Occasionally Snarky and Meta

It's from 2010, when I was still in college. (I went to college for a very long time.) It's an issue I faced when a college professor incorporated fandom into a class of people utterly unprepared for it. I was talking about it with a friend, and decided to repost to look at the issue from current lens.

This post had very little context. I took a class on Digital Media, which ended up being about social media and various facets of online culture, including fandom. None of this was in the course description, so we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. The course descriptions were always so vague, they were the academic equivalent of clickbait articles at time. Except you know, we spent thousands of dollars instead of clicking and wasting a few minutes...

On to the entry. Italics is what I originally wrote.


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https://squidgiepdx.dreamwidth.org/297595.html


Skipping around because what is order, anyway?


Compare and/or contrast your very first fandom obsession and your very latest fandom obsession.


(Obligatory disclaimer: I talk about Harry Potter in this post. I in no way, shape or form support anything The Author has said regarding transgender and nonbinary individuals. Harry Potter was very important to me, and still is for the role the fandom played in my life. The Author is in the Azkaban of fandom, and I'm good with that.)



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 What would make you leave a fandom, or prevent you from getting into it in the first place?

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Snowflake prompted us to create fanworks, so I am writing a few Harry Potter drabbles, which I haven't done in about 87 years. It takes place at the aftermath of the last book.

This is also my chance to debut "Cora Chang," which is what I decided to rename Cora after realizing how... deeply problematic the name was. (If this is still problematic somehow, please call me out.)

Obviously there are spoilers for all seven books. No pairings.

(Feel free to be honest. These drabbles were all written very quickly, on a lunch break, so do bear with me.)

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Have you ever wished for icons for a character(s) or a fandom; art for a story, podfic or fanmix you’ve created; a podfic for a story you’ve written; or a story for some artwork you’ve created? Do you have a plotbunny you’d like someone to adopt?

Maybe you'd like to find more people to squee with over your favourite fandom; or someone to collaborate with over a project? If you are new to a fandom would you like some story recs, or communities to join? Or would you like some recommendations for a new fandom?


1. I would love links to fanfic - either your own or someone else's - that explores the canon, be it 'missing" scenes, what-if scenarios, scenes from the POV of other characters. My interests are Harry Potter, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Schitt's Creek, Buffy, or Firefly. Doesn't have to be gen, but can be. I'm definitely not one for romance-only fic. AU's are also fine, but less "they're all in high school" and more so exploring what might have been if such and such had happened.

2. Speaking of Firefly, I would like a complete fic that explores what the series may have turned out to be, if anyone has any recs? There was a "Firefly season two" fic probably fifteen years ago, but IIRC the project was abandoned. (No judgment, I'm certainly not one to talk.)

3. This rec is very specific: Someone posted a wonderful Hogwarts Founders' fic, but adulthood ensued and I had to pause very early in. Then technology ensued, and I lost the tab. Anyone know what I'm talking about? And/or have other Founders' Fic recs?

4. The ability to not be up at the crack of dawn. No one can help me with this, alas. ;)

Whether it is to fix-it, honor it, or expand upon it, canon is why we are all here. So, let's celebrate canon today and talk about our favorites. Nostalgic, new, problematic, or forever canons are all welcome to be loved, dissected, and discussed. Have a favorite scene? A much-loved character? A much-maligned character? Just love the whole thing epically? Talk about it all or as little as you want!

This is going to be multifandom. Alphabetical order. I'm going to give some brief, slightly random thoughts. Feel free to bounce off of them. Spoilers for Buffy, Harry Potter, Schitt's Creek. I also talk about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but no real spoilers.

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 From here. This is for a fandom challenge, so non fandom people, feel free to breeze past as it's pretty fandom heavy.


Hi! I'm author_by_night   aka AuthorByNight and a bunch of other variations.

I'm fandom middle aged; I basically spend half my fandom time lamenting that I'm the last generation who remembers going online until the streetlights went out. Or rather, until someone needed to use the phone. I spend the rest of my time trying to impress the new generation of fandom by telling everyone to "take it sleazy". For some reason, that hasn't worked. Beginning to think I need a new method. What music do young people listen to? Anyone know?  I want to be the cool mom, damn it! 

All joking aside, I'm not <i>so</i> old fashioned. I've gotten into watching fannish YouTube videos and listening to fannish podcasts, and I also love getting fannish on LiveWidth when the opportunity presents itself. I don't write fanfic anymore, but I've had the occasional impulse to do so. I have a WIP I really should finish. I stopped because a lot of really bad things happened in the world that were adjacent to themes in the fic, but part of me also thinks the fic needs to be written <i>because</i> of how dark the world has been. 

I'm your typical frustrated millennial who really hates being called one by other people, but still calls herself one. I'm a Hufflepuff version of Luna Lovegood with a sizable helping of Hermione Granger, and a little bit of Jess Day from <i>New Girl.</i> Writing is my passion. Owned by a cat who has tragically never been fed. Or so she'd have you believe.

As for anything else, all I can say is that I work for a top secret agency. If I told you anything more than that, Will Smith would have to wipe your memory. Forever. Also, that weird teacher in middle school may have been an alien. You didn't hear it from me.

Looking forward to meeting everyone, and to the subsequent challenges! :)

So I want to say up front that this isn't an "anti-" anything anyone else has done or any community has done. It's just my own take on a questions meme/blog prompts.

