December Daily: Rip Fan Winkle

[resonant]

coffeeandink - "You took a break from fandom for a few years. Now that you're back, what's changed and what's stayed the same?"

I've been looking forward to this one, because hoo boy.

I began my break in 2014. Some things in my life were difficult (a move to a new state, a new career, a new level of financial responsibility as the spouse went back to school, commuter marriage), and apparently my participation in fandom had been springing from a surplus of energy and wasn't sustainable without it. Some things in my life were sad (mostly the death of my father), and apparently my participation in fandom had also required a surplus of joy, which I just didn't have. Also I had sleep apnea and didn't know it. So I was around, but I wasn't putting much in and I wasn't getting much out.

I gotta tell you, Yuletide brought me so much pleasure and comfort in that time. Short gen in fandoms I had no clue about -- that seems to have been the sweet spot.

I could feel that part of myself beginning to wake up this year. (Weirdly enough, the pandemic contributed to my strategic solitude reserves getting refilled.)

So what's changed?

Entire fandoms rose, and in some cases fell. I came back and people I loved were writing stuff I'd never heard of. (Schitt's Creek? Killing Eve? Stranger Things? It?) There was a really intimidating amount of new canon in MCU and Star Wars. And of course Sherlock and Game of Thrones had built up a large amount of momentum and used it to hurl themselves off cliffs.



Fandom had moved. Dreamwidth remains sleepy but reasonably consistent. Tumblr had looked like it was headed for a money-making culture, but instead it got fascinatingly eccentric. People are doing fandom on Twitter?! And I don't know where everybody else is, so if you know, clue me in.

The technology of connection had changed. When I left, I was still doing chatrooms via Ircle. Now it seems like Discord is the thing? Again welcoming clues here.

Fandom is a significant influence on professional entertainment. Not only do we have fans writing novels, but I'd be very shocked if we don't also have fans involved in the creation of movies and TV shows and games and all the other things that in turn become source material for fannish creation, not to mention media criticism and media academics.

And what hasn't changed?

Purity purges from the platforms, ship wars from each other. At least it's no longer a foregone conclusion that you can wreck someone's career by telling their boss that they write erotic fanfiction.

Fans continue to look at the official stories and say, "People like me aren't in there. I'm going to fix that."

Thank heaven for AO3.






Specify a date if you want; otherwise I'll just answer them whenever.

This year, in addition to the usual kinds of questions, I'd also love to get storyish prompts. Storyish meaning you never know what you might get: two sentences of a story, or a description of a story that will never exist, or a love song about how much I like that trope, or a rant about my pet peeve about that trope, or I know nothing about that canon except what I see on social media and here's what I think it might be about, or Ten Reasons Why I Love/Hate/Am Indifferent To that character, canon, or trope, or ...

As always, I'd love to hear about it if you're doing the meme too.


10. mific - "what about crossovers? Have you written any?"
11. mergatrude - "favourite bit of feedback you've received on a fic?"
12. marginaliana - ghost stories
13. runpunkrun - "a new thing you tried "
14. isis and clevermanka and trobadora - longhand?!
15. china_shop - Guardian as described by someone who only knows it via social media
16. kiezh following up with - "What have you heard about MDZS/The Untamed, and what did you think of what you heard?"
17. ride4ever's birthday prompt - "Storyish prompt: for any due South fic you've written, write a prequel or sequel snippet for the fic or meta about the before-or-after that can be imagined about the fic's story arc."
18. mific - "the genderswap trope where a character's gender is changed. Yes? No? Maybe?"
19. runpunkrun - "fake dating: yes or no"
20. minoanmiss - "One of my favorite tropes is Then Let Me Be Evil. What do you think of it/have you explored it/so on and so forth?"
21.
22.
23.
24. runpunkrun - "John and Rodney in 2020"
25.
26. ride4ever - "for any dS or C6D pairing that you ship, how that ship is doing in 2020."
27. reginagiraffe - "Hermione/Harry/Ron from Bed and Board in 2020"
28.
29.
30.
31.









