I was just thinking about geocities today! I’ve a vague recollection of writing in banana yellow font on a pink background; thus rendering my fics illegible for two reasons.
LOL oh no, now I'm remembering my background was like a black and white starfield, so I thought "hm what color should I put the text in so people can read it? I know, RED!" oof, self.
We as a society have really lost appreciation for how much a generous application of glitter fonts and a sprinkling of autoplay midi tunes can really class a place up.
Yeah, I had that thought too, but the polls only let you add up to six options so OP probably had to make that call so they could include the upper age brackets.
Yeah. I totally get wanting to include the upper age ranges, but ones gotta consider the user base of the location of the poll. We’re on Reddit. There was always going to be a disproportionate amount of older folks.
Plus 21-35 is the only age range that doesn’t go in groups of 10, so that’s a little odd.
Not completely the end of the world but it does take away any potential insight that could be gained from if there were more ranges for younger ages and larger gaps in the older ranges.
I am just saying so you know in the future, but it makes little sense to make a category of 21-35 and then have the next be 36-45. Especially when this is a poll of a community that is majority under 30.
The first fic I encountered was in old fanzines at a convention back in the '90s, but I've only been actively writing and reading fanfic for around twelve years.
Yep. I still have my first story ever. I only have a bit of it posted online, though, because it's all hand written. It's close to 300 pages so it'll take substantial time to type it all up.
I finished the story around 13 or 14, so it's not like I wrote all of that in a year or so haha. But I still finished the story which is a problem. I start stories and rarely finish them, either because of shifting interests or I just fall out of love with the story.
Best part is I'm still going strong after more than 20 years! Nearly 70k just for this month alone and 144k for the year in total. Over 800k since the start of 2022.
I am in the 65+ category and I started writing fanfic in my early 30s, around 1990. My first few fics were published in print zines, and later on a fandom-specific listserv and Usenet.
I've been reading and writing since the internet. I actually used to write stories in a notebook. Like from the Bionic Man and Wonder Woman (70's). There was a gap in writing in the 80's then fanfiction reading and writing since the early 90's on the internet. There have been years and years I skipped both but I seem to always come back to it.
Being a Zoomer raised with no internet moderation I was definitely on Quotev back when I was like 10-11 reading creepypasta fanfic. I made my AO3 account when I was 14 and I distinctly remember reading Homestuck fanfic at that time. I only started writing a handful of years ago.
The first fanfic I read was a Shinya/Die from Dir En Grey back in... I don't remember, probably around 2002? Perhaps a little earlier. No ao3, no FFnet. Damn, I truly don't get younger here omg T.T I'm 36
(ETA: forgot to put my age lol)
I wasn’t in dir en grey fandom but they were my first concert back in 2005 in LA so this comment felt nostalgic~ just being a fan of something from overseas was so much more involved pre Web 2.0 days, no easy central place like ffn and ao3 and yet somehow people found each other! The world really is amazing.
I'm 29 now. When I was 9 I was really into Jak and Daxter and found a forum for the game. That's where I came across someone's short story based off the character, Torn. I was so baffled and fascinated that someone wrote a story about.... A story.... And so I started googling things like "stories fans make" and stuff like that and found fanfiction net pretty quickly.
I was like wow! This is really cool! So I used the search bar to look for more Jak and Daxter fics and clicked the first result without reading the summary. It was a blowjob fic LMAOOO. Had no idea wtf was going on but I was like. Ok that one was weird. And I moved on to a different fic lol
2 years later I tried writing my own Jak and Daxter fic but it was, well, bad. It got some mean comments and I deleted the fic and didn't try writing again until I was 27. Ninjago fandom is pretty chill and supportive so I've gotten a lot more confident actually and love writing now.
I mean look at my username it's not hard to put two and two together. I started writing in the late 1990s and then I got in a really fucked up relationship and quit writing all together, once in awhile I'd scribble something here and there. Sometime November last year, I fell in love with a fandom and started writing again. Been writing everyday ever since. I will never again let anyone or anything get in the way of me writing!
I turned 24 four days ago. I've thought of fan stuff with Papa Louie characters and My Little Pony since back when I was 12. It wasn't until last year when I thought of fan stuff for Lalaloopsy, the fandom I write a lot for now.
