I have watched no tv in days and days, because this weekend is the Club Vivid deadline, hahahaha omg. So now it's not just vidding every weekend, it's vidding every night, until it's done or we kill each other, whichever comes first. (We're not at a killing place, but we haven't hit the point of trying to export VVC-ready files using our new software, or checking the vid on a tv and freaking out over the suddenly awful aspect ratios yet, either. So "finish or die" is still a tossup, really. Sunday's gonna be fun.)

But I must interrupt this tv-free vid farr to say:

YAY fifth season for Fringe!! ♥

I was crossing my fingers that the lure of easy syndication would win out over poor ratings. It's only a 13-ep season, but honestly I think that's perfect; they can hone it all right down without worrying about any filler. Woot!

(If you want to link to these and keep the cut tags intact for people, link to my front page or link to this archive page)

(disclaimer in part 1)

Finding fandom

It wasn't easy to stumble over fandom in the 1990s if you didn't have a specific interest in it. Which doesn't mean it was hard to find!

But fandom wasn't being talked about on tv, or in random newspaper/magazine articles, or being linked to off mainstream sites. Media companies weren't hosting forums to try to corral people's fannishness into appropriate venues, where like-minded people could easily find each other and link off to other more fannish sites; mostly TPTB were sending C&Ds to people who posted pictures of their show, and being very wary of this whole "world wide web" thing that was taking control away from them.


(source: a 1997 cache of the page X-File Fan Fiction Links, found on Wayback If you click that link, it will look different than my image; I made my browser's background black before I took the screenshot, so it would look the way it did originally. There were an awful lot of black-background XF sites around then...)

Most fans were careful never to publicly link back to (or even mention) fan sites, to protect each other. If there was a newspaper article about us somewhere, it got talked about and linked (or quoted, if it wasn't online) all over the place, as something rare and strange and worrying (journalists almost always got it wrong, for one thing).

(Fifteen years later, I still twitch when I see people linking to archives or vid sites or individual fanworks in public forums, particularly media-controlled forums. The instinct to hide was instilled that strongly.)

And really, everything, not just fandom, was out of sight in the very early days. The web was brand new, small, and scattered, and consisted of lots of little pockets of interest that weren't very well connected. Search engines were in their infancy, as well, and not everything was indexed.

But pretty much, all you had to do was look around on the web or Usenet for your preferred source's title, and you would manage to find something that would point you in the right direction.

( Online services companies )

( Links pages )

( Webrings )

( Fanlistings )

Where the fans were talking

Discussion was the primary function of fandom in the 90s, at least in my corners of it; fanfic was great and got devoured, but it was secondary to talking about the show. (Although for that matter, we also talked about the fanfic.) While there were people who only wanted the fic and ignored the discussions, there were also people who only wanted the discussions and ignored the fic. And where today someone watching an episode might think "I wonder what would have happened if he'd accepted the coffee?" and write a 600-word snippet about it, back in the day they were as likely to post the question to their preferred discussion place and start a conversation about it that could last for days. (Or vanish without a ripple. You never knew.)

So fans were talking all over the place, and there was a good chance you could find a format that worked for you; if you didn't want to talk, you could lurk and watch other people talking. Like anything else, it was 5-15% of the people doing the talking in most places, while everyone else lurked.

( Newsgroups )

( Mailing lists )

( Message boards )

( IRC and other forms of chat )

( Personal websites and archives for essays and reviews )

Where the fans were reading fanfic

To start with, if you were on newsgroups, mailing lists, or message boards, you were very probably reading fanfic there as well, either mixed in with regular discussion or on separate fic-specific groups/lists/boards.

Beyond that, the two main ways to find fanfic was on archives and on personal web sites.

( Archives )

( Personal webpages )

( Newsletters )

Monofannish or Multifannish

There's a myth that it was hard to be multifannish in the heyday of mailing lists. It wasn't hard at all, even before Karen's site; it was just that if you didn't have multifannish tendencies to begin with, it was easy to be monofannish and just play in the one sandbox that interested you. You could ignore anything that wasn't relevant to your own personal interests.

