the real world being on fire (in some cases, literal fire) nobody has much energy for joyfulness. Even me, and I tend to have a lot of energy.

As it turns out, yes, I did answer a fannish origin Snowflake question a number of years back!