jadesfire

Oh wow, it sounds like we got into SGA at just about the same time! :D I got my LJ in late 2005, but I didn't really start using it until I got into SGA in early 2006 (around March, I think - why I still remember that, after all these years, beats the heck out of me). I had been in fandom for a number of years before that (I put up my first fic on ff.net in 2000) but I hadn't really done the social side of fandom before, or made friends that way (except for a handful of friends made via places like ff.net; that's where I know Xparrot from). But SGA, via LJ, was the first time I really dived into being social with other fandom people, and it also started an unbroken chain of fandom socializing continuing to the present day. I had definitely been around in Internet social spaces before that (I was on a number of comics and sci-fi message boards and mailing lists going all the way back to when I was in college and first got online in '95) but there wasn't a, hmmm, a continuity of social presence. I would spend a little while on one board or mailing list, and then wander off to somewhere else when it started to die down. But since I got on LJ, when I go to new sites like Tumblr, it's basically an extension of my existing social media presence rather than a whole new one, if that makes any sense ...

Anyway, I agree about SGA being a great place to get into genfic. It was also my first live-action Western media fandom (I was pretty much entirely in anime fandoms before then).

I think it's cool how many SGA people are still around and still in fandom. I'm also really delighted that we got to meet and hang out in person; I wish we lived close enough to do it more often than once every ten years. :D