I’m working on an essay for this Seal Press anthology and have decided to write an open letter to a woman whose Livejournal I read around 2001. One day she just up and disappeared, and I never heard from her again. Through this letter to her I’m exploring my other online relationships with women (including you, my sparkle ho’s) and thinking a lot about the various online communities in which I’ve been a part.
Before Livejournal, I was on a handful of ListServs. The two biggest ones, in terms of my involvement, were Everyday Angels, a Jewel fan list hosted by smoe.org, and Witchbaby, a listserv for fans of Young Adult author Francesca Lia Block*. I was also an “Ears with Feet” t-shirt-wearing, bootleg-tape-trading Tori Amos fan. Within all of these communities I had friends, inside jokes, and shared obsessive knowledge of our subject (seriously, the shit I know about Tori Amos’ childhood).
As anyone who has been in recent contact with me knows, I read all four books in the Twilight series during the first two weeks of September and have seen the movie twice (the first time at the midnight showing wearing glitter). My intense love/hate for Twilight–and really I’m too old not to have a good dose of hate for the story–has even triggered the strengthening of some of my years-old online friendships. Anyway, I give all this background because lately I’ve been having a great time witnessing (and participating in) the online Twilight fan community. It reminds me so much of my experiences.
Visiting Everglow, the absurdly professional and extensive Twilight fansite, makes me think of the good old days of “The Dent,” short for A Dent in the Tori Amos Net Universe. The Dent wasn’t always where you went to communicate with other Toriphiles–that happened on message boards, list servs, and through personal websites–but it was the source for any announcements or updates, including recent television, radio, or magazine mentions. Even obscure things, like a 1-inch photograph of Tori in a Danish music quarterly went up on the site’s front page. So when I see scans of Australian teen magazines with Robert Pattison on the cover, I think of all the time (and money) I spent on foreign magazines that had a mere mention of Tori.
At a certain point, Tori Amos’ people began communicating directly with Mikewhy, the Dent’s owner and webmaster, because they learned that it was a better way to reach Tori fans than through her own official website. It’s been widely reported that Stephenie Meyer, the author of Twilight, reached out to her online fans early on in the series’ popularity and has continued to maneuver that world masterfully. The moderators of the Jewel list serv, Everyday Angels, were in contact with Jewel’s management on a regular basis and before she hit it real big, the singer even held a concert for EDAs called “JewelStock” (too far for this then pre-teen to travel).
I should say that while I enjoy the Twilight craze, I remain purely a lurker on these Twi-fan sites. I don’t have the time to engage at the intensity level I once did because hey, the time I had to shamelessly make scores of photo montages and Livejournal icons is now spent earning a living. And also, I think I’m past my sleeping-outside-a-mall phase.
One of my favorite Twi-sites to lurk on is the Lion & Lamb Livejournal community (“the #1 Edward&Bella Livejournal Source”). The Livejournal user icons alone transport me back to the days of photoshopping Tori lyrics over up-close, self-portraits of my face. A lot of the Lion & Lamb icons are just pictures of Kristen Stewart or Robert Pattison (or both) but even more include lines from interviews or book passages laid over images of the cast. The user icons can be pure fangirl territory (Robert Pattison with the words “never think” typed across his cheek) or inside joke territory (lines from the hilarious Growing Up Cullen). Only fans who’ve consistently read/watched the fan-fic, interviews, articles, and videos of the Twilight cast and read the books multiple times will get it.
As a former rabid tween/teen fan of another young adult series with problematic gender dynamics (c’mon, ALL of Francesca Lia Block’s female characters had eating disorders) I’m genuinely thrilled to see Twilighters coming together on the internet. If they haven’t already found out, their Twilight friendships are likely to extend beyond “omg RPattz is on Leno” and into the hard stuff. When I was 16 and struggling with my own eating disorder, the Witchbaby listserv ironically served as my safe space. I could talk about what I was experiencing and received advice, *hugs*, and support in return. Because of this and other great examples of how my online community was actually a community, I freely admit that I LOVE the Twihards. And I also can’t help but notice that some of my online friends and I–the aptly titled ~*sparkle-ho’s*~–are meta-bonding over our obsession with the obsessive Twilighters. Or meta-meta-bonding. Or something.
Whatever. What’s so amazing about really deep thoughts?
*I wrote about Witchbaby on a previous blog, check it out. Also, can you spot the inside joke in this entry?
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