Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related What was your first fanfic?

I have no idea what the first L&C fic I read was. I'm certain it was from the Archive and I'm almost certain that it was a 2002 Kerth Nominee, though possibly not. I discovered Folcdom, the ficlist and the Archive about a week before the voting closed for the 2002 Kerths. As a result I think I read about 95% of the nominated stories in that one week so that I could vote!

Loriel

I don't remember what my 1st fanfic was, that time was so confusing. I had just watched some old taped episodes my mom had of Lois and Clark and she only taped three of them, including And The Answer Is but she didn't tape We Have A Lot To Talk About. After finding out the show had ended years ago I went online, trying to find scripts of the episodes but couldn't find a good site. Then I searched the tv guide, and found out they were replaying the episodes. A few weeks later the show ended and I wanted more. My brother told to search for fanfiction ( ) and, after he explained what that was, I searched. I found a page with,like, 75 links. I looked under fanfic and went to a few sites, skimming some stories, I almost gave up right there, some of those were in desperate need of editing and in the others, the story made no sense. Luckily, I found the archive and now I'm hooked

Artemis, thank you for making my evening.

LabRat

I know I started reading fanfic somwhere between 95-97. I remember sitting in my dad's house reading Dawning before either making dinner or eating dinner. At the time, I'd gotten hooked into both L&C fanfic and Sliders fanfic. One of the sites hosting fic(I'm thinking it might have been our own archive, but it might have been Sliders) was on the verge of shutting down and was looking for someone to take over, so I started downloading lots of stories. I've got a couple of disks full of fanfic still. But I can't remember what the first one was that I had read. It's been too long.

The first time I found fanfics (i.e. the second day I went online

Elena

Like some others, my first experience with fanfic was TUFS. I wasn't actually looking for fanfic -- I was searching for information on a fifth season. I had watched the show while it was on and loved it (this was before I knew what fanfic was, and we didn't use internet much then), and when it was cancelled I was never sure if *it* was cancelled, or our stupid tv service in Laredo just went berserk on us (it wouldn't have been the first time...).

I found a link to TUFS and thought it was scripts/storylines actually written to be aired, then realized it was fanfic. I had found Star Trek fanfic online, and the Strange New Worlds ST fanfic contest was recent (they have a contest, winners get published -- but there's a word limit and some other rules and some of the stuff they've published is stupid. Anyway, tangent...) so I knew what fanfic was, but I was naive and thought it was only a Star Trek thing.

It took a while, but I went from TUFS to the archive (read S5 and S6 in spurts there) to the Ficlist to the boards to writing my own stuff. And what a wonderful journey it's been.

Bethy

You are welcome, LabRat.
In fact, , I think I even heard a rumor there was a squeal - er, sorry, sequel - in the works.

And do people know your website is still up?
http://www.chantico.com/labrat/

Artemis

My answer's gonna be short, since like others here, I don't remember <g>.

I do remember the story that got me hooked, though: MMIKC. It was the beginning of a long love affair with fanfiction.

Shadowfax

I'm going to keep telling you til you believe me, I LOVED that page full of fics. And it wasn't just because I was in LC withdrawal -- they're fun!

('And short,' she added, looking at the piles of printouts on the floor.)

Prior to getting hooked on the L&C reruns on TNT, I was heavily involved in the Scarecrow and Mrs. King and Babylon 5 fandoms, both of which also have a lot of fanfic. So I had read many wonderful stories, and also some ones that I didn't enjoy at all.

At one point on one of the SMK lists, there was discussion of setting up some kind of author awards, and a list member mentioned the L&C Kerth Awards. So once I'd seen enough L&C episodes to know that I definitely needed to read some stories, I did a search for the Kerth Awards, and for my first story picked the Best Overall Story of the most recent awards:

Wendy's For the Greater Good

Nothing like starting at the top! And, two years later, it is still one of my very favorite stories. And then I kept reading, and reading, and reading...

