The First Baby Step

[polarissruler]

After recently I made a post in my journal about my first fandom, I decided to ask - how did it began to you? What was your first fandom? How did you found it? Did you start writing/drawing/reading/whatever else first? And do you look fondly on those good old days, or not so much?

Comments

[sabotabby]

I was into Doctor Who and Star Trek as a kid, and made up stories about them in my head, and even attended a Star Trek convention when I was, like, 8. (It scared the shit out of me and I did not go to another convention until I was in my 20s!)

But my first real fandom was X-Files. One friend was obsessed with it and convinced me to watch it, and I got hooked as well. I was in high school and it was in the very early days of the internet. We had a class on The Internet and one of my friends in the class managed to use his lab time wisely and dug up what I think might have been the very first Mulder/Krycek slash fic, which he gleefully showed me.

This was the era of mailing lists and Geocities rings, which I devoured and then started writing as well.

You know what? It was great. I don't have zero regrets (I was mean to some people, and some people were mean to me, and most of what I wrote was crap, and I have strong feelings about how the X-Files set us up for Trump and *gestures vaguely* all of this) but it was mostly a good experience. I met my best friend through one of those mailing lists. I learned how to conduct myself in an online community. I got far more experience with writing and editing than I would in any other milieu. I'm glad that the stuff I wrote is largely lost down the memory hole but a lot of what I learned and the friendships I made endured.

[polarissruler]

You must have been an amazing eight-year-old to gather such bravery. (Meanwhile I'm still afraid of going to cons - and the current situation doesn't help at all.)

[sabotabby]

I was v. precocious, and my father (otherwise a dickhead) took me. Alas! It turned out that I am actually not into big crowded loud spaces, and it was full of middle aged dudes in velour with no time for an 8-year-old running around underfoot. I'm still scared of going to cons now too.

[polarissruler]

Ouch, that sounds bad. Poor kid.

[sabotabby]

I'm sure it wasn't as bad as I remember it! But I was skeeered.