Fandom Snowflake Days 14 & 15
Jan. 16th, 2013 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thisbluespiritIn your own space, write a love letter to Fandom in general, to a particular fandom, to a trope, a relationship, a character, or to your flist/circle/followers. Share you love and squee as loud as you want to. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so
I've had sort of two fannish incarnations (see below for the other) but since I found my way back to such corners of the internet (and had an internet), fandom on LJ and my flist - and the people I've got to know through comms, or exchanges - has been wonderful. The way LJ (and now Dreamwidth, too) works suits me. I love the comms and most of all I love my flist. I came here via Teaspoon, because people had links to their journals on their author pages and I was immediately enchanted by the idea that here was a place you could get together and actually talk about writing and play writing games. Nobody ever let me waffle about writing before! And after the first embarrassing period of sitting there talking to myself and being too shy to friend anyone, so it was. I'm a different person now, and while that wasn't what I had in mind when I signed up, but it's a good thing.
And now, since I've been ill, it's not only been a pleasure, it's been a lifeline. You all have been in different ways. That time the DDoD attacks nearly killed LJ in 2011? They nearly killed me along with it. It was terrifying without everyone. (I have some more resources of my own now, but that wasn't fun.) I got a Dreamwidth then, but it was very lonely and I was so glad to have everyone back.
Anyway, thank you very much for all the fun, all the memes, the encouragement, reading my ramblings, reading my fic, standing by while I learned to icon and attempted to vid, for making me lovely things, for giving me sympathy when I needed it. For all the wonderful prompts, for joining in on my comms, for the people who've sent me things through the post, and for those who've given me things online of any sort. People have been so amazingly kind. Over and over - not just my flist, but passing strangers, people lately in Yuletide and in Fandom Stocking. But especially my flisters. You've reduced me to tears in the good way on many occasions. (Admittedly, that isn't all that hard these days, but you have.) And you've all been there for me all this time, which is often the most important thing. I feel I need better words than these to express my gratitude, but they're all I have for the moment, so:
♥ ♥ ♥
*cough* Well, that was enough of being emotional and all that...
In your own space, share a favorite memory about fandom: the first time you got into fandom, the last time a fanwork touched your heart, crazy times with fellow fans (whether on-line or off-line), a lovely comment you’ve received or have left for someone. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
Hmm. So many to choose from. I think - the above notwithstanding - it'd still have to be the first time I learned that fandom existed, even though it didn't have that name. I was studying Information and Library Studies at uni and our lecturer introduced us to the joy of newsgroups. For the rest of my three years there I spent hours and hours on alt.drwho.creative and even popped into rec.arts.drwho sometimes. Doctor Who fandom was relatively small then and all pretty much in that one place. You were chatting to people from DWM and Virgin authors and things before you knew it. There was an exciting feel that you were only one step away from moving into something semi-official if you were lucky enough. It was also terrifying though. There wasn't really much privacy, or protection from flamers and spam and trollers. Or all the people who hated various Doctors with a passion.
And there was a huge buzz that came with the TV Movie - there was a sudden infusion of people and life, especially on adwc (it had only had about a dozen posts a month for a while before that). And we got together and expressed sort of non-aggressive dissatisfaction with the first EDAs and started up the Internet Adventures and it felt as if we were really making Doctor Who somehow. Even if what we were actually doing was having a lot of fun creating a motley collection of round robin stories. (Occasionally some of them even managed to be quite good and made sense. Most had some good chapters and... didn't really. :lol:) But, yes, it was fun and I'll always be glad that for once in my life, I actually joined something at the right time.
