21-1-02: my fannish origins: another historical document unearthed

[lobelia321]

I found an old diary from 2001-2002 and can reconstruct it all!

Here are the origins of my two obsessions: slash and Bollywood.

Tuesday, 20 November 2001, 20:45: I saw Kuch Kuch Hota Hai at the Arts Picturehouse.

Friday, 21 December 2001: t'h and t'elder son see Lord of the Rings.

I have no record when I went to see this film! T'younger son was too little to see it! So we had to split up as a family.

Wednesday, 26 December 2001: The diary records "I could see Lord of Rings today." (But not whether I did.)

Now comes the fateful weekend: Sat/Sun, 19-20 January 2002. We spent the weekend with a good friend who lives in Leamington Spa, near Birmingham and Warwick. It was during this weekend that I read an article on Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings and how women, too, could like this! Written by a woman in the Times Literary Supplement.

That night, and I can pinpoint it exactly because it was spent on the sofabed of our Warwick friend -- that night I had a dream in which Frodo and Sam kissed.

The next day (Mon 21 Jan. 2002) I googled -- did google even exist yet? No, I'm not sure it did... well, I did something, I did an internet search: Frodo Sam kissed. I found Least Expected (remember Least Expected??? Lotr fps site.). I was overwhelmed.

And on 24 January 2002 I was already scribbling my first Lotr fps fic. It took me all of three days!

Hah.

The diary makes no mention of any of this, of course. It was my sekrit lief. The only tell-tale sign comes ten days later, on Sat, 2 Feb: 11:00 LoTR. This was when I went to see the movie for the second time, and I was already calling it 'LoTR' (and not Lord of the Rings).

The diary also makes no mention of when exactly I clicked my way through to cimness's ficsite, read my way through her Lotr fps, stumbled across her Lotr rps and was lost, lost, lost 4 evah. Clearly, by the 24th of Jan. this hadn't happened yet; otherwise I wouldn't have been scribbling Frodo/Sam.

Sometime before 19 January (on the Friday, 18 Jan., if I remember rightly) I subscribed to an odd geeky Lotr site, that was formatted yellow and green on black, with a lot of men geeking on about Tolkien (remember this one, sheldrake?), and there was one thread that talked about the actors being sexy or something of that ilk. I think it was this comment that led to my Wet Warwick Dream.

Wow. Life-changing events.

Comments

[junalele.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool!! And with exact dates. I only remember that it all started with X-Men - me looking for Hugh Jackman pictures and finding fanfiction. But het. Then I started looking for stuff in other fandoms, one of those was SGA and I stumbled upon slash. I want exact dates, too. Heh.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

So which was your entry fandom? SGA??

[junalele.livejournal.com]

Into het it was x-men. But yes, into slash... It must have been SGA. Hmm. I'M not sure. I remember that that first story rather sent me running but knowing me - I'd probably just searched on for better. In any case, I definetely quickly expanded to fandoms more dear to me in general. Like Highlander.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

Am dead impressed with your Exact Dates.

Mine goes something like:
- Christmas 2001 -- in a 19th-century fort in Wales, resolutely refusing to see Fellowship because it would not be any good and anyway I had grown out of Tolkien.
- January 8th 2002 -- see Fellowship
- following week -- trawl web for Legolas fanfic (he is teh pretteh)
- -- discover a link to the Closer than Brothers list
- -- read everything (cimness's 'Tennessee' was the one that really convinced me fanfic could be Lit'rature)
- Feb 24th 2002 -- create My First LiveJournal
- March 14th 2002 -- write first fic
- March 16th 2002 -- post it

So you were ahead of me!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

A 19th century fort in Wales... that is so romantic! How come we both had epiphanies away from home? What doeth this tell us?

So when you were trawling the web for Legolas fic... you already knew of fanfic at this point?? You were looking with a purpose?

You were ahead of me with LJ, of course. I spent months happily grazing the yahoo groups. ;-)

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

How come we both had epiphanies away from home? What doeth this tell us?

That we need to get out of our comfort zones? Or that we are less distracted by mundanities when away?

Oh, I knew about fanfic: I had friends who wrote slash, and I used to be very high-minded about how derivative and unoriginal it all was. (Also, I used to read Blakes 7 slash for the smut). I am not ashamed to admit I was wrong. (Though x% of fanfic is indeed derivative and unoriginal. Including some of mine.)

I think I started my LJ the weekend that all the Yahoo groups were down for maintenance.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

The thing with fandom and being a fan is: you know you're truly, truly submersed and helpless in fandom when you don't care that the fic is derivative and unoriginal. God, in the early days of lotrips I devoured everything. Everything! And the more you know the crappy clichés and the conventions of that particular fandom, the more of a knowledgeable fan you become. You can then write crack and meta and mock the conventions and use them to your own twisted purposes, oh it's marvellous.

And then you bond with all the other slashsibs who are complaining about the derivation and the unoriginality and the sheer teenieness of it all and whee! (omg, all those teenie slashers have meanwhile turned 25 or somesuch!)

Not to speak of taunting fellow sibs with pics of cleft chins and suchlike, *g*. Remember chat? Does anyone still do chat?

[eyebrowofdoom.livejournal.com]

I am not a diary keeper so have no such records, but the sequence of events runs:

I was entranced by the movie Cruel Intentions and had a strange and shameful urge to see Blaine and Sebastian shag. One dark night when my parents were out (oh god! I still lived at home!) I got on the dialup internet (oh god!) and googled, and found... fanfiction.

Oh my god. I could write my own dirty, dirty story of what should have happened! I could just write it myself! And PUBLISH IT ON THE INTERNET.

From there I discovered Buffy fanfiction on Yahoo Groups.

Shortly afterwards I went to see Fellowship of the Ring. I was entranced by Legolas. I came home and searched Yahoo Groups, and found lxf and a couple of other lists, mostly about elves. From then on everything was LOTR.

Jo was crossposting some of her early RPS. How gross! What poor taste! How... I wanted to read some more of it. Then there was that first Lotrips list. You and Gloria were the best, most literate people there. You and I wrote each other enormously long emails, as if we were in love...

Fandom was officially stuck with me.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh god, kill me with the nostalgia.

We wrote long emails! Emails!! Whatever happened to them?? And we were in love! It was like one big long lovefest. It was hard to know: was I lusting after third-rate actors or fellow fans?

Cruel Intentions? Is this movie even worth seeing now? What is it about? Does it matter?

Dial-up internet!! omg, I was on AOL! The sound of the internet being dialled up (remember that distinctive bip-bip-brrrring?) was the most erotic sound evah for several months until, in panting desperation, I paid money and had holes drilled through our walls just in order to get broadband.

So did you immediately write Cruel Intentions fic? When did you start posting??? I remember divine Harry/Karls. Skittles!! That's the first one I remember. And your unbelievable, still the best on the net username.