somniloquence

First, my friend spasticat is struggling right now, and could use some $$ help until she can find a new job. She has a link to her post about it here, if you can help.

Second, I haven't been doing these types of memes for a long while, but these days I feel like I can use all the positivity I can get, so I'm doing the fic positivity dreamwidth meme.

COME PLAY @ THE [ FIC POSITIVITY FEEDBACK MEME ]
my thread here

Third, nothing special, I just wanted to share the incredibly sweet thing auslandischwasser sent me the other day. It's a copy of the huge Stucky fanbook Not Without You, a copy of dorkbait's beautiful Inktober drawings collection Saudade, a really neat historical photos collection about Coney Island and the area, and a Bucky!Cap Funko Pop bobblehead. Isn't that so incredibly sweet and thoughtful? She even took the time at the con she picked up the first two things at to have Saudade signed.

You know, I'm well aware that I'm not the kind of fan writer that people go "oh, she posted a new story, I'm going to go read immediately." But having someone say they saved your story till they ran out of good fic is…just astoundingly tone-deaf, nasty, and demoralizing.

Thursday I'm having a dreaded medical procedure that I've been avoiding for years. Now that I'm officially an Old, my doctor's wanted me to have a colonoscopy, especially since my twin died of cancer, any kind of screening test is pretty important--and we don't know any other medical family history, since I'm adopted. I really, really hate bodily functions things. Like, I'm nearly phobic about talking about it, and I flap my hands and sing la-la-la really loudly whenever people talk about it. So I really, really do not want to do this, but since the fucking Republicans are determined to take away any health care I can have, and I earned so little the previous year that I qualified for a lower deductible, my doc and I decided to take ALL the tests this year. I just had a new MRI for my back (nothing useful, still nothing to be done that will really help), and now this, and there's some other things I'm hoping to do later on while I have the chance.

I have a bit more to write on the next chapter of Celluloid Hero and then should be able to send to beta and post, then I have to get started on the pod-together story, and meanwhile I'm desperately racing to finish this Star Wars vid for the Premieres show at Vividcon. Still have a little under half to go, it's taking forever and making me cry. Why can't I find a nice, horizontal hobby where I can lie down and not be in agonizing pain?

I guess because I don't have enough on my plate stressing me the fuck out lately all the time, I've decided to sign up for the pod_together challenge where writers and podficcers work together to create something specifically to be podficced. I've never done any challenges besides Yuletide until the Stucky Big Bang last year, and I'm doing the Cap Reverse Big Bang (my posting date is June 12, just saying--I don't expect this fic to go anywhere, but at least now I can say I've done something other than the disastrous SBB). This seemed different, and I figure it's probably one of the few shots I have at seeing something podficced--part of the fun is the idea of seeing if I can create something with that in mind, it really does feel like a challenge. Plus it's smallish, so that's helpful, and the minimum word count is 1,000, which is doable even with all the stress stuff. Most of which should be done by the time I'd need to write. (If you're interested in the challenge, signups look like they close June 3, so still a couple days.)

There's something really squeeful, for me, about having fanworks of your fanworks, maybe you get jaded and it's no big deal when it happens a lot to you, but it's so rare for me that I still get excited. Which I wish I didn't--in the past year or so I've been told that someone podficced Dream of Caramel: or, a Recipe for Disaster like, over a year ago, but that they had to edit it and at this point I've come to accept that it will never see the light of day; I've had at least four people ask if they could translates fics into Russian, and got really excited about that, but again, they will likely never see the light of day; and had someone mention wanting to make a playlist, and again…you get the picture. I should know better than to get excited, and yet every time I do, and every time I get disappointed and then feel like a putz for doing so. It's not that I can read the other languages, it's just…it's the thing I love most about fandom, this unique fannish thing where we create works off of each others' works, a circular world where we're in cahoots. The podfic thing is the heartbreaker, for me--I could actually listen to that, and that story in particular always seemed like it could be fun because it has a built-in soundtrack, and I get sad every time I think about it. Anyway.

