fandom_history (LiveJournal community)

Journal Community
Name:	fandom_history
Date(s):	30 August 2002 – present
Moderator:	heidi8
Founder:	heidi8
Type:	Fandom History
Fandom:	Harry Potter
URL:	fandom_history at LiveJournal
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

fandom_history is a LiveJournal community for Harry Potter fans to document and discuss their fandom histories.

Subjects included fans' fannish journeys, as well as reposts of early emails and mailing list comments regarding Fiction Alley,

About

We hope this will become a sort of written "oral history" of the Harry Potter fandom - everyone who wants to contribute text, links, etc. is encouraged to do so.

If you have something to add and don't have a livejournal, let heidi8 know, so we can help you post. Anyone can comment, too!

Some Sample Posts

I don't know months on all this without looking, so I'm just going to group it into Random Time Periods. This all begins around November 1999, kay? Yeah.

1. Am at grandmother's house. Read "Sorcerer's Stone," which she had bought for my younger cousin. Reread. Buy rest of books in short order.

2. Find HarryPotterRealm.com. Meet Katie Bell, Gypsy, and Elizabeth Notrab. This is good. We move over to fanfiction.net and go on happily posting. The first fic I spent time on was "Shades of Grey," but I wrote a choose-your-own-ending fic called "Partings" before that.

3. People begin complaining about the fandom going down the drain because of influx of new people due to Newsweek article on Harry Potter Yes, this has been going on this long. I meet Tinderblast for the first time (though she was supposedly lurking before that... I'm not sure if I believe her. *pokes Tinderblast* can I believe you?

4. Alice Spinnet, Narri, etc. join fandom. Am slightly off-put. Start alohomora.com about this time and create my Nyx personae. Convince Tinderblast that Nyx isn't me, but my twin, for about a week. Eventually feel so bad about it I admit to being Nyx. The Harry Potter Fanfiction Writers' Association (HPFWA) is formed.

5. Golden Toad Awards begin. GoF comes out. About this time Cassie Claire & Lori join the fandom. Become virulently anti-new-people. Complete several fanfics such as "Project City" and "St. Olran's High School for Semi-Humans," both of which were good ideas but poorly pulled off. "5 Snitches" begins. I become friends with Arabella, pre-Sugarquill.

6. Slash enters! Woo hoo! I become femmeslasher. I become close to Viola, author of "Dreamwalk Blue," and begin "An Angel Comes to Babylon" which she BETAs.

7. I fall out with the management of FF.N. All of a sudden the people I "hated" became my friends. V. odd; I still don't quite understand how I managed it. FictionAlley formed. w00t. "An Angel Comes to Babylon" is put on the back burner in favor of "The Next Great Adventure," a rewrite of "Shades of Grey."

I first found the fandom from the HP forum on Salon.com's TableTalk boards, in about May of 2001. It was a rather slow period at work (I had a cushy office job as a programmer for the year before college), so I was spending like 2 hours programming each day and 6 hours surfing the net. Strangely my boss didn't mind (I was still finishing all my assignments, while the rest of the company ... was not). Anyway, my first HP "fanfic" was an amazingly Mary-Sueish series about a female DADA teacher from America. I thought it was quite good at the time actually - it was quite well written (at first I thought I'd stumbled across book 5), and I didn't know anything about fandom clichés.

Eventually the author posted that it was available on fanfiction.net. I followed the link, and was hooked. 14,000 HP fics, all on one website! Actually...the sheer volume of fics was intimidating...I checked out some of the Giver fics first, which had a much smaller fandom (it's only about 40 fics even now). Still was too scared to register, and in any case, I didn't write. I've never written...always been horribly bad at it and perpetually writer's blocked.

First decent fic I read in the HP section was The Parody by Rug, and for a long time I would read nothing but parodies and humor fics. Then I stumbled across a "fic recommendations" thread on themessage boards (ff.net still had 'em back then), and found DD. I was hooked...finished the whole thing in 2 days at work (I still only had about 2 hours of work to do each day). Started on DS too, but this was the middle of June and I'd just gotten a new project. It took me about 2 weeks to finish the 13 available chapters (plus the interview with Teen Witch Weekly).

I forgot about HP fanfic for a while then, working full days at the stuff I was actually being paid for. I next checked back towards the tail end of CassieGate...there were posts all over the messageboards about how DD/DS had been removed for plagiarism. I still wasn't really "in" the fandom (just lurking), so I really didn't care much about it. I guess I thought (and still think, really) that Xing had made the right decision, though I was sorry to see it go.

Cassie, August 10, 2000 on fanfiction.net

This is my first ever fic, so please review. If people like it, I'll continue the story, if everyone hates it…well, I won't!

Carole, August 11, 2000

"While a lot of fanfic out there is primarily about relationships...PoU (Paradigm of Uncertainty) is not. While there is a fair bit of shippy stuff in there...it is primarily a really great action / mystery. We are awaiting the chapter in which the ultimate confrontation occurs... and the speculation on who is a good guy and who is a bad guy is really rampant....noone knows....kind of like...the only ones I'm sure about are me and you and sometimes I'm not so sure about you... then there is the Harry's opponent in this story...a truly evil gal (who resembles Angelina Jolie in a black catsuit...that might make it worth your while, Neil)"

Cassie on fanfiction.net at the start of DD, Chapter 5, which was about 11 pages long

Sorry this is so long; it's a bit of a transitional chapter.

