Wednesday, March 12, 2014

How Long Have You Been a Fan?

Here's something I've been curious about: how long has everyone been a fan?  Of Star Wars in general, and when and how did you find out about fan fiction?  I've been a fan of Star Wars for pretty much my entire life.  I was born between the releases of ANH and ESB, obviously way too young to be going to see the second one in a theater.  Or walking, for that matter ;)  But I actually remember going to see ROTJ in the theater, and even who I went with and the fact that the Rancor scene was so loud we had to change our seats to something further away from the speakers. 

I am fairly certain that at that point I had at least seen ESB.  I vividly recall a VHS we had of ESB that we had to have recorded off HBO or something.  That was our only copy of any of those movies I believe until they were re-released and digitally remastered (just remastered, NOT special editions) in 1995.  Before that I probably mostly only watched them at my cousin's house since they had an earlier VHS release that included the documentary From Star Wars to Jedi, which if you haven't seen, I'd highly recommend checking out.  I believe it is easily found on YouTube. 

At that point in my life I certainly wasn't obsessed.  At times I wondered if I was that into it at all but then I'll remember that when I was only 8 years old I decided to write and illustrate my own version of ESB.  I definitely knew that movie the best, probably only because it was the only one we had a copy of so it was the one I watched the most.  I am very sad to say that I have no idea where that is and can only assume it got trashed during one of my mom's infamous basement purges.  I can still recall some of the illustrations.  I can about guarantee you that it did not include any kissing scenes and I'm pretty sure I never finished it as I don't recall torturing Han or putting him in carbonite and certainly not Vader telling Luke he was his father.  I definitely referred to a Taun Taun as a "kanga-snow-animal" though.  And I do remember a picture of Leia throwing her arms up when Han goes into the asteroid field and Yoda balancing on Luke's foot when he was upside down.  You have no idea how badly I wish I still had that!

Anyway, aside from that, I definitely played Star Wars with other kids, although I always wanted to be Luke.  Probably because of the lightsaber.  We didn't have any authentic toys so I used a wiffle ball bat.  In fact, for reasons I'm not entirely clear on, I never had any Star Wars toys except an Artoo and Threepio.  What was wrong with me?  I want to say I wasn't into action figures, but we definitely had some He-Man toys.  I had a cousin with the Falcon and an AT-AT and of course thought those were the coolest things ever.  Perhaps this is a childhood regret.  No Star Wars toys. 

For years my interest level remained normal with watching the movies here and there and not much beyond that.  I do not recall exactly when I realized that Han Solo was amazing and started paying more attention to the love story side of it.  I do know that I started to get much more interested in that when I was 16 and found a copy of COPL in a store over the summer.  It wasn't even a book store, and this paperback was staring at me and it said it was about Han and Leia getting married.  Wait, they got married?  I mean, I guess we could always just assume, but it seemed really cool to me that there was a book about how this happened.  I was not much of a reader at that point in my life.  In fact, up until then I'm not sure I had ever read a book just because I wanted to, aside from multiple readings of Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing when I was much younger. 

This began my dark descent into madness.  At the time I am sure I thought the book could've been much better,  but given my extreme immaturity I am also sure that I didn't think it was nearly as bad as I think it is now.  Hey, they get to kiss!  And they did get married in the end, after all.  Plus, at that point it was the only thing outside of the movies I knew about.  Then I found out there were already all of these other books.  This was in the mid 90s, so the Thrawn Trilogy was already well established along with several other books.  Wait, they already have kids, too?  This was awesome!  And bonus points for the fact that my cousin (not the one who had the cool toys, amazingly) already owned most of these books, so I simply had to borrow them rather than buy them. 

I read a lot that summer, and I started to pay attention to when books were coming out and buying them myself.  I used to just go to the book store and look at that section to see if there was anything new.  Yes, we had the internet, but we didn't really use it yet for that much.  And come on, I'm sure a lot of you are old enough to remember dial-up.  It took forever to look at anything. 

By the time I went to college, I had developed a healthy interest, but certainly not obsessive.  My freshman year I didn't have my own computer and rarely spent much time on the internet.  I didn't even email much.  I wrote actual letters to friends.  Things changed quickly, though.  I got a new computer for my sophomore year and I had my own dorm room. 

Being on the internet just looking at random stuff suddenly became a "thing" to do.  I don't even think I was using Google yet when I was trying to look up spoilers for upcoming X-Files episodes, back when X-Files was still producing new episodes.  Somehow that search led me to a web site that included some Mulder and Scully fan fiction.  Huh, I'd never heard of such a thing.  But some of those stories were pretty good... and included some sex, which of course was fun to read because anyone who watched that show wanted them to get together!

