User:Greenlady

Name/s:	Greenlady, Greenlady2, Jen Hall
Fandom/s:	Smallville, Starsky & Hutch
You can find me at:
On Fanlore:	My contributions / email me

(Please note: I started an account under the name Jen Hall, then realized that back at the beginning of Fanlore, I had created an account under the name Greenlady. I decided the best thing to do was to reactivate the Greenlady account, and delete the Jen Hall one. And so...)

I have always been a Slash fan. In fact, I think I was born one. This was, of course, long before the term existed. But I remember watching some of my favourite TV shows, and thinking the two male leads looked so good together....

Of course I liked m/f couples too, and as a young girl had no idea that two men, or two women, could actually be in love. When I discovered the existence of 'homosexuality' I was astonished at first, but then the concept seemed natural to me, and I couldn't understand the prejudice against it. Anyway, I began to fantasize about those male couples in earnest, and make up stories about them.

When I learned that other people felt the same way, and that there existed in the world a form of fiction called Slash, I set out to find some to read.

I learned that Slash was available on the internet, so I went about acquiring internet access. This was in the 1990s, and Fandom was then centred around various mailing lists. I joined several lists and found links to fan fiction and read my first Slash story, in The Sentinel fandom.

Now, in those days, computers were far more expensive than they are today, and I really couldn't afford one. What I got instead was WebTV, a box much the size and shape of a VCR, that let you use your TV to surf the Web and send emails. This was how I read fan fiction and took part in mailing lists. WebTV's editing abilities were minimal, and the saving of files non-existent. These points made it difficult to even contemplate writing my own fan fiction.

Eventually I figured out a way, however. I would write a short chapter of a story in an email, and send it to myself. When I wanted to edit the chapter, I would do a copy, cut and paste into a new email window, edit it, and again send it to myself. I could only keep an email window open for 15 minutes, or it would close on me, and I'd have to start over. I worked like this for years, and it taught me patience and self-sufficiency and to work out problems quickly, on my own.

It was impossible to put all those emails together into one file, for example, and so to send a story to an archive meant that I would have to send multiple emails, instead of one file. The reaction I got from archivists and other fans was mostly negative. 'Why don't you just get a computer?' was the usual response. When I explained that I truly couldn't afford one, they were dismissive. That was when I first learned that the myth about fans supporting each other was just that -- a myth.

But I got by on my own, and managed to write many stories this way. When I finally got a computer, seven years later, I was amazed at how much easier it was to write, but I still appreciate the lessons I learned from my years with WebTV, including the lessons about the true nature of Fandom. I'm very happy that I maintained my independence and never became too involved with a circle of other fans, because warm and accepting as they may seem at first, they will turn on you, as soon as it becomes obvious that you don't agree with them on everything.

But back to my discovery of Slash. In those early days -- and the late 90s were still early days -- Slash was still regarded as controversial. Writers had to 'warn' for Slash, even the most mild forms, with no explicit sexual scenes.

• • • TBC***