Flashbacks...

[heidi]

Originally posted by angiej:

18+ months and 14,000 stories after the debut of HP fanfiction
online, we've developed lots of extra canonical character traits that
are generally accepted. These are the ones I've noticed:

DRACO
--Is a great dresser with expensive taste.
--Takes issue with some of Lucius' ways.
(Sidebar: I re-read Cassie's DD this morning, and now it's
confirmed. I *adore* the fanfic version of Draco. You've GOT to
love the way he lights up a scene--even in canon.)

RON
--Has a temper to match his hair. (Anne-fan joke.)
--Is never the most perceptive character in the fic.

HARRY
--Has a tendency to be moody and rather secretive about his feelings
and personal affairs.
--Is the most famous person in the wizarding world throughout his
lifetime.

HERMIONE
--Is the center of the romantic universe, *even* in non-romance fics.
--Wins the Character Most Likely To BE OOC award... my favorite
manifestion of this is the damsel in distress syndrome.
--Often is a cover for the author's Mary Sue, self-insertion
desires.

GINNY
--Remains nearly as naive as she was in CoS throughout her lifetime.
--Has a superb sense of style... reminiscent of Draco, but she's
trendy where he's classic.

SNAPE
--Was secretly in love with Lily, a Mary Sue, or some other canonical
character.
--Has a perfectly reasonable explanation for hating Harry and the
Gryffindors.
--Is actually quite sympathetic if we'd just sit him down for a
session of psychotherapy, probing into his childhood, his tragic
Death Eater past, his lonely years at Hogwarts teaching Potions while
longing for the DADA position.

VOLDEMORT
--Is something less than Evil Incarnate and is in reality a
"grey"
character instead of the wicked-for-the-sake-of-being-wicked fiend
JKR insists she is.
--Was a sympathetic character in his Tom Marvolo Riddle days.

SIRIUS
--Is a dead sexy lady-killer, unreformed until some worthy lady
reforms his rakehell tendencies.
--Is a melodramatic tragic figure, reminiscent of "The
Fugitive", who
lapses into angst-ridden streams of consciousness about the Golden
Days Before Azkaban.

LUPIN
--Always turns into a werewolf in the fic, no matter whether it has
anything to do with the storyline or not.
--Is among one of the most underutilized canonical figures.

LILY/JAMES
--Wanted Harry and anticipated his birth.
--Either had a fiery love-hate relationship, experienced a Romeo-
Juliet like situation, or were platonic friends that secretly longed
for one another for years before becoming lovers... my theory is that
the POV is directly related to the writer's conscious or
subconscious
primary second-generation ship preference.

And now for the question of the day (asked because I'm being interviewed by someone who is very sympathetic-to-fans next week):

How did you get into the Harry Potter fandom?

My answer: I came in after reading an article about the HPfGU Yahoo Club in the Washington Post the day before GoF was released. I joined, I did a suitably stupid first post, I went to buy the book, and I came back and started discussing it with the likes of sjbranford and, iirc, folk, among others.

Comments

[tromboneborges.livejournal.com]

Well, okay. I have no idea what prompted me to start reading fic in the first place, but it was early 2001 sometime and it was PoU, like so many others. And then I read, and lurked, until Dec 2002. That's a lot of lurking. I spread across YGs reading and eventually when things moved to LJ read a few. People often seem puzzled when I tell them I was around for the FF.net debacle and so on, but I was, you know, in the shadows somewhere watching. :)

And then I showed up on Dec 4? 5? 2002 for the DV11 Release Party Chat in HP4GU, determined that I was going to see if I wanted to talk to this community and if they wanted to talk to me. No idea why then, really. I had had nothing to add, really, to various YG discussions, and I thought I might do better in a chat-like scenario. I showed up with the username "Josh," having not yet thought up my nom de guerre. And was promptly glomped by epicyclical and vanityfair, who wanted to know who this mysterious fandom boy was who had come out of nowhere.

And that was pretty much it. Yes, I wanted to talk to these people and it seems they were interested in talking to me.

