In 1994, I was 11 years old and ran an AOL forum called Tupper Weyr. I was also a member of—god, I’ve forgotten the names of them now, but several legit forum-weyrs with several original characters. A weyr is the fortress in which dragonriders, dragons, and all the “support staff” (as Wikipedia charmingly terms it) live (because someone has to cook for the dragonriders, and, like, muck out the dragon stalls, and how hard must dragonblood be to get out of your riding leathers?). Weyrs were not real, unless you were obsessed with Anne McCaffrey and The Dragonriders of Pern series and you lived 90% in your head, and the other 10% was on AOL forums with other people who also wanted to create characters named Alloris (actual name of one of my OCs) and make jokes about dragons in between being earnest about them. I wrote terrible fanfiction (before it was called that), made promises to do ambitiously detailed research projects (like, compiling all the medical information available in Moreta, Dragonlady of Pern) that I never actually did, and felt like there were people (mostly adults) who understood me (or at least one of my obsessions) and would never call me “that weird girl who read too much” (like the normal, mean-girl girls did).

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