A Fandom Archive
Hey Jewel Fans!
The idea behind The Jewel Riders Archive has always been two-pronged. One side of the site is dedicated to archiving, presenting, and sharing materials based on the creation of Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders. The other side of the site is dedicated to preserving and sharing fan works based on the series.
Anyone who has been a part of the Jewel Riders fandom for a long time knows that the best place to see fan works in the halcyon days of the internet was Stormy’s Avalon page. It was chock full of fan art and fan fiction made by dedicated fans of the show.
Stormy (known these days as Cupcakedoll over on DeviantArt and Fanfiction.net) has never left the fandom, migrating to our home over at Livejournal. She is a friend of the site, and we reached out to her for a personal take on the years she ran the Avalon site.
My Jewel Riders journey started with a catalog. One of the Christmas toy catalogs that Toys R Us, sadly, seems not to send out anymore. I was reading it while sitting on the heater vent, as one does, and there were these dolls. And unicorns. Pink shiny things and magic jewels!
Clearly, this called for further investigation!
The catalog said you could get a free video with purchase, so my course was clear. I got Mom to drive me to TRU—and then had to get Mom to ask for the free video because I was too shy to talk to people at work in a store.
The video was the episode Song of the Rainbow, a good one to start with. It introduced me to the girls and the unicorns and this cheesy but delightful show. What I really fell in love with from the first episode was the world of Jewel Riders. The world of Avalon with its seven lands, the crown jewels, the rules of magic and all the history I could sense was there behind what was on the screen. It felt like there was all this stuff in a world that was inviting me in to discover it all. (many years later when Ry posted the Show Bible I just about had a meltdown of delight.)
I also knew there was so much stuff in this world that it couldn’t all end up on the screen. There had to be extra stuff. Stuff just sitting around waiting to be played with.
I’d already written some stories—unicorn stories, and a blatant ripoff of X-Men which shall never see the light of day—and I just had to do a Jewel Riders story. All that extra stuff just could not go to waste! So I started my Trina story and it grew into a sprawling unfinished epic that wasn’t bad, for being a first-ever fanfic.
The world of Avalon invited me in to write and also invited me in to imagine being a Jewel Rider, try to do magic with music and talk to the trees in case they could send me somewhere. I wanted a prismfox.
At the same time I was exploring Avalon, I was having other thoughts that weren’t quite so pure. I had discovered fandom on the internet. I had discovered that some people were on top of the heap of fandom on the internet, with fame and fan mail and they were just so cool! I wanted to be cool like them, wanted it so bad it hurt. I was fifteen, which probably explains why ambition was so painful. But being cool on the internet requires either awesome natural talent or many hours of work, and I didn’t have the first and was too impatient for the second. So what could I do to attain that state of cool?!
There is a third secret for internet cool: if you’re the only person doing something, you’re automatically the coolest person doing it.
Yep, I picked Jewel Riders partly because I was looking for a small pond to be a big fish in!
So I looked up how to html and built myself a page. And it worked! I attained internet fame!
Of course I quickly discovered that internet fame isn’t what’s fun, what’s fun is building something. Making the website, thinking of new sections for it and writing them up and learning to draw (ok, trace) because every fandom’s gotta have fanart and there weren’t a lot of other fans who could draw. It consumed my life, and really became a source of pride. I was fifteen; I’d never created anything like this that took so much work and creativity and had people actually see it.
The Avalon site gathered all sorts of interesting people. There were half a dozen of us dropping in and out of the chatroom every evening, boys and girls, kids, teenagers and adults, from all over the world. Mostly we talked about other things than Jewel Riders—mostly anime. 1995 was the year the Sailor Moon dub first appeared and everyone who was watching Jewel Riders was also watching Sailor Moon and soon expanding to Digimon and Slayers and Utena. Some of the people I met then are still friends.
Jewel Riders really gave me my ideas about what it means to be a fan, that I can build something as a gift to a show I like and other people can enjoy it.
You can (right now!) read Stormy’s Trina fic in its entirety over in the Fan Fiction section. It’s a great read, and we can’t recommend checking it out enough, along with Stormy’s accounts on Deviantart and Fanfiction.net (both linked above).
Over the next few weeks to months, we will be updating the Fan Fiction and Fan Art sections to migrate many of the stories and pieces of art that were once hosted on the Avalon page. We of course want to continue adding new pieces as well!
For a little teaser, here are five pieces that we’re proud to feature as our first submissions!
Find more of Vaan and Terry’s artwork at the Wonder Twins Deviantart. There’s a lot of really great stuff to check out!
Find more of Neil’s adorable work at his Blog, or his Tumblr page!
Find more of Jackie’s artwork by following her on Deviantart! Her pieces are absolutely stunning!
The Jewel Riders fandom has long been blessed to have such talented people contributing to it, bringing more to our little corner of the internet than one would expect from such a small (but awesomely loyal!) fandom. We cherish each and every one of you, and the varied talents you bring together to create a true Circle of Friends. 🙂
Cheers all!
~Chris & Ronnie