celebrating 11 and a half years of the fandom I said I'd never join

[pauraque_bk]

Mixed feelings about hp_reunion, since so many of us are still here and have no need to be reunited! But I realize for many people HP fandom is now a long-ago memory and a reunion makes sense. I guess we should be glad it's stuck around long enough for that to happen.

Either way, today seems to be the day people are recreating or pointing to their first post in the fandom. Mine seems to have been on a mailing list called HP Improv.

But then! My friends from X-Files fandom persuaded me to get an LJ, which I had previously said I would never do. At the tender age of 20, I was already a stodgy old-timer who'd been in fandom for years, and I was sure this newfangled LiveJournal thing would never catch on. Online diaries were for high school drama, not Serious Fandom Business. Usenet and mailing lists forever! (Not sure whether to laugh or cry here.)

At last I caved and joined the 21st century, and broke the champagne bottle on my LJ's bow by reposting my very first HP fic, which I'm pleased to say is not embarrassingly bad. (Fortunately I was only new to Harry Potter, definitely not new to writing.)

And here's the post: May 6, 2003.

Notable things:

• I was still using my fandom moniker from my mailing list days. Why isn't my LJ called eodrakken, then? Because I didn't understand yet that my LJ name would be what people would call me. I thought it was more like an email address, and that people would call me whatever I put in the author field of my fics. (But yes, I'm good with being called pauraque now.)


• I used an "archive" field! That was actually a thing on mailing lists and I did not know it wasn't a thing on LJ. It meant that I didn't want people taking my fic from the mailing list and posting it on their own fic archive sites without asking, which sounds completely nuts now, but was actually a normal part of fandom then.


• I liked Draco! I never really stopped liking Draco, but I did fall into a crowd for whom he was not a liked character, so I sort of lost interest in him.


• Aw, the first comment I ever got on LJ was from someone who's still a dear friend (though going by another name online now). That makes me so happy.


• Very obvious that I wasn't new to fandom as I already had people showing up and making silly inside jokes from the XF mailing lists. ♥ But I think I started friending HP people really quickly after that.

This entry was originally posted at http://pauraque.dreamwidth.org/47840.html. Comment here or there.

Comments

[akatnamedeaster.livejournal.com]

Oh geez, mailing lists, now you've really thrown me into full blown nostalgia mode. Now I only need to find out there was an alt.rec.harry-potter on Usenet and my day will be complete!

[pauraque]

I don't know if there was or not, though I wouldn't be surprised. It was still the 90s when the books started, after all. I do know there were some very active HP mailing lists before the fandom largely migrated to LJ, but in that early part of HP I was still mostly doing X-Files (on MLs) and Star Trek (on Usenet).

Where were you hanging out in the olden days?

[akatnamedeaster.livejournal.com]

In the olden days of the 90's, it was a mix of furry fandom (yeah, yeah, I know but the fandom treats artists like gold and the stuff can be fun to draw)alt.rec.farscape(which is where I started reading slash), and on a personal mailing list I ran for my art.

[pauraque]

You know, looking at your skill and style in drawing animals, I actually have wondered if you might have spent time in furry fandom, but I didn't want to ask for fear of offending. I used to hang out there myself (MLs, Usenet, MUCKs) and made some great longtime friends. It's just like any fandom, really -- if you stay away from the assholes and (bad kind of) weirdos, it's an awesome community!

[akatnamedeaster.livejournal.com]

It's funny that you were worried about offending me, since I'm always worried about people giving me the side-eye if I mention it. But yes, a lot of people don't get that it's just like any other fandom, mostly cool people mixed with some nuts and scary weirdos.

I went to cons, never got into mucking though since I could never get the hang of it, did a lot of art and was getting close to BNF-hood when I started to lose interest. Do still miss some of the people though. The cons were a hoot and I always made a bundle and had a really great time.

[pauraque]

I never actually made it to a furry con but I did go to a bunch of smaller meetups (sometimes furry events within a larger sci-fi con or something) and I had such a blast with those folks. Super welcoming and fun. I think the only reason I drifted away was that I'd gotten more into X-Files and it started to take up most of my online time.