fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2520 ]

[ SECRET POST #2520 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2520 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 039 secrets from Secret Submission Post #360.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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How and when did you get into online fandom, and what did your first experiences consist of? What were the first fandoms you participated in online?

What constitutes fandom? I started reading fanfic in like the 9th grade. It was Dragon Ball Z fanfic (Vegeta/Bulma). I had it saved to floppy disks to read at home (we didn't have internet). I assume it was terrible fic.

I didn't really start making stuff for fandoms until this year. And those are just GIFs.

One time I was googling picture of Entei from Pokémon and found probably the largest website for the fandom. Looked at it a lot and eventually stumbled upon the forums, which I didn't understand how to navigate. I figured it out a few months later and browsed the forum for a while. I never actually registered. There was this one person who said a lot of cool stuff so I checked out their website which was actually pretty neat and they happened to have a forum too. Browsed it for awhile and eventually ended up registering at the ripe old age of 11.

Inuyasha. Accidently running into "lemons" and "limes" when looking for pictures from the show. Normal stuff.

Usenet. 1992. The Internet was basically the Wild Wild West at that point. My main fandoms were Trek (TOS/TNG) and X-Files. Never read much Trek fic, but I wish I could retroactively administer my Teen!Self brainbleach for some of the fic I read on Gossamer. *barf*

Started reading/writing fic for Digimon 01/02 in 2000-ish when I was around 12.

Got into the to Harry Potter around 2001 and stayed there for a very long time.

Earliest memory of online fandom was lurking on BzPower. Good times.

In terms of "talking about nerdy shit on the Internet" (I don't get into fandom in the more restrictive sense until a good deal later), Wheel of Time and Magic: The Gathering were really the big entry drugs for me, I think. Especially Wheel of Time and all the theories and speculation and discussions surrounding the books.

I think I was about 9 the first time, I stumbled across pokémon fanfic and would spend a good hour reading before my allotted internet time was up(oh the joys of dial-up). When I was a bit older I went actively looking for DBZ fic and found ff.net as well as some internet 'shrines' to certain ships.

The AOL message board for Space Cases on Nickelodeon.

I honestly have a hard time remembering. I was around 11-ish when I started reading/writing fanfic (Sailor Moon at first) and I kind of did fic on my own for a while. Then I started to get into online forums/communities, especially when I was around 14 and really into Firefly.

Well that was on the day that I discovered the internet and my social life was forever doomed. I was 10 years old and I searched for 'Elfquest' simply out of curiosity (I actually remember my dad saying something like "that's so obscure you probably can't find it on the internet". Yes, it was that long ago)I first found some fan-sites, but mostly participated in several forum RPGs and went to a few meets.

P.S. now I have the sound of music song stuck in my head XD

I think I was 13 or 14 - first fandom was Harry Potter, but didn't stumble across the concept of fanfiction until a bit later, in the Star Trek TOS and M*A*S*H fandoms. These three -- Harry Potter, M*A*S*H, and Star Trek (and Star Trek TNG, which I loved first but never really got deep into the fandom for) were my main fandoms for a couple years, while I also started branching out, got into other stuff, some other books, a lot of cartoons (South Park, The Simpsons, Futurama, ATLA), and kept spreading out. I never really just quit a fandom, I only put it on the back burner.

I wrote my first fic before I knew that's what it was called when I was...12? Fandom was Vision of Escaflowne and it was aborted after 1 page on my mothers old typewriter.
I got into online fandom a little earlier though for Harry Potter, mostly because of the emergence of those house sorting pages and online chats, my big brother had just got our first internet modem and we shared a computer, and slightly later went full in for the Stargate SG-1 fandom.

I remember mostly reading lots and lots of awfully written angsty fic on some obscure pages that have long since vanished into the ether. Also trying to chat with people already turned out to be a horror until I found the Animexx website, where it was easier to meet and discuss fandom.
This also brought the first experience with slash fanfic, surrealist porn and that secret folder stashed full of 'naughty' pictures (mostly light shonen-ai with horrific anatomy).

sailor moon. I read shitty fic and talked about it with my friends.

It was around 2007. I was living overseas and bored in an apartment all alone, then stumbled across fanfic about various rock bands. My first fanfic was something really angsty about Metallica, as I recall.

i guess part reading fanfic on mugglenet in the beginning of 05, and part joining the lemony snicket forum 667 Dark Avenue, also around the same time. i still post there so it's kind of funny sometimes, that i've been a member for so long

Well, local BBSes back in the early 90s are responsible for introducing me to Sailor Moon. Approximately five days before the dub was cancelled without finishing the second season. When I first got internet, that was one of the first things I looked for, and happened across the "SOS - Save Our Sailors" movement. Was very active on their forums, and wound up playing Sailors Mars and Uranus in an RPG started by some of the folks there. Was thrilled when it got back on the air on Cartoon Network and they were going to finish season 2... except that I didn't get Cartoon Network at the time. :P

At the same time, I was also really active on another forum, or rather a mailing list, for Dar Williams. For a folk musician, she had some really fun, hilarious fans, and there was a social justice angle to a lot of the discussion, which fortunately was not like the SJW stuff we've got going on now. People just genuinely were interested in issues and awareness and how they could help. It was really cool.

And a little later, FF7 was released, and I started a fansite, largely because I had just learned that there was a TERM for what I had been doing my whole life, and that term was "fanfiction", and that people online liked reading it as much as I liked writing it. XD

Heh, I had to think back a ways for this one...Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Anybody remember the Bronze?

I put together a Spice Girls e-zine when I was 9ish, if that counts. I started in AOL Kids Only chatrooms, subscribed to other zines, and then started making my own. I had a few subscribers lol but I can't for the life of me remember how long it went on for.

A couple years later I moved onto the Buffy and Charmed message boards on AOL Teens, and that's where I discovered fanfiction and shipping and the like. I think I was about 11 when I published my first Charmed fic, involving a self-insert Mary Sue OC. I went on to start a lot of Charmed fics and finish very few of them, but I've learned from that and now I don't even publish anything until it's complete.

I grew up in a tiny town in the mountains, didn't get access to the internet before I was in grade 10, and I went into my first ever internet cafe. I was subscribing to this anime/manga magazine, and it told me about fanfic and the online community. My first online fandom was Cardcaptor Sakura, as I started reading fics of it.

When I noticed that hey! There are fandoms for other stuff too on the internet, there was no stopping me. I went back to old favorite works, and started reading fics for Tokyo Babylon, Saint Seiya, would've killed for a good Doraemon adventure fics, but I couldn't find any. I also jumped into new fandoms like Digimon and Weiss Kreuz around this time, and shounen-ai/yaoi stuff are just a given.

I ran a Sailor Moon fansite in the 6th grade.

Let's see...my first real foray into what would become fandom was when I was in the 5th grade...I was looking for pokemon fanfic and Sailor Moon fansites. Except, I had no idea what fanfic was at first until I found some sites that had stories. Read them and was all :O and I've never really stopped since.

First ever fandoms I sorta participated in (it was hard when you didn't have a scanner *sigh*) were pokemon, Sailor Moon, and Gundam Wing.

Edited 2013-11-28 02:35 (UTC)

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[ SECRET POST #2520 ]

Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

Re: Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...