hanging my tomorrows on the bones of yesterday

Snowflake Challenge #5

Talk about what has improved in your life thanks to fandom.

1. Fandom taught me to interrogate a text. I can now to some extent see whose voices and perspectives are missing from a piece of media, which is a real skill for an autist. With some thought, I can pick out what writers are bullshitting themselves about being accepting of.
2. Fandom introduced me to more fannish people, who tend to be LGBTQ-accepting -accepting of me- and skew autistic. I would possibly still not know I’m autistic without maeritrae and those like her.
3. Fandom skews writerly and disabled, a thing which I also am. My ableism, internalized and otherwise, used to be way worse and I might not have survived the fibromyalgia diagnosis and chronic pain if I hadn’t already known folks who had similar stuff going on, who led by example how to accept yourself when your body is being a pile of fail.
4. I met my Boston Spouse through fandom, and so many friends I’ve kept up with through the decades. (My fannishness is now old enough to drink, zomg)
5. I have written fics and researched things for them that changed how I deal with people, with life, with my family.
6. I have read fics so profound that I had to reorganize parts of my life around different ethical lines.
7. Collectively, years worth of time reading fics and listening to podficcing and looking at fanart. Y’all are amazing!
8. You’re here. That’s got to mean something, too. 😉



Helpful reminder, if you’re looking to spread joy and make friends: Check out the comments on snowflake_challenge for all the awesome participants and visit their journals/challenge responses to comment on their posts and cheer them on.

snowflake_challenge #2: In your own space, write a promo, manifesto or primer for your fave character, ship or fandom.

I don’t know how to play favorites with people or characters or fandoms, but maybe a primer for fandom itself would have been nice, when I was still dipping a toe into these waters, not wanting to “bother” anyone with my unseemly and uncool enthusiasm for the X-Men fanfic I found on a web ring while researching a Gambit cosplay I never wound up making. (Possibly because I was too busy reading fanfic.)

So: you’ve found out about fandom! Welcome to the world of other weirdos! Pros: Some of them are just like you! Cons: Some of them are just like you!

Look, we English-speakers got raised in some fairly similar background radiation of imperialist authoritarianism, capitalism, and toxic positivity in the US and UK, and Australia wasn’t far behind us on that front. We all have a lot of similar cultural crap, and most of us don’t deal with it very compassionately. We weren’t taught how to, or even taught that we were being raised with these flaws in the first place. We had to fumble around on our own and figure out how to play nice with each other. So when you meet another fan who you’re not seeing eye to eye with, maybe don’t go in guns blazing. Maybe extend the same generous interpretation of their actions as you would have liked to be extended at the same point in your development.

So first: people grow better in the light of affectionate regard than they do in the harsh glare of shaming and being blamed for why we can’t have nice things. Even people who are obviously trolls 🧌 deserve basic human decency, even if you’re not going to give them the attention they are after.

Next: if your enthusiasm is not fun for other people, then you are hanging out with the wrong people. I get it, the weird cultural hegemony we live in taught you that being cool was equal to never getting excited about things, never caring enough to put your heart into something, never over-sharing or even just sharing. But fandom is a by-us for-us group of enthusiastic nerds, and we honor that by sharing our joy, not gatekeeping, and recommending the good stuff to other folks.

And last: if you think someone is being a jerk, you can tell them why that’s so, and maybe they’ll change their mind. But if you think someone liking something you don’t is what makes them a jerk, then maybe keep that to yourself? If they are not causing real-world harm to real people you can just ignore them. It’s fine.

And that’s it. That’s enough to get you started in any fandom. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

A Dangerous Sentimentality - part one of Vulnerability - Pepper/Natasha - 10k
Natasha’s friendship with Pepper Potts is becoming more intimate than she remembers agreeing to, but as a product of the Red Room, her memory has always been suspect.

Vulnerability In Extremis - part two of Vulnerability - Pepper/Natasha - 5k
In the life of Natasha Romanoff, master spy, this is a busy week for emotional revelations.