Anyway, so I recognise half the names in all the epic dedications in Virgin novels and it was all anarchic and scary and fun. And then I left university and had no proper internet access for about seven years. And when I came back fandom had changed! People had all left adwc and they had ships and things. (Apparently they had those in other fandoms before, but my corner was busy trying to get into "proper" Doctor Who most of the time.) And this I probably like better now, but I'll always be a little bit nostalgic about that time back in the 90s and the people I knew then. (A select few are also people I know now, too - they know who they are! ;-D)
I've had sort of two fannish incarnations (see below for the other) but since I found my way back to such corners of the internet (and had an internet), fandom on LJ and my flist - and the people I've got to know through comms, or exchanges - has been wonderful. The way LJ (and now Dreamwidth, too) works suits me. I love the comms and most of all I love my flist. I came here via Teaspoon, because people had links to their journals on their author pages and I was immediately enchanted by the idea that here was a place you could get together and actually talk about writing and play writing games. Nobody ever let me waffle about writing before! And after the first embarrassing period of sitting there talking to myself and being too shy to friend anyone, so it was. I'm a different person now, and while that wasn't what I had in mind when I signed up, but it's a good thing.
And now, since I've been ill, it's not only been a pleasure, it's been a lifeline. You all have been in different ways. That time the DDoD attacks nearly killed LJ in 2011? They nearly killed me along with it. It was terrifying without everyone. (I have some more resources of my own now, but that wasn't fun.) I got a Dreamwidth then, but it was very lonely and I was so glad to have everyone back.
Anyway, thank you very much for all the fun, all the memes, the encouragement, reading my ramblings, reading my fic, standing by while I learned to icon and attempted to vid, for making me lovely things, for giving me sympathy when I needed it. For all the wonderful prompts, for joining in on my comms, for the people who've sent me things through the post, and for those who've given me things online of any sort. People have been so amazingly kind. Over and over - not just my flist, but passing strangers, people lately in Yuletide and in Fandom Stocking. But especially my flisters. You've reduced me to tears in the good way on many occasions. (Admittedly, that isn't all that hard these days, but you have.) And you've all been there for me all this time, which is often the most important thing. I feel I need better words than these to express my gratitude, but they're all I have for the moment, so:
♥ ♥ ♥
*cough* Well, that was enough of being emotional and all that...
In your own space, share a favorite memory about fandom: the first time you got into fandom, the last time a fanwork touched your heart, crazy times with fellow fans (whether on-line or off-line), a lovely comment you’ve received or have left for someone. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
Hmm. So many to choose from. I think - the above notwithstanding - it'd still have to be the first time I learned that fandom existed, even though it didn't have that name. I was studying Information and Library Studies at uni and our lecturer introduced us to the joy of newsgroups. For the rest of my three years there I spent hours and hours on alt.drwho.creative and even popped into rec.arts.drwho sometimes. Doctor Who fandom was relatively small then and all pretty much in that one place. You were chatting to people from DWM and Virgin authors and things before you knew it. There was an exciting feel that you were only one step away from moving into something semi-official if you were lucky enough. It was also terrifying though. There wasn't really much privacy, or protection from flamers and spam and trollers. Or all the people who hated various Doctors with a passion.
And there was a huge buzz that came with the TV Movie - there was a sudden infusion of people and life, especially on adwc (it had only had about a dozen posts a month for a while before that). And we got together and expressed sort of non-aggressive dissatisfaction with the first EDAs and started up the Internet Adventures and it felt as if we were really making Doctor Who somehow. Even if what we were actually doing was having a lot of fun creating a motley collection of round robin stories. (Occasionally some of them even managed to be quite good and made sense. Most had some good chapters and... didn't really. :lol:) But, yes, it was fun and I'll always be glad that for once in my life, I actually joined something at the right time.
Anyway, so I recognise half the names in all the epic dedications in Virgin novels and it was all anarchic and scary and fun. And then I left university and had no proper internet access for about seven years. And when I came back fandom had changed! People had all left adwc and they had ships and things. (Apparently they had those in other fandoms before, but my corner was busy trying to get into "proper" Doctor Who most of the time.) And this I probably like better now, but I'll always be a little bit nostalgic about that time back in the 90s and the people I knew then. (A select few are also people I know now, too - they know who they are! ;-D)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-01-16 08:21 pm (UTC)they had ships and things
It's funny, isn't it? Looking back at some of the fic that was posted on adwc, there'd be no difficulty tagging it Doctor/Peri or Adric/Nyssa or even Adric/Ember. But the concept of A Ship as something existing outside a particular fic, even (in the more extreme cases) something against which canon episodes should be weighed and found wanting... it's certainly not something I remember seeing. (As I recall, at the time we were all too busy getting het-up about the 'half-human' business to worry about the trivial question of Who Goes To Bed With Whom :-) )
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Date: 2013-01-16 08:30 pm (UTC)Yes, we didn't have the names for things, at least, not in that corner of DW fandom, anyway.
to worry about the trivial question of Who Goes To Bed With Whom
That only happened in the alt!verse. Or TTR.