Eventually it dawned on me that if there are stories about X-Files, there must be stories about Star Wars, and especially Han and Leia, right?  It didn't take me long to figure out that it was true.  Oh, boy was it true.  And like any teenager discovering fanfic for the first time, I went straight and exclusively to the sex stories ;)  Most of them back then were actually pretty good.  There seemed to be some quality control involved.  I'm not even sure ff.net existed yet, and most of the web sites were fan run and the stories were submitted and then they were posted if deemed good enough.  Well, of course I was hooked.  Not in an obsessive sort of way, since I was busy with so many other things being in college, but I certainly wasted more than a few evenings reading stories late into the night.  And I even ordered a couple of fanzines.

By the time college ended, I was definitely a big fan.  There were a few message boards back then that I forgot that I even posted on until recently.  I think a lot of what we discussed was hating Bria :)  The NJO was out so there was a lot of reading going on, too.

Not long after I graduated I decided to try my hand at writing.  I'd always loved writing and figured, why not?  Again, back then there were mostly sites you submitted to so I had to send them in to someone, who then hooked me up with a beta reader who really knew her stuff and helped was in retrospect was an atrociously written story.  There is currently a much better version of it posted, though it's still not that good.  Unfortunately, by the time I edited and was ready to send it in, the site disappeared, and I had no idea where to post it.  I believe at that point I kind of took a break from reading much fanfic.  I didn't really read on ff.net, the Han and Leia sites I loved were disappearing or at least rarely added new content, and the old sites like fanfix also almost never added anything new.

Reading of the EU continued, though.  And after several years of not much fanfic reading and certainly no writing, I somehow stumbled on the Nerfherder's Playground.  Please go there and look around if you never have.  It was a really great resource for writers and the stories were edited in a sort of workshop type of way.  I'm sure some people may have hated that, but I found it very helpful.  And in general there are some good stories hidden there that I believe aren't posted anywhere else.  After a while that rekindled my interest in writing and I decided to go ahead and give it another shot.  So I posted some stuff there and got some help, and eventually decided to start putting my stories on ff.net as well.

NHP has sort of died off, but obviously ff.net is still going strong and I continued to write and post there, occasionally still posing on NHP as well.  So now I'm still reading, although not as obsessed as I used to be.  And really, there aren't as many multi-chapter stories going up anymore, it feels like.  Or the ones that do have such lengthy periods of time between updates it makes it hard to be excited when you forget what happened 6 months ago when the last chapter went up.  I'm not writing really at the moment, but that could change, I guess.  And I keep saying I'm going to stop reading the EU, but then they go and publish a new book that falls in a timeline I like and I get sucked back in.  And now of course with Episode VII it is becoming clear that I am probably stuck for life.  Oh, well.

Anyway, that is my very lengthy story as a lifelong fan.  Oh, also I own 2 sets of VHS versions of the movies, the DVDs and the blu rays.  And yet I still watch them whenever they come on Spike.

This post is also an example of one of Zyra's problems as a writer: too wordy and not at all concise ;)

What's your story?  How long have you been a fan?  How did you find fanfic?  How did you find this blog?


37 comments:

  1. I saw Star Wars as a ten-year-old when it first hit the theatres in 1977 (which I suspect makes me one of the oldest people here). I then eagerly read the novelization, bought some of the toys, and tuned in to the Holiday Special (which my brother and I agreed pretty much stank with the exception of the Boba Fett segment).

    But it wasn't until I saw ESB at age 13 that I became passionate about the Star Wars saga in general and Han Solo in particular. I read "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" and Brian Daley's Han Solo Adventures, pretty much the only books that were available at the time. I scanned Starlog and other SF magazines in the hopes of gleaning info on the promised third film. This was before the internet was in common use, so finding news, let alone communicating with other fans, was a challenge. But I joined the Official Star Wars Fan Club, which was better than nothing. I also kept my eye out for local fans and within a couple of years had discovered some friends who shared my weird interest. We all got permission from our parents to skip school so we could be among the first in line for the local midnight premiere of ROTJ.

    I was fortunate to be a computer major in college, which meant I had internet access at a time when few people did, and I was able to locate other fans through SF discussion groups (Usenet, anyone?). I read the Thrawn Trilogy when it was released, as well as some of the other early EU books, though I found them increasingly boring as the storyline progressed.

