you were the first one, you were the last one

I read the first Harry Potter book for a strange reason. The movie was due to be released in a few weeks, and I noticed one day at the bookstore that there was a version of the first book with a different cover, one that touted that the movie version was due at any moment. I hate when book covers change because of movies, and afraid that the original cover would be phased out, I grabbed the first book and took it home.

I read it before I went to bed that night. The next morning, as soon as I got done with classes, Gillian and I headed towards the library, where I checked out the second book and the fourth book as well - the third book wasn't on the shelves. Consequently, the next day found me back at Borders, buying the third book. In four days, I had read the first four books. I shared the books with Sam, as well as my parents, and over the Christmas holidays, I watched the movie.

I had no idea about fandom or fanfiction at that point.

I was in the middle of a long, slow slide into depression, and I found myself idly surfing the internet, doing a lot of nothing. (My MDC membership, incidentally, dates to December 2001, somewhat indicative of what I am saying.) Sam worked with a guy named Geoffrey at the time, and one day, Sam came home with a slip of paper. Geoffrey was a fan of fanfiction, and had passed along two sites to me, via Sam.

I shan't tell you what they were, but suffice it to say that they were 'ships to which I am not particularly partial. After a month or two, I had read everything on these sites, and expanded my searching. I think I found FA around that time, but was annoyed that I couldn't search by 'ship on there, as I could on ff.net. I read some Harry/Ron fic, and this was better than what I had read previously. Finally, though, I followed a few links, and I read Unthinkable Thoughts. That was that - I was a H/D shipper, through and through. I devoured what was out there, and sometime that spring, I began posting on FAP. Around June of that year, I fortuitously met my Alex via FAP. On 30 July 2002, I started my LiveJournal.

I know it was that fall that I met Kelly, Jess, Lady M - the other three of my fandom wives. At the beginning of 2003, Alex & I together started an RPG. That Draco is still in my head. (He lives in Wales with Harry, and has twin two year olds, Nia and Rowan. It's 2002 in his world.)

Then came OotP. I remember fandom in general seemed to think that everything was changing. We were both right and wrong. Nimbus came right on its heels.

Nimbus means the Great Southern Food Tour, and the t00by condom. Alex, Jess, and Kelly flew into Atlanta, and we drove to Orlando from there. Two days before we were leaving, we made plans to pick up elements as well. So I had five people in my 1996 Saturn SL2.

That wasn't the most people I had in the car over the time at Nimbus, though, since I'm pretty sure we made it work with either six or seven at one point. We had to drive to the - was it the Swan or the Dolphin? I think it was the Swan - from the t00by condom. I remember watching a thunderstorm for hours, and Alex telling us that she was going back to Oz. I remember Aja and I getting all excited about some theory about Draco... that neither of us can remember!

And then there was O Fandom, My Fandom.

Just two months after Nimbus, I drove to Rhode Island and Boston. I stayed with Kelly, and visited Alex, so that I would see her before she went back to Oz. At the time, I sincerely thought that regardless of her moving back to Oz, I would see her at least once in the next four years. It's been four years in just a few months. Strange.

On the way there, I met some of the people in DC that I had met through The Second War (TSW). I was Harry's player and if Draco is in my head, let me tell you what it is like to have CAPSLOCK!HARRY in your head, forever and ever. While less frequently a visitor, he does like to show on occasion. The initial three to five months on TSW were the best RP experience, really. Harry/Terry, anyone? ;)

I met several people in Boston - ari_o, lasultrix, dezzikitty, irinaauthor, and though I didn't remember it for a long while, starsthatguide. There were more, I know, at least at one point in that weekend that I met most of the people.

The next spring, PoA was out, and I headed back to Rhode Island, where I met up with Aja, Ben, and Kelly. That was so very much fun. We headed to NYC for Imax PoA and picked up elements along the way in Stamford. On the way to Stamford, I was nervous about getting pulled over, because we had my future son-in-law, a friend of Kelly's daughter, plus the four of us, all in a little stick-shift Jetta. I was the one driving. Yeesh. Then we rode the train from Stamford.

As a random aside, it was just after Imax PoA that Aegy sent out tons of text messages to all of us that Reagan had died.

Good riddance.

Wait, this is about fandom! Not politics!

To be honest, I think in some ways that was the last really active fandom activity I had. I still read fic, even now, and occasionally I'll write something, though often as not it's in another fandom. I thought for years that HP was my first fandom until I found, on an old floppy disc, my applications for several characters in a Weyr in Pern fandom. Go figure.

So here we end this tale, with an excerpt from O Fandom My Fandom...

"It is some dream that in my heart,
Has fallen cold and dead."