Snowflake Challenge Day Five

[turps]

In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story. How did you come to fandom, why did you choose your fannish name, do you have more than one secret identity? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Way back in time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the internet was accessed via dial up, I searched for the tv show Poltergeist the Legacy. I didn't do so in the comfort of my own home, as at that time we didn't have home internet, so my first fannish activity was undertaken in the small library of my home town -- and I still shake my fist at the person who thought adding an automatic wolf howl on loading the page was a good thing to do.

While checking out that page I found PtL fanfic, gen only, and in my hour slot I started to read through those stories, because this stuff was awesome! I loved reading anyway and here were stories about a show that I loved. It was like magic.

Time went on and we got the internet in our house. We could only use it between 6 and 12 in the evening and pages were insanely slow to load, but still, now I had sort of free reign I launched myself into this new world of Angelfire sites, webrings, news groups and then, my next big fannish step, mailing lists.

I'm a trekker and love Voyager especially, so when I found a mailing list dedicated to the Paris/Torres ship I was in heaven. Not only could I read stories, but discussion as well. I threw myself enthusiastically into the mailing list, sending LoCs -- letters of comment if you're not a dinosaur, too -- and happily wallowing in the beauty of Paris/Torres. Then I ran out of stories to read.

Eager to explore this new cyber world, I went searching, and found E Groups, and something called Voyager slash. Oh, but I was young and naive then, thinking this meant horror stories about Voyager. As that's not a genre I'm keen on, I didn't explore that link, until one day I got desperate, clicked the link, and found my people.

My first slash story was a Chakotay/Paris n/c abuse story. I suspect that says a lot.

From that point things exploded fannishly. I joined more newsgroups, talked more, started to make friends, including castalie who mentioned finding a show called The Sentinel, which she thought I'd enjoy. And man, did I enjoy it.

The Sentinel is where I cut my writing teeth. It was a huge fandom full of enthusiastic people and really h/c focussed, so perfect for younger me as I spread my wings fannishly. I made more friends, discovered that no matter what you do you can't make everyone like you when I was constantly ignored on Senad -- got my first little diva moment over with when I posted something to a beta mailing list that people didn't like and questioned. Seriously, I think back to my 'okay, I'll stop writing then, email and cringe, the very patient other fan that dealt with that was a saint.

I was having a load of fun, but then the next step on my journey began when I was offered a code to join Live Journal.

Around that time I'd started to be attracted to Backstreet Boys fic. I'd always liked the band, but what you have to remember is around that time, rps was horribly taboo. I've told these stories over and over -- hell, I've told this whole thing on many occasions, so apologies to those who've known me a long time. But at a slash con I was told that popslashers were the lowest of the low, lower even than furries on the fandom scale, and that was when popslash was my main fandom, and was also told in comments that writing rps was like character rape. So yeah, making the step from show based to real based slash was a huge step, so much so I seriously considered changing my name and writing under another one.

In the end I didn't, and I'm very glad about that. What I did do was fall headlong into popslash. Through crossover fics I discovered Nsync -- and Chris. Oh Chris Kirkpatrick, you remain one of my chosen ones always. And if TS was where I spread my wings as a fan, popslash is where I became established. I wrote lots, created my own website, created comms, ran comms, ran a weekly newsletter, ran challenges, made many friends, lots of whom are still around today. It's why popslash will always have a special place in my heart, a special sparkly, crack filled place that's stuffed with feelings of love, happiness and lava lamps.

I stayed in popslash for many years, and then, moved onto bandom, where, to cut this long story short, I've remained ever since.

As for my name. Turps is what my brother calls me. Terri = Ter = Turps in his mind. I'm even known as Auntie Turps to his kids. So when I needed a fannish name I picked turps, but of course that was taken, so I just shoved a random number on the end. And have been known as that ever since.

I use a variation of that name in most fannish places DW - turps LJ- turps33, twitter -- turpss, instagram -- turps33, Ao3 -- turps, though my tumblr is completely different, but as I haven't touched that in many years, that doesn't matter. especially as I can't remember it.