In a bit of "wow, sometimes the timing is just really good" news, I discovered a couple of months ago that the house I had lived in for 25 years caught fire in the fall, and while no one was hurt and there was no real fire damage, there was TONS of smoke and water damage, so no one was living there and it was undergoing unreal amounts of repair/renovation.
Kinda glad I moved out on my own the year before that happened, me!
I finally read Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser, a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder that had been on my vague list for several years. It was fascinating, not just for the background on Wilder but for the general history of it all, and especially the way it followed her entire life. Which, I know, biography, duh, but I read the books as a child in the early 70s and then watched the tv show not much later, and they were about Totally Olden Times and a generation long, long gone - but turns out not actually so much, really. Wilder died just a few years before I was born, during my oldest brother's actual lifetime. That is somehow a lot closer in time than my brain had ever parsed us as being before this. The early parts of her biography still felt like forever ago, but then it was also about things my parents lived through and talked about. It was weirdly hard to wrap my head around Half-Pint having electricity and a phone, but even more weirdly, it made it easier to grok the fictionalized-history aspect of the books. (Which Fraser addresses throughout, and it's clear that on some level Wilder was basically all about truthiness, which is just sort of mind-breaking. Stories were true even if they didn't really happen, or happened to different people in different ways, because they felt true emotionally.)
Anyway. The book is really interesting and I highly recommend it, although not if you're not prepared to see some serious feet of clay on Wilder about certain things, even though the biography is thoroughly sympathetic to her. The more personalized look at the history overall struck a ton of chords in me, with modern parallels that are just frustrating and fascinating. This has been sticking in my head a lot more than I expected it to. I don't want to turn this into a book report, but yeah. Highly recommend.
But! A week or two back, someone in the comments on a totally different topic linked to a different "collection" of posts by Devereaux, This. Isn't. Sparta., talking about all the ways pop culture gets Sparta wrong, particularly as seen through the lens of the movie 300. I started reading on a whim, figuring I'd see what the first few paragraphs were like, and then just didn't stop reading. It's engaging and well-written and interesting, and I wish he'd been writing the blog for five years instead of just one so I'd have more of an archive to catch up on. Good, good stuff. Also highly recommended!
Randomly: My decades-old degree in English has paid off once again, in that I was idly doing Washington Post crosswords the other night and as soon as I saw that I'd filled in "ode-n------a--" realized it had to be Ode on a Grecian (x), because of a paper I wrote 30-odd years ago.
The daffodils are blooming (see icon), but then the other day out on a walk with the dog it randomly started to hail very intensely. Ah, April.
This past week flew by, and I completely missed that the chocolateboxcollection was revealed Friday, whoops.
I wrote a tiny little Good Omens story for cupidsbow that I'm really pleased with; it's been a while since I played around with short fic, and I thought it was exactly the right length for what it was. It was also my first real foray into writing GO, other than a quick fill on rthestewart's Three Sentence Ficathon.
Just Right (307 words) by Arduinna Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Good Omens (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens) Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens) Additional Tags: Holding Hands, Scene: The Bus Ride (Good Omens) Summary:
"Don't be a ninny, Crowley," Aziraphale said firmly.
I also lucked out with two gifts, one in Hair and one a treat for Person of Interest! They're both about that shift from friendship to something more, perfectly suiting their respective canons, and they make me really happy. ♥ ♥ ♥
you who are on the road (1859 words) by evewithanapple Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Hair (1979) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: George Berger/Claude Bukowski Characters: George Berger, Claude Bukowski Summary:
Claude and Berger, crossing the border.
chance of rain (532 words) by ArgylePirateWD Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Person of Interest (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Harold Finch/John Reese Characters: Harold Finch, John Reese Additional Tags: First Kiss, Getting Together, Fluff, Rain Summary:
My company made donations to FRNSW and RSPCA this week, and has also offered to match any donations employees make to any group dealing with the bushfires. I'm not going to pass up something like that, and would be happy to direct my donation(s) to local places if you guys have anything specific to point me at.
Thank you so much! The thought of a story or art in any of these fandoms is already making me happy. These prompts probably lean toward fic, just because that's how my brain is wired, but I also asked for fanart for everything because art is awesome.
I love all 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. I would much rather enjoy what you wanted to create than think you felt obligated to do something just because of something I said. As long as it's for one of these relationships, I'll be happy. \o/
Ye gods, it's December already. This year has just vanished, mostly eaten by an endless reno.
But also eaten by a new dog that one of my roommates got this summer! She'd applied for three different rescue dogs before this one that had all fallen through for one reason or another, but this turned out to be the perfect dog and the perfect timing all around.
When we got her, she was about a year old and had just (like, that day) finished weaning her six puppies. She was maybe a little skinny, but was a solid dog, around 55 pounds, and super sweet.
She put on about 10 pounds in three months flat, and has gone from having a harsh, close coat to having thick fur and a ruff so soft and ruff-y her face looks fat.
I blinked a little at "fannish housekeeping" as the first challenge for sunshine_challenge, but I have to admit, it was a good one for me. I hadn't properly updated my profile in ages, and had never put together a sticky post that collated all my stuff. So yay, now I'm feeling all tidy. ish. Curious to see what the next one will be!
Me: Fandom is home, even when I'm not especially fannish about any one thing. When I am feeling fannish, I write fic, I vid, I write up occasional reviews of various things, I occasionally create resources and tutorials for various things. I live with two fans, four cats, and a dog, and will occasionally post about any or all of them.
I've also started poking at Discord, but have no idea how to link to myself there
Friending policy
I don't take access/subscription decisions personally, in any way. Add/deny/change/remove at will, no worries.
My give-access-to list is shorter than my subscription list; locked posts are likely to be personal, so if I haven't given you access, we probably don't know each other well enough for me to be telling you about my private life. (If we do know each other that well, feel free to drop me a note; I probably screwed up when I added you.)
