Man 80s fandom must have been so hardcore
I’m just so used to being able to find a show or comic people are talking about online somewhere, with English translation, reasonable video quality, screenshots and sometimes even transcripts, episode synopses and fan wikis with character references and episode lists, like within ten minutes of thinking it would be handy, fanfic and art in color and all of it tagged and relatively easy to find with some hunting
Meanwhile these gals were trading third copy videotapes just to watch an episode, waiting months to go to a con just to get an index of local zines that might have fic they like, I’m getting frustrated and peeved just thinking about it
I will never forget receiving a mysterious brown paper package with the return address “The Nome King” (and nothing else) at about the time the Unabomber was sending deadly packages through the mail. I decided that he and copycats would not use that as a return address, so I opened it. Inside was a VHS tape hand-labeled “Beetlejuice”, but when I put in my VCR, which was honest to gosh hooked up to the b&w TV my parents had watched the moon landing on (it was free, and Babylon 5 and DS9 actually worked really well in b&w), the tape turned out to be My Neighbor Totoro. In Japanese. With no subtitles.
This was before Miyazaki was well-known in the states. I followed it pretty well up until the giant 18-legged Cheshire Cat pulled up to the bus stop.
I eventually located and printed out a fan translation found on a regional college network using archie/veronica.
Also the college dorm rooms at Bryn Mawr had fanzines other women had picked up at cons. i remember Jabberwocky, a longrunning Blake’s 7 series, and an anthology of Sarek/Amanda fluff by Jean Lorrah.
Doctor Who fandom in the early 80s was mostly a solitary affair, and the primary activity was amassing as complete a collection as possible of reruns recorded off TV. It took years of dedication. It meant keeping up with one’s local PBS station broadcasts, programming the VCR, pleading with the parents for more tapes, elbowing out anyone else’s wishes to record something, all with the goal of catching and recording reruns of episodes one didn’t yet have.
And then one had the magic notebook keeping track of which tape had Hand of Fear (interwoven with episodes of TNG and Monty Python and possibly Robin of Sherwood or Red Dwarf) and where ep 5 and 6 were since that tape had run out (interwoven with Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers talking mythology). DItto trying to make sure one had recorded all the TNG eps and had spent a whole summer forbidding ANYONE to touch the tape that ended with “I am Locutus of Borg” so that one could record the second half right after the cliffhanger.
The prize, of course, was going back to college with some handpicked episodes, and 17 people (that was our record) crammed onto one bed to watch an episode on a teeny tiny TV perched on someone’s fridge. Or else fighting to reserve a slot on the dorm TV’s VCR, which was usually booked weeks in advance. My job was to provide Blake’s 7. Susan was in charge of keeping us supplied with Robin of Sherwood. KIm and Kimi specialized in Robotech and Queen music videos. Angela brought vampire anime. And so on.