    But, like Zyra, my earliest experience with fanfic came through X-Files fandom. X-Files was a wonderful introduction to the world of fanfic. Not only was the fan-base incredibly well-organized at a grass-roots level, but some of those early fanfic writers were unbelievably talented, and the support and respect between writers was awesome. It was a fantastic environment in which to experiment and improve as a writer.

    I eventually took a lengthy and enjoyable break from the fandom world to focus on my family. Recently, with my little one now a delightfully mature mid-teen, I discovered I had more free time and was thrilled to stumble across Razor's Edge in a book store last fall. Razor's Edge reignited my passion and sent me online in search of fanfic, which is how I found this blog. I'm looking forward to more discussions!

    - Sabacc Gal

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  2. I have been a fan since the release of ANH in 1977. I remember it well. My then boyfriend wanted to go to the movies. I was furious at him for something I can barely remember. So I finally agreed to attend the movie, hoping things would improve. By the time I left the theatre, I'd made up my mind to dump the loser boyfriend -- which I did -- and I'd become a fan. It was the most amazing cinematic experience I'd ever encountered. It was a perfect film, full of characters I loved and loved to hate. I was 21 at the time.

    My youngest brother was 4 at the time of ANH. I have lost count how many times he and I went back repeatedly to see it. I saw it with friends, with my siblings, with the guy who's been my husband for 31 years now.

    By the time ESB came out, I was waiting with baited breath. The first time I went, it was with my then boyfriend now husband. We went at least a half dozen times together. Every time it came to the theatre for an encore performance, we were there.

    We went to see Return of the Jedi on opening night and on our wedding night. I thought initially the movie was somewhat weak, but it's grown on me over time.

    I married my husband, decided that I wasn't cut out for aerospace engineering, gave birth to a daughter, and went to grad school, and writing fic was the furthest thing from my mind. Then I started to establish my career. Between that and raising our daughter, I was pretty much buried all the time. Mr. Stats was an X Files fan and got me into watching it. I wrote XF fanfic for a few years. Then my daughter had plunged into some serious problems, and I stopped.

    A few years after that, Mr. Stats convinced me to watch Numb3rs. I expected to hate it but I really enjoyed it, and wrote fanfic for a few more years. Then I went on hiatus from writing and spent the next few years helping to raise my granddaughter and watching my teaching loads explode. Last year, my granddaughter developed an interest in playing Angry Birds Star Wars. Well, more of an obsession. I said to her, Grandpa and I have all the Star Wars movies. Would you like to see them? I wasn't sure how she'd like them, being only 6 at the time, but she was hooked at the very first showing of ANH. We still watch them a lot together. Last weekend we did Episodes 4, 5 and 6. She only likes certain sections of 1, 2 and 3. Smart girl.

    I was itching to write something other than journal articles and conference papers, and my granddaughter's enthusiasm drove me to write about my favorite screen couple of all time. I did a Google search and this site popped up. I wandered on over, innundated Zyra with way too many stories, and I'm still having a blast :)

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  3. I became a SW fan at some point between the release of ESB and ROTJ. Think I can blame the kid next door for part of it, he had SW figures and I thought they were pretty cool, and I then watched the first movie when I was about 6 years old and was hooked! Then I saw ROTJ in the cinema, but hadn't seen ESB yet, so I was very confused, but still loving it. When I did eventually see ESB on VHS tape at around age 8, I remember watching it about 3 times in one day, and then cried my eyes out when we had to return it to the rental shop. Collected a lot of the marvel comics from around 1983 until they ceased publication, and I had pretty much the entire set of SW figures. I had Barbies too, but the SW stuff was cooler ;)

    Think my interest wavered a bit during the late 80s, but I still liked it. And Harrison was waaay hotter than all the pretty boys my friends were into and I started to think Han and Leia were a pretty cool couple.

    My Han and Leia thing really picked up steam when I read Heir to the Empire in 1991, and I was floored that they got married and she was pregnant, I thought that was totally cool. And I dutifully bought all the EU books all through the 90s and developed an obsessional habit of hanging out in book stores and trying to read all the Han and Leia bits as quickly as I could to get my fix, and then would later buy the book. I remember the day I found Planet of Twilght and flicked through and thought, this is a load of crap, they aren't even together. And then I saw the fur rug reference on page 112 (See, still remember the page number), and almost passed out!

    I don't know exactly when I found fan fic, but it was the BEST thing ever. I was addicted. I was obsessed with Cindy Olsen, Leela Starsky, Dant Solo, and I thought, "Why can't the EU books be as good as this?" I remember printing off a load of my fav stories and keeping them in files. Some of them went astray but I still have one of them hidden away ;)

    During the early to mid 2000s I stumbled across Nerfherders Playground and couldn't believe how many other people loved Han and Leia as much as me. Got heavily into posting over there and eventually became a moderator

    I remember finding the blog when I did a web search for info on the upcoming SW bluray releases, and the rest, shall we say, is history :)

    So yeah, I've been a SW fan most if my life and a Han and Leia fan for about 25 years. And I'm now a writer of this fan fic stuff myself, lol. Something I never dreamed I would be.