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Date: 2013-01-16 08:28 pm (UTC)very glad to have you on my f-list.
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Date: 2013-01-16 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-17 11:01 pm (UTC)the pleasure of your posting is all miiiiiiiiine! (koff, koff! i shouldn't do the evil cackle at my age koff! hack! wheeze etc)
<3
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Date: 2013-01-18 08:24 am (UTC)And there's still an S&S prompt of yours from ages ago that I have tucked away safely for when I can write longer things, because it was great. So: ♥
But, yeah, be careful with that cackling... ;-p
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Date: 2013-01-18 09:14 am (UTC)On the other hand - *eyes glittering eyes* stop that S&S hidden prompt taunting you fic-tease you!
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Date: 2013-01-16 07:03 pm (UTC)*hugs*
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Date: 2013-01-16 07:47 pm (UTC)I cannot forget that one of your first comments to me was to express horror at the Three/Liz/Martha fic I wrote - because you'd failed to note the adult rating on it! :D
It took me a long time to learn that Doctor Who characters can get up to those sorts of thing. :lol: Oh dear, I'm sorry!
*hugs back*
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Date: 2013-01-16 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-16 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-16 08:29 pm (UTC)*giggles*
Seriously though - I did indeed forgive you - I've no idea why that's stuck in my head, particularly...
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Date: 2013-01-16 08:37 pm (UTC)Well,
I forgot to add to the list: you all put up with me, for which I am amazed and grateful! :-)
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Date: 2013-01-16 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-17 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-16 11:26 pm (UTC)Ooh! Location, please?
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Date: 2013-01-17 06:55 am (UTC)It really is rated adult for a good reason!
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Date: 2013-01-17 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-17 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-16 08:22 pm (UTC)I don't have anything particularly coherent to say, but it's so much fun to have you around! I am forever happy at the "er, you have an unfortunate typo" email I got from you :D *hugshugs*
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Date: 2013-01-16 08:28 pm (UTC)I am forever happy at the "er, you have an unfortunate typo" email I got from you
0_o So, basically I make friends by annoying people and criticising their fic... /o\ (I vaguely remember - was it when I was going to rec Dear Mike??? Or was that something else?)
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Date: 2013-01-16 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-16 08:32 pm (UTC)And I have yet to find a satisfying alternative to LJ, really; Dw doesn't really seem much more active than LJ, because those who are active there also post here... and no other site seems to have the same possibility for communication. Perhaps the blogging lifestyle has simply upgraded? If so, that's a bit sad.
But yes, all my love for LiveJournal. It's impossible for me to imagine life without it. ♥
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Date: 2013-01-17 06:05 pm (UTC)And in the meantime, as long as there are still some of us here, we'll cling together and have fun for as long as that's possible. I think there are times people still come running back to LJ and Dreamwidth for the moment.
And, aw, growing up on the net! I have to admit, i'm rather relieved to be slightly too old to have any teenage fic to come back to haunt me - what I do have is terrible enough... ;-) But, hey, that's part of being a teenager anyway, isn't it?
Anyway, yes, for all its faults, I'm still very fond of LJ - it's the people here. ♥
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Date: 2013-01-17 11:22 pm (UTC)And urgh, yes about being a teenager growing up online. But the good thing about growing up is realising that 1. no matter who you are, no matter what you did as a teenager, it was probably ridiculous and embarrassing and 2. that you're going to keep making mistakes and fucking shit up as an adult, so in the long run you have to remember the important things. Perspective is a wonderful thing.
