THE INEVITABILITISTS: A historic Smith/Neo Matrix fangroup

The original "The Inevitability" fangroup (founded in 1999) was a British community of older female Matrix fans in their 70s and 80s. They shipped Smith/Neo as a romantic pairing, and their work and writings tended to explore a central idea: that Neo and Agent Smith were star-crossed lovers bound by an inevitable, tragic pull across the code of the Matrix. They referred to this connection as "The Inevitability" and this was the name of their ship, of which they were proud crew members known as Inevitabilitists. Together they produced a rich treasure trove of fanfiction, essays, poetry, textiles, zines and heated debates exploring Smith and Neo’s relationship.

Crew member Beryl P- ("Shutterbug") was the self designated "ships photographer" and captured many of the meetups and moments at convention stalls, in cafes, living rooms and cinemas, primarily using Gameboy Cameras which she was particularly impressed by. The aesthetic effect produced by this low-res camera was felt by members to be very "Matrixy" in style, and was widely kept as the principle camera for photos used in zines and newsletters, leading to a distinctive aesthetic. Pictures were printed out with the Gameboy camera printer and pasted to master copies, which were then photocopied for wider distribution.

This present archive is an effort by the granddaughter of the late 'Teletype' (Dorothy K) to recover, preserve, and republish as much of that lost material as possible. Very sadly, many of the elderly original crew members of The Inevitability lost their lives in the Covid-19 pandemic - including Dorothy ('Teletype'), Joyce ('Fax'), Florrie ('Rolodex') and Beryl ('Shutterbug'.)

Many of the archived items are in physical formats as much of the output took place offline and was physically posted out to members or produced/distributed in meetups. The archive is comprised of typewritten zines and essays, as well as a substantial collection of beautifully hand-crafted embroideries, tapestries and blankets. Some content is digital, but stored on obsolete media like floppy disks. It’s going to take time to digitize and restore these pieces and I want to obtain permission from original creators where contact can still be made before republishing their work. Expect gradual updates – this may take some time! Family members of 'Shutterbug' very kindly sent me her collection of Gameboy Cameras which she used to document Inevitability meetups – I’ve found a way to extract the photos from these using a little USB device and will upload them in due course.

Old crew members of The Inevitability will be glad to know that I have an almost complete collection of the infamous “NOW that’s what I call Smith/Neo” music CDs, running from 1999 all the way up to 2019 when the creator 'Fax' sadly passed away. The original 1999 collection was released on cassette! We are just missing a CD cover for the year 2001 – if anyone out there has this please get in touch. We will work on digitizing these and sharing the playlists (for obvious legal reasons we won’t be able to share the mp3s!).