Kathy

This is a neat topic, Kathy

Okay, so the first fanfic that I ever read ... you know, I don't remember it being a specific fic. I read a group of them, but I don't recall which one came first. One of my friends (who had the internet at a time when I didn't) printed out a few stories that she'd found on the internet about "my Superman show" (as she liked to call it [g]). One of them was Zoomway's and one was Demi's Heaven's Prisoners (the PG version). Well, I devoured them in no time at all, and I wanted more [g].

Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to read anymore until I graduated high school and got my new computer (complete with the internet! yay!). I remember the next fic I read being "What It Means To Love You" by Erin Klingler. Wow, was that an awesome fic, and I was blown away by her talent (and hey, I still am!).

After that, I remember speed reading my way through the archive. I would come home from class (I was in my first year of college) and read for hours. Then I stumbled upon the message boards in the fall of that year. I definitely remember the first fic that I read on the MBs -- Wendy's The Penfriend. Seriously, it was like *Christmas* when I came home from class to find that she had posted a new part of that wonderful story [g]. There were times when I would try to wait and not read the new part right away, because I knew that after I was finished, I would only start wanting the next part immediately! Never did succeed there, though -- I'm weak when it comes to Wendy's writing [g].

Actually, I owe a lot to Wendy's posting of The Penfriend. I was loving the story so much that I always felt a little guilty about not telling her so (ah, the days of lurkdom). So in the spring of that year, I decided to jump right into FoLCdom. I posted my first fanfic, started commenting, made some friends, and ... well, long story short, here I am, getting ready to graduate from college in May, and I'm still around

Hmm, probably could have said all that in less space, but I get wordy when it gets late [g].

Tracey

well, i don't remember my first fic, either. i'd kept from posting for exactly that reason, but it looks like i'm not alone in that. thanks, guys.

i do know how i got into fic, tho, and i guess i'll tell that one. it's short and sweet. or something.

basically, when i was in high school, my life was on compuserve, due to health problems. i'd hang out in the various forums and chat rooms that i liked. joined up with a philosophical discussion group that called itself "the church of the bunnies" (i took the name "rabid rabbit rabbi of the non-existant hareline," and got in a flame war with a guy who went by RabbiT and claimed i'd stolen his nick). joined up with the comic book forum, too. i spent quite a lot of time, though, in the sci-fi media forum (which got so big that it split into sci-fi media and sci-fi media2... i was active in both places).

well, a large part of getting caught up with the sci-fi media forum was the lois and clark section. i enjoyed chatting with folcs, talking about the series, whatever. then, one day, one of them (pretty sure it was pam, the section asysop) pointed me to rhen's ficlist. that was december 95. i got sucked right into it. i read everything that hit my mailbox as soon as i could, and, although there were no comments on the ficlist, i had fun talking about them on compuserve.

it was only a few months after that when i started writing. felt really good to have an outlet for the creative energy that had been buzzing around my head.

of course, getting feedback on those stories (by private email and sometimes on the forum) only encouraged matters..

so, that's my story. hope you didn't find it too boring.

Paul

ROTFL! Artemis, I think Second Degree Burns is one of the few stories in this fandom that's infamous before it's even been posted! It was begun right after Burnout (you work out the math - it scares the heck out of me, so I'm not going to ), is half-finished now and has been for something like five years (a few months ago I was looking through an ancient floppy disk before discarding it and was dismayed to find an early draft of the darn thing on there! ) and recently I came to the conclusion that what's there already is so boring and predictable I really should just dump it and start from scratch....

Translation? Don't hold your breath. <g> It is, technically, scheduled to be worked on and finished next. Right after...erm...um...what I'm working on today. I reckon if I don't get it finished and out this year I probably never will. But I suspect it's going to take a lot of hard work from my poor betas - who will probably cringe when they see me coming with it - to whip it into shape.

LabRat

Wow, the memories this thread evokes!

My VERY first fan-anything was a fan-written Star Trek script that someone in my university dormitory wrote and let me have a look at. We're talking type-written, back in 1992 or 1993 or maybe earlier. I'd just started reading the Trek novels at the public library, even before I started collecting the books. I didn't even have a TV at the time - we didn't have one when I was a kid, either. I'd seen an ep or two of the original Trek when I'd been at people's houses, that was it, so the novels were how I got started with Trek for the most part. Anyway, it was my friend's roommate or suitemate, or something like that, who wrote this script, and I remember thinking, "Wow, I'm not the only person who likes this show here at this school" - this was a very conservative religiously affiliated university, and I'd figured everyone would be anti-scifi there.

