Bit of Ivory

A lot of my flist has been posting these, and since I’ve been having similar feelings myself, it seemed like a good idea to follow suit.

I started in fandom in what has been called “The Golden Age” between GoF and OotP– I started reading TLC and The Harry Potter Movie Site (later the Harry Potter Connection) and places like that around June of 2001, found a fanfiction I liked (Harry Potter and the Heir of Slytherin by Persephone aka Drummergirl) at the HPMS/HPC forums and followed it and its accompanying discussion as a lurker for several months, and finally got up the nerve to post right before September 11. I was aware of places like SQ (as a lot of the posters at the HPMS/HPC forums had their fics hosted there, and followed fics that were hosted there) and, shortly thereafter, Fiction Alley, but didn’t venture into the social aspect of the larger fandom for some time, choosing instead to stay in my little comfort zone. It wasn’t a bad place to be, actually. I met Melissa there, as well as Teri, Lou, Trisha, Rebecca, and many others (including Wolf550e, who is and probably always will be anti-LJ) :P. I was pointed to a lot of good fanfic, got my first lessons in fandom behavior and politics, and forged my first fandom friendships. I was inspired to write and post my first fanfic, and to start my first blog. I remember when we all told each other our real first names– some made people guess, even, and that was fun. Completely unaware of most of the rest of the fandom, especially its darker, nastier aspects, I stayed in my little bubble and loved life.

Of course, it didn’t last. Eventually HoS was finished, and the conversation died away. The original website with which the boards were affiliated up and disappeared, and we lost a lot of people who hadn’t had the boards bookmarked separately. Several subsequent affiliations died as well, and eventually posting all but died, and the boards have since been deleted. Melissa moved on to, well, TLC, many of us moved to blogs rather than message boards, and I. . . I registered at SQ when the new site went up, got involved in ship debates, and gradually–very gradually– became involved in the larger fandom. In March of 2004 I started my Live Journal, which opened up a whole new world of friends to me. I found I had more notoriety than I had any idea of– I still thought of myself, and still *do* think of myself, as relative nobody in the fandom, someone who may have famous friends but who is not famous herself. I spent anxious days waiting for new chapters of After the End and Rising from Ashes to be posted, made contact with Angua when I discovered we’d be debating at Nimbus together (and what a nerve-wracking experience THAT was, let me tell you– little old ME talking to the Great Angua?! :O), and met my first fandom friend IRL when Lilac brought her son to the same bookstore we attended for the midnight OotP party. I went to Nimbus, and met many more people IRL– people like Morgan Tuatha and Lou and Mellie who I’d known since my very first days in fandom, and other people like Angua, Sweeney and Catherine who were more recent friends, and people like Kirk and Julia who I’d never met even online before but who I instantly adored. Then came Wahleecon and late-night Y!M sessions and– so much. My fandom focus changed from reading fanfic to interacting with the people behind (and even around) the fic. And I can’t say that’s a bad thing, although I do miss the days of compulsively checking SQ or a Yahoo! Group hoping for a new chapter of some amazing fanfiction.

For a while, I kept up with my old friends just as much as my new friends, and I do still check the blogs of all those who aren’t on LJ almost every day. I remember those early days of confusion after HoS finished– where were we supposed to go now? What were we supposed to do? For a while we tried to continue the thread. But then Mellie got ever more busy, RJA stopped posting, Persephone herself dropped off the face of the earth– I last heard from her when OotP came out and she recognized me on the Today show. Those of us who had no larger fandom affiliation valiantly carried on the conversation, but felt rather left out. People had moved on, had forgotten us.

And now, when I hardly comment at all on *any* of my friends journals, don’t IM so much any more, and basically lurk in fandom except for scattered posts about why I’m not around much— I wonder if my first, my best friends are feeling the same sense of– I don’t know, abandonment that I felt when other members of our little clique began to move on. Do they look at me like a good friend from the past, but not involved in the present? Do they see me as an SQ mod, as someone who has people like Angua and Moey and Marta on her “friend-of” list, and doesn’t need the “little” people like Trisha and Katie anymore? Or worse, do those who don’t have LJs like Morgan and Wolf see me as abandoning them completely?

I hope not. I really, really, hope not. Because no matter how much I love all my new friends (and I DO!), I can never forget the first people who showed me kindness, who loved me and encouraged me and gave me memories that I can never erase. In some ways I wish we could all go back to that simpler time, that there was some place that we could all gather just like we used to and have fun just like we did then. But it’s not to be. Fandom has evolved, we have evolved, and this is our reality now. I just hope that all my old friends know that I’m not singling them out, or that I think that they’re beneath me because they aren’t as well-connected as I am now. I hope they know that I’m shamefully ignoring everyone equally. And that I will always think of myself as a little HPCer, posting about everything and nothing on the Heir of Slytherin thread.

I want to be the kind of person who finds time for everyone, who doesn’t let people down. I’m going to try a little harder to be a little better, to be the kind of friend that all of you are to me. Because in the end, that’s what fandom is really about– the people you meet, the people you care about, the people whose posts light up your friends page, whether they’re posting deep canon analysis or activities of their daily lives or silly things about nothing at all.

So, keep posting. I’m still here.