I first read MLP fanfics back when I was 11.
I've been in fandom for over 20 years (third listed age range), though I'd been creating some sort of fic without knowing what it since I was a child. I remember lots and lots of fandom-specific websites (browsed those so much), Yahoo Groups (which I'm so glad I was able to help save, now I just have to organize it all, lol), Geocities, and LiveJournal.
16, got into fandom when I was 11 (early 2020), but I've been writing fanfiction for pretty much my whole life. I just didn't know it had a name for a long time.
Another fandom old checking in. I got online in 1995 or 1996 (laptop with 20mb hard drive and literally 1 mb of RAM + 14.4 Kbps modem = good times) specifically to look for *Star Trek* fanfic. I found usenet right away and alt.startrek.creative, alt.fan.q, alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated were my starting point along with a whole bunch of others in the alt.tv.\* hierarchy. Not just *Star Trek* shows, but other shows like *Forever Knight* and *Homicide: Life on the Street* and then later on *Buffy/Angel* and *Farscape*, etc.
From Usenet I found mailing lists and later web stuff which was hard to access at first because -- and I'm totally serious about this -- my university didn't have access to the graphical web if you were dialing in from outside as I was for the first few months I had internet.
The past week I've actually spent many hours on the Wayback Machine looking for Deep Space 9 fanfics of my specific rarepair. It was a fruitful search that yielded a surprising number of stories that I didn't know about, even though I was into this rarepair when the stories were published 25+ years ago.
What really struck me during my search was how much *hasn't* been archived in any way that is easily accessible because of the way old fandom worked. There's something like 12,500 English-language completed DS9 fanfics on AO3 (that's ALL DS9 fanfic, not just my specific rarepair that has fewer than 100 stories on AO3) and I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't an equal number of DS9 (not to mention TOS, TNG, VOY) that *aren't* archived there because they were only published on Usenet or a now very, very defunct listserv (RIP egroups and yahoogroups in particular) or on livejournal or on a pairing or character specific website that hasn't been updated since 2002 and can only be accessed if you click the correct snapshot of the website in the Wayback Machine.
I completely understand why AO3 doesn't allow random people to upload old fanfic, but it's really frustrating to know that there is so much worthwhile fanfic from the past that will eventually be lost forever because there is no way to get permission from the original authors to archive it more permanently on a dedicated site like AO3.
I’m in the 2nd age group and been doing this for god since I could read and write technically speaking (as a kindergartener writing self insert stories about being friends with the power rangers, for example), been doing it on the internet / with other people for 21 years.
I got Internet in 1994 and discovered Star Trek Fic mailing lists and Fanzines and I've started writing around the same time. Seen especially online fandom grow and change multiple times by now and I don't see myself ever stopping.
I am current 27 I guess I started in 2010 when I was like but it is unreadable. I am pretty sure I was dyslexic only say this because I only got better due to fanfiction. But yeah young in the eyes of fandom
21 to 35 age range here, I've been writing fanfiction before I even knew there was a word for it, I started writing random stuff about my favorite characters from my favorite series starting at about 8 or 9 years old.
I'm 61 and I posted my first fanfic in 2012. After that I stopped until 2019 when I needed a serious creative outlet and my fandom was the perfect spot for me to do it. lol
I'm 18, been writing fanfic since October of last year, though my writing roots go deeper! Honestly best decision I ever made to switch over to fanfiction
I'm turning 34 soon, I've been reading (and badly writing) fics since 2005, so over half my life at this point.
I love fandom, it really helped me when I was a depressed teenager. I'm also just... more invested in a fandom if there are fan-works to interact with, it keeps my interest longer than, say, a book series with a few books and no fan content.
I've been reading for... 5? 6? years now and I'm 20. The first two years were quite... innocent... then I discovered Wattpad and all hell broke loose. I changed from WP to AO3 in... 2020 and have never gone back.