To make a long story short, a year or so later I bought my own TV (a VERY BIG DEAL <VBVEG>) and discovered that I could get The Next Generation on it, so I started watching the show. Of course I was hooked already, thanks to the novels. Then I moved out of the dorm and into my own little efficiency apartment, so efficient that someone had made it by building a wall across the back of their garage, with the main entrance through the garage. (It was long and narrow, perhaps three mattresses wide?, with the bed space in a loft above the garage storage space on the other side, that you had to crawl up a ladder to get into bed. I had a little short love seat sofa that I preferred to sleep on, even though my feet stuck up in the air and the arm of the sofa was my pillow and I often woke up with a crick in my neck. There was a closet on one end of the room whose door often came off the track and I had to get my landlord, who lived in the house whose garage I was living in, to fix it every time. At the other end was a miniscule kitchen sink behind what used to be the back garage door, but was now my back door out into the back yard - there was practically no elbow room, let alone dish-draining space, because he had put a tiny little bathroom in the rest of that space. But you had to go out into the garage and open the bathroom door from out there with a separate key - I hated having to go to the toilet in the middle of the night that winter; this was Michigan, btw! The bathroom was so narrow that if you were sitting on the toilet and you tried to lean over to look between your feet, your head bumped the wall. You had to turn sideways to get past the toilet to get into the shower, which you could barely turn around in...)

Anyway, I put my TV up on the loft shelf, and I started taping the show in earnest, and buying novels and reading them at an alarming rate. (Alarming because first, I didn't have the money to spend on them, and second, I didn't have the time to read them - I spent time reading that I should have spent studying or practicing...) About that time, I started discovering the internet - I had been on various forerunners briefly the year before, doing research for my music courses, but about that time the internet started getting interesting. I'd found some Trek sites before, and some fic too, but it was just a novelty, since the type of 'net we had before that was really awkward to navigate. (I don't know if the older members will remember it - it was about 1990 or 1991 if memory serves. I don't really remember the details myself, but do remember that at that time it was a lot easier to just look up the books and the microfiche and other stuff, than to try to navigate that old 'net) About this time, too, the university computer lab, which before had been mostly a glorified typewriter room and other computer applications centre, got the internet, and we students were allowed to access it! So I started spending time searching for the titles of all the Star Trek episodes that I had missed so far. That's about all I did with Trek on the internet for a couple of years...

One day a girl looked over my shoulder and commented that I must be a Star Trek fan, too. We struck up a conversation, and lo and behold, she was a scriptwriter-wannabe (now that I think about it, might she have been the one who wrote that first script I saw? dunno), and we became good friends. I taught her to play chess, and she took me to my first Trek convention, and when I had my first Trek dream (I don't have to ask if you've ever had a dream about your fandoms - I suppose most of us have had them ) I told her about it. She suggested I write it down, and so I started to play around with the idea. I'd read a lot of Trek books by now, and I fancied that I could write a story like that - there were a lot of bad Trek novels in the beginning, if those of you who are also Trek fans will remember, and I thought I could do at least as well as those bad ones, maybe better.

Meantime, in 1994 I had to quit grad school due to lack of financing, and I returned home to look for work. I kept buying books - the older ones from a used book shop near my new place, the newer ones from the bookstore in the mall across the road. I made friends with both the used book seller and one of the clerks in the bookstore, and spent a lot of time chatting with them while I was in their places browsing their shelves - they both knew of my obsession with Trek, and they were very kind to listen to my rambling about this story I wanted to write. Finally one day the clerk said, "I want you to go home and write the first paragraph, and then come back here and show it to me." I think she got sick of me talking and talking and never doing! So I did - I went home and scratched out the first sentence: "Annie McGregor could have sworn she'd seen the young man someplace before." Yup, you guessed it - my first fanfic ever was my own Trek fic, Through a Glass Darkly! I managed to write that first paragraph out, and I took it back to that clerk, who gave me some point of view pointers and encouraged me to continue. So continue I did, teaching myself to write fiction as I went - over about five years or so until I finally feel like it's done now. And now I'm continuing with a sequel, Face to Face, but that's another story.

