Snowflake Challenge 2

[cmk418]

Challenge #2

In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story.

Sometime in the early 2000s, I discovered the television "Oz". I didn't have HBO at the time and had to rely on Netflix to send me DVDs. It took a couple of episodes, but when it took hold, it really took hold. I binge watched before binge watching was cool. I read all of the recaps on the late great Television Without Pity and discovered that Oz had a forum where fans would chat. I lurked on the chat boards, rolled my eyes at people's devotion to the episode "Cuts Like a Knife" (which is a good episode, but not the best IMO), and through the forums discovered oz_magi. It was an annual exchange that took place around Christmas and had dozens of fics, mostly centered on Beecher & Keller, but there were a few that were of non-canon pairings. I can remember being fascinated by fics that paired up Tim McManus & Sean Murphy, best friends on the show but not gay in any way. It was one of those things that made me wonder "can they do that?" and then say to myself "I don't know, but it works and I like it.)

So then I started imagining what other non-canon pairings would be interesting to read about. For some reason, I had a fixation on Ryan O'Reily & Jia Kenmin and I told myself that if I was given the opportunity that I would request that pairing through Oz Magi that year. I joined Livejournal in July 2006 and having several months before Magi decided to try my hand at writing and making some friends who also were as fanatical about Oz as I was. I wrote my first drabble for hardtime100 (full disclosure, I'm now the mod, so you can see how that worked out) about Jia Kenmin and got a grand total of one comment. But that was enough and I was back for the challenge every week after that. I made a lot of friends in the community and that led to other fandoms and challenges.

It's been almost two decades, but it all started with a little forum on a now-defunct website.

Comments

[silveradept]

Little forums on now-defunct websites hold so many of our origins, I think, and we are both glad they are gone, so they can't show us who we were, and sad they are gone, because the community we had there was pretty cool.

[greetingsfrommaars]

that's so cool! I have never been a forum user - not sure if I just didn't find my way to the right sites or what - so I enjoy hearing about what it's been like for other people.