Yup, lots of wonderful people and the means to have long and engaging conversations with them. :)
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Date: 2013-01-18 05:57 pm (UTC);-)
That is a pretty good description of Tumblr. I like it, too, but it's better suited to sharing graphics and quick quotes and jokes, so I only get people jumping ship for it if that's what they're mainly into. Still, each to their own, and I'm sure there'll be ways to be a fandom as long as there's an internet and the world doesn't end.
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Date: 2013-01-16 10:06 pm (UTC)One of my regrets is that I only got online during the 2000s, so I missed out the glory days of the newsgroups in the 1990s; not being a big RL club-joiner, I really spent that part of my fannish existence only participating in Who fandom as a consumer rather than a, well, a participant. Writing bad fan fiction (I'm not sure I even knew that was what it was called in those days) that I never shared with anybody. And then...the internetz! And shortly afterwards, I found the Teaspoon and started sharing and taking part, and that led me to Livejournal.
And even if I seem not to have been as active lately as I was in those first couple of exciting years, and even if LJ itself isn't as active as it once was, I'd still miss it an awful lot if anything happened to it. And all of the people who I engage with through it. And yourself. :)
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Date: 2013-01-17 06:08 pm (UTC):lol: I don't know about glory days (I was always too shy, really) but it was fun.
Well, we're still clinging on to this sinking ship, and if it goes down, we're on Dreamwidth with a dinghy, so I think we'll be okay for a while longer yet.
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Date: 2013-01-19 07:25 pm (UTC)Sshh, I want to think of them as glory days that I missed out on! For some mysterious personal reason, apparently. :D
Yes, I think so. As I was just saying in another comment, I think LJ's demise has been a bit exaggerated over the past couple of years - there's a bit of life in it yet.
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Date: 2013-01-19 07:36 pm (UTC)Okay, I was just lying. They were great and you should have been there. I could have totally messed up your planet and you could have done terrible things to my ongoing character; it would have been great. ;-p (Round robins were like that. I had to take DWM up on their offer on NAs so I didn't ever again think Irving Braxiatel was somebody's original character who happened to be a surgeon at a hospital.)
Glory days, yes. :lol: :lol:
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Date: 2013-01-19 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 08:20 pm (UTC)And on the bright side, your planet is safe from me.
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Date: 2013-01-19 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 08:59 pm (UTC)Oh, and on that note a bit of gratuitous fanw*nk that I've been dying to share with somebody but haven't had the chance up too now. The drug "retcon" that Torchwood used to fling about with such abandon (known as "Compound R" back in the 1910s, in my fic anyway); it was surely made from some sort of secretion or something from the same species of alien worm Eleven was messing about with in the Xmas special. Now, how the Institute actually came by such a worm is probably a ficlet in itself.
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Date: 2013-01-20 09:23 am (UTC)Oh, that does tie up neatly, yes.
Now, how the Institute actually came by such a worm is probably a ficlet in itself.
Involving a lot of Torchwood agents becoming hopelessly amnesiac in the process, I would assume. (A ficlet? Some how I doubt it. ;-p)
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Date: 2013-01-20 02:34 pm (UTC)I think the thing is, you could either do it for humour or dead straight and unpleasant, Torchwood at is unethical science practices again. Although I think Torchwood should always be a little bit ridiculous even at their nastiest.
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Date: 2013-01-16 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-17 06:10 pm (UTC)Fandom Snowflake's been good fun & they don't mind anyone joining in late, so that'd be nice - it'd be fun to see your entries. :-)
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Date: 2013-01-17 12:38 am (UTC)And I still maintain that the Eighth Doctor comic strips in DWM are amongst the best Who that I've ever seen.
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Date: 2013-01-17 06:14 pm (UTC)Yes, I was never all that much into the DWM comic strips - but Eight and Izzy and that. Yes, I agree, out of the ones I've seen.
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Date: 2013-01-17 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-17 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-17 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-17 08:18 pm (UTC)♥
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Date: 2013-01-17 08:39 pm (UTC)Hope you get some rest. And: ♥
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Date: 2013-01-18 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-18 05:51 pm (UTC)