shadowscast (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shadowscast) wrote2020-10-11 11:01 pm
shadowscast) wrote2020-10-11 11:01 pm
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Well, this is quite a rabbit-hole. (Umbrella Academy Discord Server)
So hey, I've joined an Umbrella Academy fannish Discord Server.
That's been quite a delightful time-suck for the past three evenings.
Also, I am amused at how my fannish life has come full circle somehow.
When I posted my personal fannish history post last year, I traced my history from mailing lists to message boards to LiveJournal to Dreamwidth, and placed the start in my early 20s.
I joined the Discord server a few days ago, and looked through the intro thread where everyone was posting their ages (it's an 18+ server), and I discovered that I was literally the oldest person there by at least a handful of years (I'm 42; the next-oldest person on the thread was 36, and there were a whoooole lot of 18, 19, early-20s folks). So that was a little head-trip. And it reminded me of when I joined my first fandom, Once A Thief, and I was in my early 20s, and I felt so young because most people in the fandom were in their 30s or 40s.
I was discussing this with some people on the Umbrella Academy Discord (after one of them told me that I was the same age as her mom, LOL), and some of the early-20s folks were saying that they felt old in fandom, because there were a lot of high-schoolers in their fandom. They expressed surprise about my first experience, where I was the young odd one out while in my 20s, and somebody suggested that it might have to do with the fandom. Which is for sure at least partly true, but then I realized a bigger factor, which is that: back then, teenagers weren't in online fandom because they didn't have internet access! (I got my own private internet connection for the first time in grad school. And that's when I started posting fic.)
Anyway, I went away and pondered all this.
And then I remembered something.
I discovered fan fiction when I was in university, and started posting fic when I was in grad school. So I tend to mark that as the beginning of my participation in online fandom.
But when I do that, I'm forgetting something.
When I was fourteen years old, my family got internet access. (This was in 1992; we were early adopters, because in fact my dad was a computer programmer; that was his job.) And on the shared family computer, I was allowed to go on irc. And what did I do on irc? I talked about Elfquest comics.
Yes indeed. Let me repeat this for emphasis: My first online experience was in 1992, when I was 14 years old, going on irc to share my Elfquest theories and headcanons with strangers on the internet in ephemeral chatrooms.
So ... 28 years later, I land on Discord and look around and realize: oh my gosh, this is basically still irc.
(I shared this insight on the server too. And mostly everybody was like, "what is this ancient irc technology you speak of?" But one person was like, "omg, you are riiiiiight." Heh.)
That's been quite a delightful time-suck for the past three evenings.
Also, I am amused at how my fannish life has come full circle somehow.
When I posted my personal fannish history post last year, I traced my history from mailing lists to message boards to LiveJournal to Dreamwidth, and placed the start in my early 20s.
I joined the Discord server a few days ago, and looked through the intro thread where everyone was posting their ages (it's an 18+ server), and I discovered that I was literally the oldest person there by at least a handful of years (I'm 42; the next-oldest person on the thread was 36, and there were a whoooole lot of 18, 19, early-20s folks). So that was a little head-trip. And it reminded me of when I joined my first fandom, Once A Thief, and I was in my early 20s, and I felt so young because most people in the fandom were in their 30s or 40s.
I was discussing this with some people on the Umbrella Academy Discord (after one of them told me that I was the same age as her mom, LOL), and some of the early-20s folks were saying that they felt old in fandom, because there were a lot of high-schoolers in their fandom. They expressed surprise about my first experience, where I was the young odd one out while in my 20s, and somebody suggested that it might have to do with the fandom. Which is for sure at least partly true, but then I realized a bigger factor, which is that: back then, teenagers weren't in online fandom because they didn't have internet access! (I got my own private internet connection for the first time in grad school. And that's when I started posting fic.)
Anyway, I went away and pondered all this.
And then I remembered something.
I discovered fan fiction when I was in university, and started posting fic when I was in grad school. So I tend to mark that as the beginning of my participation in online fandom.