[heinous_bitca.livejournal.com]

If it was the 5th, it was my birthday! Wheee! Of course, that means I was not there. :(

Everyone glomped you because you were the fandom straight boy. There were so few... ;)

[smilie117.livejournal.com]

Hmmm - I read the books in Dec '00 - loved it after the first few chapters of HPSS, recommended by a friend. By the time I was finished with GoF - I wanted more - LOL - but sadly there was no OotP nor the rest of the seires yet - sooooo having discovered X-Men related fandom stuff off of FFN back then - I figure I'd give Harry Potter a shot.

This was Jan '01 - and hence found stories - where I used to read anything and everything at a time *so long ago* and hence my slow integration into fandom by reading stories off of FFN and then following links to Y!Groups which lead to me learning about FA from Y!Groups which eventually lead me to FAP - not when it first started, but rather a half a year later when I was linked to it somehow - was surprised I hadn't found it sooner...

Delurking in Jan '02 by posting to a forum at FAP, and the rest is history - meeting lovely people to talk about various things HP - some of whom I had the great chance of meeting in person :D esp. at Nimbus :) so basically it was on a whim to give fandom a try while waiting for the rest of the series... just turned into something more when I made friends past the HP :D [end rambles]

[hermione-like.livejournal.com]

I posted this entry last year in fandom_history sinec it was my second year of being in the fandom--which makes this November 3 years! :D

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

I guess it was almost two years ago now, I had been driving my friends crazy talking about the HP books. One of them mentioned hearing about something called Harry Potter fanfiction on the TV or radio. The speaker had mentioned this really cool place called FictionAlley which was started by this really cool woman named Heidi Tandy. It took me days to find the site but I was hooked. Later I found the Yahoo Groups and ff.net.

: flips hair

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Oh, sweet! Thanks so much! :)

Re: : flips hair

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

Hey, apparantly they raved on about how you started this sight. Whoever told me was pretty impressed.

[zorb]

It was fall of 2000, my first year at college, and my favorite Star Trek fic site hadn't been updated in ages; I had literally read everything on the site. I decided to check out the Harry Potter fanfiction I'd heard about, since I'd enjoyed the books so much, and what was meant to be a temporary diversion became my primary fandom as I attempted to "catch up on everything at ffnet" (yes, I think I was temporarily insane). When FA went up, I started reading there for the quality control, and I finally delurked on the H/Hr ship thread right before the first film came out. The rest is history. *g*

[aome.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it be easier to just point your interviewer at fandom_history?

[moony]

I can remember 'way back about mid-2001 hearing that there actually was a HP fandom, and being slightly nauseated by the idea of people writing about children having sex (because, at that point I didn't even consider the aging-them-up clause, and CHAN had never even crossed my mind). I was deeply mired in Popslash and LOTRiPS then, but toward the summer of 2002 I had left those fandoms after a nasty real-life experience. During recovery I read the books again and realised that Sirius and Remus were so in love, so I started looking online for fic. At about the same time, an article appeared in the Sacramento Bee and talked about something called Fiction Alley, and interviewed someone called flourish. I thought, "Wow! HP fiction is a THING!" and promptly started reading just about everything I could get my hands on. Suddenly the concept of British teenagers snogging and buggering themselves into a frenzy no longer bothered me. In fact, I started writing some myself. And that was that. :-)

They're still so in love, btw. *thumps desk with fist*

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Youaresoindenialabiuttheveil.

But it's so true. Theirloveissocanon. Have you read grim slasher's fics on aT yet?

[longtimegone]

I entered the HP fandom after reading the books in March of 2003. I knew about fic (extensively so) from the X Files fandom. And I found I just couldn't get enough Harry Potter so I dove in to FA. There's more to that story HERE. >:D

[(Anonymous)]

I love your icon!!!

-Seriana

[wcspegasus.livejournal.com]

How did you get into the Harry Potter fandom?

Right after SS came out on video a friend lent it to me to help keep me awake during a tack cleaning session prior to a horse show. The next day after the horse show I went out and picked up my own copy of the movie.

