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

[pauraque]

I don't remember my first actual interactions in online fandom. I started lurking and reading on X-Files and Star Trek mailing lists and newsgroups in the mid-90s, but I was soooooo shy back then, I was afraid to post! Probably my first baby steps consisted of emailing feedback to fic writers (feedback by email... imagine that) so they're lost in the digital aether.

It might be for the best that I lurked for so long, considering that I was often ignoring those "not for readers under 18" warnings on slash fics... :)

[who_la_hoop]

See, back when I was on the Buffy mailing list, I didn't have the internet at my house(!) but my dad had it at his, where I spent weekends, so I remember him printing out emails for me to read as dial-up, and staying online, was so expensive XD Crazy!

I think one of the first comments on a fic I actually left was emailing Tira Nog after reading A Nick In Time. She never emailed back! Clearly, it didn't scar me, though, haha.

I was over 18 by the time I discovered fic, so I never had to lie about that! I do remember buying erotica from the bookstore though at under eighteen... The world is a much better place for having Amazon and home delivery(!)

[pauraque]

Oh yes, I remember dial-up being charged by the minute. Not to mention if you stayed online you couldn't use the telephone! I was definitely printing out fics to read in those days.

I had a RL classmate who was savvy in the ways of the internet, so I knew where to find the juicy stuff a couple of years before I was legally allowed. Mostly stuck to text, though, because if you wanted to look at dirty pictures you'd be waiting all day for them to load and would probably have lost the mood by then...