But when I do that, I'm forgetting something.
When I was fourteen years old, my family got internet access. (This was in 1992; we were early adopters, because in fact my dad was a computer programmer; that was his job.) And on the shared family computer, I was allowed to go on irc. And what did I do on irc? I talked about Elfquest comics.
Yes indeed. Let me repeat this for emphasis: My first online experience was in 1992, when I was 14 years old, going on irc to share my Elfquest theories and headcanons with strangers on the internet in ephemeral chatrooms.
So ... 28 years later, I land on Discord and look around and realize: oh my gosh, this is basically still irc.
(I shared this insight on the server too. And mostly everybody was like, "what is this ancient irc technology you speak of?" But one person was like, "omg, you are riiiiiight." Heh.)
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I'm trying to remember when we (me and ex SO) got online....we got married in '85, and then he was in the Army until 88, and then we moved to Kansas City, and I think we had a computer up and running and going online in, probably....'91? I just cannot remember.
A good friend of ours was a computer guy; he would come over to our house every Sunday with doughnuts and the Sunday KC Star, and i would sit and read the newspaper while they built computers.
The first thing I did online was go....here, to talk about CJ Cherryh books: http://www.solstation.com/cherryh/cherryh.html
:D
Also did a *lot* of iirc stuff, mostly because ex SO was a big name dude in a group called ACiD (ANSI Creators in Demand), who did ANSI and ASCII computer art. Artpacks went out on BBS'! Remember those? Oh man, so much nostalgia here....:D
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I actually just started reading and loving some of her books in the past couple of years! I read the Hani series, and also Cyteen.
I remember coming across some cool ASCII art, although it wasn't something I sought out or created.
Wow, the memories.
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Oh, neat - i'm glad you liked them! I really enjoyed the 'Cyteen' novels, even though they creeped me out. 'Downbelow Station' is my favorite of her sci-fi, though I truly love them all, and the 'Dreamstone/Tree of Swords and Jewels' is my favorite fantasy story.
I hope you continue to explore her worlds - I'm happy to talk about them any time. :D
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Pretty much, and it's also why the demographics of internet users until the last decade skewed to the small number of people with at least some college education, because universities and labs were where the Internet grew up. When I did my survey of the Buffy fandom back in 2005 it was both highly educated and also underemployed. The reason was all the people in their early 20s still in school working part-time lower-entry jobs.
So yeah, the early decades of organized fandom left out a lot of kids because they were also unlikely to be able to go to cons (pre-Internet) and other spaces where fans might find one another. Also adults were more likely to be organizing everything, which is less offputting online than in person. I remember I found out somehow that in my hometown there was a Star Trek club headquartered in a home within 5 miles of my house. But I chose never to get in touch because I was 11 and figured they would all be grown ups and it would be uncomfortable.
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Aw! But probably also true. Unless you had a Trek fan adult of your own who you could bring along as a chaperone.
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omg Elfquest! Now there's a trip down memory lane...
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Elfquest introduced me to the idea of polyamory, in that moment when Savah suggests to Rayek that instead of him leaving Sorrow's End because he lost out to Cutter, maybe Rayek and Cutter and Leetah could become a threesome. I mean, Rayek said no! But that moment pinged me with a serious "Oh hey, there is a third door!" feeling, and I've been unimpressed with tragic love triangles ever since!
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The cheekbones, the impulsiveness, the white hair, the attitude... I have a type and no mistake. ♥
But that moment pinged me with a serious "Oh hey, there is a third door!" feeling, and I've been unimpressed with tragic love triangles ever since!
*nods* And later on there are actual polyamory relationships and it's lovely. (Love triangles are a stupid thing!)
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My son is talking to his friends there, since they also use for gaming.
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LOL, exactly.
I had used it a little bit before but for voice chat—I used it for talking with my friends while we were playing Minecraft together, and also a friend of mine organized some Shakespeare readings over it.