Lost and fandom nostalgia

[textualdeviance]

Normally, I'd be writing about the Lost finale over on fanbitch, but a) That journal is pretty heavily about a different fandom (and the trashy fic I'm writing in it) right now, and b) This is more about personal stuff than the show, so...

I already made a post over here about the religious stuff (though I may do more navel-gazing that direction later); this is more about my experiences as a fan.

First, one funny little aside: I went poking around YouTube for some old-skool Lost goodies (and posted one of my own), and ran across several DomLijah vids. Which, naturally, I had to watch. And then I read the comments. Oh, lordy.

Not only am I astonished that that fandom has been going on for 5+ years in my utter absence, I'm also astonished that the screeching teenie HDU SAY THEIR GAY STFU FREEK crap is still going on, too.

All of this has happened before. All of it will happen again...

Oh, wait. Wrong series finale.

Anyway.



The Movie that Ate The Oscars did its thing, the meetup/TORN party was glorious, and I was coming off a 2 1/2 year crazyfan high. The DVD was still due, but I was ripe for something else to distract me.

Then Dom got a new job. Or so we hoped. I was still running BEI at the time, though I'd branched out into the Beyonds by then, and I sparked up a fan campaign to contact ABC to make sure they picked up the pilot. Which they did. Yay! And I started up a new site: Lost Multimedia.

Then they took the first half of the pilot and a few castmembers to Comic-Con that summer. And that's when all hell really did break loose. They had to move the panel to a larger hall, and they had 4,000 people show up to it. Nearly all of whom, going by the screaming, were there primarily for Dom. The cast then signed autographs for three hours, and probably could've gone many hours after that.

Lost MM started getting a ton of hits after I posted some of the material from that, and even more when I went to an ABC Fall Season event a couple of months later at Disneyland. Which, btw, was mobbed, too.

Or, in other words? The massive fandom for this show existed before the pilot had even aired, largely because it hired a former hobbit.

Once the show aired, of course, it caught on because of its inherent coolness factor, and eventually Dom fandom faded enough that they felt comfortable marginalizing, and eventually killing off (very nicely) Charlie. But at least for the first season, Dom fandom drove that show. Which means so did I. Ack.

My BNF status in LOTR fandom was something that kind of fucked with my head. I never really understood, at a gut level, exactly how huge BEI was, and therefore exactly how notorious I would get for doing things that, to me at the time, were just random pervy speculation and screwing around. (And, I'll admit, poking homophobic fangirls for the delight of hearing them scream.) When that carried over into Lost fandom, though is when I started feeling weird about it, and thought it might finally be time to back off. So I did.

And then I went back to school and became a Legitimate Media Person and here I am now, only slightly worse for the wear, and having a delightful time in my new fandom in part because of learning my lessons before.

Still, the finale last night brought up a lot of memories, and did sort of act as a bookend for that time of my life. Though I was really done with it five years ago, because the show continued in my absence, in a way, my lasting influence as a fan did, too. And now that it's finally over, I kind of feel like my involvement is finally over, too. I feel like I can finally put that chapter of my life to rest.

And so I shall.

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[noipeh.livejournal.com]

It's hard to believe it's been five yeas, in some ways, that was the most fun I've ever had!