That same year I remember hearing about this new show, Lois and Clark: the New Adventures of Superman. I thought, "Well, that sounds interesting. I think I'll check it out." The first part of the first season I switched the channel back and forth between LnC and Seaquest DSV, which also premiered that year in the same time slot, so I missed parts of various LnC eps - but I caught them again in reruns, and taped them when I started taping the show several years later. About halfway through the first season I realized that I was well and truly hooked on LnC, and stopped watching Seaquest because it conflicted. (I suppose if I ever get into DVDs I'll get Seaquest, because I did enjoy it - but I liked LnC better...) Then I got a position teaching English in Africa at my mom's friend's ESL institute for about six months of 1996, and my flight left just before the wedding episode aired - I was so mad, because I had been looking forward to it for months... But of course, it turned out to be the beginning of the Argh - I came back to Canada just in time for the beginning of fourth season, and I couldn't figure out why they weren't married. And of course, that was the middle of the NK arc, so no wonder I was confused. And then they started missing shows and repeating old shows, and then they just stopped showing it, and I couldn't figure out why; I didn't have access to the net then, so I never heard about the show being cancelled - I think it took me about a year before I realized that it wasn't just that my station had dumped the show.

In 1997 I got a job teaching at a school in central British Columbia that had internet access in the seventh grade homeroom, and I got permission from the seventh grade homeroom teacher to use it after school - later they set up an internet/computer lab over in the high school building, so sometimes I would go over there after school, too. (But it was a Mac lab, and I was/am more comfortable with PCs.) At first I just did general surfing, but I quickly stumbled on TV show sites, including fanfic sites. I had watched the odd MASH ep at other people's homes and on my own TV, although at that time I really didn't consider myself a diehard fan. And I have always been fascinated by time travel - eps that deal with it are some of my favourites in Trek and other shows - so when I saw the Quantum Leap novels in the library, I got hooked on that show, too. (Never saw an actual ep, tho, until our Canadian station Space: the Imagination Station started airing it a few years back.) So the first online fanfic that I can remember reading was a MASH/Quantum Leap cross called (of course) Q*U*A*N*T*U*M L*E*A*P - I was a little lost about some of the QL mythology, but I enjoyed it. The second and third online fanfics that I can remember reading were a TNG/QL cross pair called (of course) L*E*A*P T*R*E*K I and II.

About this time I found the old Loiscla (was that it?) listserv on Indiana.edu, which later became the Yahoogroups LnC Fanfic list. I was *so* excited to find out that I wasn't the only LnC fan out there - I had thought that I was the only one on Earth, for some reason - that I followed the link from the very next popup ad for free email service I saw (usa.com) and got my very first email address, and signed up for it. I honestly don't remember which was the first LnC fic I read there - I suspect it may have been something from Zoomway - but I do remember Irene's Firestorm and sequels were posted about that time, as well as some of Yvonne Connell's stories, and I was really impressed. (I also got into the XFiles this same year, and spent hours reading their stories - one of my favourite writers from that fandom, Sheryl Martin-Nantus, is also a prolific writer in my most newly discovered fandom, Stargate SG1, I was happy to find out recently... Her XF fics the Downtime Series and the Dragon Chronicles were some of the first I ever read in that genre.)

In 1998 I moved to Vancouver, and had to haunt the library, the employment agencies, and a multitude of internet cafes in order to keep up with my fandoms - at that time, just LnC and XF and Trek, although I soon added others. A new author had just started posting to the fic list and the boards, and had been nominated for the first Kerth awards I ever attended, and I was really impressed with her work. When I went to Anne Ciotola's IRC tutorial, there she was, and I was totally overwhelmed - my favourite new author, there in the same channel as me, and I could chat with her in person! Well, Wendy Richards won that New Author award, and I was just tickled for her (you remmeber that, don't you, Wendy? ) - and when later on we found ourselves on IRC again, I started asking her all sorts of questions about writing. It was she who suggested the topic for my first LnC fic, Moments of Illumination, btw. I wrote a couple others, and joined the round robin team for a while, and I still have one fic in the works that I've been stuck on for several years - and I have a series that I'm trying to plan, but now I'm in Korea without my tapes, so that has to stay on hold for a while. But I still have to thank Wendy for getting me writing again...

