Snowflake Challenge

[thisbluespirit]

Since I seem to be accidentally doing this, as I did #1 the other day and in the course of it, also did #5 and have friended and talked to quite a lot of people!

So here goes for the rest:



Challenge #2: In your own space, talk about your fannish history.

I partly covered this in the intro, but I started out when an Information & Library Studies lecturer introduced us to newsnet while at uni back in 1995. He said there were groups for everything, including breakfast cereals, and not being much into Weetabix, I looked for Doctor Who... and found fandom and fanfic. I settled in alt.drwho.creative (rec.arts.drwho was a bit scary, although I did read it) and wrote stuff, and then the TV Movie came out and things livened up. We started our own pretend-official Doctor Who series called the Internet Adventures, which we wrote as round robins.

I had written odd bits of things that might count as fic before, for both Doctor Who and Dungeons & Dragons (the cartoon), and had DWM since I first discovered it on holiday in 1991, but it was the first time I'd been able to do creative and fannish things with people and I loved it.

I lost internet access for ages after that, but in 2006/7 went looking for the remnants of newsnet in Google Groups, found alt.drwho.creative and joined back in, and asked where everyone was. They pointed me to A Teaspoon and an Open Mind and that was amazing. (I mean, you could have italics even! I was still writing italics like *this* because that was how we did it in newsnet when you had no html). And Teaspoon was full of links to LiveJournal and I followed them and fell in love. It took a while before I had an actual flist, but it was pretty much the perfect format for me. The bad stuff was still around, but it was so much easier to pick and choose where you went and who you interacted with.

And that was that, basically. I have a tumblr, but it's just an extra and I wish everyone would come back to journalling. I can't live without communities, adjustable privacy and boundaries and threaded commenting. And icons.

I also wound up tag wrangling on AO3 in about 2013 or 2014, which was partly due to vilakins, who suggested I might like it after that time I added tags to b7friday.

I flirted with forums for a while, but on forums I always spent all my time in the off-topic thread talking about a different fandom to the one the forum was about. (That was how I ended up watching Blake's 7: I was on the Spooks forum talking Classic Who in the Off-topic section and then my two fellow DW fans suddenly started talking B7 and I couldn't join in. And then told me that if I liked Classic Who and Spooks then I would definitely like B7, and they were totally right. I did. It was also the start of a downhill road, because that was the first time I found that other old TV could also be awesome, because that first B7 watch was just amazing.)

I used to be more monofannish, as you can see from this all being Doctor, but LiveJournal and yuletide are enablers and so is AO3 and I'm basically incurably multifannish these days. I like flitting about and having one night stands, but I'll always come back to my main fandoms.

Comments

[theseatheseatheopensea]

I have a tumblr, but it's just an extra and I wish everyone would come back to journalling. I can't live without communities, adjustable privacy and boundaries and threaded commenting. And icons.

Same. I had a tumblr for a couple of years, and my experience pretty much sucked. Which i know is just me, because lots of people love it. But to me, journals are where it's at! ;)

[thisbluespirit]

I have mixed feelings about it, because it has helped me find some nice people into old and obscure telly - but I wish I could bring them back here!!

[theseatheseatheopensea]

Mixed feelings... that's a very good way to describe it. I did meet some lovely people there, but overall it was terrible for my mental health, which obviously is totally on me, but still, i've never had that experience on LJ or here on DW. So i've tried other social media things, but over the years, journalling is the one that's stuck! <3

[lirazel]

I like tumblr for memes and pretty gifsets, but as a main platform for fandom, it really sucks.

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, I have to agree! But then, we're the ones who are over here, so I suppose we would!

[trobadora]

I have a tumblr, but it's just an extra and I wish everyone would come back to journalling. I can't live without communities, adjustable privacy and boundaries and threaded commenting. And icons.

Ha, that's exactly how I feel. (Except that I don't even have a tumblr.)

[thisbluespirit]

I quite like making gifsets and that is a thing tumblr does well. I also appreciate other people's much prettier gifsets. But I wish we'd come back here for the rest!