The Vividcon premieres vid is not…going. And the deadline is fast approaching, I don't know if I can do this in the time I have. I still don't have the original trilogy footage. Arg. I'm in full panic mode right now, I also found out that the copy of the particular remix of the song I have is protected, it's so old--back when iTunes put restrictions on using the songs. So I have to deal with that too. It's easy to find other remix versions but the one I want is harder to find. I hate everything right now.

The vertigo is getting a little better--there are moments where it's still unpleasant, usually when I'm getting up from bed or a chair, but yesterday I was able to get through the whole day without feeling like I was going to ralph if I moved too quickly. I still can't walk a straight line, and have to be careful not to tilt my head up or down much, but maybe it's on the mend? Who knows.

Skipping ahead again, because I'm so behind:

Day 13
In your own space, write about a moment in fandom that meant a lot to you. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

A long, long time ago, when tapes were still the norm for people trading vids and there really was no viable streaming medium (and anything you put online had to be super low quality and the size of a postage stamp), feochadn and I were finishing up compiling a bunch of vids for what would become our first collection together, primarily because I really wanted a way to get our Magnificent 7 vids out there and Jo's Band of Brothers vid to Ebben? Ne andro lontana. I'd posted asking if people would be interested in a collection, and because she is one of the kindest people on the planet, killabeez offered to make us a DVD if anyone would prefer that instead of videotape. The times, they were a-changing, but there were still just as many people who had no way to play discs as had no way to play VHS tapes, and I was so blown away that not only could someone take our VCR-made vids and make a playable DVD but that she was volunteering to do so.

I made a poll to see how many people would prefer discs and there were enough, so we put together a master tape with all the vids, and sent them off to killa, and she sent me a test disc and I couldn't believe my eyes! It was magic! Sorcery! I had only just gotten a computer that was capable of vidding, but here were vids on a lossless medium! It was amazing. And then on top of that she created the title cards for each of the vids and I think if I recall correctly duplicated them for us so we could mail them out to people who had purchased them. It was amazing! And all I could do really was write fic with a pairing she liked, which still feels wholly inadequate. But it meant so much to me--I didn't have the technology, but I knew people were interested in the vids, and I wanted to move into the 21st century, but I didn't know how, and like so many times since then, killa's been my guiding light about how to do that, has helped me through tech problems that I don't know how to solve myself. ♥ ♥

Today's question from sholio : If you had been in fandom when you were a kid, what shows would you have been fanning on, and what kinds of things would you have looked up for them?

I used to actually write stories, sometimes on paper, sometimes just in my head, for my favorite shows and movies when I was little. The first thing like this I know of I wrote when I was five--a little Hound of the Baskervilles remix, I suppose you could call it, of the Mickey Mouse and Goofy version. We found it when we were going through my mom's things after she died, and I laughed my ass off because…wow, even though I didn't know about this kind of fandom till I was in my twenties, apparently I was a little fanfic writing fangirl as a child.

I also still have the record albums my sister and I wrote all over with ballpoint pen--the first two Monkees albums; we put hearts and stars and shit all around the names of the guys we liked best (she was a Davey Jones girl, I went for Mike and Mickey). I was fucking obsessed with that series, and their music, I really was. I still love it, unironically, unashamedly. If we'd had internet then, I would absolutely have been following them on social media, and buying all the weird merch, and going to shows, and whatever else was out there. As it was all we had was Tiger Beat and 16 magazines, so I had to get my fixes there.

I also would have been writing fanfic and vidding, I'm sure, for this incredibly obscure western called Laredo. No one knows about it, but for some reason my sister and I were obsessed with it, which was difficult because my mother pretty much banned westerns from our television--my sister and I wanted to watch Bonanza and the Rifleman and stuff like that, but my mom had this deepseated antipathy toward any show where anyone used the words "ma" or "pa" and so it was rare for us to be able to watch those things. There was very little written about it, and I think we found it after it had gone off the air and was being shown in reruns on a Saturday afternoon or something--that was the one time Mom wasn't dictating what we could watch, so I think that was how we found it.