Transformative works policy:
You can remix, translate, podfic, or make art for anything I've written - no need to ask. Please credit me as the source, and I'd love a link when you're done if you think of it.
I know it's very much not the case everywhere, but my area seems to have finally decided that it's spring for real, and we're having a brief, glorious day in the low 70s (~20C-ish), warm enough to sit outside in sandals and shorts and a tank top, which is exactly what I'm doing. Blissssss. Tonight there will be burgers on the grill, even.
I've been consuming tons of fannish media and just not writing about it, because it's been so fast. Saw Captain Marvel and enjoyed the hell out of it; saw Aguaman and not so much; watched most of the existing MCU repeatedly as mollyamory flings herself headfirst back into her deep, abiding love of Tony Stark. It's been really nice doing such a deep dive into canon; it's been a long time since I did that for any fandom, and I'd forgotten how much fun it is spotting all the little tiny things that you miss when you're not obsessing. It's a little odd in that I'm not actually obsessing like mollyamory, so I'm less invested than I'd expect for something I'm watching so closely, but that's it's own kind of interesting.
We even sat through the 2003 Incredible Hulk, which was worse than Aquaman. And yet unlike Aquaman, we watched the entire thing. I can appreciate the style Ang Lee was going for, but oh my god that was a boring movie. And if you're going to have that many Science Montages, either speed them way the hell up or find more interesting science. Also maybe find an emotional throughline somewhere. Maybe.
All the MCU led to other Marvel universe stuff, and we rewatched Deadpool. I remembered liking it, but I hadn't remembered how much. It shouldn't work for me; it's too violent and gory. And yet! They pulled it off with the style and the humor. Then on to Deadpool 2, which no one in the household had seen, and which hooked us right in with the opening and the credits. I am totally on board for Deadpool 3 if it ever comes out.
This ramble brought to you by fresh air and sunshine.
I'm still reveling in my sudden ability to be fannish again, and poking at all the things. There are a bunch of new(-to-me) tools out there for spiffying up the AO3 experience on desktop browsers, so I figured I'd share what I've found, plus a couple of old favorites I last mentioned in 2013.
These are a combination of bookmarklets and userscripts. The bookmarklets just need to be dragged to your bookmarks bar. The userscripts require the Tampermonkey extension to be added to whatever browser(s) you use. Once you've added the extension, going to a userscript's page will show you an Install button; click that to install the script in Tampermonkey. The script will run automatically on any page it applies to.
All of these tools are browser-specific. If you use more than one browser, you'll need to install everything you want on all of them, and customize them if needed.
Finding fanworks
The AO3's built-in search and filters have gotten even better (yaaaaay excludes!), but that's no reason not to customize things even more. With the add-ons I'm using, going to a fandom's works page (or any search-results page) gives me a list of results where:
This script also makes the stats line on the fanwork larger and pink, so if I'm linked to an incomplete work, I still have an instant visual clue that it's not complete.
Works that contain particular tags that I really don't like are collapsed with an explanation of why they're collapsed (they could also just vanish entirely, but I like the option of being able to click in if I'm in the mood) (Schegge's "AO3: Fic's Style, Blacklist, Bookmarks" userscript)
If you want just a blacklist without the added styling and bookmark functions, try tuff's ao3 savior
Streamline search
Works that I've already marked as seen (using a button that appears at the bottom of each work) and/or already kudosed are visibly marked on the results page, so I know what I can skip at a glance. (Min's "AO3: Kudosed and seen history" userscript
Works with a zillion tags appear with some of those tags hidden and a 'show tags' button for if I want to see them; if not, I'm not having to scroll past giant blocks of text. (You can set your own limit on how many is too many.) (Vannius's "AO3: Tag Hider" userscript)
If there's enough data for a match, it pops up a list of works that might appeal, each with a plus sign next to it. I can click straight onto a link to dive right in, or click the plus sign, which adds the work to a reading list stored on the browser's extensions bar.
If you go looking for userscripts, you may find the userscript version of GetRec'd. Don't use it; the creator has deprecated it and is focusing on the two browser extensions instead. The userscript version won't work.
That's before I even touch the filters - literally just on loading a page. Once the page is up, I can fine-tune the search/filters to a pretty amazing degree.
These are also all possible to do on AO3's more complete Works Search page, but having them available in the filters makes things a little faster. I'm not likely to go all the way to the Works search to add "only works with more than 1000 kudos", but with the filter box there I can just add >1000 to the kudos filter and boom.
Save filter terms
I can set up persistent include or exclude tags, globally or by fandom, so I don't have to keep checking the same box in the filter list every time. (tuff''s "ao3 saved filters" userscript)
Need kittens in everything you read? Add 'kittens' to the global box, and you'll get kittens every time you use the filters anywhere.
Hate kittens? Add -kittens to the global box, and poof, never any kittens ever again (unless someone didn't tag their kittens, always a risk).
Love vampire AUs everywhere except one particular fandom? Go to that fandom's works page and add (-"Alternate Universe - Vampires") to the fandom box, and it'll be filtered out any time you're looking for things in that fandom.
Want all the angst, all the time, in your main fandom, but not necessarily anywhere else? Go to that fandom's works page and add angst to the fandom box.
Save entire searches
When I have a search set up that I like, I can click a "Track This" button on the works page, and it will be saved to a "Tracked" box. (Min's "AO3 Tracking" userscript)
I can click on that box anytime, from anywhere on the archive, and see a list of the tracked searches (up to 25) that I've saved. I can either click on the name to go to the latest search results, or click "Check for new" to see if anything's been posted since the last time I checked.
You can track any works page/listing, whether you've run a search or not.
Right now I'm testing this on a collection someone out there is keeping of their favorite fics for [trope], as a way of finding some specific recs for that trope. This button has many possibilities, is what I'm saying.