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  4. I say ANH in theaters when it first came out. I was 11 and remember my dad going to see it without my brother and I first because he wasn't sure it would be ok for us.. hahahaha...

    I was instantly over the moon for the series and had a puppy love thing going on for Han but after being teased by my 20yr old aunt over it would not have admitted it again until I was in college.

    I totally remember tuning in for the holiday special. Black. And standing in line to see ESB and Jedi. In HS I found fanfic of the old style in actual print mags... so wishing they hadn't been eliminated in a moving purge by my mom while I was on my exchange student year. Le sigh.

    I've been a closet fan forever with Baby 5, Doctor Who, and a few others in the wings but didn't find others who were as obsessed as I was till college. When I was the first up to ABQ to get a copy of Heir to the Empire and suddenly had lots of friends wanting to borrow it. I should have guessed that my fellow astrophysics major class mates would be as obsessed as I was.

    Three career changes, three children (two with special needs) and way to many years later, Star Wars and the associated fanfics are still my escape.

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    1. Oh, so many auto corrects in this comment ;)

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    2. Yup. I'm an editor not a proof reader ��. And still figuring out this swipe thingy

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  5. I was 6 years old when I first saw Star Wars at the movie theater. I remember vividly being amazed by it all. I loved Chewie the must back then. I got a princess Leia doll and I liked the fact that she looked different from my other Barbies. (She was a little chubby, which I’m sure Carrie Fisher was ecstatic about). My friends and I played with the figurines (I had, Han, Leia, Obi Wan, C3P0 and Chewie). I even had a little romance going on with my little Han and Leia in the late 70 (only because I didn’t have Luke’s figurine…little did I knew back then).

    When ESB was out in 1980, I didn’t care much for the franchise anymore so I didn’t go see it in the movie theater. But when I was 12, I watched Star Wars on some movie network channel called “Super Écran” (yes, I didn’t speak English and my first contact with the Star Wars universe was in French….BTW, you don’t want to hear Harrison Ford’s french voice, it’s so bad). So like I said, I was 12, I was experiencing changes in my body and when I saw Han Solo sit in front of Luke and Obi Wan in the cantina and introducing himself, he gained an ardent fan. So I went to see ROTJ a couple of weeks later with my new found adoration for M. Ford and was happy to see that he was the one who got the girl! Not long after that. I rented ESB because I wanted to see how these two got together and played it on our new 800$ VCR (LOL). So 1983 was the year I started to develop my obsession with Han and Leia. Of course, ESB was my favourite movie of the 3. I taped it when it played on TV and even made an edited version without any Jedi training for Luke. I knew their lines by heart and my girlfriends and I used to watch the movie and paused on HF face and making houuu and haaaa sounds. My mom didn’t understand how come I liked this “old” actor who was 2 years older than my dad. Moms…. sometimes they just don’t get it….

    So over the years, Star Wars was omnipresent in my life (books, re-releases, documentaries, even on my wedding day, we arrived in our reception hall with the Star Wars theme song)

    I don’t actually write stories but I was always imagining all sort of scenarios for our loving pair (the missing moments, what might have happened on Ord Mantell, the “what if” like: what if the ice corridor collapsed after Han and Leia went by it, etc. ) So 10 years ago, I came across my first fanfiction and I realised that I wasn’t the only one imagining stories, even better, people shared their views with the world by writing great stories. I’ve read so many of them over the years…

    And finally I found this blog and realised that even 30 years after the start of my obsession with this great couple, I wasn’t alone and maybe not so crazy…. This place is like my “virtual” secret garden.