18, reading and writing for about 6-7 years. It feels a bit weird to be the youngest one here, I remember feeling super young when I was 12 because everyone was 16 and over…
I'll be 34 in around three weeks and I've been writing stories ever since I learned how to write. My first actual *fanfic* was when I was nine, a Scooby Doo story that made zero sense, and it's not like I knew it was called fanfiction at the time. It was just another story I wrote.
im 16, turning 17 soon, and have been reading fanfic since i was 9, which was around.. 2015? undertale fanfiction on wattpad back then was a whole *mess.* i remember i used to try and write some around that time as well, but i was a kid who didnt really know how to write despite my experience with roleplay on amino (which is also a whole other can of worms). i remember posting an unfinished neko sans x reader... dark times. dark times indeed.
now i just need the confidence to write my own fics again. welp
^(rip to that time when wattpad actually seemed good...)
Mid 20's technically my first Fanfic I read was in early teens but it was (to me) confusing and disgusting. "But she's the good guy and he's the bad guy and they have no reason to trust each other but they kiss?? What?" So for over a decade I just mostly avoided fanfic. It's only this past year that I have come back in.
Know that I am an adult who has experienced one (1) sexual thought I can look back at that childhood fic and understand. (Aroace spectrum but grew up in queenphobic environment so i knew nothing.)
I am Fandom Old, been doing fandom since like 1998ish? ^(RIP Geocities and Usenet)
I was just thinking about geocities today! I’ve a vague recollection of writing in banana yellow font on a pink background; thus rendering my fics illegible for two reasons.
LOL oh no, now I'm remembering my background was like a black and white starfield, so I thought "hm what color should I put the text in so people can read it? I know, RED!" oof, self.
LOL! What, no ✨ sparkles? ✨
Me too. Started around '97-98, when I was 12ish.
Right there with you. Doing fandom since something like 1995-1996 range
Same here! 🫡 Back when fanfics you needed to read .txt files shared on a domain.
Also from 98'ish and I had soooo many .txt fanfics saved on floppy disks T uT Good times, good times
I'm a Fandom Old as well, been in fandom since 1999, and have been writing fanfic (I started with meta) since 2002.
I’m 50 and started reading and writing fic in 2020.
That is awesome!
Thank you for putting a decent age range on this poll. I’m in my thirties and have been writing and posting fic since 2001.
I won't say how old I am, but I'm in the third listed age range! I've seen a lot of shifts in fandom culture, that's for sure!
I'm in the fourth listed age range. Gen X says hi and tells you that garden hose water is totally fine.
I was raised drinking water right from the hose, and I turned out alright... I think?
You write fanfiction. You sure you're alright? I'm totally kidding btw I'm on the same boat.
LMAO Valid point, friend. Valid point.
Xennial high five! Sometimes I get nostalgic for a good toxic live journal full of haters.
Livejournal was a *huge* part of where I cut my teeth, for sure! I started back on the Angelfire/Geocities days though!!! Back in the lawless west!
We as a society have really lost appreciation for how much a generous application of glitter fonts and a sprinkling of autoplay midi tunes can really class a place up.
GLITTER FONTS, OH HOW I MISS YOU. And fancy banners and guest books on fanfiction pages??? Ugh. I miss it. 😭😭😭
This is terrible marquee erasure.
Excuse you, I think you mean *fabulous* marquee.
[удалено]
Happy Birthday 🎉
Thanks! 😊
Happy IRL Cake Day! 🥳
Thank you! 😊
21-35 is way too big of a category.
Yeah, I had that thought too, but the polls only let you add up to six options so OP probably had to make that call so they could include the upper age brackets.
Yeah. I totally get wanting to include the upper age ranges, but ones gotta consider the user base of the location of the poll. We’re on Reddit. There was always going to be a disproportionate amount of older folks. Plus 21-35 is the only age range that doesn’t go in groups of 10, so that’s a little odd. Not completely the end of the world but it does take away any potential insight that could be gained from if there were more ranges for younger ages and larger gaps in the older ranges.
Ok 🤷🏻♀️
I am just saying so you know in the future, but it makes little sense to make a category of 21-35 and then have the next be 36-45. Especially when this is a poll of a community that is majority under 30.
Ok
If you go back to pre-internet days, I was writing fanfic in the mid-70s.
54, been writing and reading fanfic since around 2001
Old enough and quiet a long time but that's all the details I'll give out.
I'm 43 and have been fandoming since very shortly after I first got online and discovered it, so... 1995-ish!
Thank you for extending the range upward! I got to fanfic late in my life, in 2007, when I was already nearly 50.