It was a strange show, in that it was tonally different from anything else you'd find on TV then--not quite a dramedy, but definitely a comedic hour-long series. The two main characters were complete hotasses, and even my young self was wide-eyed at William Smith's pecs and biceps and traps, and he wore pants that rivaled Jim West's in tightness, BUCKSKIN pants that were deliciously tight, and he had that Chris Evans Dorito shoulder to waist ration. So much of the series makes me cringe now, the racism and the sexism and all of that '60s era shit, but man, little me loved it, and I'd have been all over fan sites if I could have.

There were a lot of things I was actively fannish about without even knowing that a thing like fandom existed--my walls were littered with the pullout posters from Tiger Beat (sigh, David Cassidy), I'd write in for giant posters of actors like Paul Newman, and I collected clippings in scrapbooks and stuff. I was a budding film buff as young as ten, so I was starting to research movies and collect things about them, and the movie stars, and the musicians I liked. I think that's why I know I'm never going to be able to fully disinvest from fandom--I've been this way my whole damn life, without even knowing that such a life existed.

___

ETA: Did anyone else get a kudos email today from AO3? Man, I finally have some kudos and I still don't get an email even when I have some! I'm used to going days and days without any kudos, but it would have been a nice thing today except that there's been no sign of one, it's almost midnight, and I can't find anything about it on the twitter feed so I assume everything's fine.

Day 4

In your own space, create a fanwork. Make a drabble, a ficlet, a podfic, or an icon, art or meta or a rec list. Arts and crafts. Draft a critical essay about a particular media. Put together a picspam or a fanmix. Write a review of a Broadway show, a movie, a concert, a poetry reading, a museum trip, a you-should-be-listening-to-this-band essay. Compose some limericks, haikus, free-form poetry, 5-word stories. Document a particular bit of real person canon. Take some pictures. Draw a stick-figure comic. Create something. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Well, this one's a lot harder. I'd love to write something ficcy, but after four stories in four weeks plus a vid, I'm running on empty right now and trying desperately to get something going on a fic I left off a while ago.

But I've been meaning to write this meta post for a long time, so…


I've been thinking a lot about how fandom, specifically this corner of fandom that sprang from the early days of Star Trek (when at that time, fan culture predominantly revolved around literature in the science fiction and fantasy realms), has become mainstream. Enough so that now publishers are taking fanfic, filing off the serial numbers, and publishing it as original fiction, and Entertainment Weekly is hosting a fanfic contest, and Amazon's trying to capitalize on fandom with a fanfiction publishing scheme. Fewer and fewer fan-run cons that are just for fans are happening; these days it's all about the huge ComicCons and Wizard Worlds, where people have to pay big bucks for the opportunity to see their favorite celebs. Money is king at the sites where fans have mostly migrated, such as Tumblr and Twitter and Facebook, who only care about advertiser investment. Any of us who post vids to YouTube or Vimeo know how quickly a vid will get banned or blocked or just disappeared--all because of license agreements with music companies (mostly, some video producers will do it too), historically the most notorious business for screwing people over for what they perceive to be a profit threat.

And the newer generation of fans, man of whom have no idea of the history that's out there and may not ever connect with other fans beyond follows and friends lists, who may never delve into the history of how hard fans had to work to have their creations shared, are often unaware of the fact that fanworks have historically not been public, have not been out there where just anyone could find them with a quick internet search. That a lot of people didn't even know what slash was, for instance, because zines had to be sold under the table since they were considered porn and a violation, even if there was nothing explicit in them. Or that most people had to buy tapes, and later DVDs, to find vids, because the equipment was monumentally expensive and difficult to learn and there was no such thing as streaming. Everything was done from fan to fan, and people had to connect with each other in order to get content.