Organizing/storing/saving fanworks
From the search results/works page:
Every listed work on a search/filter page has a button on it for downloading directly, without clicking in to the work. (tuff's "ao3 download buttons" userscript)
This basically clones the archive's own download button, so it brings up all the usual format choices.
Every listed work on a search page has a button on it for a fast, customized bookmark on Pinboard, without having to go into the work (Flamebyrd's "AO3 → Pinboard Bookmarklet Generator" - the page includes an option for the button, if you want to install the userscript version)
Every listed work on a search page has a button on it for fast "mark for later", without having to go into the work (Flamebyrd's "Read Later Buttons" userscript)
There are tons of ways to customize your reading experience. I wanted a few specific things: page-margin control, font control, a way to mark where I stopped reading if I need to come back to something, ability to see at the end of a fanwork if I'd already kudosed it, and an easy way to quote things in a comment without losing my place. I use three userscripts for all of that:
Fic's Style: Every fanwork has a small menu button at the bottom right of the screen.
Clicking that gives me options to
change fonts
change font size
change margin width
change the background color of the fanwork (not the entire browser page)
or reset back to defaults
Whatever you set will be remembered the next time you go into a fanwork, but with the controls right there on the page it's easy to adjust on the fly.
The userscript includes a handful of default fonts and colors for switching through; if you're comfortable in code, you should be able to change these or add more. But the basic set provides a good array. This script is NOT designed to be tweaked by casual users.
Mark your place: I also get a button at the top of the page that says "Full screen".
Clicking that pulls up a semi-full-screen page (the browser controls are still there, but things like the header tags are gone), with an Exit button at the top and two small controls added at the bottom left: a caret (^) and a plus (+) sign.
The caret is a "go to top" link; the plus sign adds a 'bookmark' for whatever spot you're at when you click it.
You can only have one bookmark per fanwork, which also means you can mark your place as you go if you're worried about crashes or interruptions. The bookmark will update itself to the new position every time you click the plus sign.
Once you have a bookmark or two, you can click on the Bookmarks link in the nav menu across the top (next to Fandoms | Browse | Search | About), and it will show you a list of the works you've created bookmarks for.
Click on one, and it will open the work in the full-screen view;
Click on the "Go to Bookmark" button and it will take you right back to where you were
Meludame's "AO3 Kudos tools" userscript, which I thought was lost forever, and which I'm so happy to have found a copy of.
This script needs to be edited a bit, but is pretty straightforward. You add your own username where it tells you to, and if you've kudosed a work, it turns the Kudos button green and adds a green background to your name in the kudos list.
You can also edit it to highlight other people's names in the kudos list, if there are people whose tastes you trust and you want a quick glance in advance to see if they liked a thing.
AKA "the floaty review box" userscript. You may have seen this one mentioned around recently, which is how I found it.
With this installed, any time you open a fanwork you'll get an addition to the row of buttons across the top, saying "Floaty Review Box".
Click the button and a semi-transparent box appears, floating at the top-right of the page.
This is movable! I tend to slide it further to the right (under/behind the right border of the browser) so only a bit of it is showing, so it doesn't overlap with the text on the page at all.
It stays put while you scroll through the story, so you can easily add commentary as you go.
It even has an Insert box: select the text you want to quote and click the Insert box, and it pastes in surrounded by italics markers. You can then hit return a couple of times to add your reaction. You can do this as many times as you want.
Everything you add to the floaty review box is instantly mirrored in the comment box at the end of the fanwork, so when you're done you can either tweak it or post it.
One caveat: If you start typing in the regular comment box, and then switch to the floaty review box, your review-box text will not be mirrored in the comment field. You'll have to copy-paste at the end.
I was going to put instructions for customizing the things that could be customized in the post, but it got seriously unwieldy, so instead I'm going to put the instructions in comments, and then fix the links in the post.
Greasy Fork's AO3 user scripts, lots more than I mentioned here, including ao3-savior, a more fine-grained blacklist (and whitelist) userscript than the Blacklist I mentioned above.
I've been on vacation this week, and had intended to spend it playing around in layouts and webpages over on Hubzilla and basically trying to catch up over there. Instead I've been poking at AO3 customizations, and dusting off my old pinboard, and have spent most of the last two days sorting pinboard tags into bundles. This is ridiculous, and yet has made me so happy. \o/ I do not currently have so much as a single unbundled tag!
Which will change as soon as I finish sorting out the AO3 stuff (in this case in particular, a bookmarklet to post to pinboard directly from AO3), because the eventual plan is to have redundant copies of fanworks bookmarks & recs, which means there's an unholy amount of copying back and forth in my future. But they will be all tidy and organized, yessss.
I lucked out and got two stories, which was unexpected and entirely lovely. ♥♥♥
Angles and Curves (536 words) by SLWalker Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: due South Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Vecchio Characters: Benton Fraser, Ray Vecchio Additional Tags: Slice of Life, idyll, Yearning, Gen or Pre-Slash Summary:
On a cold Chicago day, Fraser reflects on both of the worlds he knows.
And
Lower Your Voice (678 words) by dragons_and_angels Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: MASH (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: "Trapper" John McIntyre/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce Characters: "Trapper" John McIntyre, Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce Additional Tags: Voice Kink, Episode Tag, Germ Warfare, Treat Fic, Chocolate Box Exchange, Infidelity Mention Summary:
Hawkeye persuades Frank to drink the beer in 'Germ Warfare' but across the tent, Trapper is getting other ideas.
And I wrote one:
Peace even in the storm (2000 words) by Arduinna Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Dead Zone (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Bruce Lewis/Walt Bannerman Characters: Bruce Lewis, Walt Bannerman Additional Tags: Snowed In, Huddling For Warmth, First Kiss, First Time Summary:
"Strip," Walt said, turning back to the wood and sorting out a few pieces that he hoped would catch quickly.
"'Scuse me?"
"I said strip." Walt looked at him again. "Look, there's no way this wood gets this cabin warm enough to dry out you and your clothes at the same time. The only way you're getting warm again is without wet clothes on. So strip."