A week later I went and bought all four books in hardback. On week after that I went hunting fanfic and found FictionAlley.

There's a much longer and much more boring version of that story here as well. :)

[sincelastjuly.livejournal.com]

I got into the fandom by doing a search online for "draco malfoy" or "harry potter" or something and Cassie's DT showed up. I wondered what the hell a schnoogle was, went to the main site, found FA through that, and signed up that night.

[debellatrix.livejournal.com]

I wasn't kidding when I said in my Nimbus bio that I came into the fandom and fanfic by way of the VSDs. At that point, I discovered a thing called LiveJournal, where people seemed to discuss a myriad of things including something called fanfic. There seemed to fanfic for the HP series, and apparently, this same author had written some of it.
That was fall of 2001, lurked until Nov 2003 when I got an lj.
Next thing I know I'm on the phone with Gwen and Heidi about Nimbus....

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

How did you get into the Harry Potter fandom?

I was already pretty much a trufan of various stripes, having attended my first cinematic SF movie in '71, my first Worldcon in '77, and been Trekkish since one summer in my junior high years (between 7th and 8th?).

Therefore, when I realised people really WERE right about this Harry Potter stuff (after reading 1-4), I headed straight for the Internet, for Google, and ended up at the Sugar Quill, with occasional eddies to FA, GT (*sigh*), et al. And so she wrote.

SIRIUS
--Is a dead sexy lady-killer, unreformed until some worthy lady reforms his rakehell tendencies.
--Is a melodramatic tragic figure, reminiscent of "The Fugitive", who lapses into angst-ridden streams of consciousness about the Golden Days Before Azkaban.

*blink* Well, the sexiness is obvious, isn't it?

[hermorrine.livejournal.com]

I'd heard about the books but for whatever reason hadn't gotten around to reading them. Then the ads starting showing on TV in fall 2001 for HPSS and I decided I didn't want to see the movie without having read the book first, so I went to my local library and checked out all four. I read them in less than 3 days and wanted more. I ended up doing a websearch and, oddly enough, the first place I ended up was FA. In quick succession I found HPfGU and a ton of other Yahoo groups, including Veela Inc, and it was a former Veela who gave me my LJ code. I think you know the rest of my history from there. :)

[photosinensis.livejournal.com]

How did I get into fandom?

Well, two years ago, I was on Yahoo!, looking for a good laugh. I decided to look under Lord of the Rings humor, so I pointed myself in that direction. There, I stumbled upon some ring chant parodies, a few crackpot theories, and these diaries that sounded like the entire LOTR gang was on crack (either that or the author was...come to find out that Cassie was neither drunk nor stoned, but just being Cassie).

A year went by. Not much happened, unless you count me reading the first four books 3 times.

Then, one day, I again go looking for another piece of what I later learn is called fanfiction, The Lord of the...Whatever. It's still not done, but the Very Secret Diaries catch my eye. I disturb the people in the room with my very loud cackling. When I get home, I read them again, just for grins, when I decide to poke around the livejournal in which Cassie originally wrote the VSDs to see if she had done anything in the HPverse.

Meanwhile, I joined the HPGalleries board.

After a couple of days of intermittent internet connection, I finally sit down to read the Draco Trilogy. Later, I take the link to FA from Cassie's main LJ, and I started reading because I had nothing better to do.

Four months later, I finally join the FAP boards.

And back at the end of June (right before the release of OotP), I wrote my first chapter and published it at FFN, Schnoogle, and Portkey (where an intended unrated version was supposed to appear, though I later scrapped the idea).

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[selene-rain.livejournal.com]

I posted my whole long story here a while back.

[webbapettigrew.livejournal.com]

I began reading the PoU stories when I was in labor for baby number two. I had bought the first three HP books as stories I thought my boys would like later on when they were older, but hadn't read them myself.

One afternoon I got bored and didn't feel much like going anyplace (I was eight months pregnant!) and decided to read the books for something to do. I was hooked! I did a search on "Harry Potter" online and found ff.net. One of the first stories I found was "Paradigm of Uncerainty".

And it was a go from there.

