By all rights, this website should not exist. At least, not anymore. It was, at one time, a pipe dream belonging to a very unorganized, very unprepared man and it should not have gone much beyond that. Yet it did, and here we are a little over a year later.
I originally wanted to start FAN for two reasons: One, to fill the void left to our great message board when we split from our then-parent website, Wrestlecrap.com. The other was to give myself something to do, and find something to entertain myself. With the help of my good friend Dan Lashley, plans were set about to start up a slightly different type of pop culture website, one that embraced all aspects of the cultural landscape, from comic books and movies to pro wrestling and music; from nostalgia and mainstream to obscure and indie.
In May 2011, Dan and I launched FAN without a real battleplan, because that was the battleplan: To go into this blind and have fun as we went; to learn and let the site grow organically. We put together a team of writers and were ready to take on the world.
And then real life happened.
Very soon after, it became obvious that neither of us were ready to put the time and effort needed for the site into it. Dan’s a family man, and I have been dealing with long-standing personal issues that precluded me from getting as involved as I had hoped. To help out, we brought in others to aid in keeping things running. And that’s where the magic really started.
I cannot thank enough deities out there for Andrew Leslie.
Andrew stepped up and did what I couldn’t do at the time, and got the ball rolling in so many ways for FAN. With the support of Justin Oberholtzer, who serves as our PR department, Justine Leonard, our webmaster and many, many others, Andrew has taken FAN to places I didn’t expect us to make it to so quickly. And with the back-up of a great, and growing, writing staff, FAN really started to become something.
In the time that I’ve had to step away from FAN and from its message boards over the past few months, I’ve been able to sleep at night knowing things were in good hands. We have a great – and talented – crew of writers and some fantastic minds coming together for the site. When Dan and I do come back on a full-time basis, I know we are surrounded by one of the best teams of our nature there is on the internet.
Thank you, Dan, Andrew, Justine, Justin and every writer we have or have had the opportunity to showcase the work of. Thank you to every poster on our message board for supporting us. Thank you to all of the new readers who have found us through our crew’s tireless efforts to present entertaining pieces.
FAN is a year old now. After a few stumbles, we’re just now learning to walk, and pretty soon, we’ll be learning how to run. And when that happens…when that happens, it will be magic.
Thank you all again, and stay a FAN forever!
–Madison