hoursgoneby | Fandom Snowflake Challenge 2020

Challenge #2

In your own space, talk about your fannish history. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

My very first fandom was Star Trek, and from a very young age: when I was a toddler, if the episode was appropriate and I'd behaved well enough, I was allowed to sit quietly and watch TOS instead of taking a nap. Then, when I was older, I fell for Transformers, M.A.S.K., Jem and the Holograms, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (We were not allowed to watch G.I. Joe because it was 'too violent' but apparently this didn't apply to giant alien robots and mutant turtles.)

In the 90s I discovered a wider world of fandom - groups, fellow fans, and conventions - with online fandom coming into my sphere of awareness in the late 90s once I got online access at home. I tripped across the term 'shipping' when it was relatively new in the X-Files fandom. I found fanfic (art wasn't so big then, on dial-up), IRC, newsgroups, and mailing lists.

Access was sporadic in the early 00s but I was finally able to get access from home. Fandom moved to forums and Livejournal (and its clones). AO3 came into being.

In the early 10s I fell out of fandom. Life was hard and stressful and depression and what would later be diagnosed as PTSD hit hard. I had to spend time learning to manage them. I fell back in to fandom in the mid-10s, exclusively in smaller ones. Then, in 2018, I went back to my early days and started reading Transformers fanfic again. AU Yeah August happened in 2018 and I was seized with the impulse to write for it. And, that brings us to today, where I'm writing and engaging regularly again. ^_^