And it was decidedly not public. To be public usually brought scorn and ridicule, and since so much of media fandom, as opposed to the SF or comics world, was created by women, we were even more likely to get scorn heaped on us. Sometimes people were even threatened by participation--I know of at least two people whose partners used their fannish activities against them in divorce proceedings, and one person who was outed at her job for writing explicit slash by someone who disliked her. Read Fanlore and find out about the actions Lucasfilm took against Star Wars zine producers. It was just not a friendly world at all, outside the walls of our little castle.

So it's been a hard road, sometimes, for people who started out when fandom was not talked about outside of fandom, when your porn fantasies or vids about your crush object weren't likely to be discovered by People Who Didn't Get It. We used to call those folks "mundanes." We weren't creating fanworks that would be read or viewed by mundanes, we were creating them for our fellow fans who squeed with us over the same things, who loved the same actors or musicians or athletes we did, who adored the same tropes we did. Who wanted to talk endlessly about the way those two characters gazed into each other's eyes or the way you just knew that the singer and the guitarist were knocking boots because of the way they interacted on stage. Who respected the boundaries of the fandom universe.

In short, to quote Dr. Frank N. Furter, "I didn't make him for you." Our fanworks are not created for nonfans.

The main reason I've been thinking about this so much, aside from things like articles about EW's stupid little fanfiction contest coming across my dashboard, is that a while ago I got the most delightfully hilarious comment on a YouTube video, and it reminded me that there are all these people out there now consuming our fannish content who just have absolutely no freaking clue that our content is not meant for them. They don't get it. They don't understand what fannish vids are, or what fanfic really means to the readers in the fandom. It doesn't stop them from sharing their opinions, of course.

So the vid in question was one I made a few years ago for Vividcon, a Miami Vice vid I've wanted to make pretty much since I discovered vids back in the early '90s. It was to Peter Gabriel's Red Rain, a song that was used on the show in one of the later season episodes. But that wasn't why I wanted to make the vid, in fact, I'd actually forgotten Red Rain was used at all until…I got this YouTube comment from an actor who was in the episode where it was used.

This is GREAT... But actually RED RAIN was used in STONE'S WAR episode when I killed Lonette McKee... Check out the episode if you can. It's a classic! As are all the Vice's Trivia... G. Gordon Liddy returned as Capt Maynard and played my handler in that episode.... Bob Balaban played Ira Stone.

So, I laughed and laughed and laughed when I got this. Because he felt compelled to tell me that I was using the song wrong! It was only used in that episode, and I messed it up by putting all these other episodes to the song! And clearly you never saw that episode or you would not have used the song incorrectly, so here it is, go watch!

It never occurred to him, I guess, that if there were clips from, like, 20 other Miami Vice episodes in the vid, that would mean I might have watched Stone's War (which, I did, when I first got the discs, but it's one of my least favorite episodes, so…). Fannish vids aren't a concept that he's familiar with, so he doesn't understand how clips are recontextualized in fanvids, how different stories are told using the format of blending song and video source material to create something new. He isn't the audience that the vid was made for. (I actually am not making fun of him for leaving the comment, I was flattered as hell that an actor who appeared on the show watched the vid--that show gave me a lot of enjoyment for a very long time and is one of my all-time favorites.)

But it really brought home to me how much the audience has changed for these things. A number of years ago, a friend of mine was caught in a really difficult situation where someone uploaded her vids to YouTube, didn't give an attribution, and one of the vids was an explicit look at a Kirk/Spock relationship. It went viral, and there was a whole kerfuffle around it that she never wanted, but the funny thing to me personally was that another friend of mine, who's only marginally fannish but loves my friend's vids to pieces, told me that someone had forwarded him a link to the vids, and made a snarky comment about the explicit one. He was like, "Yeah, I told them to shut their piehole and also that I'd seen them before and that I thought they were incredible and you're not the audience they were made for." In the years since that, I've seen this play out over and over again: mundanes discover fanworks, think it's hilarious and stupid, mock fans in public (or maybe worse, try to shut down the production).

