Interesting question!
I went for 7-8 years. 8 years ago, I ran into my very first Lois and Clark episode: Contact. I wasn't impressed. Still, since there were two episodes in a row on M6 (the French network, not the English motorway [g]), I watched When Irish Eyes Are Killing... with which I wasn't impressed either.
So I gave up on the show, until I accidentally ran into Through a Glass Darkly and Big Girls Don't Fly; by the end of BGDF I was pretty hooked, and since I didn't know anything about the show back then, I thought it was really over and that Clark would never come back from New Krypton. I remember looking for Lois and Clark books (possible continuations or published fanfic, although I had no clue that fanfic existed at the time) in the summer. Didn't find any, and so my interest decreased until I forgot up to the existence of the show. Bad Kae, bad! [g]
One year later, one of my classmates informed me that Lois and Clark was back on TV and asked if I was going to watch it. I shrugged and said why not, and I did watch it. M6 started off with reruns, like they did every year, and so I was able to see almost all the episodes. I started taping when I went away on holiday, halfway through Season 1. I was just taping to watch the episodes when I got back; I didn't intend to keep the tape. Just like I didn't intend to stay up all night when we got back from our ski holiday, watching my Lois and Clark episodes. Honest, Mum, I didn't mean to! [bg](I was 17 and still in high school [g]). Anyway, I kept my holiday-episodes, but didn't tape any other ep. Or yes, I did tape them, but I taped over them on the next night.
Then came Barbarians at the Planet, and I was absolutely, hopelessly, desperately hooked. It's the scene in the park that did it for me. After that, there was no turning back. I started to keep my favourite episodes on tapes (BaTP/THoL, The Phoenix, Tempus Fugitive, Lucky Leon, Whine Whine Whine...) then I decided to invest my pocket money in blank tapes and I taped everything and kept everything.
I also started to collect any article I could find about the show. I made folders with tons of pictures I found in magazines. I spent every Monday evening in the magazine section of my local supermarket trawling through pages and pages and looking for anything related to Lois and Clark. I wrote summaries for each episodes and gave them ratings (yes, I was already weird that way
).
But I didn't have a clue that there were lots more to come. A year and a half later, my parents bought our very first computer. With an internet connection. Yow-sa!!!!! I found the TUFS website first, and I think my jaw hit the floor when I discovered that there were people writing stories about my favourite show. For some reason, although I had dabbled in some writing for another show I watched at the time, it had never occurred to me that I could write Lois and Clark stuff (let alone in English).
Since I was very new to the Internet (actually, very new to computers in general), I didn't have a clue about those things, so I printed out all the TUFS stories for fear they would get offline overnight.
So the very first story I read was the first TUFS story.
A few days later (back then I was on dial-up and paying per minute at an extortionate rate, so I went online for about 10 minutes every day; barely believable now!) I found Genevieve's one-stop Kerth-reading site, with the 1998 Kerth winners and nominees. I read Demi's Heaven's Prisoners, Chris's Meet Me in Kansas City, Love Beyond All Measure and Dimensions of Loving.
I remember that Genevieve's website advertised 752 stories on the archive (yes, I remember the exact number [g]), and my first thought was to wonder how many ink-cartridges it would take for me to print them all.
Rest assured that I didn't print them all.
But I saved every single one of them onto loads and loads and loads of floppy disks, sorting them out between S1, 2, 3 and 4. No, I don't do that any more. Yes, the floppy disks are still somewhere at my parents' place. Yes, I'm a weirdo.
I started to check the archive every Sunday for updates. Wendy's The House of... Lane was one of the first fanfics I read on the archive, and my first thought was, whoa, I've got to find more by this author! Hey, it was BaTP! There was also Disquiet Nights (Like Dreamers Do), by an author who left the fandom since but left us her stories under the name Shawn V.; another "whoa, I've got to find more by this author!" (uh, yes, that was BaTP, too...) More stories. More names of authors whose stories I started to devour. More and more time devoted to Lois and Clark fanfic.
And then after a month, I decided to try my hand at writing, too. There was no way my stories would ever make it out of my hard drive. NO WAY! Uh... we all know how that one ended. [g]
I'm rambling off topic now, but you're used to me doing that, aren't you?
Anyway, I finally jumped in and joined IRC on the night of the Kerth Awards 1999. I had voted for my favourite stories in each category and I wanted to see what that ceremony looked like. I was very intimidated to see all my favourite authors there. Most of all I was stupefied that they all seemed to know each other. I mean, someone called "ELK" got in and everyone said "Hey Erin!" Thud! How did they know that ELK was Erin?!? If you'd told me then that I'd meet some of my very best friends through this IRC thing, I would never ever have believed it. Mind you, if you'd told me that after 8 years, I'd still be a fan of Lois and Clark, writing fanfic and spending the better part of my time with friends met through FoLCdom, I wouldn't have believed it either...
Kaethel