The Fandom Binder
For those of you among the 'fandom olds,’ you may recall a time where we actually printed copies of art and fic we enjoyed - many of us being unable to create websites or save too many files to our computers at the time...long before the likes of Google Drive and AO3. This was back when fandom was nurtured by individually maintained series, ship, and/or character shrines connected by webrings like Anime Turnpike.
Some of us printed these fandom treasures and organized them in binders, now presumed lost to time and the trash heap years ago.
Well...rummaging around in my parents’ storage space, guess what I found. My fandom binder!
Apparently I had a thing for collages - I actually covered my half of my freshman dorm room in a much larger version of the above.
So come with me as we wade through my teenage fandom days...
The inside cover is a treat, with a quote meant to be terrifying and empowering (?) alongside a snarky comic about Gackt’s dick.
The first folder included only a TIME article on phobias, a few damning pages of notes from my high school calculus class on which I scribbled all my pent-up teenage angst and anger, and a printed out email flame (no joke) to someone who apparently my friends and I were having it out with.
We’ll skip those and jump into the actual fandom content.
First out of the gate is Digimon Adventure, which had grabbed me in 1999-2000 via the Fox Kids channel programming. We have here some print-outs of MST3K-ified (or “MSTied”) Digimon fic, most of which involved the Digi Destined serving in the roles of Mike/Joel and the bots. Such fics were initially permitted on Fanfiction.Net before they were purged alongside other content guideline updates between 2000-2005, since they were both (a) reposting someone else’s work and (b) script format.
This is followed by fanart printouts (Yamato was my clear favorite, second only to the amount of Taito I printed). And a saved note to a friend printed in computer class that extolled the fact that Odaiba is REAL.
I have no words. I can only assume that my little brain was just so used to stories in made up locations that the thought that the series would involve a real city just was too much for my little fangirl brain to handle.
Moving right along...
This note is followed by printouts of various fanart, predominantly of Yamato and the Taito ship. This is in turn followed by extensive planning, character costume designs, and inspiration art printed off of Elfwood (c.2001-2002) for the fantasy AU / isekai fic, The Realms (which, yes you can still apparently find the first two chapters of via FF.net).
After that, we also have a printed, separately bound copy of my first ‘official’ (i.e., posted) multi-chapter fanfiction, An Unexpected Death, which took about 1.5 years to write and upload...and is also still on FF.net
Moving past Digimon, we land in Gundam Wing territory. Like the previous section, we kick off with printouts of fics, art, and other fun things.
I apparently kept some notes passed between my friend and I. As was typical of the day, fans all interacted with the characters as if inhabiting the same universe. Emojis made regular appearances in our script-format notes (I also apparently shared half-formed plotbunnies via scripts).
We also had grand plans of co-authoring a “the GBoys are undercover at our high school” story, which was also common at the time among fellow fans. Here is the rough idea of the school schedule:
I also found some casting for a Matrix AU...
...and the makings of a roadtrip series of quintessential “American” locations:
We wrap it all up with some truly phenomenal crackfic by Celes Maxwell:
Closing out the remainder of the binder is some JRock fanservice, an autograph from Gillian Anderson (c.1998), and a random table of contents that only had empty pages or nothing behind them. Presumably all these sections had more content, but I can say without a doubt they are GONE at this point.
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.
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So yeah, that’s my fandom binder, put to good use between 1998-2004. Show me yours!
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