This past year, when the Avengers actors were on Jimmy Kimmel, he showed some (thankfully not explicit) fanart of Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo's characters and seemed to be, like the dick he is, baiting them and the other actors about how stupid and silly and embarassing fans were, and when they came back from commercial break, RDJ and Ruffalo were gazing into each other's eyes, Ruffalo sitting on RDJ's lap, re-creating one of the art pieces shown earlier. And I don't know if they did it as a way to say "fuck you" to Kimmel, or they were mocking fans (with Ruffalo, I tend to think not), but it at least felt like they were saying, "Hey, it's our fans. It's okay. Let them have their fun, this isn't for us." And we've seen how the Sherlock actors were pushed to read some fanfic in public, as a way to laugh at and embarrass them and the writer of the fanfiction.

The fact that the lines are more and more blurry between fan content creators and general mass consumption work is making these things happen so much more frequently. Sometimes we'll get people who grok us, and love us, and support us (Orlando Jones, for instance, who was such a huge participant in Sleepy Hollow fandom). Sometimes it'll be someone like the actor who left me that YT comment, people who don't get it, but feel the need to share anyway, or my friend who told off a nonfan who wanted him to join in the mocking of a vid. Sometimes it'll be people who buy an ebook because it sounds interesting, not knowing that the writer is also a fanfic writer and that the characters are based on the ones they write fanfic for.

The genie's out of the bottle, and fandom is a public thing now. But one thing I see that hasn't really changed, over and over again, is that we didn't make it for them. We made it for ourselves, our friends, our follow lists, the other congoers, the person who has yet to discover fanworks but will when they think, "Wow, I love this, I want to read more about this or see more about this" and input a search, discovering a whole new world they never knew existed. It's that thing that people like my comment-leaver don't understand--fanworks are an invitation: Come squee with me.

ETA: This post is on Tumblr if you want to reblog it there.

So, a year ago a little movie came out and totally changed my life. I had been slowly getting back into the feeling fannish again thing with Pacific Rim, writing fic for the first time beyond Yuletide (well, I wrote one Pepper and Loki hanging out keeping vigil with a girls' night story after Avengers), but I had no idea the tsunami of fannishness that would sweep me away with Winter Soldier.

I should have guessed. I mean. I loved the comics, I love Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes more than I can coherently render (SebStan's been ruining my life for years, OMG his mouth, his eyes, his voice, his everything), and I had fallen in love with Steve Rogers somewhere along the line totally against my will, but such is the power of Steve and Chris Evans. My adoration of Natasha Romanov is boundless, and Scarlett, and so they are two great tastes that taste great together and she fucking owned that movie. And then there was the casting of Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson--when they announced it, I might have squealed to a level only dogs can hear. I'm not admitting to anything. Because I adore Sam in the comics and I adore Anthony Mackie and it was kismet, I'm telling you. Kismet.

But then. It was a '70s political thriller. Maria was in it! Sam Jackson got to be a major badass! Robert Redford was eeeeviiiillll. Frank Grillo! And Peggy fucking Carter still being awesome just lying in a bed, calling Steve on his issues. That flashback. To the end of the line. I just. I still cannot. I love this movie more than I can even say. I saw it 23 times in the theatre alone, and that doesn't count all the watchings in between of crappy cam copies until the DVD came out. I watch it at home all the time. It still hits me just as hard as it did then. I read fanfic at night before I go to bed--I hadn't read fanfic much at all for the past decade outside of Yuletide. I write. So many words, and I still have ideas to chase. I vid. It just hasn't slowed for me at all, though I'm sure at some point it will, and then I will be sad. I see people moving away from it already, and I get sad, because I'm just as head over heels as I was back then.

And speaking of fandoms, one of my old loves, Fast and Furious, came out yesterday. I'm sure I'll go see it, but I have a lot of pain, with Paul Walker being gone. I know it's gonna be hard. It'll be easier because the last two movies weren't quite as important to me as the first and the fourth, but I did enjoy a lot of the fifth one (caper!). So spoil me, if you've seen it. I know I can't go until I know what to expect.