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    1. I remember reading "shifting impressions" by Push on FF.net (which is one of my favorite fic by the way) and then saw her link to this blog. That's what got me here in the first place and I started reading the joint story: the sequel, which I waited for updates with great enthusiasm, I was hooked! ;)

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  6. I was 11 when ANH came out and while I know I saw it in the theatre, I don’t remember much about it. I think I went with a friend of mine. I must have liked it well enough because I do remember that by the time ESB came out, I was super excited and standing in line at the mall to get into the theatre. I definitely had a Han obsession by then as well. ESB was fantastic and I loved that Han and Leia had a relationship. I started imagining ‘missing moments’ between the two of them, but never wrote anything down.
    It was a long wait between ESB and ROTJ, with no videos or internet to satisfy teen-age lust. So I do remember spending lots of time and cash at the bookstore, looking at/buying issues of Starlog magazine for Star Wars related items and buying packs of bubble gum for the Star Wars trading cards. I even made a scrapbook out of articles/pictures that related to Star Wars. I had the paperback books of the movies. At some point in that time, someone gave me a Han action figure, so at least some of my friends knew about my love for Han. Of course, Raiders came out during that time and pretty much cemented the deal. I got an Indy action figure as well. I still have both of those, as well as my box of trading cards. But my scrapbook is gone.
    By the time I entered college, I still liked Harrison, but the Star Wars obsession had waned, I had an Indy poster in my dorm room. Over the years, I’ve occasionally watched the movies when they were re-released or came on TV. It was still one of my favorite series ( I had a Lord of the Rings obsession when that came out), but I was not into it obsessively. I never read any of the Extended Universe material or any books that came out, though I think I knew they existed.
    Then about 2-3 years ago, and I have no idea what prompted it, I started searching on the internet about Harrison. I’m thinking it is related to some sort of mid-life crises. I found some home-made Han/Leia music videos on YouTube and then somehow I found NerfHerder’s playground and then FF.net. I spent many hours reading every Han/Leia story out there. It was wonderful. I think one of the stories had a reference to this site, so that is how I ended up here. Nirvana. I continued to just read stories for about 8 months before trying my hand at some of my own. Just one-shots. It took another 6 months before I got the nerve to post anything.
    Now, I’m into reading the extended universe books (thanks for the book reviews) and pretty much got a Kindle just so I could do that without my daughter making fun of what I was reading. I’m taking a shot at a multi-chapter story in the works. I got the Blue Ray of the Original Trilogy and then ended up getting the whole set so that I could see the deleted scenes. And I still look up at the sky every once in a while and think how cool it would be to see the Millenium Falcon appear and touch down in my yard.

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    1. I remember now... I was reading Push's profile on FF.net and that's how I found out about this place. And I forgot to mention the Millennium Falcon model I put together from a kit sometime in my teens that I still have. Such a geek.

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  7. Since I'm still a teen, I guess I'm one of the youngest here... I remember when I was about 3 seeing the VHS of the Original Trilogy and asking my Dad about it. He described it something like: 'Oh, there's a robot who has some plans that the bad guys want and he has to keep the plans safe.'
    It was when I was about 5 that we got a demo of Lego Star Wars, and then we liked it so we watched the videos. Been a fan of the films ever since.
    I guess my Han/Leia started around 12 and then I stumbled across fanfictions and, eventually, this blog. I have about 60 EU books and have probably WAY too much Star Wars stuff, but there you go.

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  8. Excellent stories, guys. I love how many of you have been fans for so long. And I love that so many of you were actually able to see ANH in its original run. But it's also nice that these movies are so timeless that some found it years later. Sometimes I think I wasn't that into it, although my walls were definitely plastered in Star Wars (and Indiana Jones) posters.

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  9. I've been a fan since seeing Star Wars for the first time in fall 1977 when it finally made it to my local movie theater. Sorry Han and his fans, he doesn't show up until 45 minutes into the film so Artoo had a 45 minute head start for me to fall in love with him. I've had all the books from the start, all the early action figures (no room to collect any but Artoo now) and a lot of other collectibles. I found out about fanfiction when reconnecting with other fans around the 20th anniversary relaunch. Back before DSL I had to download zip files over the dial up connection and print out to read. I haven't written fanfiction unless you count the comic strip cartoons of frozen Han Solo I drew while waiting to be dismissed from high school final exams (obviously right after seeing ESB). I found this site/blog probably through Nerfherder's Playground forum.

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  10. Let's see if I can do the condensed version (I do like to blab):

    Became a fan at five years old when my dad introduced me to ANH when it premiered on HBO. I was instantly addicted. We had recorded it on our new VCR, so I was able to watch it everyday if I wanted to--and I did. Every damn day. It got to the point that my mom was able to hold it over my head to get me to behave: "You better go and clean up after yourself, or I mean it, NO STAR WARS today!" I also played with the toys, and saw ROTJ opening night in the theater--I remember being SO EXCITED, it was like having Christmas in May.

    After a few years I grew out of mySW fixation and moved on to other things. For the next ten years I wouldn't give SW a thought.

    Then, toward the end of my senior year in high school, I was hanging out with a male friend who noticed my little brother's copy of the trilogy and was like "Oooh, Star Wars! Let's watch it!" It may surprise you to hear this, but I believe my response was along the lines of "Meh, 'Star Wars'? *Really*??"

