December meme: early fandom, people edition

[arduinna]

For james:

the first or one of the first people you encountered in fandom

This is cracking me up, because James is one of the first people I remember coming across online (which is the fandom I'm defining this as). *g* (hi James, I have known you foreeevvvver!) I don't think I ever said boo back then, though, other than probably sending in an age statement for JADFE (♥) So I'm not sure if it counts as "encountered" or not.

The first person I encountered face-to-face was a woman whose name I no longer remember, although I have visual memories of her and her home.

I was all about Forever Knight in those very early days, mostly lurking on Forkni-l, and someone offered to host people for... something. Season premiere night, maybe? Just general tape-watching? I don't even remember, but I decided to go, and showed up to find the house decorated in Raven images because she was a Ravenette. *g* I was pretty charmed, and we had a good time, even though I was the only person to show up, which was a tad awkward what with us not knowing each other at all. Those were the days when people actually did think that if you met a person from the internet in person, they would turn out to be an ax murderer, so it was nice to have that disproved!

I lost touch with her almost immediately, probably because I wasn't in her faction (much though I love Janette), so I wasn't hanging out on her faction loop at all. Someone posted to the main list about the list's IRC channel, I think on Efnet back then. I had no idea what IRC was, but the post included some instructions, so I got a copy of mIRC and logged on one night. It was great! Turns out it's one of my favorite ways to be fannish to this day, although now I tend to avoid public channels.

Back then, #foreverknight (that's an IRC channel, not a hashtag) was full of tons of people (for mid-90s values of "tons of people") chatting away pretty much 24/7. I got to know a bunch of people pretty well, enough that our conversations would start to dominate the main channel and annoy people, so we broke off into a private channel instead, where we hung out for ages.

And I'm still friends with a handful of them! (waves to eviltammy, ithildin, ninjababe). I've never met Ninj in person, sadly, but got together with Ith, Tammy, and a couple of other friends at Syndicon East in 1997 (that con was a vector -- for years and years later, I'd run across people and find out they'd been there, too); Tammy and another friend came to visit me for a few days at my place; Ith, Tammy, and that same friend and I all went and spent a week on Cape Cod one bright, cold November, where at least one waitress couldn't take it and had to ask us where we knew each other from, because we all had such vastly different accents. *g* And where we accidentally broke into a pirate museum. ♥

Off IRC, meanwhile, I was eventually hanging out with the UFfers, both online and locally. One of the oddest moments was realizing at an UFfish party that I was talking to a woman who went to the church where my cousin had been a priest, and that we'd both been at the same Mass at that church at least once. And she remembered the priest I remembered from my childhood, who'd switched from my parish to hers before moving on again later. It's a small, small world, people. Alas, I've long since lost touch with all of those folks; something about the faction itself, or the faction loop, or something, got less appealing to me, and I just moved on to Due South without much of a backward look at some point, really.

It's really amazing how many people I still know from the 90s in fandom, though. Although huh, thinking about it, I'm still in touch with people from FK, and people from TS (good lord, I still know so many people from TS!), and a few people from Pros, but I think the only people I still know from my DS days are those who moved on to TS about the same time I did. Strange.

---

Full request list here, still open!

(I should really get more icons so I can use appropriate ones for these...)

Comments

[james]

Hee! I didn't actually expect it to be me. ;-) Wait, now I feel old! wtf, when did that happen?

[arduinna]

My first thought was that Ravenette, because in-person! Then I thought, wait, but JAMES. Right there in JADFE! I was reading your fic, but also there has to have been some sort of age-statement communication happening, right? heeeee

And lord, don't talk to me about old. *creak creak*

[rhi]

::laughing:: I still know a double dozen people from the '90s in fandom, too! It's not just you!

[arduinna]

I keep finding people, too! A friend was visiting this past year, and offhandedly mentioned that (DW person) was (person from the FK mailing lists almost 20 years ago). We're all still here, man. *g*

[rhi]

::lol:: *I* was on the FK mailing lists, if quiet and late to the party; I don't think Devo was all that quiet or that late. Not sure who else though!

[arduinna]

ahahaha, of course you were! Deep in my heart, I suspect that everyone was on the FK lists, if quiet. *g*

*points down to batdina* there's one! She's actually the person I was talking about. *g*

[batdina]

so that vector? I too was at Syndicon East. Forever Knight and I parted ways a long time ago (though I was suckered into writing a story for their ficfest last summer) but it is the fandom that brought me a lot of the people in my life who I care most about these days, including the partner-chick.

anyway, I suspect we hung out in some of the same places back in the day. just thought I'd mention it. (I miss IRC! do people still meet there?)

[arduinna]

I swear to god, everyone in fandom was at that con! Except it didn't even feel that big to me. So bizarre.

