green: (btvs: buffy)
green ([personal profile] green) wrote2025-01-03 10:20 am

baby's first fandom

For [community profile] snowflake_challenge #2:

In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story.


In 2001 I started watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I had only just gotten a new computer with internet capability. I had no idea what fandom or even fanfiction was, but I soon came across some while looking for people who were just as obsessed over this show as I was. The first forum I found was Buffyworld I think? I saw people posting fanfiction in the forum and I didn't know what I was doing but I thought THIS. I want to do THIS.

I didn't even know how to copy/paste. I wrote maybe the first chapter of a Dawn-is-turned-into-a-vampire fic straight into the forum. And I started following links! And I joined a Yahoo chatroom for BtVS! And I discovered what shipping was, and someone asked me if I liked femmeslash and I was like 'WHO DOESN'T!' (I want to make it clear I did not know what the hell it meant, I thought slash meant like hack and slash fighting and femmeslash must be about girls fighting???) and somehow ended up joining a group for Buffy/Faith and Buffy/Willow. I started making friends. I found some Angel/Spike and Spike/Xander fanfiction in the wilds of the internet and at first I thought it was a joke. To be fair, the fic was very comedic and I thought all aspects of it were meant to be comedic. I soon learned that was not true!

I would not have found a sense of community in fandom in the same way if not for Val. She posted my first fic (an Angel/Spike angst fest) on her site, and started up a board for Spike lovers I joined, and I met so many people, and followed them all over to LiveJournal and by 2003 I was firmly entrenched in fandom.

I would also like to say that fandom has saved my life several times over.
buggyfiction: (imagination)

[personal profile] buggyfiction 2025-01-04 02:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Unfortunately that website pre-maturely closed down *sigh*. I'm just shocked I still had that.