So, well, I guess that answers your question a LOT more than you ever thought you wanted to know about me, right? But you asked, so I babbled

I'll shut up now...

Melisma (retreating back under her Rock to gargle with salt-water after all of that!)

Wow, Melisma, someone who watches/reads as much different sci-fi as I do, *and* admitting it to the world at large! I'm impressed! I think the only thing I don't watch that you mentioned is M*A*S*H! And there's also a load of other stuff that I manage to keep up with as well! When I tried to type my 'interests' in that little box you get when you register, the form nearly had a fit! I gave up and eventually put 'almost anything sci-fi/fantasy!

Loriel

LOL, Loriel, so did my little box. The first time. This last time I generalized so much it hurt. Makes me wonder if we couldn't get Anne to make that little box a lot bigger, so I can list all my shows.

OH! I'm so excited, I've been checking the TV show listings at home, even though I won't be able to watch anything until the beginning of November - it's nice to see what the stations are showing... Anyway, I discovered today that one of them is airing 7 Days again! If you know anything about that show, it's about a guy who goes back seven days in time (the time travel thing is what hooked me, of course ) and prevents disasters or other stuff from happening. It ran for only three years, and I discovered it during season 3 - and the fall after, when I was looking forward to reruns on Space, 9/11 happened, and it got taken off air along with a whole host of other shows that even slightly made reference to terrorism. I hope this one station is still running it when I get back - I know they keep running TNG eps over and over, so maybe, and they have 7 Days on at like 3am, so maybe...

Melisma (crossing her fingers, here under her Rock)

Love 7 Days! You're lucky tho! Here in the UK, I think the BBC has killed it! which is quite surprising, cause BBC is actually quite nice about the sci-fi stuff. They started showing 7 Days, got us hooked, then quit, half way through season 1?! I'm desperately waiting for them to put it back on, but I think I may hope in vain.

And I have to agree with you about the Time Travel stuff. It appeal to me too. Did you ever read the TNG novels Federation and Imzadi. Ok, so Imzadi isn't so much time travel as a love story, but its so worthy of mention anyway. But Federation is fantastic, all time travel and stuff, one of the best ST novels (I actually wrote 'fic' before I realised what I was doing) that I've ever read. I actually go and read the end of it every so often, even if I don't have time to read the whole book!

Edit: Ok, just noticed your sig... There was a stupid question up there. Somewhere.

(If the mods are about to hit us over the head, we can take this to email. )

Loriel (who tried and failed to make this even remotely on topic. Oh! I have a thought! If I mention Tempus and HG Wells does that make it almost on topic? )

Teehee - we can make it on topic... Speaking of HG Wells, did you see the fic I just posted over in fanfic? It's from like 1999, but I know that a lot of newbies prolly haven't had a chance to go through the archives and the older boards yet, so I posted it here. If I don't get stomped on by our illustrious moderators, and if the rest of you want it, I'd be happy to repost the rest of my solo finished LnC fic on this board, too. The HG Wells connection isn't really in the fic I just posted, tho - it's in one other one and in another fic that I've left incomplete for years but that I just printed off Zoom's boards so that I can take another stab at and hopefully finish!




As to the other - yeah, let's email!

Melisma (grinning like a gremlin here under her Rock )

I hadn't seen it, so I've just wandered on over to read it! Loved it! Everyone else - go and read it!

And Melisma, you have to post the rest of your fic! (Says the girl who is panicing at the complete lack of any studying she's done! Spending all my time reading the mb!)

Loriel

Edit: And Melisma that was a lovely recovery to an On Topic discussion! Very nicely done!

Well, I'm glad you are so enthusiastic about me doing that - if other people weigh in as positively, I'll just do it. What do the rest of you say??

Melisma (holding her breath, here under her Rock)