( Looking for more fandoms )

( Spreading the cross-fandom word )

part 1
part 3

Okay, what is going on with this show? I started watching it originally sort of intermittently, decided I liked it, and started watching regularly. And for a while it was great! It was your basic cop procedural but I like the characters, and it was all about Sam and G, and their relationship.

It was fun! Sam and G mooned around making eyes at each other; I loved Hetty, and Dom, and Kenzie was okay but not my favorite. And then they started changing things up – got rid of Dom, brought in Deeks, so we lost the chance to watch Sam mentor a young agent and instead got to watch a sleaze leer all over Kenzie. Awesome. (Yeah, yeah, sleaze with a heart of gold, whatever, I don't care.)

(Fair warning, this is long...)

( And then we get to this season. )

Via white_lotus, Korra premieres on Saturday, April 14th, at 11am E/P!

The Legend of Korra, in which the mythology of the beloved animated franchise from Avatar: The Last Airbender creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko continues. The series centers around a new Avatar named Korra, a 17-year-old headstrong and rebellious girl who continually challenges and bucks tradition on her quest to become a fully realized Avatar in a world where benders are under attack. The half-hour series will debut on Saturday, April 14, at 11:00 a.m. (all times ET/PT), as part of Nickelodeon's Saturday morning block (8AM-Noon), which has been the number-one destination for Kids 2-11 for 12 consecutive years and currently delivers more than three million total viewers each week. The Legend of Korra will air regularly on Saturday at 11:00 a.m.

Source: Nickelodeon Unveils Plans at Annual Upfront for More than 650 New Episodes Across Every Genre (Marketwatch)

About a month ago, I finally took the plunge and headed up to a local shelter, after months of waiting for the right moment and then weeks of dithering over the cats on their website. I dragged therienne along with me for moral support and drivingness (she'd been there a few months ago to get her new kitten), as well as the loan of one of her sleepypods.

She heroically stuck it out with me for about four hours as I wandered from room to room in an ever-deepening spiral of indecision, despite having pretty quickly narrowed my choices down to four sets of under-2-year-old pairs (I wanted a bonded pair to keep each other company).

But in the end, I went for a pair of 8(ish)-month-old brothers. <3 They'd caught my eye when they showed up on the website a few days earlier, and they were just as cute and appealing in person.

The adoption went relatively smoothly; they were swamped so I had to wait a while, then I got an adoption specialist who told me all the things I was supposed to do (almost none of which I intend to do), down to what brand and flavor of food to buy, and how to clean the litter. *eyeroll* But I nodded earnestly along, tried to clarify the slightly confusing medical records (which took a full month to sort out), and signed where she told me, and then a volunteer brought the boys out.

They were totally silent on the way home except for one forlorn meep from one of them about halfway home, and then were still totally silent at home. therienne and I figured that no one had talked to them when they were small. :( Poor boys. But they were happy to eat a meal, and explore my bedroom, and by that night were already escaping into the rest of the apartment any chance they got. By the next morning, I gave up; ~12 hours' confinement in one room to adapt to being out of a cage/in a new place was going to have to be enough.

I'm terrible at naming cats; my default is LOTR names, but none of the ones available to me really quite work (or I figure the vet staff would never be able to figure them out/spell them). It generally takes me weeks, and this time is no exception. There are still some alternatives that I may fall back on if these turn out not to stick*, but for now...

( Meet Darien, the lanky, flirty, ladies' man: )

( Meet Hobbes, the solid, affectionate, intrepid explorer: )

( Together, They Fight <s>Crime</s> Red Dots! )

♥ ♥ ♥

Hobbes has found his voice, at least a little; he'll let out little cries now and then. Darien is almost entirely silent, although now he'll let himself grunt when he jumps off of something and lands hard. I know he has a voice, though, because he started wailing in the vet's office when they put drops in his ears in case of mites. (Also, for a skinny, wiry, underfed cat, my god he is strong.) (Ahaha I wrote that before I took them back to the vet for followup shots; he outweighs his brother by half a pound now, having gained about 14 ounces while Hobbesie gained... 2. I think he no longer counts as underfed.)