Cassie on fanfiction.net at the start of DD, Chapter 8

I appreciate all the extreme interest shown in who Hermione ends up with, although I am starting to live in fear that if I put her with, say, Harry, people will come over to my house and burn life-size cardboard Draco figures on my lawn. (Although if anyone knows where to get a life-size cardboard Draco figure, please let me know as I think it would be a cool thing to have.)

Cassie on fanfiction.net at the start of the last chapter of DD And, uh, Pansy Parkinson loves him. (Yuck.) Well, she does.

Cassie on fanfiction.net at the end of the last chapter of DD note added later

Um, somebody asked me if I got the idea of "Magids" from Paradigm of Uncertainty, which has something similar..?. Well, I have never read Paradigm, and in fact I got the idea from a Diana Wynne Jones book called Deep Secret. So, sorry to the author of Paradigm…no offense intended.

Lori, September 27, 2000

Cassandra, I checked out Draco Dormiens today...I didn't have much time so I read the first and last chapters. I hope to be able to read the rest soon! I *really* liked it a lot. Very well-written...enough to make me jealous! As I said in the review you and I seem to have brought up a lot of the same ideas! I feel validated!

Cassie, October 2, 2000

I must say I've taken about as much time dwelling on how on earth to get Draco into leather pants as I have on any other more significant plot twist. I hope it's not too ridiculous....

I discovered the Trouble in Paradise…and I simply *loved* that story to itsy pieces. I began to draw a lot of HP fanart…really really bad HP fanart. I drew mostly for the Draco Trilogy and Paradise epic. I didn’t have my own scanner, and kept scampering off to my friends house and uploading gigantic scans of these ugly drawings. Cassie was ever so polite, and told me they were wonderful…heck, I thought they were wonderful and sent some to Starling (bad bad bad move). She was ever so polite as well…but probably a little disgusted that I actually thought I was good as she was.

I joined a few yahoo!groups and a new era began…

I began to post all these messages and having discussions with people on HP_Paradise and cassie_and_rhysenn, and a few other lists. I groped up the nonexistent social ladder of the HP fandom and was…flailing about. This was the time when I thought of nothing *but* the fandom, and it was quite unhealthy. I was involved in all these things, mindful of only how to become a more popular person. But ever so often, I paused and wrinkled my brow, wondering why I put so much energy into it…because after all, this *isn’t* real life.

Began talking to Andy and Lou. *waves* I slowly backed out of the heart of the fandom, and became more or less normal again. It’s a relief that the obsession didn’t last *that* long.

Began my current Founderfic called Rosa Crocea. Did tons of Medieval research, and befriended the lovely Anna L. Milton, who helped me immensely with all the aspects of the story. I worked extremely slowly, and got 5 reviews combined thus far ^_^;; though, it’s mostly because I updated every 6 month. Seriously.

Was briefly caught in the big affair concerning a rather deranged Sinead. I spied on her for Heidi and Cassie in a 3 hour chat to reveal the that she hacked and deleted HP4GU. Then Stacey revealed me to Sinead accidentally, and so went my experience as a detective/spy. I was rather good at fishing answers out of her while pretending to be very sweet. And stupid. Very stupid.

[...]

Hmmm, basically Stacey walked out of the fandom without warning, and all the mods at FA.org scrambled a bit to get used to not having her around. Most people resent her for not being responsible and such, and some unpleasant words were exchanged. Aja is calling Stacey a stalker, and all the fandom big-people are now a bit paranoid about each other, and calling each other psychos. *shrug* I tend to keep myself out of it after Sinead left.

A year ago today I picked up a two week old USA Today that was folded open to page three in the Life section. It was sitting on the coffee table and I was getting ready to toss it without a second thought. The little blurb in the upper right hand corner caught my eye. It was the reason I had saved it in the first place, a story about web publishing and fan fiction. I thought “oh yeah, I meant to check these sites out.” I don’t remember the other site but FFN was the first one and happily, I entered the URL. I was back in writing mode after a several year drought and thought this would be a cool place to put out some of my work. I really knew nothing about fan fiction. I had just finished reading all 4 HP books the first time and was looking for anything to read to pass the time until number five came out.

I ventured into the pool and the first story I read was Call of the Wild by Wolfie Twins. It was recommended in an article by Flourish, as was PoU, and featured my favorite character, Remus Lupin. Two weeks later, I started reading PoU, which in turn led me to Lori’s mailing list. A few weeks later I joined the HP4GU list, on April Fool’s to be exact. From that point on I was hooked.

I’m now on 26 different mailing lists, 24 of which are HP. I have my own story on Schnoogle and a couple other places, which I have not updated in a long time because of severe writer’s block. I discovered slash, which I really like if it’s not PWP. I have been through a few minor flame wars and two major flame wars, one on HP4GU and Cassiegate I. I’ve made some great friends. I’ve seen the birth of FAP and it’s phenomenal growth in just six months. I’ve also seen the darkside that wasn’t there a year ago. Cassiegate II, Johngate, the over all junior high bullshit that has severely divided the fandom.

Fate in the form of a little USA Today Article brought me to this fandom. I, for one, am actually surprised I’m still here a year later, usually I would have gotten bored by now and moved on to some new obsession. I guess it’s because of the people I’ve met that I’m still here, the people I call my friends and hope to meet someday in RL.

You know it’s funny how things happen, a year ago I didn’t know that any of this existed. Everything happens for a reason even if we never know what the reason was. Good or bad I’m glad I’m here and I think I’ll be here for a while more. Happy 1 Year Anniversary to me. You know I just realized that being part of the fandom has lasted longer than any romantic relationship I've ever had. Go figure.