Sunshine 2019: Prompt 6

[scripsi]

Our love of fandom knows no bounds, and it is not limited to fanworks.

This is the time to share all of the things we have collected over the years showing our love for our favorite fandoms. This can include both things we personally own and things we wish we could add if money/space were no object. It also includes stories and memories that brighten our days.

Have a fandom tattoo? That custom keychain your friend made you 10 years ago? That life-size statue of Iron Man someone made that lights up and you absolutely would center your living room around if you could get your hands on it? Convention stories, internet friendships, and the ensuing shenanigans … anything that makes you smile when you reflect on it, we’d like to learn more about it!

I don’t have any fandom collections. I collected things when I was younger, but they were always geared toward my interest in fashion and costume. I collected dolls in national clothes from other countries, and paper dolls in period clothes. But as an adult, there were too many years with limited living space and little money, and I kind of fell out of the habit of collecting things. Perhaps I’m interested in too many things to feel passionate enough about something to collect.

I do have a lot of great fandom memories though. In 1999 we got our first modem, at the same time as I became a mother. I spent many nights awake with a cranky baby, and living in the countryside several kilometers from the nearest village also made me feel very isolated. Then I found an email group focused on the crime writer Dorothy l. Sayers, and I found fandom and a community. We discussed sayer’s books and so many other things the group eventually got a subgroup devoóted to any subject under the earth. I read my first fanfic in that group. I wrote my first one too. I met people from it in the USA, Scotland, and Sweden. For years I chatted with people in that group daily. I’m still in contact with many of them on Facebook.

A few years later, when email groups started to turn extinct I had a similar experience with a forum dedicated to Jason Isaacs. I had a lot of fun, met several of the people there IRL, and am still in contact with a lot of them on FB. The forum also introduced Livejournal in my life and was my entryway to write fanfic more seriously. And on Livejournal and later Dreamwidth I’ve stayed. I’ve met a few of my friends here- I met even more people I’ve got to know through my interests in costume history and sewing. Some of my best friends IRL are people I once met on Livejournal. I’ve no plans to go anywhere else.

Comments

Sunshine ☼ Challenge

[oldtoadwoman]

Your costume work is so beautiful though and that almost feels like a fandom in itself so I think it counts. ♥

I wonder if I would have any friends at all without the Internet. I was so painfully shy. I'm still an introvert, but have learned to force myself to be polite and social when needed, but I think those skills came out of learning how to talk to people online in an environment where I had time to form my thoughts, delete the sentences that weren't going anywhere and try again, and realize that I'm not the only "weirdo" in the world. I have a number of real life friends now, but if I trace back how I met them as friends of friends of friends, every one can be indirectly traced back to someone I met online.

[used_songs]

I kind of miss forums. I mean, I know there are still some out there and I could participate in them if I so chose, but they were fun back in the day.

[enemytosleep]

It's so fun to read everyone's stories about entering online spaces for the first time and making friends and building a fandom community there.