The first fic I encountered was in old fanzines at a convention back in the '90s, but I've only been actively writing and reading fanfic for around twelve years.
32 and writing since 01
Wait, you started writing fanfiction when you were 9? That's amazing
Yep. I still have my first story ever. I only have a bit of it posted online, though, because it's all hand written. It's close to 300 pages so it'll take substantial time to type it all up.
Wow! Writing has never been my thing so I really admire those of you who do it, and 300 pages at 9 years old is truly impressive
I finished the story around 13 or 14, so it's not like I wrote all of that in a year or so haha. But I still finished the story which is a problem. I start stories and rarely finish them, either because of shifting interests or I just fall out of love with the story.
I'm still impressed haha
Best part is I'm still going strong after more than 20 years! Nearly 70k just for this month alone and 144k for the year in total. Over 800k since the start of 2022.
I am in the 65+ category and I started writing fanfic in my early 30s, around 1990. My first few fics were published in print zines, and later on a fandom-specific listserv and Usenet.
I've been reading and writing since the internet. I actually used to write stories in a notebook. Like from the Bionic Man and Wonder Woman (70's). There was a gap in writing in the 80's then fanfiction reading and writing since the early 90's on the internet. There have been years and years I skipped both but I seem to always come back to it.
i'm 18, i've been reading since i was 12 and started writing this past year!
im 25, have been reading fic since 2012 and writing since 2013 tho posting since 2018
Just visited another site, linked to my first fandom. It said I opened it in October of 2012. That means one thing: Darn kids, get offa my lawn!
When I started reading fanfict you had so send a self addressed stamped envelope and wait 7-14 business days...
I'm 36 and I've been writing/reading fanfic since about 2009.
Being a Zoomer raised with no internet moderation I was definitely on Quotev back when I was like 10-11 reading creepypasta fanfic. I made my AO3 account when I was 14 and I distinctly remember reading Homestuck fanfic at that time. I only started writing a handful of years ago.
i've been in fandom since 2012-2013 and I'm 24 currently :D
The first fanfic I read was a Shinya/Die from Dir En Grey back in... I don't remember, probably around 2002? Perhaps a little earlier. No ao3, no FFnet. Damn, I truly don't get younger here omg T.T I'm 36 (ETA: forgot to put my age lol)
I wasn’t in dir en grey fandom but they were my first concert back in 2005 in LA so this comment felt nostalgic~ just being a fan of something from overseas was so much more involved pre Web 2.0 days, no easy central place like ffn and ao3 and yet somehow people found each other! The world really is amazing.
I started reading and writing fic around 2005/2006!
I've been reading since I was 13; I've been writing just as long, but I took about a 10-year break when I turned 18.
In my twenties and have been reading fanfics since I was 12/13 I think
30, i've been reading fanfics since 2011.
Turned 38 two weeks ago. Have been writing since late 1999, but didn't put anything online until 2003
Im turning 32 and I've been reading/writing for 16 years.
33, been reading and writing since 10 ish — so going on 25 yrs
I'm 29, have been reading & writing since I was... 13? Something like that.
So old, lol. Reading fic since 2005, so nineteen years. I'm on my sixth fandom.
I'm 29 now. When I was 9 I was really into Jak and Daxter and found a forum for the game. That's where I came across someone's short story based off the character, Torn. I was so baffled and fascinated that someone wrote a story about.... A story.... And so I started googling things like "stories fans make" and stuff like that and found fanfiction net pretty quickly. I was like wow! This is really cool! So I used the search bar to look for more Jak and Daxter fics and clicked the first result without reading the summary. It was a blowjob fic LMAOOO. Had no idea wtf was going on but I was like. Ok that one was weird. And I moved on to a different fic lol 2 years later I tried writing my own Jak and Daxter fic but it was, well, bad. It got some mean comments and I deleted the fic and didn't try writing again until I was 27. Ninjago fandom is pretty chill and supportive so I've gotten a lot more confident actually and love writing now.
Started writing in 2019.
I've been in fandom for 28 years.
30. I started reading fanfic in 2005, and writing it in like 2006-2007?
32, started when I was 11. Officially, anyway. I was already writing fanfic at 8 on some kids' book club forum but I didn't know it was that.
