Returning to fandom after some bad teenage experiences

 

That GREAT time I met Andreas Katsulas (left, Ambassador G’Kar in Bablyon 5 - don't know who the guy on the right is)

Returning to fandom after some bad teenage experiences

by Jen Davies, nerd

Dec 31, 2025

TW: nothing graphic but discussion of inappropriate romantic relationship attempts by older men when I was a teenager

It has been fun to return to Internet public fandom over the last few weeks, for the first time since 1999. Especially since it's to my first great love: Star Wars. Coincidentally I happened to rewatch the Star Wars sequel trilogy in August, and in a rage about the end of TROS watched everything Adam Driver has ever done, which kept Kylo Ren/Ben Solo on my mind until Adam's reveal in mid-October about a cancelled Ben Solo movie. I was ready to participate in whatever persuasive efforts the Star Wars fandom was going to bring to bear on Disney to rescue #TheHuntForBenSolo. Why had I not participated in the public Star Wars fandom before? I had a bad experience with a band (music) fandom as a younger person, before there was any awareness that predators could interact with children there.

Why I avoided public fandom for 25 years

The Internet came to my house in 1995. I was 15 years old. A person could visit the entire Internet back then, I've read, if you had the patience because it was all dial-up (slow).

It was easy to start or find a community of interest and I quickly found a listserv where people who loved the same rock band from the 1960s-70s. A listserv was a lot like Reddit except it was distributed via email rather than existing on a webpage (though maybe there was an archive page, now that I think about it). It was the primary place for that band's fandom on the Internet. We would write to each other about our favourite songs and albums, and why we liked them. There was a lot of thought that went into every message because (most of us seemed to be aware) every message was going to lots of people. Not everyone appreciated my observations, but criticism comes with the territory of writing about something, and even then I understood that. 

The first man who reached out privately and personally was a lonely guy in his 40s (I was 16, almost 17 then), and he and his wife were estranged. He was a reader on the band’s listserv, interested in what folks were saying but not writing much himself. He said he appreciated my perspectives on the music in the context of modern, younger people experiencing the music for the first time, and I still believe he meant that. I'm not even sure he realized just how inappropriate it was because while it was sort of public that I was a teen, I wrote my public posts with maturity. But he also wanted to know about my life and share about his, and that's where things became predatory. He wrote that he thought he was developing feelings for me - as an idiot teenager I was flattered by the attention. At some point we talked on the phone, and although I liked sharing the music with him I convinced him to try to reconcile with his wife. I was 16, and my parents did not know this happened - parents didn't know to monitor their kids’ digital media then.

The second man who reached out from the band's fandom was 28, ie 11 years older than me - that number has stuck to me throughout my life, and I have occasionally had the opportunity to work with teenagers and young adults who were 11 years my junior, which reinforced just how completely inappropriate the man’s outreach to me was. I was 17, and I don't think it had even been a full year since I had had to redirect the other man back to his wife. This man knew the band’s music well, and he was brilliant (in other disciplines besides music). Over the year and a half he and I exchanged emails, I told myself I loved him - in reality I was just again flattered by the attention. What did I know? We met twice and planned to get married, but I was desperately depressed because deep down I didn’t want it - thankfully my parents intervened and convinced me to end the relationship, with their emotional support. 

What does this have to do with fandoms? There were always mean-spirited people on the Internet, and that was expected because there are bullies everywhere. I learned through those experiences of being targeted for romantic attention by men who had no better sense that there are many kinds of “bad actors” lurking in fandoms. People who are there for the fandom but may not have great judgment in their real lives. And because of my experience with the range of “bad actors” I decided I would engage with fandoms at a distance only, as I became an adult. 

That time I met Andreas Katsulas and "good actors"

This was a very positive experience. He was lovely. I don't know what year the photo was taken, or what the convention was called, but I'm confident it was 2000 or 2001 because my now-spouse and I were not yet a “thing” and I was still super broke. I hadn’t been to a convention before (or since, I don’t think), and I could only afford a one-day ticket and not even a hotel room - my plan had just been not to sleep since I took the bus into Toronto and I would be taking the early bus out of the city anyway.

At this event I got lucky with the lovely people I happened to meet at the dance in the evening. Yes there was a dance, and yes I was painted up blue like a Star Trek Andorian, but I can’t find the one photo I have somewhere of that. I was hesitant to be talking to strangers after my online experiences, but we ended up chatting and at the end of the night when I revealed that I was just going to wash my face in the bathroom and go wait at the bus station they offered to let me shower in their hotel room. It was a mixed gender group, so I figured I would probably be safe. (Was that wise? Probably not, but nobody had flirted with me which I took as a good sign that everyone would keep their hands to themselves.) I showered and even slept for a few hours on the floor in their room - no incidents. It turned out they were "good actors." They also introduced me to Sluggy Freelance, a comic about fellow nerdy people and their pets - check it out.

Coming back to online fandom

Now, I have chosen my social media platforms carefully so I have to deal with fewer trolls (e.g., I closed my Twitter account when it became X - I just recently opened a BlueSky account). And I have been pleasantly surprised by the people I have met in the #savethehuntforbensolo community. I had not realized until my #adamdriver binge led my YouTube algorithm to #starwars commentary that #reylo was a thing (I'm not a Reylo but I “get” what you see), and Reylos seem to be lovely people overall - I have not yet run into a self-identifying Reylo who is trolling, so that's encouraging. In fact they are having to put up with a lot of trolling, gracefully and patiently.

I love how shared love of a thing (story, franchise, band, team, whatever) brings people together on the Internet. But I'm keeping my eyes open now for predators who might be overly friendly with young people in the digital spaces we share, because there had been adults who could have warned me or maybe spoken to me about what they might have been seeing, and I don’t remember much help. I only remember one man detecting something going on via the messages on the listserv and reaching out to caution me about other men with poor intentions. (I didn't listen, I'm far too trusting. But a few concerned citizens might have reached my better sense.) Because I would really like to reduce the number of young people who have to deal with the regrets that I did.