Wow. I can't believe I've been in fandom long enough to remember "way back when" but this was a fun trip down memory lane. Thank you for taking the time to write it up.
It's amazing the things you forget, like spoiler space! Or the difficulty of taping from one VCR to another and pulling out the ad-breaks! Or Kestrel's link page! I'd completely forgotten that until I saw it, and then suddenly remembered how much I used to love rec pages.
I think one of the really interesting things was noticing how I got into fandom in the mid-to-late 90s, tail-end of mailing lists and saw it step sideways to personal sites and blogs, and then LJ, and how those experiences have shaped my attitudes as a fan. The urge not to be too public (the threat of C&D letters, the distrust of media/academia studying fandom) and the trust of recs/links pages (it's still how I read in fandom because recs give a good chance of quality, while randomly clicking stories in an archive can be doubtful).
It made me think about my personal distaste of tumblr -- I like it for fanart but I don't see the point of it, not really. It just seems to be everyone liking and linking everyone else's things -- great for communication but maybe it's the underlying idea of noise to signal ratio that gets me.
It also made me appreciate the fanart that's so easily available these days on our fast computers and high-limit downloads. I remembered the tendency for websites to be mostly plain, and frequently coloured text on black background (which I don't miss at all!), but I'd forgotten that part of that was due to download limits and the lack of good picture quality.
slash was seldom welcome on main lists, which were considered general-audiences, while slash was considered to be always-adult even for the most innocuous observations. So there could be a main list and a slash list without anyone thinking it was breaking the fandom.
You know, I'd half-forgotten that. I think of myself as a slasher these days, but I'd forgotten that 10-15 years ago, any slash pairing was considered inherently adult and somewhat forbidden. Compared to now when there are same-sex romances in teen shows and a lot of slash stories are rated at G and PG levels and it seems to be everywhere on journal-fandom, all mixed in together.
It's funny to think how fandom has splintered (the idea of a fandom having *one* mailing list/source/fannish interracting place is utterly unreal these days) and in other ways, the barriers have eroded away.
And, huh, I did not know about the Tori Spelling RPS thing. That explains a great deal, to be honest.
(And as long as the PTB in question wasn't Aaron Sorkin, the big baby.)
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It's amazing the things you forget, like spoiler space! Or the difficulty of taping from one VCR to another and pulling out the ad-breaks! Or Kestrel's link page! I'd completely forgotten that until I saw it, and then suddenly remembered how much I used to love rec pages.
I think one of the really interesting things was noticing how I got into fandom in the mid-to-late 90s, tail-end of mailing lists and saw it step sideways to personal sites and blogs, and then LJ, and how those experiences have shaped my attitudes as a fan. The urge not to be too public (the threat of C&D letters, the distrust of media/academia studying fandom) and the trust of recs/links pages (it's still how I read in fandom because recs give a good chance of quality, while randomly clicking stories in an archive can be doubtful).
It made me think about my personal distaste of tumblr -- I like it for fanart but I don't see the point of it, not really. It just seems to be everyone liking and linking everyone else's things -- great for communication but maybe it's the underlying idea of noise to signal ratio that gets me.
It also made me appreciate the fanart that's so easily available these days on our fast computers and high-limit downloads. I remembered the tendency for websites to be mostly plain, and frequently coloured text on black background (which I don't miss at all!), but I'd forgotten that part of that was due to download limits and the lack of good picture quality.
slash was seldom welcome on main lists, which were considered general-audiences, while slash was considered to be always-adult even for the most innocuous observations. So there could be a main list and a slash list without anyone thinking it was breaking the fandom.
You know, I'd half-forgotten that. I think of myself as a slasher these days, but I'd forgotten that 10-15 years ago, any slash pairing was considered inherently adult and somewhat forbidden. Compared to now when there are same-sex romances in teen shows and a lot of slash stories are rated at G and PG levels and it seems to be everywhere on journal-fandom, all mixed in together.
It's funny to think how fandom has splintered (the idea of a fandom having *one* mailing list/source/fannish interracting place is utterly unreal these days) and in other ways, the barriers have eroded away.
And, huh, I did not know about the Tori Spelling RPS thing. That explains a great deal, to be honest.
(And as long as the PTB in question wasn't Aaron Sorkin, the big baby.)
Hee! As a Sports Night fan, that I remember!