( We had a bit of a health scare the first week... )

But the extended incubation period is finally over, with both boys still active and hungry and therefore safe. \o/ So now it's also safe to post publicly about them.

So far, it's all working out pretty damn well.

♥

* Okay, so maybe Legolas and Gimli are still in the running, a bit; as are Vinnie and Sonny, and Benny and Ray. But all of those have issues; Hobbes is really too cuddly to be a Gimli; Darien is waaaay too sweet to be Sonny; and I would be forever explaining to people in fandom that no, it's for Ray Vecchio, which would get annoying. And I refuse to call him RayV. So. Darien and Hobbes! (And yeah, I know -- but "Bobby" wasn't working, and "Fawkes" wasn't, either, even though Darien has a foxy face and foxy fur, so Fawkesie would be sort of awesomely punny.) back to the rest of the story

Fandom feed subscriptions are available on AO3 now!

Sadly, the site is slow as molasses at the moment, probably because everyone is hitting it at the same time trying to get feed subscriptions set up.

I don't know that I'll bother subscribing to bigger fandoms, but man, what a fantastic way to keep up with the small to middling ones -- god knows I never remember to go check every day, or even every week or month, but there are fandoms I'd leap on a new story in. And now I can! \o/

Hah and I got one some in!

ao3_havenfic_feed

ao3_alphas_feed

ao3_peacemakers_feed

ao3_personofinterest_feed

ao3_leverage_feed

This is so awesome.

(WIP notification subscriptions are also available, but that one doesn't affect me. *g*)

(edited to add alphas feed)
(eta2 to add person of interest, leverage, peacemakers) (possibly I should slow down with these...)

This just made my whole day.

I am so jazzed about this, I can't even say. cesperanza gives the full background here, but basically, once upon a time, she came up with this idea for writing tiny stories about characters in a Canadian shack, and shortly thereafter there were 101 little ~500-word stories in something like 60 fandoms written by about 30 people.

And somehow it has been ten years now since then, wow. So in celebration, she's created a new collection on AO3, for anyone who wants to contribute.

I've got two stories in there already, one Leverage and one Burn Notice, and a few more ideas kicking around in my head, too. (This is what happens with me and Shacks: I wind up writing in fandoms I've never written in before.)

Come play! These are a lot of fun, and very low-pressure. Just aim for roughly 500 words, stick your characters in a Canadian shack (no matter how unlikely that may be), and post to the Canadian Shack 2011 collection on AO3.

Help us get to 101!

♥

I was poking around some old stuff and found this post from last October that I'd written up but then never posted, for some reason, and figured what the hell. May as well put it up now!

( Assisted Suicide - spoilers )

Thank you so much! The thought of a story in any of these fandoms is already making me happy.

Usually this is where I say "whatever you want to do with them is great", and then put my specifics likes and dislikes under a cut for easy ignoring. I'm still doing that, with one caveat:

This past year has been pretty rough on me in terms of personal losses, and I'd really like something that falls on the warm / happy / fluffy / vanilla end of the spectrum, if possible. If that isn't something you can do, I understand; just please no deathfic or loss of a loved one, including pets; and no terminal illnesses of any kind as an h/c trope. Thank you. <3

I love all four of these fandoms unreservedly, so if you have a yen to explore the universe, or bring in additional characters I didn't list, it's all good.

If you want more information about my requests, read on - but please don't worry if your ideas go in a different direction. Optional details are optional! As long as it's for one of these fandoms, and uses the characters, you totally win at Yuletide. \o/


( my fic tastes )

Why I love these fandoms

(Alphabetical, not ranked by preference! I love them all. :)

( Burn Notice )

( Invisible Man )

( Night Court )

( Peacemakers )

Truly, I adore all these fandoms, and will be happy with absolutely anything you write, as long as you enjoy writing it.

And thank you, again!!