#i think the fact that clubs and athletes do not have profiles on tumblr is one of the appeals of this site in the first place

[cruyffista]

Users employ social media to create an interpretive community around their objects of affection. They interpret and negotiate “texts” (as in football matches and athletes), often with a degree of disagreement, to create a shared meaning that results in specific codes of understanding; as Jenkins describes this process, the “texts become real” to the members of the community. An example of these codes of understanding is how players’ actions on and off the field are evaluated, such as a gesture of fair play or players’ personal lives. Fans may also challenge the official “readings” (i.e., interpretations) of the clubs, for example when evaluating the players’ actions. This ongoing negotiation of codes, which may be opaque to those outside the community, forms the basis of the community’s self-perception and continually reinforces it. The more actively this process of interpreting “texts” takes place, the more community members develop a sense of belonging and a social identity. In this negotiation process, fans can take on additional performative roles such as “writer[s], blogger[s], film-maker[s]”. Fans thus develop additional identities while engaging with their fandom, which, as Coppa emphasises, “impact her [the fan’s] sense of self and the way she engages with the world”. In online fandom, these processes take place in an “imagined community,” in which people share a common sense of belonging even though they have never met each other. Social media platforms, which let people easily connect from all over the world, foster this development. As members of the interpretive community may change over time, so may the interpretations of the “texts”. Moreover, as Lindlof argues, the “texts” themselves may change, which is especially true for football, as the structures of the sport (e.g., rules, competition formats) and its actors are in a continuous flux. A fan community is thus not a coherent entity but rather a “loose affiliation of sub-subcultures, all specializing in different modes of fan activity”. In this array of subcultures, seemingly “wrong” versions of fandom are “subjected to the disapproval, discursive policing, othering, or more-or-less active neglect”, which has often happened to female sports fandom.

Jessica Kunert, The Footy Girls of Tumblr: How Women Found Their Niche in the Online Football Fandom

[footballwritersprofile-blog]

Football Fic Writer Profile - lunasenzanotte

The first writer that we are featuring is well known for her AU fics. If you like Historical AU, you might, at one point on your scrolling through fics on AO3, find yourself reading Conquest of Paradise.

Yes, people, please welcome, Luna. You might know her on AO3 as lunasenzanotte, and she’s also on Tumblr as @diegoalvesisgod 

If you feel like the pen-name sounded familiar to you, here is an excerpt from one of her works:

The boy suddenly appears next to him, reaches up to him with his bound hands, touches the small golden cross Villa wears around his neck, and the wooden necklace he has around his own neck. Villa smiles, takes his chain off his neck and holds it in his open palm. The boy takes off his necklace with some effort and places it around Villa’s neck, lowering his head slightly to allow Villa do the same to him. It would be a bad deal, but it’s not a deal, not to Villa.

(The History of Silvilla)

Luna is originally from Czech Republic. She has a cat named Fernando (named after Fernando Muslera). A supporter of Liverpool and Athletic Club, she also enjoys watching and playing tennis. If you see her Tumblr url, we don’t think that it’s a surprise that Diego Alves is one of her favorite players, along with some other names like Ander Iturraspe, Viktor Fischer, Simon Kjaer.

Luna has started writing since a very young age, at around 8 or 9, and poetry was her starting point. However, it was Tennis RPF that has brought her to the wonderful world of fanfiction. When asked about the first fics that she wrote, she mentioned The Thin Ice, an AU fic about the Uruguay NT. Just like what we often felt about our first baby, she said despite how she thought there were things that she could had done better with it, she was very fond of it.

Luna could get her inspiration from anywhere. As she said, “I never know when inspiration can strike. Sometimes it’s a song, a movie, a picture, that sparkles an idea, and then I spend a lot of time twisting and turning that idea until a plot comes out of it. I spend a lot of time walking outside listening to music, as I don’t have a car and go everywhere on foot, and I just think about fictional scenarios.”

Once she got the inspirations, she usually did a lot of plotting. “I create my setting, do research, and then I start writing. I never do it in one sitting. I write in chunks/scenes, and then tie them together”

In fact, her meticulous research is probably something that you might have noticed if you read her fics on AO3, considering how the details were describe very well in her fics.

