Missing Fandom Spaces

I'm back with another snowflake_challenge. This time to write about a favorite memory of fandom. I spent the last day stewing this over because my experience with fandom the last few years have not been positive. I'm going to have to go way back to find a favorite memory. Like ten plus years back.

Back in 2010 (I think it was), I discovered some Stargate SG-1 communities on livejournal. I kind of just lurked around in the background for awhile, getting a little inspired to try my hand at writing fanfic for the fandom. I had written a few things for myself (including winning NaNoWriMo in 2010 with an SG-1 story), but it wasn't until I finally posted a story to livejournal in December 2010 that I started getting involved.

And I'm so glad I got past my social anxiety to make those first posts and join the different communities. I have so many fond memories from that time. My favorite comm was stargateland--a challenge community for all things Stargate. I wrote so many stories through that comm. I also joined icon-making challenges and made a bunch of friends that I still occasionally chat with around the internet.

I really miss the way fandom was in the heyday of livejournal. It felt more open and welcoming. People interacted with each other. I made so many friends, including one that saved me from states away when I had a mental health crisis. 

Probably my favorite memory from that time was creating and running my own writing community. The one I had been in fizzled out after the first round so me and another member created our own comm based on that one. We called it Writerverse. We came up with challenges, she designed the comm, I scheduled all the challenges, and we worked together to keep track of points. It took us one round to realize we couldn't do it ourselves and needed some mods to help up.

It was a learning experience and a lot of work, but came to me during a really rough patch in life and gave me something to focus on. Something to be proud of. I created that--a place where others came to commune with like minds and have fun. Although, any type of writing was allowed, it was very much a fandom space for me even if other members weren't in the same fandoms. We still got each other.

I co-ran Writerverse for a year and a half. Eventually, it got to be too stressful for my mental health so we turned over the daily functioning to the mods. The comm eventually fizzled out, too, like everything else on livejournal. It's been a little over 10 years since we originally created the comm, but it still exists, run by one of the mods, but no one participates anymore. She said she would keep running it forever. Sometimes I wish I had the energy to participate again.

I'm not sure my rambling actually answered the original snowflake question. I don't have one specific moment from fandom that's my favorite--more like a time period and the most vivid memories of that time came from running writerverse.  I just miss that time in my life when I could just sit down and write and had energy and felt like I had a place in the world.

Now I don't participate in fandom, livejournal barely exists, fandom isn't as welcoming, and I have no energy to write so I just keep myself in my little corner and quietly watch and feel left out. I guess I'm just getting too old, lol. Maybe someday I'll find a place to exist again.