FK was how I got fannishly socialized and I treasure the friends I still have from them, but Sentinel was the real formative fandom for me in terms of relationships; that's where I met my fanpair. *g*

As it happens, you're the person I was mentioning to rhi above, where I just connected your user name and other name this year and a lightbulb went off! We moved in different circles in FK and I'm not sure you'd even remember my name from back then, though; I was mostly pretty quiet publicly. I think.

I think some people are still meeting by IRC! There are still some public, busy channels, usually around broader topics than just one fandom, though -- I know of the #yuletide and #vividcon (and maybe #vidding?) channels that are open to anyone, where people seem to turn into regulars and get to know each other. Both/all of those are on Slashnet these days, I think. I've reached a point where the busy public channels are usually too much for me; maybe I've lost my knack of skimming 10 different convos and having two or three going at once myself. *g* It's a pity, though; that really was always my best way of getting to know people, and now I mostly just hang out on a server in case someone I already know shows up.

[sakana17]

We may have discovered this already sometime in the past, but I was at that Syndicon East, too, along with klia and talking_sock. It really was a vector!

[dorinda]

Ahahaha, this really is like The Hot Zone or The Andromeda Strain or something. :D

[arduinna]

It is baffling to me. BAFFLING! It wasn't that big a con! But almost everyone in fandom was there, it feels like. So, so strange.

[kass]

(that's an IRC channel, not a hashtag)

Ahahahaha yes.

[arduinna]

IRC is still my default reaction to a #! I have to consciously remember "no, wait - hashtag". *g*

[twistedchick]

I was at Syndicon East too, though I was shy and felt really overwhelmed. And I remember you from TS fandom as well.

[arduinna]

Okay, seriously, I am just dying. I can't get over what a vector that con was. If you were there alone, though, I'm not surprised you were overwhelmed! It was really... odd. Kinda crowded and busy, but not really set up for meeting other fans, just to listen to and/or stand in line to meet the pros. It's the last actor con I ever went to, because it completely cemented for me that I don't like actor cons; I want something geared for fans. Different strokes, though; one of the women I went with couldn't imagine going to a con where the point wasn't to stand in line for autographs.

TS! <3

[twistedchick]

I'm not good in most large groups to start with, and that crowd was just overwhelming. The venue has been used for science-fiction conventions for years -- decades -- but the Syndicon organizers must not have listened to anyone talk about crowd flow or program location. Though I did meet Stan Kirsch briefly, which was great, and Jim Byrnes, and I remember his concert well.

Even the Worldcons I attended later did not make me feel half as overwhelmed and insignificant as that Syndicon.

[sholio]

Oh, interesting -- I either never knew you used to be into FK, or had completely forgotten! These were pre-fandom times for me, so I wasn't really into the show in anything other than a having-fun-watching-it kind of way, though I still remember my deep and abiding sense of betrayal at the premiere of season three. (I was in college and didn't actually own a TV, but I stayed up 'til midnight -- I don't know if this is true everywhere, but it was always a late-night timeslot show for us -- so I could watch the premiere on the big TV in the dorm lounge, and pretty much NOPE'd right away from it after that.) I bought the first two seasons when they came out on DVD and I guess that was the first time I realized, oh hey, there's probably fic for this ... since I'd discovered fanfic in the intervening decade. And lo, there was indeed fic. :D

... I still haven't seen most of season three ...

[arduinna]

FK was totally my gateway to online fandom. I was watching it on my own (and yes! late night -- it was part of Crimetime After Primetime on CBS, and would start at almost random times, and move around the schedule, so you had to be willing to hunt for it.) It was the first show I ever taped consistently, partly because of that weird schedule; I'd set a tape to record for a couple hours in hopes of catching it, because I was working and couldn't stay up that late. (Back then I was actually showing up at work during regular hours. ahem.)

When I got online, I had no idea what to do; there wasn't really anywhere to go, and I didn't know anyone. I knew there was this new thing called a "search engine", though, and you could type things in and maybe it would show you where to find it. So I typed in my favorite show, that everyone in my life thought I was silly to watch - and it came back with a page that had instructions for joining a mailing list, where hundreds of people all watched the show as religiously as I did. It was amazing. I learned how to dupe tapes in that fandom. *g*

And hee, yes, plenty of fic. It's a pity that the fandom's archive infrastructure got so wobbly; the woman who decided to run the main archive sort of gafiated, and things were in limbo until someone else started up a backup/interim archive. And the JADFE (erotica) archive moved all over the place. So there's no real one centralized place for the fic, sadly.

OMG the season 3 premiere. I had no idea it was coming, and was just so horrified. I bet I would have just walked if I wasn't on the list, but at that point I was part of a community, and I stuck it out. There were some okay things about it, and a few actually good things, but the bad was... bad. Very bad.

... don't bother. *kof*