How long I've been a fan depends on how you define it. How long I've been in fandom is rather a different thing, but again depends on which definition of fandom you're using.
I've been reading all the science fiction and fantasy I could get my hands on since I was a child. Literally: I received a special prize in a "kids' reading contest" at the local library the summer before I entered third grade (for anyone who wants to know exactly how old I am, that was 1976) because while I hadn't read anywhere near the winning number of *books*, the total number of *pages* I'd read dwarfed all the other entrants' totals--but the contest organizers hadn't thought about that when they set up the prize structure. One of those books was the Lord of the Rings (okay, three of them). To be fair, most of it went over my head and I didn't really come to appreciate it until I read it again at about age 15.
I read all the SF and fantasy my local library had, but was a fan alone for years. I had basically no access to TV shows until after I graduated from high school, but I did see a few fannish movies when my parents were also interested in them (yes, I stood in a line that snaked around the block to get into Star Wars, and I remember the newspaper ads that said "Held over! 16 weeks!!!" or such).
In high school though, I did find a few similar friends. The boys who liked D&D or SF were not welcoming to a girl, shared interests or no, but there were a few girls. One girl in particular was in my world literature class, and we spent most of that class hour all semester writing a collaborative alternate-sentence multiverse-spanning Doctor Who adventure involving a number of our classmates and whatever other assorted characters we felt like throwing in. Note that I'd never actually seen Doctor Who at this point, except maybe one or two episodes.
I found the early internet in college (ie Usenet groups). I was mostly a lurker though, and didn't really subscribe to fannish groups as they'd be understood here. I did read rec.arts.sf-written and the like, which were the version of fandom that organizes and attends SF cons, and I've attended a few of those over the years.
When I was a senior, I subscribed to the SF Book-of-the-Month Club, and that is where I encountered the first thing I became truly fannish about: the Chronicles of Amber. I no longer remember how I learned of the existence of the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game, but I started playing it online sometime around 1997. I do remember how that happened. I had set up a pseudonym to use in a usenet group where I wanted to be anonymous (previously, when I posted--which was rare--I did so with my legal name). Said pseudonym was "Fiona of Amber", and I signed all my posts "semper, fiona". When I joined AOL in 1995 or so, I had the username fionamber. One day I received an instant message from someone that said "Hi mom!" She had an ADRPG character who was a daughter of Fiona. We RP'ed over IM for a while in a casual directionless way, and eventually joined up with someone who was running a AOL-chat based game. That game lasted...five-ish years? ADRPG is a writing-intensive game, and I wrote thousands of words of character journals, character memoirs, etc...all posted on my AOL webpage and now lost to the sands of time. Yes, I've tried the wayback machine. I think I had set my pages to no-index, and now they're gone.
I found livejournal in 2001, thanks to other Amber players I met once I started attending ADRPG conventions--I used to go to three or so a year. Now I haven't been to one since 2014, and the one before that was 2007. I suppose I'm due to attend again in 2021.
It took me a while to discover any fannish communities on LJ outside of the Amber community. I can't recall exactly why I landed on it or when, but I do know I started mainlining Harry/Draco fic around 2012 because it resonated for me with a relationship I was in at the time. I started subscribing to more and more LJ comms to find more fic.
The thing is, I was also aware of (though not involved in) strikethrough and boldthrough and racefail and the origins of the AO3 and many other fannish history items as they happened, so while I wasn't myself a member of the communities, I know I had many LJ friends who were. So obviously I was peripherally associated with fandom from at least '07. But, nonetheless, 2012 or so is when I started following for myself. Before long I also discovered podfics and downloaded tons of them to my phone.
I tried a few times to write something fannish, and for whatever unknown reason have been blocked. So having listened to hours of podfic, I had the thought that maybe if I couldn't write, I could at least *read*. I contacted my friend
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tryslora (someone I originally met through Amber who was also in HP fandom--so there's one of the crossovers) and asked her if I could make a podfic of one of her stories. She said yes, gave me some suggestions and also some names of other podficcers and links to how-to tutorials, and I was off to the races. Five years ago yesterday, I published that first podfic on the AO3. A few weeks ago, I published the sequel. I had meant to do the second sequel in time for the anniversary, but lost track of it at the last minute. Soon.