~webba

[kindofwhimsical.livejournal.com]

After my friend gave me the paperback of Sorceror's Stone one day in class I quickly read all three books and loved them, and began my infamous Harry/Hermione story. I wanted others in the fandom to read it, but didn't know HTML, so I sent out email newsletters with chapter updates, to many, many addresses I collected from HP guestbooks and AOL profile (after asking them if they wanted to be added to the mailing list). Then I figured out HTML and the Mena's Harry Potter Fanfiction Newsletter site was born, complete with random map of Neverneverland. I learned a little more about web design eventually, and redesigned the site into Hermione's World.

This is old, old school of course. The reason I started writing the fanfic was because I was looking for an epic Harry/Hermione romance online, and couldn't find one. So I wrote one, and apparently others had been looking, too, because the idea really took off for awhile there.

[chresimos.livejournal.com]

Well, my story's not very interesting, but if you want to know:

I finished the books and GoF in November 2002. It was fun. I wanted more. I'd never really been in an online fandom, or read any fanfiction, but I knew that such things existed, and I was curious about them. Harry Potter seemed like the perfect excuse - I liked it enough, so I wouldn't get tired of reading about it, but I didn't like it so fanatically I couldn't tolerate having my perceptions of the canon warped(of course, my innocent mind had no conception of just how warped the fandom could go!). I did a search. It led me to Draco Dormiens(it's interesting that so many people seem to come via the Draco Trilogy! Alas, I was one of the mob.). I was impressed because I thought fanfiction was supposed to be terrible and badly written. From there I went forth into other fics, and fictionalley. I stayed because the fics were good and because Fictionalley was so phenomenally well-organized. Really! I wish all fandoms had such helpfully labelled forums. *sigh*

[dejaspirit.livejournal.com]

Geesh. You know story, right? Car accident, confined to bed for two months, Harry Potter Books....

The rest is history. I'll have to write that up someday.

[til-midnight.livejournal.com]

I became hooked on Harry Potter during the summer I was fourteen. My family has just moved across the country and I had no friends so I spent most of the summer reading. My mum got Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for my little brother, he read it in a few days, said it was wonderful, and left it in the car. I was later sitting in the car waiting for him to finish something and so I picked it up, started reading, and was hooked.

I discovered fanfiction and fandom during the beginning of my sophomore year. GoF has just come out during the summer. I was failing geometry (stupid subject) and I was suppose to go to review labs everyday before school. However, half the time the teacher wouldn't show up and the other half of the time *I* wouldn't show up, so I spend a lot of time in the library. I was on bored.com and saw a link to ff.n that promised a "new" Harry Potter stories and the here I am, three years later. (And I actually managed to pass geometry.)

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

I knew that hp fandom existed before I got around to reading the books but put both off due to fears of timesink. Books 1-4 were consumed across five or six days of grading essays, summer of 2002; only in April or May this year did I start trying to find fanfic to read, via the VSDs and cassieclaire's passing refs to some other hp-oriented lj she maintained.... Then I read (http://www.livejournal.com/users/greythistle/58714.html) and read (http://www.livejournal.com/users/greythistle/54126.html). I'm glad I have, because the well-written fics please me rather more than JKR's own work (but wouldn't exist otherwise, blahblahblah) and the whole culture of fic-writing fascinates me.

[nahkasiipi.livejournal.com]

I read the HP books in March 2001 and I found fics in January 2002. A friend of mine told me she had read some Harry/Draco fics and I was all O.O Like, does HP slash really exist? For some reason, I had never thought about it. I found myself searching ff.net some days later and found some good fics (yes, there were some, at the time...) H/D has been my OTP ever since. :) I also found FA on quite soon and registered myself there though I didn't take part in the discussions much.