This is a rarepair that had never even occurred to me, which usually means there's no way I'll sign up to write a thing, but I had a little headtilt moment when I saw it in the tagset and thought I'd risk it. I had a lot of fun revisiting canon, and turns out these two are a lot of fun to write together. <3
In summary: Chocolate Box was a lot of fun! Glad I played, will play again.
Oooh, the signal-boost thing works for AO3 collections, too. I edited this a bit to get rid of the "profile" and "join" links that got included because I also wanted the collection icon, but other than that, totally straightforward.
The Wayback Exchange is a fanfiction exchange for all those old canons you loved back in the day. Nostalgia's trendy now! Get with it!
This gift exchange is focused only on canons that are more than 10 years old. That means that for the 2019 round, the only canons eligible will be ones with no new material published or released after December 31, 2009.
This is an update to the update to astolat's bookmarklet for signal-boosting posts. It always allowed you to signal-boost from any page anywhere, not just DW, but ljwrites has added user name tags for almost every site DW has tags for - so AO3, pinboard, LJ, JF, IJ, DJ, DeviantArt, Etsy, Blogger, Ravelry, Wordpress, and a few more.
I've never actually done an icon meme, I don't think. So what the heck! torch picked these three for me to talk about:
Keywords: Snooch in the groove Description: Snooch (of Eben and Snooch fame) rocking out on a couch in a fab hat
I didn't realize I hadn't included the name of the webcomic in the description, whoops. It's from Two Lumps: The Adventures of Ebenezer and Snooch. I used to follow it compulsively, although I drifted away a few years ago. I made the icon because I just love the feel of it; Snooch is not the brightest of cats, but he's earnest and good-hearted and he's having such a good time in his awesome hat there. So basically, a mood icon, I guess?
Keywords: beanies Comment: made by cynicatlantis! Description: beanie versions of John and Rodney from SGA
This icon makes me so happy. ♥ It's art that cynicatlantis made for an SGA story I wrote, Candygram. Art for a story I wrote!! It's been almost 13 years, and it still makes me beam. It was a wonderful little round-robin of inspiration; mmmchelle wrote a story about beanie Atlantis (Inanimate), which cynicatlantis drew art for, which inspired me to write Candygram, which inspired even more beanie art, of which this icon is one piece. It's my John/Rodney and also general SGA icon, and I love that it's such a perfect symbol of the energy and glee of SGA fandom in the mid-00s.
Keywords: crusoe Comment: icon by fraught Description: Friday and Crusoe, head to head
This is just beautiful - warm and glowing and intimate, and a perfect capture of their relationship. I'm immensely sappy about this show and this pairing, and this icon makes me all *happy sigh* all over the place. They love each other SO MUCH. I use this one for talking about Crusoe (or used to, anyway), and for general aw-they-love-each-other things that I don't have more specific icons for.
And one bonus icon, that torch knows all about because she made it for me:
Keywords: hermit Comment: torch made this! Description: a tarot-card version of Linus from Peanuts, carrying a lamp as The Hermit
This has been my default icon since the day torch made it, which was a really long time ago. It's perfect for me. ♥
Ask in the comments, and I'll pick three of yours.
I'd seen a few posts about this whole federated fandom idea and thought it sounded interesting, if weird, and I was looking forward to seeing what shook out when other folks got further along and things were ready for using.
I actually told people, straight up, that I wasn't going to do any poking at it; this is too techy for me, I need a finished product, wtf is an instance, anyway.
Then I signed up for Mastodon (a twitter-like microblogging system), which I'd at least heard of, but the default interface was terrible for me and drove me right off. So then I clicked a link in cesperanza's comments and signed up for what seems to be the current fannish-testing-ground on Hubzilla, fandom.stopthatimp.net.
... Seriously, I had NO INTENTION. But here I've been for the last few days, and I gotta say, I'm pulling for Hubzilla to be the next big thing. I'll leave the technical stuff to other people, and just tell you why I'm liking the system as a user.
Customize your view
You can set your stream to sort in three different ways:
by "Commented date", which bundles posts and comments together and pops any post that's been interacted with to the top of your stream;
by "Posted date", which bundles posts and comments together and leaves things in chronological order by post (newest at top), regardless of if someone adds a comment;
or by "Date Unthreaded", which gives you a chronological order of everything without bundling comments to their posts. In this view, everything has a "view in context" link on it so you can click through to see what it's connected to if it looks interesting.
You can also set your homepage and stream posts to show with comments expanded in place (this is the default), or toggle the "blog style" layout where comments are hidden and you have to click through to see them.
Sorting by "Date unthreaded" ignores "blog style" layout and just gives you a raw stream of everything individually as it gets posted.
Write any length post you want
At least, so far I haven't seen any indication that there's a character limit on posts, or on comments for that matter.
Privacy settings
You pick the type of blog you want, and the system applies automatic privacy settings for that level of blog
You can choose "Social - Federated" to have your posts show up on other services (if fandom's going federated, this is probably the one you want)
You can choose "Social - Mostly Public" which is roughly the equivalent of a public blog on LJ/DW/Tumblr, where anyone can go see it
Or you can choose to lock it down further, to access-list-only but people can see that you exist in the directory ("Social - Restricted"), or to access-list only and not visible in the directory ("Social - Private").
You can install an "Affinity Tool" that gives you a slider that you can apply to each of your connections, giving them a general closeness level to you. When you post something, you pick the general affinity level that it should go out to.
You can install a "Privacy Groups" app that lets you create specific groups of people, like DW's access & subscription filters. This gives you total control over who's seeing your posts, and whose posts you see, much more precisely than the Affinity slider.
When making a post, you can also set an on-the-fly custom privacy setting, where you pick right then who can see a particular post, without having to create a new Privacy Group. You can choose as many people as you want here.