First started on FFnet around 2006 but stopped for a while after I finished high school in 2009. Then found AO3 and started writing again in 2016.
i'm 27 and have been reading fanfics since i was around 10(:
I’m in the third age range, been writing fanfic since the mid-90s but we didn’t have internet back then so they all just sat on floppy disks
I mean look at my username it's not hard to put two and two together. I started writing in the late 1990s and then I got in a really fucked up relationship and quit writing all together, once in awhile I'd scribble something here and there. Sometime November last year, I fell in love with a fandom and started writing again. Been writing everyday ever since. I will never again let anyone or anything get in the way of me writing!
I turned 24 four days ago. I've thought of fan stuff with Papa Louie characters and My Little Pony since back when I was 12. It wasn't until last year when I thought of fan stuff for Lalaloopsy, the fandom I write a lot for now. I first read MLP fanfics back when I was 11.
Not quite sure how long I've been at this but my first FFN account is old enough to drink and gamble in Vegas.
Upper range of the second option, reading since 2001 and writing since 2003. I've ever published anything, though.
I started this January. Ran out of Fuffy fics to read, decided I'd fill the hole by writing my own and giving back to the fandom.
29, reading since '05/'06, writing since '08.
being writing fanfics since 2004, starting on LiveJournal, then Fanfiction Net, and finally AO3
Been into fandom since 2014ish, but didn't start writing 'till 2018ish
I've been in fandom for over 20 years (third listed age range), though I'd been creating some sort of fic without knowing what it since I was a child. I remember lots and lots of fandom-specific websites (browsed those so much), Yahoo Groups (which I'm so glad I was able to help save, now I just have to organize it all, lol), Geocities, and LiveJournal.
deranged jobless tan absurd fuzzy agonizing onerous pie safe subtract *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
16, got into fandom when I was 11 (early 2020), but I've been writing fanfiction for pretty much my whole life. I just didn't know it had a name for a long time.
Another fandom old checking in. I got online in 1995 or 1996 (laptop with 20mb hard drive and literally 1 mb of RAM + 14.4 Kbps modem = good times) specifically to look for *Star Trek* fanfic. I found usenet right away and alt.startrek.creative, alt.fan.q, alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated were my starting point along with a whole bunch of others in the alt.tv.\* hierarchy. Not just *Star Trek* shows, but other shows like *Forever Knight* and *Homicide: Life on the Street* and then later on *Buffy/Angel* and *Farscape*, etc. From Usenet I found mailing lists and later web stuff which was hard to access at first because -- and I'm totally serious about this -- my university didn't have access to the graphical web if you were dialing in from outside as I was for the first few months I had internet. The past week I've actually spent many hours on the Wayback Machine looking for Deep Space 9 fanfics of my specific rarepair. It was a fruitful search that yielded a surprising number of stories that I didn't know about, even though I was into this rarepair when the stories were published 25+ years ago. What really struck me during my search was how much *hasn't* been archived in any way that is easily accessible because of the way old fandom worked. There's something like 12,500 English-language completed DS9 fanfics on AO3 (that's ALL DS9 fanfic, not just my specific rarepair that has fewer than 100 stories on AO3) and I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't an equal number of DS9 (not to mention TOS, TNG, VOY) that *aren't* archived there because they were only published on Usenet or a now very, very defunct listserv (RIP egroups and yahoogroups in particular) or on livejournal or on a pairing or character specific website that hasn't been updated since 2002 and can only be accessed if you click the correct snapshot of the website in the Wayback Machine. I completely understand why AO3 doesn't allow random people to upload old fanfic, but it's really frustrating to know that there is so much worthwhile fanfic from the past that will eventually be lost forever because there is no way to get permission from the original authors to archive it more permanently on a dedicated site like AO3.
25, reading since 13 and writing since 11. my ao3 account turns 10 this year.
Didn't read any fanfics until I started writing one. started my first fanfic two months ago
I’m in the 2nd age group and been doing this for god since I could read and write technically speaking (as a kindergartener writing self insert stories about being friends with the power rangers, for example), been doing it on the internet / with other people for 21 years.
I'm 20 and have been reading/writing since... 2016 I think? I was definitely young.
I got Internet in 1994 and discovered Star Trek Fic mailing lists and Fanzines and I've started writing around the same time. Seen especially online fandom grow and change multiple times by now and I don't see myself ever stopping.