I think that July 2002 was the time when I really entered the fandom. I got my LJ then and finally started to get to know some fandom people, a bit. I've always been somewhat shy and it isn't easy to just start talking with people I don't know and in English, which isn't my native tongue. But I've had much fun anyway. :)

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

I got into the fandom about 11 months ago. I had read PS/SS and CoS and enjoyed them but I *really* got into HP when I started reading the books aloud to my daughter shortly before her sixth birthday. I wouldn't let Maya see HPSS the movie until after we'd read the book, and reading the books got her into them as well. By the time we finished POA in late September last year, I was convinced JKR was (and is) bloody brilliant. We were most of the way through GoF when CoS the movie was released. We went to the local premiere and that was it. I was hooked (yeah, I know it's not the greatest movie but still...) I joined HPfGU the same night. Of course I got scared away by the 3,000 people who joined just in time for OotP, but by then I was spending most of my HP-time on LJ anyway. **smooches to all of you** When they're not busy wanking each other (I assume that means nobody here), HP fans are the greatest:-)

[daffybroad.livejournal.com]

I was peripheral to the Harry Potter phenom until well past the release of the fourth book. Foolishly, I did the thing where I shyed away from reading them despite my family's best efforts - in fact, one might say, due to them. Strangely, I was introduced to the fandom before I was introduced to the canon world at all.

I was almost entirely immune to the phenomenon until, on one of his newsposts on Penny Arcade (http://www.penny-arcade.com), Tycho made passing reference (http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2001-12-12) to "homoerotic Harry Potter fanfiction".

"Homoeroticism?" I could be heard to comment. "There's potential for GAY in these books?" Needless to say, I clickedy-clicked my way over - lo and behold, it was iscaris's Magical Intrigue, with Irresistable Poison still in its first fledgling chapters. I skimmed some of her stand-alone fic - not really knowing the characters, I failed to appreciate the work, but I was intrigued. Intrigued enough to accompany my family on a trip to the first film.

Well, you all know how the story goes from there. I was hooked. I devoured all four books in three days, then read them again over the next week, before spiriting away my sister's copies back to my University dorm, cackling under my breath. When I exhausted the books, I returned to Magical Intrigue, which led me to epicyclical's DD/DS/DV trilogy... and FictionAlley and Schnoogle, which not only sated my endless desire for fanfiction, but inspired me to write my own (http://www.thedarkarts.org/authorLinks/Talina_Malfoy/) - my first fic in any fandom.

Thank you Tycho, Rhysenn, Cassie, and especially to Heidi for the site that cemented my love for the fandom. You are excellent scrumptious.

[heart-of-wine.livejournal.com]

I was procrastinating from work one day in June of 2000 when I did a search for Harry Potter on the internet.

I came across a Salon article that mentioned fanfic and linked to Lori's group. I joined, read avidly, and participated a little, but really delurked in December of 2001 in the SCUSA Pumpkin Pie thread by posting the first snippet of what later became my first novel length fanfic.

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

IT started wit ha spontaneous hp tal ko na very mucn not-related yahoogroup somewhereearl y2001.
Then I borrowed the braille books adn good hooked.
then came movy one while I wa stil stuck in POA (don't ask0
Then aaround finishing gof in 2002 I found JK's wonderful
column and yahoogroup. Then I found her wonderful stories
and then the rest of SQ.
Next I read dreamwalk blue (but not good enoug hsince the
after the reread some year later I kept sayig nwhat a
fantastic rewrite that was...(*shrug*).
Ten came a bit of a plunge into discussion.
Then a large dive into FA...much too large. That's when I registeered and started writing and submitting.
Then someone got me ootp and I thougth "is this a hard-back
fic?" I kept thinking "this is god subplot? I hope JKJ finds out
about it and keeps it in mind..oh wait. this IS jkr."
And meanwhile I'd started really reading and picking out fics
to read. My favs are filed with reccomendations and
interesting sounding stuff.
Now I've finished ootp...WROTE ANOTHER FEW STORIES
And made one big vow: this time I will go into fic-land and stay there. hah!
NOw for some confessions:
I started reading TIP and left off somewhere for unknown
reasons *ducks*
NO, I haven't finished reading after the end *ducks some
more*
ummm.....not even started any of the other auld classics
classics that started it all. *hides*
But I wil do from now on. I promise. All the ravign and quotations made me curious. :)
peace
Yvonne