Hey FoLCs, I have a message to share from Annette Ciotola (who's one of the OG FoLCs and who founded these message boards as well as the nfanfic archive):
It’s with a heavy heart that I'm letting you know that FoLCdom’s beloved Julie Mack passed away last week, losing her battle with cancer. Back in the day, Julie was a fandom fixture—part of the original group of about 10-15 FoLCs who would hang out on IRC. She is also one of the main inspirations for me creating the nfanfic archive in the first place—so that we could have a protected place to store and for people to access her stories.
I remember nights on IRC where we were all just bored and some of the crew would start writing, turning things into an IRC Round Robin fic—writing a paragraph or two and then shouting “NEXT!” It ended up becoming a sort of tradition, so many of us looking forward to every Friday or Saturday night when the live fic was most likely to happen.
It was so amazing to watch all the IRC RR writers just off the cuff, paragraph by paragraph as we all waited on the edge of our seats, create an amazing and often spicy story right there live in front of us.
Julie took part in her fair share of the IRC Round Robin fics, but she also wasn’t afraid to fly solo with the live fic writing! Many of us were always eager about the possibility that Julie would write another one of her nfic vignettes—her “Vignette Series” of romps that can be found on the nfic archive.
She wrote 49 of those vignettes in total, and I’ll always be sad that she never got that 50th one up there. She does have 70 stories on the nfic archive, though, some of which are non-L&C.
I knew Julie for almost 30 years! I remember it was just after S3 of L&C was ending that I found my way to the fandom, back in the days of the LISTSERV and the AOL chatroom before we started hanging out on IRC.
More than just a fandom friend, Julie was a true friend, too. She was a die-hard Dodgers fan who went to as many games as she could while enjoying her retirement. She and her husband bought season tickets every year.
Now anyone who knows me, knows that I’m a die-hard Yankees fan, and throughout the years, every time the Yankees and the Dodgers played, we’d have ourselves a little catch up chat and watch the game together. We had our own little friendly rivalry while watching our teams.
Julie leaves behind her husband and two amazing kids. She was such a kind and generous person, and she had a huge impact on my life. And there’s no doubt the lasting impact she had on the L&C fandom.
One thought that puts a smile on my face is knowing that now she can watch all the Dodgers games she wants for free as an angel in the outfield. My heart hurts so much, and I’m really going to miss her. But I can hear her voice in my head saying, “Don’t worry about me, kid. I’ll be fine.”
Annette
P.S. Thank you, Sara, for helping me put this together. ❤️
Julie Mack's author page on nfanfic.com (this is a password protected site and requires you to sign up for an account).
Julie Mack's author page on the main L&C Fanfic Archive.
IRC Round Robin team's "author" page on nfanfic.com.
The LISTSERV "archive". This is where it ALLLLLL started, y'all! THIS is how us OG FoLCs got our fanfic fix back in the day!