This also lets you you pick people to exclude from seeing your post on an on-the-fly basis, so if you're doing something like planning a birthday surprise for one person in your Friends group, you'd go to the custom setting, pick "Show Friends", and also pick "Don't Show [birthday person]". Again, you can pick as many people as you want to either Show or Don't Show.
Lots of other stuff: you have individual control over all kinds of things for each of your connections, including whether people can administer your channel, upload or edit files/photos to your channel, post on your channel (like posting on someone's wall on Facebook), etc. The system sets defaults based on the kind of channel you create (which honestly will be just fine for most people most of the time!), but within that there's a lot of granularity if you want it.
Image galleries
There are galleries for images! You can upload photos and arrange them however you want!
The amount of storage available will probably vary depending on what server you're on, but the capability is there.
Reblogging/sharing
You can reblog/share almost anything, including individual comments to any post. !! It doesn't seem to be possible to reblog the commentary someone else has added to a post, but I might just be missing something so far. If you hit Share on a shared post, it shares the original post. There's a clear description of who wrote the original and a link to view the original, so it's easy to see the conversation.
On the one hand, you lose the fun of reblogs that go off in their own direction with great commentary. On the other hand, you can leave actual comments, so the converstaion can happen in one place, without people only being able to see one small thread of it.
Cut tags/read more tags
You can do a single level of cut tag - I haven't found a way to nest them, or to have more than one on a post yet. But it's really easy to do the one level. You put the informational text you want people to see above the cut between [summary] and [/summary] tags, and that text will show up as regular text with a link below to "View article".
So I would write the above like this: [summary]You put the informational text you want people to see above the cut between (summary) and (/summary) tags, and that text will show up as regular text with a link below to "View article" [/summary]
Calendar
It comes with a calendar - actually, two calendars. I'm poking at this with a few other people, and it has some huge possibilities. Like, say, a fest forum that puts its dates up in its events calendar for its members to see and copy to their own calendars if they want more direct reminders.
And so forth. It's a sort of composite of LJ/DW, Facebook, and Tumblr, with solid default settings and hugely customizable individual settings if you like to be that granular. If you like journal-based fandom, it's going to be a pretty painless shift.
Which is not to say it's ready for fandom to shift over whole-hog; it still needs some hammering out, and fandom is going to want a lot more themes, and variations within the themes themselves, and how-tos on how to do everything.
But it has a lot of promise, and you really can talk effortlessly with people on some other systems (like Mastodon). You really can just pick up stakes and move to a different Hubzilla server ("instance") without losing your contacts. You can't track a tag per se like on tumblr, but you can search for something and see posts that mention it, whether in the body or the tags.
I'm really, really liking this, is what I'm saying. :)
It was forty-four years ago today Vidders taught themselves to play They've been going in and out of style But they're guaranteed to raise a smile So may I introduce to you ..... The act you've known for all these years? Media Cannibals Lonely Hearts Club Band
*Some of these vids have appeared online before as downloads. This is not the entire collection of fanvids but it does include some from the VCR-era of vidding.
I've been reading some of the posts about money and fandom that are making the rounds, and in the comments to fairestcat's post, people touch on the source of much of the weirdness in fandom re fanworks and money: old-school SFF fandom.
It's always been bizarre to me that fanartists could make money off their fanart, when fanfic writers were expected not to. (I should add here: I love the fannish gift economy, and thought it should encompass all fanworks, not just fic.) I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and eventually came up with what I think might be the answer. Or an answer, anyway.
So here's what I think happened: back in the day (mid-20th century), if you were an SFF fan going to conventions, there were three "paths" to participating. (Someone's going to come and argue that. I'm generalizing wildly here for simplicity. I know there were many ways to participate.) If you wrote fiction, you could submit it to magazines or book publishers, and go pro, and create content for people to talk about. If you drew art, you could submit it to magazines or book publishers, and also sell it directly to buyers at art shows at conventions, which were basically fandom's galleries.
If you didn't want to be a "pro" creating more content, but wanted to talk about fandom in general or the content that already existed, you contributed ("tribbed") to zines (APAzines, letterzines). Tribbers got copies, and other people could buy copies (of the letterzines) for the price of copying and mailing, basically. (Again, generalizing wildly, just to provide a sense of a common approach. Don't @ me *g*.)
Star Trek fandom branched off from SF fandom, and took a lot of SF fandom's terminology and culture with it, including zines. They were created along the old familiar lines: people who wanted to tribbed to zines, and got "paid" with a copy of the zine, and people who hadn't tribbed could buy it for cost and shipping. But in ST fandom and its descendants, zines were as likely to be full of fanfic and fan poetry as meta or analysis.
Artists could get their work out by tribbing to zines, or making zine covers, but art reproduction was harder than mimeographing or photocopying text, so artists also tended to show their work at conventions, which also got set up along the old familiar lines: an art show that allowed for sale or auction of the art.
And then that got embedded in the culture. Fanfic was part of the conversation, like meta, and you didn't pay for it beyond the cost of physically receiving a copy. Fanart that was in zines was also part of the conversation, and ditto.
Fanfic writers who wanted to be paid filed off the serial numbers and went pro if they could, just like in SF fandom. Fan artists didn't have as clear a path to a pro life, but could sell their art at cons. Even as fandom moved online, it was hard to show art, so art stayed outside the general conversation.
These days, art is a huge part of the conversation, and for the most part is free the way fanfic and meta are; you can browse around DA or tumblr (or you could, anyway, sigh) and see all sorts of visual takes on things. But because it was outside the conversation for so long, and treated as a sort of pro content, it's still much more acceptable in fannish culture to take art commissions, or sell art.
It's a bizarre difference in approach when you only see the existing conversation among all the creative forms of output. But I really think it goes back to those early days of creating something slightly different out of SF fandom's culture, and the translation just not being perfect.