If you are someone who likes some angst, you probably might want to subscribe to her fics, since angst is her favorite genre to write. And people, get ready to have a box of tissue next to you because according to her, her favorite trope is together in death.

“In general, I like killing my characters and making myself depressed of their demise. Two characters who die together are my absolute favorite.”

Her words. Not ours. So let’s just say that her fics are the ones that will give you TONS of feelings.

When asked about the football player that she likes to write about the most she listed some Danish players, like Simon Kjaer, Daniel Agger, Viktor Fischer. According to her, she always gets unique ideas about those players, and writing about them would often lead her to write something that is different from her usual writing style.

If you see the list of her works on AO3, you can easily see how she has a wide range of fic idea. (Anyone read her Hogwarts AU fic with a bunch of Uruguay NT and Argentina NT players? That’s just an example of how creative she is).

For her, writing is like a therapy where she can pour her thoughts, feelings and emotions out of her head into the fictional stories. And she said she found that she found more freedom in writing football fics, compared to writing for another fandom.

Luna teaches creative writing for kids (age 12-15), and there is this awesome experience that she shared with us in regard with writing.

“Two of the students wanted to read the fantasy trilogy I have written. So I gave them the books, and they both read it, and then they fought over it. They had such different opinions on the characters and how it should end that they almost physically assaulted each other. It was really amazing to listen to them and learn what they saw in it and how differently they perceived things.”

We have to agree with her here on how interesting it is to see how different people see things differently, including on how different readers will have different perception when read our fics, right folks?

Talking about reader’s perception, we asked her about how she felt on getting comments or feedbacks on her fics. Just like most (if not all) writers, she said she love getting comments! So please, do not hesitate to tell her what you think about her fics! She especially loves the comments that come with questions of the fic, as according to her, that kind of comments can “take the story a whole different way”.

She also mentioned this wonderful experience when she received not just a long comment, but also some fanart in the form of two drawings of the characters. Unfortunately, her flash drive crashed, along with the fanart. So if any of you reading this happened to be the one drawing the fanart, would you, by any chance, still have like a back up of the fanart or something? We are sure that she would be over the moon if she can have it back.

Now, a little spoiler about her upcoming project. For now, she revealed that she had some random notes on her first fic about… *drum roll*… Paulo Dybala.

YES. We can hear you gasp over there, just like us when we heard it from her! No pressure, Luna, but we would be very excited when you decide to continue this WIP and share it with us.

If she had to pick one of her fics that she felt most proud of, she chose Death and Death Alone. She told us the fic was a really difficult one to write, she even said it was even physically painful to get through some parts of the fic. She admitted that there were some bits from the part that were inspired by real events, including memories of her grandparents from WWII.

For those of you who still feel insecure about your writing, do not let those insecurities hold you back from writing. Because even a talented writer like Luna still thinks that she still has things to be improved in her writing. Since English is not her first language, she still thing that the language is something that she finds to be her weakest point. However, she believes that it will improve by writing even more than she already had.

When we asked her a writing tips, this is what she shared with us.

“Read. Read as much as you can, and learn from it, both the bad and good writing.”

Well, people. That is all that we want to share with you today. We would like to thank Luna for the interview. It has been really great to learn more about you!

We are looking forward to reading more of your writings.

To close this interview, let’s have another excerpt from her writing.

Ander doesn’t smile, because what he said was only half of the truth. The war he has to fight is not as important as where he will fight it. The land is the prize, and finally, he understands the importance of it. Because she is there, in every place her feet once touched, she is in the wet sand of Donostia, in the sunsets of Bilbao, in the green hills of Gaztelugatxe, the earthy tones of Jaizkibel, the ancient stone walls of Gatika. There are still pieces of her that he can pick up.

And maybe one day, the pieces will make him whole again.

(Hold My Hand When This Ends)

Well, that’s it for our first post on featuring one of the talented football fic writers! We hope you enjoy it as much as we do! We will publish another profile 2 days from now, which is on February 3. Until then, see you, folks =)