Brooklyn of Ample Hills Was Mine - abandoned - was going to be Steve/Bucky but never got there - 6k
In which Steve is suddenly female, half the Avengers are getting used to paradise, and Bucky Barnes can't believe they unfroze him for this shit.

let us end in it too - Darcy/Lady!Loki - 12k
If his time under the scepter’s influence had taught Loki anything, it was that the denizens of this benighted realm were just as broken and neurotic as he. If he looked even a little bit different, nobody would ever know it was him! He could hide in the leftover magical signature in this destroyed New City of York and nobody would catch on for a year! He could take a bit of a vacation from everything he was supposed to be.

It could be a spot of fun.

I want to do a thing, but I don't know what I want. Ugh.

If I can take the spirit of the Snowflake challenge into the rest of the year and keep reaching out to fans and building those network connections, it should be worthwhile? I know I should keep up a higher level of reaching out than I do most of the year, so I need to devise some kind of, perhaps weekly, Fandom Thing to do. Or see if there's already an ongoing fandom journal prompt comm or something to follow? I don't know. I have all these feels and nowhere to put them.

Maybe I will comment on two journals a week that I find via tag-browsing. As long as I don't put pressure on myself to friend and follow anyone I don't have rapport with, I should feel not forced to do anything and it will work out, theoretically?

In other news, cramps are so dumb. Just, mindless beastly things. Why, body. Why.

I feel like now would be a great time to remind people that raw pumpkin seeds contain naturally occurring interferon, which slows the rate of viral replication, and gives your body a slight advantage at fighting off viruses. Your local Mexican store may also call them pepitas. sabotabby pointed me to great research about melatonin which may also help to prevent long-haul covid.

Challenge #7
In your own space, tell us about 3 fandom resources, spaces, or communities you use or enjoy. (One or two is fine, especially if you're in a smaller fandom!) Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I'm about to dump some WIP fic and notes onto prospectus - a fandom community for amnesty where people can adopt your unfinished works.

https://www.fpslist.org/about-fps-list/
Fanwork Permission Statements list! If you are a writer or creator who has blanket permission to make transformative works of your stuff in your AO3 profile? Then here is a handy place to let the podficcing, fanart, and remix communities know that.

I am also a member of fancake - a monthly fanwork rec community, where we introduce each other to the good stuff of our fandoms. If you are in the market for a new fandom, the challenge this month is starter recs for people new to a fandom.

And that’s all I got.

Challenge #3: In your own space, put some favorite characters into an AU, fuse some favorite canons together, talk about your favorite AU/fusion tropes, or tell us why AU/fusions aren’t your cup of tea. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I have instead been thinking of the Witcher/Star Wars crossover meta I was talking to lilalanor about. ( Read more... )

For Reading Wednesday I am currently reading Brené Brown’s Atlas Of The Heart, and the sentence

“I am not responsible for your emotional reaction to accountability."

reached out of the page to hold a mirror up to my face so I could see the pained wince I was making. Because Ouch. It is a raw truth that I have not at all internalized. I will talk to my therapist about it week after next.

I will soon be reading Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg and the Culture series by Iain M Banks for Ghost’s and my book club.

There is a website where you can read / review and search for indie perfumes by note that I have been lurking on the last couple days. Can you tell?

Another housing thing, this time a class for homebuying.

The framework I want to use for the trauma-healing in neurodiversity interviews is grounded theory research methods. I will have to learn the math behind it during the later half of it, but for now I'm reading about how to ask open-ended questions about emotional subjects, to get direction without giving direction. I'm thinking of just keeping the questions as short as possible and letting people interpret them as they see fit, then just hoping it all comes tumbling out once people get on the subject.

And a random reminder: if you are writing a scene where someone (especially someone female) is being gatekept out of a fandom/sport/political/other male dominated space and you solve this by having her dunk on them with how much more she knows than they do about the subject, you are kind of missing the point. Yeah, it's satisfying to see people get their comeuppance, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still kinda validating the gatekeeping itself by implying that you should have to compete to "earn" your place in fandom or wherever. That's kind fucked up; let's not do that.

Let People Be Part Of Things 2K5Ever.

Do I join the comm and just recc a deluge of OT3’s, Foursomes, and Moresomes? Even though I will probably have very little to share for the other months? Decisions …