A lot of memes (fandom or not) ask pretty casual questions. Which are great for many people, but sometimes more in-depth questions are preferred. The object of this meme is to compile questions that are little deeper OR sillier. Obviously everyone's idea of deeper or interesting is going to be different, so no pressure. I want a mix. Ultimately, my goal is questions that lend themselves to conversation, as opposed to more brief answers. You can ask questions about fandom, opinions on various topics, life experiences, serious stuff, spiritual stuff, funny stuff, anything you like. Just try going for questions that lend themselves to more in-depth posts.


I figure I'll accept questions over the next month or so, depending on how many I get. Ask however many you want. Making it public so anyone can contribute!

The Sunshine Challenge is doing a color theme this year. I thought I would relate colors to mostly fandomy things, though not all of the time, and not all Harry Potter.

Today, however, I am focusing on the reddist of them all in Harry Potter: The Weasleys. It would take too long to talk about all of them in great detail, so instead have provided some brief thoughts on each Weasley, along with many treacle tarts and a cup of hot strong love.


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So Community is on Netflix, and naturally I've been rewatching. It got me thinking about my community college years, and the reality versus fiction. Of course, I will be doing my comparisons keeping in mind that the show diverged from any semblance of reality pretty early on.

As this is a public post, I am keeping things pretty general. For all intents and purposes, I will call my school MGCC - My Greendale Community College. Spoilers for all six seasons, probably? But mostly the first three.

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I'm making this post public. :) 

I believe that the concept of "parasocial friendships" is only gaining traction in popular usage, although the term itself has been around for some time now.  (As is often true.) Essentially, a parasocial friendship is one where you might feel very close to someone, but the closeness felt is very one-sided. This happens outside the internet social sphere as well, but I'm here to talk mainly about the internet end of it, as well as how making connections with people and engaging in discourse with them is more difficult than it used to be. 

Parasocial relationships include: Vloggers, podcast hosts, bloggers, and even fan creators who've also shared their personal lives. They do not interact with you, though - or if they do, the interaction is incredibly minimal. For example, I listen to a podcast where I feel I "know" the hosts. They'll like my replies to their tweets, but that's the extent of it. They don't know me. They don't follow me. This can even mean that it's easy to cross lines you didn't consider existed. At worst, people can become demanding. Sarah Z of YouTube talked about some of her followers demanding videos of her, the way you might jokingly bug a friend.  Except because she's not their friend, it isn't funny.

An example  of these relationships in blogging community is a popular blogger who posted parodies as well as personal entries on LJ around 2003-2008 or 9.  She was on my flist, but we barely interacted, at least as far as I can recall. I knew her best friend's name, I knew some personal things I'm not going to get into (even if she did post them publicly to her hundreds of followers, that still feels weird), but I was just another comment. And you know, that was fine. I LIKED her, but didn't really need to be friends with her. I just enjoyed her stuff. (ETA: Since this is public, I omitted the name.)

Conversely, there were creators I did reach out to back then where the  friendships were mutual.  They shared stuff, I felt I had something in common with them, we became friends on IM or on LJ.

The fun thing about LJ is that I sometimes knew people without knowing I knew them elsewhere.  For example, very early on in the Harry Potter fandom I read a fanfic that was amazing, one of my favorites, and much to my sorrow I never heard of the author writing anything else. One day I clicked on the link to the author's website... it was a good LJ friend of mine. I was like, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WHY DID YOU NEVER WRITE AGAIN?" because in that context, it was an entirely appropriate response. :P   

That being said, even seemingly mutual friendships weren't necessarily as close as they seemed. There were a few people who I thought I was close to, only to realize we really weren't that close. That's another phenomenon not entirely exclusive to the online sphere, it happens IRL as well, but I think lack of tone - and, at times, nuance - on the internet makes that even more of a challenge.  I found out one "friend" who wrote a fic I liked never liked me. I discovered a forum post where he said he couldn't stand that I IMed him. So don't give your IM name on the forums? Don't have conversations with me, which implies you enjoy my company? Whatever, his problem. The point is that it was complicated even when there was apparent reciprocity, because it was still one-sided even with interaction on his end.

Despite situations like those, I do miss the opportunities fans have to meet other fans through their work, as well as engage in fannish discuourse. Vloggers and podcast hosts aren't really trying to get to know their fans, the way a lot of people on LiveWidth and other mediums were back in the day. Twitter's algorithms make truly following people and exchanging conversations harder, because you don't necessarily see what your friends post, nor do they see yours. Reddit is very much based on upvotes and downvotes. It's also harder to engage in discourse due to the reactionary nature of so many websites.

I sometimes wonder if that's another reason LJ and DW are so quiet these days - people aren't meeting and coming here to engage further the way they were before. I've come across so many people who are shocked LJ and DW even still exist. They aren't realizing their favorite creators or random people on forums have LJ and adding them. Often, people aren't looking to meet anyone at all, as much as they are relaying their thoughts to a larger audience. Which, so we're clear, is not a bad thing - no one is obligated to socialize with anyone else, to exchange theories or meta with anyone else, to respond to comments or retweets. But there's far more of this one-sided discourse than there was before.

We're floating in the same water, which has its own beauty, to be sure; but it's not a communal beauty as much as it is an intuitive one, which can, at times, make it all rather bittersweet.