Fandom nostalgia
Jan. 19th, 2017 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kraitSo for Christmas, I finally got round to digging up all the old photos of trips I had taken with a friend back in 2012; this involved digging up the converted-to-external hard drive of my computer from that era and browsing through it.
(I'm organised, in my own very unique way. But it's the kind of way where four years later my filing system may defeat rational analysis, and "where did I put that? What did I NAME the folder for that?!" is a common refrain.)
While I was doing this, I of course ended up browsing through a lot of other stuff as well, including a whole bunch of my earliest fandom-related folders, when I was just a young serpent learning how this whole 'online fandom' thing worked; I've got canon materials, fan art, LJ icons, drabbles I was working on, and miscellaneous tangential materials all saved together in a jumble. (This post was almost a "political cartoons about Harry Potter" post. Why do I have so many of them? Why were there so many of them? One forgets just how much of a sensation HP was, until things like this crop up to remind one!)
Anyway! I felt such a wave of fandom nostalgia while going through this stuff. So many names I remember: Snaples, Brevisse, Seviet, Lizard, Raven Dunbar, Dovie, sine_qua_non767, Nimori, wikdsushi, Telanu, amethyst_lupin, Donna Bond, Gwyllion, Yukipon, Cybele... I remember them all so fondly, and can't help wondering where they are now, and missing them, and just generally missing the way fandom was, in those days. We were all so joyfully talkative, the fic and art and meta and casual LJ posts just pouring out of us! They felt like friends, though we never met in person.
(A few of you are still around! Hi,isis and dementordelta! There's fanart for your fics stored on my external hard drive and it gave me so many lovely feelings to see it again!)
Seeing "c.2003" and "[name] '04" on so much stuff is kind of mind-boggling, too, because I'm not a person who Has Skills when it comes to tracking time; I joke about being an Old Fan, but it's still a little bit shocking to realise that I was downloading explicit fanworks in a year when half of Homestuck fandom was in elementary school. And HP fandom wasn't my first fandom, but it does seem to be the first one where there was a wealth of fan-created artwork as well as fic - especially explicit fanart. One day I should put together a timeline!
It's really interesting, looking back at it so discretely; one notices trends and little signs of the times... The aforementioned increase in fan art generally, and in explicit fan art. A huge amount of fan art done in traditional media, with all the little things that go with it: handwritten captions and speech in comics, scanner blur. Long-URL personal websites under the artist's signature. Lots of meta-jokes about fandom itself.
Anyway, this post doesn't really have a point. I just tripped over some old fandom stuff and fell headlong into ~~emotions~~ and wanted to fling names out into the void in the faintest hope that they might not be gone forever; someone might know where (and who) they are these days, and pass the word that someone still thinks of them and their work from time to time.
Tell me about your old fandoms, and whether you ever peek into the souvenirs of your past fannish days!
(I'm organised, in my own very unique way. But it's the kind of way where four years later my filing system may defeat rational analysis, and "where did I put that? What did I NAME the folder for that?!" is a common refrain.)
While I was doing this, I of course ended up browsing through a lot of other stuff as well, including a whole bunch of my earliest fandom-related folders, when I was just a young serpent learning how this whole 'online fandom' thing worked; I've got canon materials, fan art, LJ icons, drabbles I was working on, and miscellaneous tangential materials all saved together in a jumble. (This post was almost a "political cartoons about Harry Potter" post. Why do I have so many of them? Why were there so many of them? One forgets just how much of a sensation HP was, until things like this crop up to remind one!)
Anyway! I felt such a wave of fandom nostalgia while going through this stuff. So many names I remember: Snaples, Brevisse, Seviet, Lizard, Raven Dunbar, Dovie, sine_qua_non767, Nimori, wikdsushi, Telanu, amethyst_lupin, Donna Bond, Gwyllion, Yukipon, Cybele... I remember them all so fondly, and can't help wondering where they are now, and missing them, and just generally missing the way fandom was, in those days. We were all so joyfully talkative, the fic and art and meta and casual LJ posts just pouring out of us! They felt like friends, though we never met in person.
(A few of you are still around! Hi,
isis and dementordelta! There's fanart for your fics stored on my external hard drive and it gave me so many lovely feelings to see it again!) Seeing "c.2003" and "[name] '04" on so much stuff is kind of mind-boggling, too, because I'm not a person who Has Skills when it comes to tracking time; I joke about being an Old Fan, but it's still a little bit shocking to realise that I was downloading explicit fanworks in a year when half of Homestuck fandom was in elementary school. And HP fandom wasn't my first fandom, but it does seem to be the first one where there was a wealth of fan-created artwork as well as fic - especially explicit fanart. One day I should put together a timeline!
It's really interesting, looking back at it so discretely; one notices trends and little signs of the times... The aforementioned increase in fan art generally, and in explicit fan art. A huge amount of fan art done in traditional media, with all the little things that go with it: handwritten captions and speech in comics, scanner blur. Long-URL personal websites under the artist's signature. Lots of meta-jokes about fandom itself.
Anyway, this post doesn't really have a point. I just tripped over some old fandom stuff and fell headlong into ~~emotions~~ and wanted to fling names out into the void in the faintest hope that they might not be gone forever; someone might know where (and who) they are these days, and pass the word that someone still thinks of them and their work from time to time.
Tell me about your old fandoms, and whether you ever peek into the souvenirs of your past fannish days!
no subject
Date: 2017-01-29 03:33 pm (UTC)I wouldn't know the wonders of Western-media fandoms until 2011 (hahaha BBC Merlin), and hence I missed the HP/LOTR fandom entirely, though I did watch the movies. And how I got into Merlin was through someone on
Aaaand now it's come full-circle with me being back in anime fandom, Yuri on Ice.
I do miss people who've left, and that's why I try to keep in contact with friends through other mediums like Tumblr and Twitter. For me, fandom is where friendship starts, but I really want to know friends outside of our shared fandom as well. I'm glad fannish trends seem to be more accepting of that now.