[isis]

Heh, I was on Usenet in the mid 1990s also - we didn't have alt groups (through work) but I spent a lot of time on talk.bizarre as well as various rec groups and sci groups for actual work.

[thisbluespirit]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times! No binaries, flamers, spammers, and trolls and that first taste of being able to connect with people all over the world and, as it turned out, one person in my ILS group. :lol:

[hamsterwoman]

but on forums I always spent all my time in the off-topic thread talking about a different fandom to the one the forum was about

Yeah, this is why I love the LJ/DW way of doing fandom a lot more -- because (for the most part) you're in your own journal, or someone else's, and if the two of you want to go off on a tangent about five different fandoms, then you're not actually off-topic, it's just the normal from of conversation.

The Tumblr way of doing splintered-off "side blogs" for every fandom annoyed me so much! I want to see the other cool fannish things my friends are into, or how else will I end up picking them up?!

[thisbluespirit]

I follow very few people and I think they don't tend to do side-blogs much (save for certain themes/categories rather than different fandoms) so I have picked up a surprising amount of fandoms because I saw a gifset on tumblr that one time. But, yeah, I love the flexibility of journalling as a fandom platform.

[luthien]

I have never really been involved in Doctor Who fandom, apart from writing a couple of very short fics around the time New Who happened, but I have been a Doctor Who fan for *blench* 42 years, so I've been aware of the fandom for a long, long time. (I also still write italics *like this* in my fic drafts, and then have to go through and change them when I'm editing. ;)

I am back on tumblr because I'm in a fandom that is based on tumblr. I've never enjoyed it there much, though. You can't have proper conversations. Over the years I've been very good at finding nice quiet corners where the sane people lurk, but on tumblr it's harder to keep the negative insanity from intruding.

[thisbluespirit]

I also still write italics *like this* in my fic drafts, and then have to go through and change them when I'm editing

LOL! Oh, wow. I stopped fairly soon after getting into Teaspoon and LJ and finally learning basic html. (But then I'm always taken aback when I learn people are using the rich text editor on LJ/DW or AO3 because I'm so used to the html coding that fighting with the rich text quirks instead seems just ridiculous!)

You do have to go where the people are. And the pretty gif sets. I may grumble about tumblr, but I like making gifsets and I appreciate other people's much prettier ones, too - and have picked up quite a few TV shows and films because I saw a gifset!

[luthien]

Oh, I've been able to do html for... well, at least 20 years, since I built my first fannish website. It's just that when I'm writing I put all the html in after I'm finished. It would MAKE SENSE to write the italics in when I'm writing instead of having to replace the asterisks later, but... my mind just doesn't work that way. *g*

[thisbluespirit]

Well, asterisks works as well as anything for find and replace! I don't usually type them in as I go, but I've grown accustomed to adding them as part of my editing process and I would be lost without the thing that makes me go "So... do I really need this italic here?" (The answer is almost always no!)

[liadt]

Getting into old TV: the hazards of talking to people on the internet;p

I never got into Tumblr as you know. Soon as I made an attempt at it it looked like it was a sinking ship, but I think most people went back.

[thisbluespirit]

People entice you into terrible cardboard things with giant fake spiders and Jarvik!! (It's awesome.)

I think a lot of people did, but also a lot of people didn't. I am not a big tumblr user, but it definitely feels smaller than it used to.

[liadt]

Once you've seen Jarvik resistance is futile!

[dimity_blue]

I think anyone who deals with the Bog of Eternal Stench that is the AO3 tags system is A) a hero, and B) insane.

I salute you.

The difference in the internet between 1995 and 2001 or so must have been amazing. I'm glad you're around.

[thisbluespirit]

I think anyone who deals with the Bog of Eternal Stench that is the AO3 tags system is A) a hero, and B) insane.

Um, thank you? ;-p

I had internet at work from 1999 and sort of at home, but it was dial-up and it wasn't until we got broadband from about 2005/6 or so that I could seek out fandom once more. (I had a fic I wanted to finish!)