A while back (in, uh... 2006), I got the urge to compile a master list of fannish things related to Invisible Man as a sort of snapshot of where the fandom stood at that moment. Or at least, where the bits of it that I could see stood. I never intended to keep it up-to-date or ever do an overhaul on it, mostly because holy crap it was a lot of work, and the fandom was already fading.
But trascendenza is hosting a watchathon starting in February, and suddenly I was digging it out. Because who knows! Maybe people will want to go looking for things, and not know where to find them!
So I overhauled it after all. I did not go looking for new things to add; this is still largely a snapshot of 2006. But I took out any individual links to fic or vids that can now be found on AO3 or ff.net; deleted author sites where all of the author's fic could be found on AO3 or ff.net; updated dead links to Wayback where I could; and deleted a couple of sections that don't seem especially relevant anymore (mailing lists that are now dead or full of spam; defunct del.icio.us tag searches - if anyone needs pointers on how to search pinboard for I-Man stuff, just ask).
If a link had vanished and I couldn't find it on an archive or on Wayback, I left it in, but struck through, to keep a record of what used to exist.
It is a cold snowy sleety horrible weekend, and we thought, what a great weekend to watch some movies on Netflix!
This seemed reasonable enough; the last time we thought that, we wound up watching Bird Box, which was really good. (In fact, therienne and I started watching that, and 20 minutes in decided we were probably somehow cheating on mollyamory, who is the actual horror fan in the house. So we called her down and started over.)
So, we were poking at Netflix late Saturday afternoon, and Netflix said, "hey, you liked Bird Box! You should totes watch "How It Ends". It stars Forrest Whitaker!"
Cool, said we - Forrest Whitaker is always worth it!
Yeah, no. Oh my fucking god, this movie is not worth it. What the hell even was that. I think they were trying to be atmospheric and mysterious and instead all they did was not tell a story of any sort. We never find out what happened, or how widespread it actually was. The ending was not an ending; the movie just kinda stopped. Are they safe? Are they dead? WHO KNOWS. WHO CARES.
I keep trying to write up summaries to explain, and it's just endless words that do nothing. Just. Don't bother watching this movie. Ugh.
We were so disgusted that we had to watch another disaster movie just to remind ourselves that there are movies with actual plot out there. Which worked out well for me, because we settled on Dante's Peak, which I'd never seen, and which was a lot of fun. And which had an ending! That made sense! \o/
In short, don't trust Netflix's algorithms, man. They lie.
(Seriously. "2012" was a better disaster movie than "How It Ends". And 2012 sucked.)
Day 3: In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.
This is hard - so many choices!
But I'm going to go with a pivotal moment in Haven: the first ep in season four. It tears down alllll the walls between Nathan and Duke, and it makes me incredibly happy.
I actually have a post mostly written up from, uh, 2013 that I never got around to wrapping up or posting (it was meant to be a post-YT reveals post, and I just never went back to it in January), so am just going to plunk that in here to 'splain. There are going to be spoilers for most of the show here: caveat lector.
Begin old post: ~~~ Things about Duke and Nathan I sorted out in my head (read: turned into headcanon) while rewatching (most of) Haven:
Duke is a romantic pragmatist. He likes being in love, he doesn't seem to really stop being in love (he never trusted Evi again after whatever happened between them, but I never got the feeling he'd stopped loving her, at least a bit). But the heart of him is about pragmatism and practicality, and using the tools at hand even when those tools are people (within some limits -- I suspect Evi's limits on that were different than his, and hence the breakup). Within those limits, he just doesn't take things personally, and he doesn't understand why other people do -- especially Nathan.
Nathan is a romantic idealist. He likes being in love, also doesn't really seem to stop being in love (he was still very fond of his HS gf, etc.). He's not a pragmatist at heart; he will use people if he has to but he doesn't like it, and he's bad at it (like, say, Jordan -- Duke could have charmed his way out of that reveal, because he would have played it lighter and looser out of sheer pragmatism, but Nathan doesn't know how to do that, and wound up hurting her badly as a result).
But they're both romantics; they both genuinely believe in relationships, genuinely value relationships - genuinely value each other. So they get pulled together along the planes where they align, and then something happens -- usually Duke doing something that to him is utterly normal, that reads to Nathan as something a user would do, something you just don't bring into a relationship you value. So Nathan shoves Duke away, in a move that seems utterly random to Duke, because why would anyone get that mad over [thing]? [Thing] is just... [thing]! It's no big deal!
But it's a huge deal to Nathan, who feels like all his trust has been thrown back in his face, because how could someone do [thing]?
And then they have a period where both of them feel like the other one has randomly and for no reason blown up their friendship, and they can't trust each other. And with every cycle of that, the barriers between them get a little bit stronger, because they're both Charlie Brown, trusting Lucy not to pull the football away, and crashing down harder every time she does.
And here's the other sticky part of all that, amplifying it: Duke's pragmatic approach to affection and relationships is almost identical to Garland Wournos's. So Nathan is super-primed to feel like the people he loves and wants to trust most just can't be trusted to put him first, ever. While meanwhile they're just baffled, because of course they put him first! It's just this other thing that has to get done right now, so what's the big deal?
(The day I figured out that Garland and Duke approached Nathan almost identically, I think I actually squeaked.)
So, anyway, back to Duke and Nathan and their push-pull relationship. We know that Duke came back specifically because of the Troubles; he already knew they were back when he arrived in Haven, because that was his only reason for coming back. Nathan didn't know yet. Duke and Nathan run into each other, Duke makes friendly overtures and invites Nathan to go fishing, Nathan says sure, okay, thinking they're reviving their friendship. Nathan then discovers that Duke asked him because he wants Nathan to flash his badge at the Coast Guard; Nathan is furious, they "beat on each other for an hour", Nathan's Trouble manifests during the fight (implication is that it's the fight that triggers it), Duke "doesn't even care".
All of that is Nathan's version of the story. But here's the thing: Nathan also says, at a different point, that he's never heard of a Trouble manifesting because of physical stress. It's always emotional stress, something huge.