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Comments

[kass]

Oh, man, ircle. I remember ircle. :-D

[resonant]

Not exactly state-of-the-art, but then I was also hand-coding my own website, such as it was, so it was about the level of technology I expected.

Discord

[raine]

I'm on a handful of Discord servers - let me know if any of these interest you:
- Cranky Fandom Olds
- Escapade Convention (escapadecon.net)
- two different The Old Guard servers, one more verbose than the other
Basically, with Discord, it's like back to needing to have the secret link to get into the walled garden of fandom.

Re: Discord

[resonant]

I definitely fit into the category of Cranky Fandom Olds. I remember thinking of myself as a cranky fandom old when I was forty!

Re: Discord

[raine]

Heh. Here's the link, good for 1 use, whenever you're ready: https://discord.gg/RzC4hVdjpV :-)

[adafrog]

And of course Sherlock and Game of Thrones had built up a large amount of momentum and used it to hurl themselves off cliffs. lol

[hypertwink]

21. Now that you've come back, is there a fandom that you want to dip your toe into? (Follow up: Are you apprehensive/excited about it?)

[muccamukk]

I'm splitting between Discord, AO3 and Dreamwidth these days too. I tried tumblr, and it doesn't work for me. Discord is nice as a slightly posher irc, but it's very ephemeral and really depends what server you're on. It feels basically like closing ranks and curling in as opposed to everything being public on tumblr.

[resonant]

I had a tumblr, and then when the purity purge came I righteously deleted it ... but I'm still up there every single day, getting along without the convenience of a subscriptions page but looking at individual pages. So it wasn't as good of a flounce as it could have been.

[muccamukk]

Same! Then I made another one this summer b/c most of Band of Brothers fandom is on tumblr, and deleted it a week later. So now I just look at individual ones.

[lunabee34]

I'm glad you're having a renaissance!

[resonant]

Thanks! It's a relief.

I find I didn't notice how many other people weren't around until I started coming back -- I see names and think, "Wow, yeah, those were some terrific writers; wonder what they're doing now?"

[princessofgeeks]

So good to hear from you. Thank you for this.

[resonant]

Thanks! I've noticed you participating and being encouraging, even when I didn't respond much, and I've appreciated it.

[pauraque]

The one that really boggles me is that some people do fandom on Facebook, of all places. I never touch that site so I don't know from personal experience, but I hear there is a substantial presence.

[laurenthemself]

That terrifies me.

[resonant]

Wonder what the algorithms make of that?

[celli]

I don't know what I would have done this pandemic without my discord, I really don't. I mean, craft night, for one, came out of it. But also, just...having a Not Twitter place for daily conversation, sorted by topic, my good friends meeting each other, I needed it so badly.

[resonant]

I can't do Twitter at all. I think there's just too much of it.

[laurenthemself]

Discord is basically IRC with fancy clothes.

There are some terrifying things about the fourth wall coming down in places. I've had some nerveracking experiences hearing about, for example, actors in shows I've written fic for (character fic, fic of the characters, not RPF, just underlining that) reading said fic. One time one of them tweeted about it to the actor of the other character in the pairing. Another time one actor told two of the others about it on a livestream that, thankfully, I can no longer locate. That instance made me lock down all my AO3 fics, and I mean ALL, for months.

I would like to put the fourth wall back.

[resonant]

Yikes! I'm a big believer in pretending that the people who make the canon exist in a different universe from this one.

[laurenthemself]

And it would be so, so much easier to do that if things like this didn't happen:



To be fair to B. Dave, he didn't originally ask; a fan asked and tagged him, which... NO, that shouldn't have happened in the first place, but then it went on and on...

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for this perspective! I'm glad coming back has been rewarding.

[resonant]

I missed you guys so much.