'How I Found Fandom' zine discussion

[holli]

This is probably the simplest of the zine topics I'm proposing: a zine of essays and comics about people's first fandoms, and how they found them. If you're in fandom, you have a story for this zine, and I'd love to hear it.

Comments

[crantz]

I got one! My dnd playing, ST fanfic writing mom told me about fanfic and wackiness ensued

[morgandawn]

I may have a story to share. Is there a word count min?

[morgandawn]

re fan art: color? black and white?

[cakey]

I read this and immediatly started planning a b&w comic in my head. Not sure how big it will be (probably one or 2 pages), what really happens and what the point of the story (if any) will be. I'm notoriously bad at finishing stuff unless there is a deadline. Is there a deadline?

[xenoglossy]

I was really into Neopets in the late '90s/early 2000s, and in 2001, when I was about 13, I started going on the site forums. There I found the roleplaying boards. As someone who played make-believe with friends into sixth grade and was disappointed when no one else wanted to play anymore, I was thrilled. A lot of the RP settings were original (or at least generic), but some threads were set in existing fictional universes. One of the decently popular ones (I mean, it wasn't Harry Potter, but there were pretty regular RP threads about it) was the Dragonriders of Pern universe. I was a huge fan of the series at the time, so I participated in those threads a lot.

A number of the people participating in the Dragonriders of Pern Neopets RPs were also doing more long-running (and scandalously unauthorized!) Dragonriders of Pern RPs on MSN Communities; I ended up invited to join one, and before long I was in dozens of them and running several myself. It was an exciting time--Dragons! Mary Sues! Wank! Pseuicide! The constant looming threat of possible C&D letters from Anne McCaffrey's lawyer! I still had no concept of "fandom" as a larger thing, though; I didn't know fanfiction existed (much less fanart or fanvids or what have you) and was only vaguely aware that there might be communities like this for other canons. The MSN Communities Pern-RPing set did sometimes make RPs set in other universes--I was in a Star Wars one and one based on the Abhorsen series by Garth Nix--but these were pretty isolated from any existing fan communities for those canons.

Eventually (in about 2003 or 2004), a bunch of the MSN Communities people moved onto this hot new platform called LiveJournal and got involved in roleplaying over there, and since they were my friends, I followed them on over. And that's where I finally got involved in some less insular fan communities and discovered fandom-in-general existed.

I hope this was the kind of thing you were looking for.

HELP! How do I submit?

[grey_bard]

I've just written something for this, if you want it. How and where would you like it submitted?