Which means that Duke's "betrayal" is what actually triggers Nathan. Duke's friendship means that much to him.
I think from Duke's eyes, that whole thing looked a little different. I think to him, he had to go back to Haven, he ran into an old friend and invited him out fishing, with the added bonus that this friend could even wave off any curious Coast Guard cutters if need be, making for a nice relaxed day for both of them (because why wouldn't Nathan want to do him an easy favor like that? It's not like he was asking Nathan to help him smuggle something specific - just smoothing the way in case anything happened, like flashing a badge at a traffic cop and promising to make sure Duke drove more slowly). Then that old friend loses his temper for no reason, and they get into this ridiculous fistfight and now Duke's angry too, because wtf, this was supposed to be a nice day! Then Nathan's Trouble gets triggered, and Duke, who knows full well the Troubles are back, doesn't really blink; he knows all kinds of Troubles are being triggered, and he's extremely familiar with Nathan's. Also dammit now Nathan *can't feel Duke's punches*, and how is that fair?
Then Nathan stomps off and stays angry at Duke for two years, while Duke decides screw it, he didn't need Nathan as a friend anyway, so there. He doesn't even like cops.
Then Audrey shows up and smacks their heads together a few times, and starts letting them past that point. They start relating to each other on a more grown-up level; they find out things about each other that they don't turn around and use against each other; they start trusting again. Slowly, carefully, and with some backsliding, because their pattern is so well-established now -- but they're breaking it every chance they can.
Except third season, which is the point at which Audrey's been in town a few months and has started to trust Duke as much as she trusts Nathan -- and Nathan is still hugely aware that Duke betrayed him so severely that Nathan's Trouble manifested, so he warns Audrey, explicitly telling her that as best he can, and she... pays no attention, and keeps right on trusting Duke. Nathan's falling more in love with Audrey every day, and sees her setting herself up for a betrayal of some sort, and he's just so angry at both of them -- that Duke is probably setting her up, that she won't trust that he knows what he's talking about (he's known Duke for 30 years; she's known Duke for what, 4 months? 5 months?).
Nathan spends most of third season braced for Duke's next big betrayal -- and Duke doesn't betray him, or Audrey. (Which is because his pragmatism is aligned with their goals, pretty much, but also because he really is more willing to just help now, and Nathan has had to learn something about pragmatism since he became Chief [not to mention how his handling of Jordan was basically him trying to channel both Garland and Duke through himself, with wretched results, but he can't really throw stones about using people now].) ~~~ End old post!
So, yeah - there's just so much history between these two, going back forever. There's the first three seasons of the show, which took 3 years in real time but only about six months in show-universe time (so everything that happens in the first three seasons is still pretty fresh and raw all the way through).
And then at the end of s3, Duke and Audrey vanish into the Barn. *poof*
So s4 starts up, and we find out it's months later. Duke is thrown out of the barn in another state, thinking it's only been a few hours. Things Happen and he makes his way back to Haven, looking for Nathan; the Teague brothers tell him where to look, but warn him that Nathan has changed.
Duke goes off and finds Nathan in the midst of a group of burly men, scruffy and bruised and careless, taking money off these guys by betting them he can take whatever punch they throw at him. The woman Duke has been traveling with is all, "... that's your friend?" Duke sort of winces and says, "We're... complicated." Then he borrows a $20 and walks up behind Nathan, who's taking a break to have a swig of beer.
And I interrupt myself to say - I love that borrowed $20. They are complicated, and Duke is a pragmatist, and he's totally prepared to buy a few minutes from Nathan if he has to. <3
Anyway, so Duke says something, and Nathan recognizes his voice, and his eyes go so, so hopeful. He spin around and grabs Duke by the arms, lighting up all over his face, and then pulls Duke into the fiercest, happiest bearhug ever, tightening his arms even more when Duke hugs him back, and making little noises of pure joy.
Here's where I steal from another post I actually did make that same year: ~~~ This season has been a Duke/Nathan slasher's dream, from the moment Nathan turned around to see Duke and reacted with completely nonverbal sounds and one of the best hugs I've ever seen anywhere. ... I may have watched it a few times since then.
That hug makes sense from Nathan's POV, where he's spent six months thinking Duke was dead and it was his fault, but for Duke, it's been a few hours, maybe a day tops, since he's seen Nathan, at which point they were at their normal levels of semi-grudging trust and working together. But he sees Nathan's face light up at the sight of him, and that triggers an identical reaction in him; he lights up right back, and he may not quite be trying to crawl into Nathan the way Nathan's trying to crawl into him, but he doesn't let go, even though Nathan smells bad.
And they never go back from that point. They've had other moments of relative peace and harmony in the past, but they're just moments, and then the protective walls go back up. This time, it's like they both decided oh well, the cards are all on the table now -- they really do mean that much to each other, and they both know it. So they just move forward from there.
I'm tempted to go all gushy and say all they ever needed was one moment like that, of pure trust and love, but I don't actually think that's true. I think they needed the last few years of history to make that moment possible in canon.
And then we get things like Duke backing Nathan's play in a heartbeat, even though he first doesn't believe him, and then thinks Nathan's out of his mind and tries to keep convincing him it's a bad idea. But even then, publicly he's still backing him, even if it means coming up with yet another lunatic plan later, to the point that other people tell him outright they know he's just doing or saying whatever to protect Nathan, which. ♥
We get Nathan trying to stop Duke from risking death to save Nathan, with the weird angry living blood trouble thing; and Duke whapping his arm away and then absorbing all the weird angry blood anyway, because he knows what that blood wants to do to Nathan, and at least he has a shot of surviving it.
We get that fantastic moment on the hill, with all the Guard around wanting to kill Nathan, and Duke absorbing some Troubled blood and yelling "Run!" and Nathan just BOLTING, without a blink, totally trusting Duke to have his back and to know what he's doing.