    Well, somehow he talked me into it, and wouldn't you know it? I fell instantly back in love with it. I think we watched the next two movies right after another, and both of us so thoroughly enjoyed it that that became our "summer of trilogy watching." Seriously, our other friends thought we were becoming demented nerds. Maybe we were.

    Anyway, since my "high school reawakening" I've pretty much stayed a fan ever since. Sometimes my passion seems to rise to higher levels than others, but I always love it, and no matter where I am on the spectrum of "obsession", I'll ALWAYS watch it on Spike if it's on (even though I have the DVD copies within arm's reach--go figure).

    I discovered fanfic about 14 years ago when I stumbled upon fanfix.com (remember that site??) I didn't attempt to write anything until a good nine months or so after that. You can see the results of this first attempt in the form of a long-ass story at fan fiction.net. which I have yet to finish. Yes, apparently I don't like to start small. I'm still living with that decision even today. :p

    Oh, and how I found this site: I think I told Zyra this, but when I was slipping back into the fandom 18 months ago, one of the things on my agenda was to work on that Big Fic. But I had lost my working copy of it to a computer virus. I knew it had been posted at different web sites, but I couldn't remember their names (for some reason I completely BLANKED that I had it at fanfiction.net) so I just Googled my fic by title and the "...tragically unfinished…." post came up (Thanks for the mention, btw. That post both made me feel flattered/happy and guilt-rdden/terrible at the same time. Nicely done. ;)) Anyway, soon I was digging through old posts (I'm STILL catching up!) and reading old conversations and thinking "wow, I've really missed talking about all this stuff!" I've been a follower ever since. :)

    How did I do? Too long? Oops, I left out Han and Leia. Is that bad? (I grew attached to them in high school At five and six? Luke was my favorite. ;))

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    1. Not too long. Mine was very long! I like hearing people's histories. I'm so glad we were able to guilt you back into writing. I'm not above doing it again ;) Honestly, it's kind of amazing that you started writing that so young and it was your first story. My first stories were terrible.

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    2. Oh my god, I *was* so young! I mean, I didn't think so at the time, but now looking back? Ha! It's funny. And for what it's worth, I had been writing little stories on and off since I was very small. So it wasn't my first story story or anything. But yeah, it was indeed my first fanfic. :)

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    3. Of course at the time you didn't think you were young. And I used to write all the time, too. When I was in third grade a friend and I spent weeks and weeks at recess writing and illustrating a book we later read for the class, just because. Wrote lots of other stories on my own, too. Wrote and made movies later.

      Oh, and FANFIX! That was probably the first site I found and I went through and found and read every Han and Leia story. You can still access most of the content on there through the wayback machine. I also read on some now defunct Han and Leia sites. I actually don't think I looked at stories on ff.net until 5-6 years ago. Not sure why. Everywhere else seemed to have some version of quality control. It's also possible that back then you couldn't search by category and character, but I'm not sure.

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    4. Yeah, I totally get it about fanficiton.net. It seemed like you had to dig through a lot of…er mediocre stuff to find the gems in there. I usually went through other sites as well. I only ended posting my story there at all because my original JC thread had turned into more of a social thread for my readers, and it was getting harder and harder to follow the story in there (not that I'm complaining. I kinda loved it)

      And yeah, I don't think you could sort through stories by character or anything back then. I mean you could look under the category "Star Wars", but then you had to wade through piles of Ani/Padme fics to find the Han/Leia stuff. I also remember posting your own stories back then was a bit of a pain (probably why I was so bad about updating there--no matter how far along I was on the JC). You had to manually put everything in html format yourself and it was kind of a chore. Sooo much easier now!

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    5. I didn't realize until much more recently that people posted stories on the JC forums. I mostly only looked under the literature section there. I tried once or twice but it is near impossible to navigate it and actually find stories, and if you're coming in late then it's annoying to have to find the story while sifting through the comments between chapters. I'm sure it was fun WHILE you were posting it, but to try and read old stories it's just not worth the effort.

      Ugh, html code? That sounds awful! No wonder I never posted there. It's so easy to do it there now!

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  11. I find it funny that those of us who own the DVDs/BlueRays, etc will STILL watch the movies when they come on Spike, TNT, etc. We'll watch it on TV with all the commercials and it takes like 4 hours. What we should do is pop the DVD in when we run across it on TV and fast forward to the point where it is on TV, but we don't. I'm as guilty as the next guy. Just strikes me as something silly we humans do.

