#i love fandom so much

[kaladinsspear]

Have some rambling fandom thoughts :)

Okay, cards on the table, I hc Kaladin as aro/ace. My opinions on who he ends up with in cannon are ambivalent at best. Mostly i'd be curious as to how Sanderson manages to squeeze another relationship in with all the plot going on. This may just be wishfull thinking on my part, but my honest prediction for book 5 is that Kaladin ends up in multiple committed and fulfilling relationships, just not a romantic one.

All that being said, cannon is about 65% of my enjoyment of a story. There is something delightful about picking the story apart and reassembling it like papier-mâché. Sometimes you get incredibly transformative art that has almost no resemblance to the cannon you constructed it from. Omega Dalinar weathering an unexpected menopausal heat is definitely something you could choose to create with your papier-mâché project, or you could create a flawless immitation of cannon which explores some of the off screen Kaladin/Leshwi interactions. Both are what I love about fandom. ^_^

So yes, Kaladin is aro/ace, but Shakaladolin is my jam and I will happily play with all the ships.😌

[katnissandpeetamellark]

I’m gonna post a new Lucy Gray / Snowbaird posty post soon FYI

Bc I really do appreciate how kind 99% of Snowbaird fans are. You’re fun, you’re flirty. You deserve more laughs. We’re all out here dying over Coriolanus’s poor decisions and deserve to at least laugh 😂💖

[bloodanna]

I make one post about season 1 of 911 and everyone just keeps telling me to wait for season two...

[wander-wren]

on fanfic, original fic, and living on the boundary

most of the time, you hear about fanfic authors who eventually “make it” writing Real Books. very rarely, you might hear it the other way around. once upon a time, not too long ago, it was common for fanfic authors to aspire to write fic that mimicked Real Books, and very likely some of them still do. i’ve thought about it and realized the two were not separate experiences for me—something i suspect is becoming more common as fandom becomes more mainstream.

pretty much all of my earliest stories (elementary-age) were derivative. i loved multiple series about horses, and especially black beauty; the cats vs dogs movies, underdog, racing in the rain, and the whole dog’s life series. and more! those are just the ones i can distinctly identify as being stories i pulled from when i wrote about horses and dogs escaping abusive humans to go be spies. or wander the wilderness and be rescued by nice humans. i was also a big fan of dramatic angst, so not much has really changed. perhaps you could call those things fanfiction at a stretch, but i really wouldn’t.

once i hit 12-14, i started making things that were more original—all work is derivative, but this wasn’t consciously inspired by media i’d seen. i was, however, really big into ya dystopia, so that genre came up a lot alongside fantasy. i also found my way to fandom spaces and real fic at the start of this period. at the time, though, i didn’t even clock it as something different. i was simply writing “my warrior cat stories” right alongside my stories about kids in magic school and teens living underground post-nuclear war.

when i was around 13 i discovered the terms and community around fandom, moved to wattpad, then ao3, and more firmly separated origfic and fanfic in my mind. posted some more of both. finished like six things ever, all of them pretty short.

at 15, i started to Take Writing Seriously. i finally finished my first (original) novel, then my first longfic. wrote a few more fics. started a few more novels that didnt quite get off the ground. took a year-ish break from fic to really focus on original fiction, then wrote both at once again, and then in the last year or so, mostly abandoned original fic (except for editing) in order to throw myself back into the fandom sphere.

what i’m saying, in this very long-winded way, is that there is no ascending the writing ladder from lowly fic to super professional original work, to me. do i spend more time and energy on original stuff? sure! that’s the harder sell, and the one that, in theory, will eventually make me money. is my style exactly the same? no! they’re different mediums and i’ve honed each separately to reflect different strengths.

but my original work is still fanfic-y, in the sense of being extremely character driven, slim on the worldbuilding that’s not directly relevant, and emotional.

i think writing a first draft of something my own is a nearly identical process to writing a longfic, if that longfic actually has a plot (mine don’t always) and i know my audience is going in fandom blind. i still have to explain things like character backstory and how the world works, but it’s hardly the priority and i only need the bare minimum to get what’s going on. everything is focused on the high-emotion moments, skipping past all the boring bits in between. things happen with very flimsy justification, characters are ooc to serve the plot, and somehow we went on several tangents on our way to the end that didn’t all get resolved.

that makes my fanfic sound bad! but those things in fic are features, not bugs.

the second draft and beyond, then, is an effort to turn the story into a source material, rather than a fic based off the source in my head. features in fanfic are, unfortunately, bugs in novels, and they must be squished. but the core of the story is always the emotions, the character arcs, the relationships. they’re what i build around and what i follow like a compass when i revise.

i’m a very fannish person, i suppose. my silly little hope is that approaching my original stuff this way might entice a small fandom of its own to form around it.

this is also here as yet another reminder that you don’t have to use fanfic as “practice” for future, more legitimate works. it does not have to be a training ground until you’re good enough to move to the big leagues and push it aside. that’s not how this works for me. i would not have any kind of writing career without my fanfic. i would be such a wildly different human it is painful to think about. fanfiction is my heart, and it informs everything.