We get Duke just assuming the role of Nathan's de facto partner in the first part of the season (and again later, when Audrey's out of commission), with both of them accepting it as perfectly normal (and again, not just them, but everyone else; the vibe between them is so relaxed and simpatico at this point it's amazing). He even makes sure that Nathan's coffee can't accidentally scald him before he hands it over.
We get that moment when Duke actually tells Nathan he's good at his job -- not mockingly, not even teasingly, just a straight-up "the thing you're good at is solving cases and finding people" -- and even though the way he does it sounds like it could be a setup, Nathan doesn't think he's being set up, he trusts that this is a genuine conversation. We get Duke and Nathan having a nose-to-nose, heart to heart convo about how Nathan wants Duke to protect "Lexie" when he's gone, while earnestly telling Duke that he *will* stop the Troubles, and Duke quietly and sincerely saying "I know you will". Oh my heart, the trust, the belief.
And later, when Duke has killed Wade and is grieving and angry and freaked out and lashes out at Nathan and Audrey, Nathan doesn't go defensive or angry; he acknowledges that Duke's saying some true things, and then when he realizes that Duke's Trouble is gone and figures out that Duke must have killed Wade, he just sort of absorbs it; he doesn't go all cop on Duke, he's just there for him. (... which, okay, is sort of being a terrible cop, but in Troubled Haven terms, makes me kinda melt.)
We get Duke, who for seasons now has been saying he doesn't want to help people, eyerolling at the sky and plaintively wanting to know why everyone always thinks he wants to help, telling Jennifer that when he was a kid, he's the one who carried Nathan to the hospital when he broke his arm -- and even more tellingly, that's how he differentiates himself from Wade, who freaked out and didn't help at all. That childhood moment was defining for Duke.
And most of that is just the first few eps of the season, as they turned themselves into this tight little unit of two, even with the other people swirling around them, even as they made room for Jennifer and "Lexie", even as Duke's brother showed up trying to reconnect, even as Dwight tried to reintegrate Nathan into Haven PD.
I have been eating this season up with a spoon, man. ~~~
So, yeah. Haven S4E1, where Duke and Nathan drop their prickly facades and embrace the relationship that'd been lurking under the surface the whole time. Making me an incredibly happy fan in the process, heh.
(... so much for combining days to catch up. I think I'll be doing this thing till February at this rate!)
Let's see if this year I can actually manage to post something for this. :)
I'm way behind, so I'm combining a few days as I go.
Day 1 Talk about your Happy Place - the things that give you joy, calms you or keeps you sane.
For literal places that make me happy or calm me, water would have to come first. Any body of water, but especially the ocean. I love looking at water, and being near water, and being on water, and being in water. I've lived my whole life less than 25 miles from the ocean (barring a stint in college when I was 80 miles away), and just knowing that it's right there and I could go look at it anytime is completely grounding to me.
Day 2 Rec at least three fanworks that you didn’t create.
Have some Yuletide!
Better cheated to the end by Damkianna Fandom: The Sting (1973) Relationship: Henry Gondorff/Johnny Hooker Characters: Henry Gondorff, Johnny Hooker Additional Tags: Trust Issues, Light Angst, Rescue, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Yuletide Treat Summary:
He probably should have known right then, the moment he saw them. Down the street some distance, crowding around the mouth of a narrow little alley. The way they were standing said trouble, sure enough: looming, tense shoulders and jutted-out chins, brief sharp movements of their hands and arms.
He should have known trouble meant Johnny.
But he didn't think of it, didn't realize. He saw there was somebody cornered, getting shoved around a little—and it wasn't till one of them finally threw a punch, knocked that somebody's hat off and gave Henry a nice clear view of a flash of wheat-gold hair, that Henry felt his breath hitch and fumbled his way into motion.
My rec: Wow, this just feels so real and so right. ♥ The language and voices are bang on; I completely buy Henry's POV here. It's a thing of beauty.
Battle Lines by petrichoral Fandom: Gilgamesh Fandom: The Epic of Gilgamesh Relationship: Enkidu/Gilgamesh (Mesopotamian Mythology) Characters: Gilgamesh (Mesopotamian Mythology), Enkidu (Mesopotamian Mythology) Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Alternate Universe - Space Summary:
Gilgamesh, legendary space general and ruler of Uruk Prime, has an unexpected encounter with a pirate.
My rec: This is amazing. It is The Epic of Gilgamesh in space, which is not a thing I ever knew I wanted or needed until I read this. Or, as I said in my comment: "Oh my god, this is amazing and perfect. Wow. Oof. I didn't think the raw physicality and power of the original could be translated to a space AU, but wow was I wrong. *flail*" 'Cause yeah. That.
The Christmas Present (5090 words) by SunlitStone Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Temeraire - Naomi Novik Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Iskierka & Temeraire, John Granby & Iskierka, William Laurence & Temeraire, Temeraire & Tenzing Tharkay Characters: Temeraire (Temeraire), William Laurence, John Granby, Tenzing Tharkay, Iskierka (Temeraire) Additional Tags: copious application of dragon logic Summary:
"A present," Temeraire repeated. "The white stag. To...show our appreciation of him as our host."
"That seems very foolish."
Temeraire sniffed. "I would not want people to think my host did not have enough things, or sufficiently fine ones."
"Oh, very well," grumbled Iskierka, sounding disgruntled in her turn. "I suppose you are right. I will have to join you."
"No you will not!"
"I will; you are right; there is nothing else for it."
Or: Temeraire and Iskierka discover (something adjacent to) the true meaning of Christmas.
My rec: A slightly lighter note than the last two! This is charming, and "copious application of dragon logic" says it all, really. Written in wonderful Temeraire POV, and a delight.
Thank you so much! The thought of a story or art in any of these fandoms is already making me happy.
I love all 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. As long as it's for one of these fandoms and relationships, I'll be happy. \o/
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