Fans and their projects, that is a topic that can fill whole books. Some weeks ago I read a book with the title “Die Macht mit uns” – “The Force is with us”¹. This book presented mostly American Star Wars Fans who showed parts of their (fan) lives and how far they had gone to fulfill their fan-being or their fan dreams.

This is now the first article in an article series, that I want to write about the Stargate Fandom.

I want to show various sides of the Stargate Fandom. Further I want to present examples of  individual projects made by Stargate Fans.

What exactly is a “Fandom” ?

Fandom is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest. A fandom can grow up centered around any area of human interest or activity. The subject of fan interest can be narrowly defined, focused on something like an individual celebrity; or wide, encompassing entire hobbies, genres or fashions. [...] While it is now used to apply to groups of people fascinated with any subject, the term has its roots in those with an enthusiastic appreciation for sports. [...] When referring to an organized sub-culture, the term “fandom” is most often associated with science fiction fandom, the community of fans of the science fiction and fantasy genres, an international fan sub-culture which dates back to the 1930s and has held the annual World Science Fiction Convention since 1939 along with many other events each year. Science fiction fandom maintains organized clubs and associations in many cities around the world, and has created its own jargon, sometimes called “fanspeak”.²

Fandom consists of the fans themselves and of the works/creations made by Fans in, or better: for their fandom.

In this first part of the series, I want to talk about one side of Fan-Works, namely with the category Fan-WebSites.

Websites

There are countless websites that are related to the topic Stargate. A search via Google.com with the search term “Stargate Fansite” brings 209000 results on 10/25/2008. When you search on the same day with the search term “Stargate Fanseite” (german for Stargate Fansite) with Google.de you get 114000 results. Naturally, among these results are some websites that have not much to do with Stargate or websites that you can call in the meantime “Karteileichen” (that is a german word for things that are only on a list or in a card index without having any purpose or content – you could translate this word as dead bodies in a card index).

Who among the “older” Fans does remember the promising webproject Web Stargate³? This website was in the late 90s active and tried to build an own Gate-Network with the help of the Stargate Address Symbols. The Gate-Network should be a link-archive for Stargate websites, and each website should get their own gate address in the network.

From time to time other websites try to revive this great idea, but there has not been one website gone that made it so far and good as Web Stargate then.

However there were a lot of other great web projects made by Stargate Fans, who disappeared due to the lack of time and/or money or fading interest of the developers. For example:

Sternentor.com⁴

This was one of the first german websites about Stargate. This website had a professionally looking design and a lot of information.

DutchGate.com

This was a dutch fansite, which focused on Stargate SG-1. This website was multi-lingual with a dutch and an english version. It had a database, a lot of multimedia content for download, some links and pictures. The intro site was already made with Flash.

spacemonkeys-gate.com

This website was dedicated to the character Daniel Jackson and to some part to Jack O’Neill.

SG1Fans.net (Tau’ri Stargate)

A general fansite, that concentrated on a database with information about episodes, technology and similar topics.

Stargate-Gaming.com

When the Stargate SG-1 Computer Game Stargate SG-1 The Allicance⁵ was announced in the media and the net and the first pictures were shown online, a lot of Stargate SG-1 The Alliance Fansites appeared online. Stargate-Gaming.com was one of these fansites for the game, and with its design it was outstanding. A lot of information about the game were on this website, too. This was an affiliate of Chevron 26. But with the end of the development of the games, died the fan hopes and a lot of these game fansites vanished some weeks after. This fansite vanished, too. Other SG-1 TA⁶ fansites were converted some time later in Stargate Worlds⁷ – Fansites.

sg-command.net

I was startled some days ago after seeing that this website does not exist anymore. The SG-Command.net Community was the information site for all Fans, that want to get or make a Stargate costume or that wanted to meet other costume fans (here an example of an advertisement). What a pity is all I can say. Another nice community that vanished quietly from the screens. Here are two photos that show happier times. The community was often with a stand or representative people on bigger Conventions (Photo , Photo). But there are already other new costume communities in the net that are looking forward to new members (more information about Stargate Costumes and the related communities will be in another part of this series).

A large section of the websites that you can find at the moment via Google, Yahoo or DMOZ are still online and are updated more or less frequently.

Apart of a great section of small and middle sized fansites, there are a few websites that have evolved from small fansites to big web projects.

You have to name Gateworld.net here.

Gateworld’s first steps were under the title STARGUIDE⁸. The design was nothing special. But you have to take a look at the website now⁹.

The website got a new layout and design from another friendly Scifi Fan, and it good a few new scripts so it shows itself now in the current Web 2.0 Design. Furthermore the website got an own video portal with up to date interviews and specials and an own podcast. That lets the fan’s heart beats a lot higher.

In the german speaking part of the net, you can name Stargate-Project.de in this category. Here a screen shot of the website¹⁰.

A few pupils got the idea to make a Stargate fansite and in the meantime it evolved from small fan-run fansite to a website that is operated by a Media and Internet Agency in Essen¹¹. So fast things can change.

However back to topic:

There is an incredibly great number of websites that are engaged with the topic Stargate. This span goes from general small fansites, to middle or big information websites, fanfiction archives, private smaller websites with poems and artworks, Wallpaper-, Icon- or 3D-FanArt websites, Music Video sites, sites that only concentrates on single characters or actors to fan clubs, costume groups, message boards and RPGs. And this list is not completed at all. And behind every fansite is at least one Stargate Fan, who spends a part of his/her free time with the work on their own website. And the work will continue.

Long live the Stargate Fandom!

You can find a big sorted collection of Stargate Websites in Chevron 26’s Linkarchive.

This was the first part of the series about the Stargate Fandom.

To be continued….

In the next part, we will take a look at the topic “Stargate Fanart”.

About the Author

Isto is a fan of Stargate since the first Stargate SG-1 video appeared on the german market.
This was in April 1998.

Since then she is a devoted fan and is studying the Stargate phenomenon and fandom.

1. Die Macht mit uns – Star Wars und die Folgen by Constantin Gilles – a german book about Star Wars Fans [↩]
2. Definition by Wikipedia.org [↩]
3. This website was once reachable under the URL http://www.Stargate-One.com [↩]
4. Sternentor is the german word for Stargate [↩]
5. Unfortunately the development of this game was stopped and will not be continued. [↩]
6. SG-1 TA was the officially abbreviation for the game [↩]
7. Stargate Worlds is an announced Stargate MMORPG Computer Game [↩]
8. Screenshot was taken in one of the early years of Starguide, a larger screenshot could not be found [↩]
9. Screenshot was taken in July 2008 [↩]
10. Screen shot was taken in July 2008 [↩]
11. See the Stargate-Project.de’s Impressum [↩]