Behind again on memage! grammarwoman--Is there a fandom you resisted but fell into anyway, or one that you thought would be a great fit for you but turned out bleh?

You know, I rarely ever get into anything that I didn't discover on my own. There are a lot of shows I've watched based on recommendations, but fandoms are always things I have to discover on my own. No fic or vid can pimp me, I just seem to be impervious to fandom for something I didn't find the fannish feeling for myself. (check out that alliteration!) So when I do fall for something, it's definitely because it hit something in me I needed. Like, even Due South, I fell for the show and I made some vids with Sandy, but as a fandom experience, I watched it from the sidelines. I never really got more into it as a fannish whole than the vids. (That might also have been because the show went off the air almost within weeks of me being converted, and then when it came back a couple years later, I didn't enjoy the changes they'd made much at all.)

But probably Captain America fandom has surprised me more than most, especially the comics part of it. I've always avoided comics fandoms, especially ones with a really lengthy history, because I cannot keep all that shit straight in my head and it drives me crazy, as a completist, trying to keep track of which universe a character's dead in or in outer space or is a ghost or is involved with someone in this universe but not in that universe…argh! It's maddening to me. And with Cap, you've got all these disparate takes on him, and his relationships with different people, and his history…it's enough to make me lose my mind. I think that's one reason I like the MCU because even if it's retconning stuff or not keeping track of its own shit (like, say, the gray canon of Steve and Bucky meeting in an orphanage that came from the first movie, then changed for Winter Soldier), for the most part, they're sticking to one universe (helpful when you don't have rights to other characters!).

But if you'd have asked me a couple years ago if I'd fall head over heels in love with Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes? Or Sam Wilson and Natasha Romanov and Sharon Carter? I'd have scoffed. I liked the characters, sure, but to fall as deeply in love with them as I have? That was totally unexpected, and kind of glorious.

On the other hand, fandoms I totally expected to have but then didn't are legion. The worst one might be Agents of SHIELD. I thought that was a given for me, because Coulson, and I already liked Ming-na Wen, but Jesus Christ on a biscuit I hate that show. I keep hate-watching it, but what they did last week, I'm not sure I can stomach it anymore. I've never been so underwhelmed and then pissed off by something I thought was made for me to love as I have been about that show. I just have to keep putting my fingers in my ears and going la-la-la Coulson and Clint are off somewhere making waffles and drinking coffee from the pot together, and he's not flying around on that fucking plane on that fucking show.

I did the DW friending meme last year and found a bunch of cool new people to connect with, so I've thrown another entry in the pot this year at theladyscrib's journal, especially since I'm in the throes of fandom love for such a huge fandom this year with Cap/Winter Soldier MCU stuff. As soon as I get this book I'm copyediting out the door, I'ma be friending people!

If anyone's interested, that's where my big passion lies right now -- I haven't been posting here much beyond the fic or vid announcements, but I do occasionally venture forth for other things, and hope to do both the December talking meme and something I did last year, the 31 Flavors recs meme I stole from raveninthewind. I hope that will help get me out of my depresso slump a bit.

I miss the conversation, I do -- both in the sense of people posting on journals and me being involved more with the people I know and with fandom at large. Tumblr's great for giving me a visual rest for my eyes when I work on books, but it's impossible to talk to people there, and it seems like the tide of great Cap2 gifs and fanart is ebbing, so…

1. Went up to killabeez and Mr. Killa's new house last night for dinner and it is really beautful and dinner was lovely and of course the company was awesome. The view from their living room is spectacular, overlooking the area where the ferries leave from Mukilteo -- seeing the ferries with their lights on, crossing the water at night, is always one of the things I love about living in Puget Sound.

2. This fucking spectacular Winter Soldier paper art project by beelikej for talitha78 is utterly amazing and you should go read this post to see how she did it. I am green with envy!

3. Um. Oh! A couple people rec'd stories I've written this week, which means the world to me. I've been feeling pretty crappy about writing lately and that was definitely inspirational.