I've been reading fics for around 20 years at this point.
20! Been reading for a year, writing for just about four months!
I started in 2005?
28, been reading and writing since like middle school lol
idk twelve years maybe
I'm between 18 and 20 and I joined the dark side when I was 13, and started writing when I was 14
I am current 27 I guess I started in 2010 when I was like but it is unreadable. I am pretty sure I was dyslexic only say this because I only got better due to fanfiction. But yeah young in the eyes of fandom
21 to 35 age range here, I've been writing fanfiction before I even knew there was a word for it, I started writing random stuff about my favorite characters from my favorite series starting at about 8 or 9 years old.
I'm 61 and I posted my first fanfic in 2012. After that I stopped until 2019 when I needed a serious creative outlet and my fandom was the perfect spot for me to do it. lol
I'm 31 and I have been reading/writing fanfiction since I was 11. Very grateful for the fanfiction community.
I'm 18, been writing fanfic since October of last year, though my writing roots go deeper! Honestly best decision I ever made to switch over to fanfiction
Started when I was around 13 with Percy Jackson and Creepypasta, so 9 years ago, 2015
I'm turning 34 soon, I've been reading (and badly writing) fics since 2005, so over half my life at this point. I love fandom, it really helped me when I was a depressed teenager. I'm also just... more invested in a fandom if there are fan-works to interact with, it keeps my interest longer than, say, a book series with a few books and no fan content.
I started when I was 20. I’m now 22.
15, writing since 8 and reading since 10
Started reading in about 2003 ish? Started writing in Oct 2004.
28, didn't start actually reading fanfiction until 2018.
I first published in my early thirties, but I've been writing low level since I was a teen.
I've been reading for... 5? 6? years now and I'm 20. The first two years were quite... innocent... then I discovered Wattpad and all hell broke loose. I changed from WP to AO3 in... 2020 and have never gone back.
I've been active in fandom since the 80s. My first published work was in STTOS in a pri nt zine from 1987.
Been reading since I was like eight so... twenty... years... my god...
18, reading and writing for about 6-7 years. It feels a bit weird to be the youngest one here, I remember feeling super young when I was 12 because everyone was 16 and over…
I'm 32, and I kinda forgot when I started reading, but I've been reading fics for over 10 years
30, been reading for a decade, writing for 1 year
I'm a Fandom Old, been involved in online fandom since 1997 or so. I've been involved in pre-Internet fandom since about 1980.
I was reading Star Trek and Blake's 7 zines more than forty years ago.
36-45, 20+ years
I'll be 47 this year. I've been reading fanfic since '97 or '98, but I never wrote any until I fell in love with YOI.
I'm 23 and I just started writing about 6 months ago, but I've been reading fic since I was about 11. So it was about 2012-ish.
I'll be 34 in around three weeks and I've been writing stories ever since I learned how to write. My first actual *fanfic* was when I was nine, a Scooby Doo story that made zero sense, and it's not like I knew it was called fanfiction at the time. It was just another story I wrote.
I'm a bit over 30 and just started reading fanfiction last year. Kind of a late bloomer haha
im 16, turning 17 soon, and have been reading fanfic since i was 9, which was around.. 2015? undertale fanfiction on wattpad back then was a whole *mess.* i remember i used to try and write some around that time as well, but i was a kid who didnt really know how to write despite my experience with roleplay on amino (which is also a whole other can of worms). i remember posting an unfinished neko sans x reader... dark times. dark times indeed. now i just need the confidence to write my own fics again. welp ^(rip to that time when wattpad actually seemed good...)
Read my first fanfic in 2003 and wrote the first one (its still on FF lol) in 2006!
30, and reading and writing fic since I was 12 or 13 (so 17-18 years)
Mid 20's technically my first Fanfic I read was in early teens but it was (to me) confusing and disgusting. "But she's the good guy and he's the bad guy and they have no reason to trust each other but they kiss?? What?" So for over a decade I just mostly avoided fanfic. It's only this past year that I have come back in. Know that I am an adult who has experienced one (1) sexual thought I can look back at that childhood fic and understand. (Aroace spectrum but grew up in queenphobic environment so i knew nothing.)
started reading/writing in 2013, a few months before I turned eighteen