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    1. Seriously, EVERY time it's on TV I will watch it. I honestly probably only put my own copies in to watch like 2-3 times a year because once a month they show them on TV. Maybe it's knowing that since it's on TV, everyone else is watching, too. It is absolutely silly. Although I find it true of most movies. I get all excited that something is on TV even though I could watch it anytime I wanted. Just a few weeks ago the first 3 Indiana Jones movies were on TV on a day I was sick and I watched all of them, commercials and all, even though I could've seen it all in probably 90 minutes less without all of the commercials.

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    2. I'm currently committing a similar offense by watching "The Fugitive" on Oxygen. Yes, I own that movie too. There's no reason to put myself through this…but truthfully those commercial breaks are a convenient time to get stuff done. Like next break? I"m running out for coffee. :)

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    3. The Fugitive is on?!?! You know what I wish was on TV right now? Working Girl. It's been a while. Good call about the commercials though. I think that's part of it, like if I put in the DVD then I have to be seriously committed and I can't step away from the TV for anything. But if it's just on some channel and there are commercials then I can go do things and come back to it and it's no big deal.

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    4. Oh my god, YES! I haven't seen that movie in FOREVER. I have the VHS copy, but…you know. Man, that's a good one. I'd definitely be up for watching that. :)

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    5. Oh, yes. Ask and you shall receive: 5:30pm eastern time on the Reelz channel. Thank you, cable.

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    6. Oh my god, I'm gonna be out, but I'm totally going to DVR it. Ha ha! I can't believe it's gonna be on! It's like you willed it through The Force. ;)

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    7. You're welcome ;) It's going to be on tomorrow night on the Sundance channel too. And come on, it's just one of those movies that has to be on TV every once in a while. It felt like we were due.

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    8. Lucky you... I don't have these channels with my TV provider but Blade Runner is on tonight on the Encore movie network. I'll have to trade Jack Trainer for Rick Decard! ;)

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    9. Ahh, gotta love Working Girl. I immediately think of that scene when he's changing his shirt whilst talking to Melanie Griffith on the phone, and all the women in the office are watching him. Sigh.

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    10. Thanks for the heads up, Z! I've been wanting to watch that again as well...for the exact scene Claire mentioned. Heh...

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  12. I don't remember how or when I saw A New Hope, but I'm assuming I did because I remember vividly going to the theaters to see Empire Strikes Back and I had seen ANH by then. I was 6 when ANH came out and about 9 at that memory of ESB in the theater. The only part of the movie that I 'vividly' recall is being so worried/devastated that Han Solo was perhaps dead. Even though back then I was not even into a 'shipper' preference or anything. I just was worried about Han! I played with my brother and his two friends. I would be Princess Leia, my brother was Han, his older friend was Darth Vader and his younger brother was Luke. We would reenact scenes from the movie. My brother and I had tons of SW action figures. A C-3PO head that opened up and carried all the figurines. We had a Millennium Falcon. I do remember one of my favorite figures to play with were a couple of Jawa's. They had cool orange eyes. And a hammerhead guy that we thought was cool. I remember loving the Ewoks in ROTJ. But after that age, I left Star Wars behind. I do remember a set of SW glasses from McDonalds...

    And then, as my ff.net profile states, I watched the movies again with my children and it wasn't until that screening that a lightbulb went off while watching ESB that said, "Holy Shit! This is a romance! And an awesome one at that!" I can still remember the first time I googled Princess Leia for something and found Wikipedia and learned her last name and read that she and Han got married and I just couldn't get enough of it. I was around 38 at the time.

    My first fanfic (I had never heard of such a thing) that I found/read was Sue Zahn's "Into the Fire" and it was just some random webpage or something and I couldn't find any other stories so I emailed her and she sent me to her website and it was like I had discovered Atlantis. I started reading everything there and then once I figured out it was all called "fanfic" it was all over. I wonder how many hours I devoted to reading fanfic back then. It's amazing I'm still married and employed. ;-)

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  13. I can clearly remember going to watch ANH in the most famous cinema in Budapest when I was in the elementary school. I can not remember the year but it was in the late 70’s.
    At taht time Hungary was part of the Soviet controlled block of Europe and it was really a big thing to have this film in the theaters.
    Can you imagine we bought cinema tickets on the black market to watch Star Wars?

    I was in the secondary school when I started to realise that I may have too much interest in SW in general. I thought I would grow out of it in time.
    Years later I still considered myself an extreme SW fan until I went to the first and last Sci-Fi Fan event of my life and met with people in costumes.
    (I was really relived that my state of enthusiasm was far from pernicious.

