Thank you so much for taking the time to remember, compose, and post this! It's fascinating what I don't remember. I'm finding it a bit sad as well, because Snady was my pimp. I bought my first TV in 1992, after being TV-less since 1969, because she became our housemate. Then came the VCR, and the tapes: Blake's 7, Pros, S&H, Wiseguy. Slash and gen zines galore! Snady told me that fan stories were the fannish conversation, and I watched that conversation evolve over the next decade. There was the 3-inch 3-ring binder that she handed to me, filled with printed out discussions from both the B7 lysator mailing list (hosted in Sweden!) and the Usenet groups. By 1993 I had an email account at the local public internet hub (Northwest Nexus, aka halcyon), and I became very active about B7 and slash over the dial-up modem (talking to people all over the world!). Snady learned how to make VCR vids, and she and I bought an editing deck, and all the Media Cannibals played around making vids in the living room. I took my first trip to England in 1994, to go to a B7/Dr Who con (Who's 7) with two women I had met only on the B7 list. There were more cons (Zcon! Escapade! Media West! show-specific cons!), and more vids, and zines, zines and more zines, and Sandbaggers, Highlander, X-files, Farscape... And by then the media for all the different conversations had changed so much that I pretty much stopped participating, and now just talk to my friends, the majority of whom I met in fandom even if we don't share many fannish interests now.

I miss the show discussions on the mailing lists; forums sometimes can provide the discussion space I remember, but the blogs don't offer it. Zines used to be the only way to get fiction; they were rare and special. Computer vidding is a solitary pursuit. There is just so much more of 'fandom' now, various twigs, branches, bushes and trees. A lot of repetition and little that is new, I guess. Maybe I'm just a cranky old lady, but I miss the 'old days'. And I miss Snady.