Before the CW was a thing and it was still called the WB, there was a little show on the network named Charmed. It was the show that got me invested in television, and it lead me down a path of roleplaying, graphic making and yes, shipping. So much shipping.
San Francisco, 1998. I was seven years old and my family lived in a smaller, more rural neighborhood in the city and I didn’t have very many friends. The one thing I did have? Harry Potter. Sorcerer’s Stone was already published and my parents got me into magic at a really young age. You might be thinking “Well, wasn’t that your first fandom?” And yes, technically it was the first fandom I got into. But the first fandom I really delved deeply into was definitely Charmed – Potter just got me interested in magic first.
How it all started
If there’s anyone to blame for how obsessed I am with TV now, it’s probably my mother. It was that fateful day in October (the 21st, to be exact) that my love for fandom really began.
I remember the night vividly. I was doing my homework in our living room and my mom was getting dinner ready. “Be sure you finish that before 9,” she said randomly. I was curious, so I asked why and she said “There’s a new show about witches I think you might like! But only if you finish your homework.” She probably regrets showing me Charmed because from that moment onwards I was obsessed.
Watching the premiere I remember thinking “THAT IS SO COOL!” Charmed had everything I ever loved at that point. As a kid I loved history, I loved my city, and I loved magic. This show had it all: A Victorian house in “San Francisco”, a really cool spell book, some epic characters, and magic a plenty! Yeah, it wasn’t really filmed in San Francisco but hey I didn’t know any better! The only thing that could’ve made Charmed any better for little me was getting an episode in space or with dinosaurs.
After that night Charmed became a weekly tradition for my mother and I. I’d make sure I had my homework done and she’s let me sit on the couch with her with some hot chocolate and get ready for the best hour of TV ever in my life, ever. And I’m so not exaggerating, Charmed was the one thing I looked forward to all week.
Even when Charmed scared me silly, I loved it. I distinctly remember the first episode that scared the crap out of me: “That Old Black Magic.” It was the second season, and the sixth episode. It started with three hikers going missing because this witch, Tuatha, just got out of her tomb and needed human hearts for her spell. I didn’t go into nature for about three months after this.
And in that same season, the finale showed a teenage Prue getting lost in Golden Gate Park and ultimately getting killed. Not killed killed, but more “shock” killed because she doesn’t die until the end of season 3. But I lived literally two blocks away from Golden Gate Park and after that episode I refused to let my parents drive near it for about a week, despite that road being the fastest way for us to get to school.
The extent of my obsession
You know how most kids obsessed with something end up collecting things like posters, folders, stickers, or books? Yeah, I had all of those, but they just weren’t enough. So I took my obsession online.
I was on the Internet for a long time, folks. I started going online a lot around 2002, when I was twelve. That’s when I discovered things like the AOL chat rooms. Dangerous, wonderful, weird, creepy chat rooms. If you aren’t old enough to remember the glory that is America Online, aka AOL,then I pity you.
There was a chatroom for everything back in the early 2000s. Think of any fandom that was big in that time, and there was a chatroom for it. Honestly, those chatrooms were probably the catalyst for modern online fandom obsession. And I was most definitely a part of it. But just chatting about Charmed was so boring! So what did I do? I role-played. No, not that creepy adult stuff that married people do to get a little more spice in their lives, but actual text-based role-plays.
I’m lucky enough to have saved a transcript of one of my chats from those AOL days. This was when my username was Spider-Man inspired and I went by fake online alias “Andy.” My mom told me to make up a fake name for the Internet, so I used Toy Story as my inspiration because I didn’t feel like Leo suited me. Lo’ and behold, the start of my writing days:
spideysenser22: ok so i call phoebe. do u want piper or cole?
[friend]: ill take cole! lets do a convo betwn cole and pheebs.
spideysenser22: k!!! lol i cant wait lets just start them with arguin about paige not likin him
[friend]: k. lets do dis, andy! *cole walks into maner’s kitchen and sees phoebe readin a romance novel (lol)* “u need to get ur sis off me”
spideysenser22: *phoebe looks up, annoyed* ugh cole i just got to the good part. what r u talkin boot?
[friend]: shes just on my case and its annoyin seeing her look at me all stupid like. i aint a demon no more! get her off me!
spideysenser22: shes her own witch, man she can do what she wants. besides u were a demon like just hella long ago. shell calm down. b nice to her!
I think that’s enough to show you just how, er, into it I was. No, the grammar wasn’t the best and perhaps my insight into Phoebe’s character should have let me know that she would never use the word “hella,” but hey, I was 12!
And role-playing wasn’t the only way I was involved.
Next Page: Check out my first contributions to the ‘Charmed’ fandom, including epic early 2000s photoshop work.
My contributions
As I stated earlier, I was online a lot when I was a kid. It started off with those chatrooms but it grew into something bigger, something more fun. For those of you who weren’t as addicted to the Internet as I was, the progression of socializing went something like: AOL –> Chatrooms –> Message Boards –> MSN/AIM –> MySpace.
During the message boards phase, I was an incredibly active member of something called the Invisionfree Skin Zone. What is Invisionfree, you ask? It was a forum/message board software that allowed people to make their own boards for free. I designed a bunch of themes for those boards, and one of them was Charmed themed:
It actually wasn’t horrible! But that was 2005. Want to see what my first ever Charmed Photoshop creations looked like? A little more pathetic:
There’s so much gold on the Internet from my old Charmed days, and I wish I could show you the entire Freewebs website I made. It was beautiful: The curser had magic “sparkles” following it, the text was hot pink on a black background and I was asking for more people to role-play. It was beautiful.
Final thoughts
Over the years I stopped making Charmed themed stuff and made more Harry Potter graphics because hey, the fandom was bigger and more people commented on my Potter stuff. But I will never forget the days where I spent hours on that Charmed website.
I’m grateful for having been introduced to Charmed because it catapulted my love for writing which got me where I am today. I can honestly say without my first fandom, I wouldn’t be here. Charmed will always be a part of my life.