    I have to tell you that the very reason I started to learn English was that I really wanted to watch and understand the OT in English. Second reason was to be able to read Carrie Fisher’s books.

    Approximately ten years ago I found the first fan fiction accidentally on the internet. It was a really sad story about Leia dying in an incurable disease. It was shocking! My life changed. I started to explore the world of fan fiction and on the way I realised that I rarely read other stories beside Han and Leia centred ones.

    My list of “crimes”: books (in Hungarian and later in English), DVDs, albums and lots and lots of downloaded fanfictions.

    Now at the age of 44 I am a definite Leia and SW fan not a die hard one but I am stuck with loving SW and Leia for the rest of my life I am sure of it.

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  14. I think it was the summer I graduated high school, around 8 years ago, my friend had a two-day SW marathon. When we got around to the OT, I couldn't believe I had waited so long to see them. I LOVED them. The only movie I had really seen before was TPM when I was a kid. I do remember I had always wanted to see ESB because they would always show clips of it as an example of stop motion animation on the film specials I used to watch.

    A year or two later, I decided I wanted to see them again so I went out and bought them. Suddenly I found myself watching them non-stop. I mean, I'm pretty sure there was a period of time where I was watching one of the three almost everyday. Upon each viewing, I was more and more interested in Han and Leia, and I've never been into romance. So as I dug myself deeper and deeper into this hole, I inevitably succumbed to reading fanfiction. ;)

    Whilst sifting through different fanfic sites, I found NHP when it was just about dead. Then this place popped up, thankfully!

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  15. Sorry to be so late to this party! I've been a fan since 1977, when I was three. I don't remember seeing either of the first 2 movies for the first time, but from the beginning it was a part of my world and consciousness. I had one of the original Kenner R2D2s, as well as a boss Darth Vader turtleneck. I'm guessing it was when I saw ESB that I turned into a rabid Han/Leia shipper.

    My fandom seems to blossom when my life is most difficult. Elementary school was several years of daily hell for me, and retreating into fantasy was a great escape. Just after I graduated from college I had a resurgence of fandom as I tried to figure out just what the hell to do with my life. That's when I read through most of the existing EU. And then most recently, the years since my kids have been born I've made another difficult adjustment. This has been the time when I've read the most fanfic, and of course begun to participate in the fan community and write.

    I'm so glad that I've finally gotten past all the embarrassment that I used to feel about being a fan. I went to an all-girls prep school, and it was so unacceptable to be into science fiction. Accepting my own loves has allowed me to write fiction for the first time in my life.

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  16. Oh, and if I might expand the question a bit: my 4 year olds are both fans, too. And today a pretty amazing thing happened. I was out to lunch with the boy and the girl, and I was telling that I (and also real people on the Internet!) have noticed a marked similarity between Kristoff in Frozen and Han Solo. They both have beat up, fast vehicles that they're proud of, they each have a creature sidekick with who they have seemingly one-sided conversations. And the boy added that they both go to snowy places :-). ANYways, the girl suddenly pipes up and says, "something just flew into my head! I like Han Solo!" I seriously almost died. I cupped my hand and whispered "me too." The boy asked why and she said, "because he's so cute in Star Wars!" Well, she might be a bit precocious, but the girl has good taste :-)

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  17. We own The Fugitive, it's one of Mr. Stats' and my personal favorite flicks.

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  18. Just found this site! Hi, everyone! I've been a fan since 1977, when ANH came out, but alas, I come from this low-tech, super-uncool family, so we only saw it like once in the theater (as opposed to my now-husband, who saw it like 10 times with his older brother, bought the soundtrack and listened to it constantly, read all the novels that were then available, etc. I don't think I was even aware that the soundtrack album existed. :P) in a drive-in no less!

    However, my little sister and I did buy the bubble gum trading cards, plus all the action figures... and I remember she, my best friend and I went to see a double feature several years after ANH came out, it was ANH and another movie, can't remember, maybe Star Trek: the Movie? anyway, ANH played first and it was so wonderful we skipped the other movie and sat through ANH again instead. I would do that again in a heartbeat. :D

    I did have the novelizations of ANH and ESB, and read them many times, although by the time Jedi came out I was too busy with school to spend as much time with it (still loved the movie, though.)

    Of course my husband and I went to see all the prequels, which we consider reboots rather than headcanon, and just recently we rewatched the original 3 and I got obsessed all over again. Only this time, there's the Internet, and sites like this, so it's just so much easier to feed one's obsessions than back when I was a teenager first in love with Han Solo, and admiring Leia and Luke and the others. So glad to find this forum!

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