I’m very grateful for the Gomens fandom as it exists today, but I have to wonder what it was like in the 90s/early 2000s in the beginnings of the internet and pre-adaptation!! If there’s any GO fandom olds around I’d love to hear your stories
The community was small in comparison to now - so, so small. The major hub for posting fic and having meta discussions was a LiveJournal community called lower_tadfield. When I first read the novel in late 2004 and became part of this community almost immediately, the body of work out there was such that you could literally read all of the fic in a day.
New fic being posted to lower_tadfield was a big deal. We were a tiny fandom building our literary tradition in a highly interactive fashion. We all tended to read each other’s content and comment. Say what you will about LJ as a platform, but the communities there were crucial to the formation and growth of so many new and growing fandoms.
It’s surreal to me now, knowing I could once track almost everything in this fandom’s landscape without too much difficulty. The artwork was incredible. I would love to hear what other folks who were there with me at the start have to say, though, too!
