(Unlike most fandoms since, XF's huge audience included huge numbers of people who never had, and never would again, be in fandom -- and those people, in a mass, could be really overwhelming and stiflingly heteronormative, gender-normative, etc.)

t cough Nikita fandom.

I think XF qualifies as the Microsoft of fandoms. Except in speed terms; by the time I was getting into active writing (season 5), the majority of the slashers were already on their way out the door and into that awful Sentinel show.

(Why??)

Because Sentinel was really, really ridiculously gay?

Because people have hair and muscles fetishes?

Because, apparently, any two warm bodies would do, and those were the only two warm bodies. (Except one woman I knew who was doing Jack/Daniel, back when SG1 was still on Showtime, and I was like, "Wait, you can slash anybody ? Even if they aren't eyefucking alla time in the text?" It was a landmark discovery for me.)

Yay for eleventy zillion more cable channels. Improving the chances of slashed texts that don't suck by a million percent!

Because, apparently, any two warm bodies would do, and those were the only two warm bodies.

Well, no. It's a buddy show, it's got your classic pairing of action man/brainy man, and the two characters were ridiculously close, and got more so as the show went on. Once your spirit animals merge, where else is there to go?

The script room, clearly!

Well, no. It's a buddy show, it's got your classic pairing of action man/brainy man, and the two characters were ridiculously close, and got more so as the show went on. Once your spirit animals merge, where else is there to go?

It's also addictive like crack-covered potato chips. And the subtext was barely sub, as they say.

Oh, discovering The Sentinel was a golden period of fandom for me. There was so much fic, on a more than acceptable level of creativity and intelligence!

I still haven't been able to get over the bad production values of the origina (Sentinel)l, no matter how good the writers are.