[imtheiliad]

I finished a 550k+ word fanfic in the last …*checks calendar* …. Three days?

Now fucking what

[repbeyondthedefaults]

Someone commented on my ongoing fic that I haven't updated in ages today. Turns out, I had started to get back to it this week on my draft. But they totally made my week by telling me they love the story!

No one reblogs on tumblr anymore.

No one leaves comments on Ao3 anymore.

Seriously people the lack of fandom interaction these days makes me genuinely depressed, it never used to be like this, makes me wonder what's the point of coming online to do anything anymore.

Reblog a post so other people can see it.

Leave a comment so the author doesn't feel like giving up.

Fandom cannot live on Likes or Kudos alone.

[penny-anna]

fanfiction writers when a character is remotely non-human

[kik1draws]

I feel like it would definitely be them lol🤧

[sketchy-doge1]

Jedediah and Octavius wish yall a happy pride!!

[disast3rtransp0rt]

this is a huge contributor to the "shortened fandom life cycle" rut we've found ourselves encountering more frequently over the past few years. a show appears and disappears from the group consciousness so quickly it's hard to keep track. it's also a problem for our understanding of society and each other.

media has become fad-based. it's a disaster for overall general comprehension/the humanities because nobody talks about their shows over the coffee machine anymore. which means they're way less exposed to alternative perspectives of the same scenes. there's less opportunity to understand a variety of fascinating and diverse human experiences.

and yeah, it feels sad and somewhat purposeful. we engage more heavily with social media - but only to argue or hype/beg for upcoming seasons before a new shiny thing grabs our attention and we leave. only engaging with the media but never pausing long enough to get to know each other.

(this is not an "all members of fandom" thing by any means, but i've noticed the pattern growing more prevalent as well-established fandoms like Star Wars, Star Trek, and GOT are hit by quick waves of engagement that quickly dry up again between active seasons)

you know one of the worst impacts of this whole streaming media enshittification era is that normal people never seem to talk about TV shows anymore. like in 2012 you couldn't go a week at my office without someone starting Game of Thrones discourse over their coffee break. in the 2000s people were always talking about their American Idol faves. when I was a kid in the 90s you had to be allowed to stay up late on Thursdays to watch Friends because everyone in 7th grade was talking about it the next morning.

but now? the most watched show of 2023 was Ted Lasso, a show that existed for three years before I even found out Ted Lasso was the name of a show and not just a guy. I still have no fucking idea what it's about. is Lasso a surname or an occupation? is Ted a cowboy? who the fuck knows. people who have Netflix, I guess? but not people who have Disney+, who probably all watched WandaVision but only talked about it on the internet.

I have a friend who's the biggest Star Trek fan I've ever met but I can't talk Lower Decks with her because she doesn't have whatever the fuck streaming service it's on and she doesn't pirate things for some reason.

our engagement with media used to be a casual part of the day-to-day social fabric and it's just like...not anymore.

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

I am such a big Werewolf Stan advocate I had to jump on this particular train 🙏 (but I didn't really wanna commit to full line art, you guys understand)

Oh, and you guys aren't gonna believe this, but here's part two 🙌

[dano-or-not]

I find it really wonderful and comforting that Mob Psycho 100 is so inherently optimistic, even though its main message, “you are not special” sounds so mean at face-value. Being special means that something matters more than something else of the same category. Being special at baking? Great! Being special at math? Super! Being special at bodybuilding? Neat! Having so many people have such unique special abilities is what makes the world work. But having a special ability doesn’t mean that someone who doesn't match your special ability matters less than you. You can't be special for simply existing, because that would mean someone else isn't. You aren't special because you inherently matter.

[nutmeggery]

actually I will say something about this:

setting up a romance line but waiting until one of the actors is a freshly legal adult before executing it is creepy, actually, especially when the co-star is 15 years older

[giddygeek]

I was just talking to someone on twitter about this, and if I’m estimating the timeline right, Good Omens stopped being Yuletide eligible in 2005, which meant roughly around then, there were 1000 fics

Before s1, 2000

Two months after s1 in 2019, it hit 10,000

Two weeks after s2 in 2023, it’s awfully close to 50,000

FIFTY FUCKING THOUSAND

Well done, team. Someone might have taken mercy on us, but it wasn’t Neil Gaiman!!!

People wrote Crowley/Aziraphale fics for twenty years. Some of them never made it to the AO3, but most had—here’s where we were the day before the new series aired.

[ao3 screenshot showing 1999 works]

Today, two months after the series aired—almost to the day—we crossed the 10,000 story mark.

Well done, team...and may Someone have mercy on our souls.

[blackkatdraws2]

[Toon x Mobster] A tender moment.

[Animation timelapse here!]

[AUDIO USED:] Chet Baker - Almost Blue Sound Effects edited by me!

[datcravat]