rodo's journal

Snowflake Challenge #3: Airing of Grievances

2023-01-05T16:51:30Z

snowflake_challenge: Challenge #3
In your own space, Scream Into the Void. Get it all out.

This is kind of hard for me, because I tend to prefer not to vent, but there is one thing that frustrates me about fandom-as-a-whole: the more time marches on, the less accessible it becomes, for me at least.

So, I’ve got sociophobia – actual, diagnosed sociophobia. It’s gotten a lot better. Ten years ago, I couldn’t leave the house or phone anyone, and I can do that without much of a problem nowadays. I’m never going to like it, but I can manage. Unfortunately, other aspects haven’t gotten better: I still can’t stand chats, or basically any form of fandom interaction that relies on timely replies. I just need time to prepare myself to be social online, and sometimes I’m going to be really late – if that isn’t okay, community-wise, I’m just not going to be there at all. Discord, Twitter, even platforms like Tumblr, all move so much faster, and that just makes them impossible for me. (Besides some other issues.)

I just wish things were different, you know?

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Snowflake Challenge #7: Communties and Resources

2022-01-13T16:46:31Z

Challenge #7: In your own space, tell us about 3 fandom resources, spaces, or communities you use or enjoy.

1. fail_fandomanon: Yes, I know. But for someone for whom basically all current fandom platforms just don’t work, I’ve found it’s the best place to keep up to date with fandom, especially when it comes to exchanges. And occasionally, you have really great conversations there.

2. Reddit: If you’re into fandom discussion that has less to do with fic and shipping and more to do with world building, your fandom’s Reddit might not be the worst choice. It depends a lot on the fandom, of course. But I’ve found that some of the best discussions for my otherwise silent fandoms can be had there.

3. Wookiepedia: Look, the Star Wars universe is just too big for me to wrap my mind around. I use other fandom wikis as well, of course, and appreciate all the effort people put into them, but I chose to link Wookiepedia as an example because it seriously takes the cake. AWOIAF takes second place, with its many notes on calculating characters’ ages and the chronology.

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Exchanges, Oh My!

2021-08-30T17:07:51Z

Okay, I'm beginning to think this exchange summer is seriously cursed for me. It started when I had to choose between everywoman and an exchange that sounded far more relevant to me that was being proposed on fail_fandomanon. There was a prospective mod, and they had a writing period in mind that would have overlapped with everywoman, and since I only do one exchange at a time, I decided to chance it and bet on the latter. Which, of course, never happened at all. Yay.

But okay, I said to myself. Shit happens. There's still fandomgiftbox. It's been run well for years, I've participated three times as a writer and twice as a recipient. I always had fun. I'll just throw myself into that one. Yeah, if it were on schedule, it would reveal on September 5th, otherwise known as next Sunday. It never really reveals on time, but this year, the question is whether it'll reveal at all. The mod has vanished off the face of the earth, leaving everything in limbo, which of course means I didn't get to write much for it either. The uncertainty certainly put a damper on my creativity - and due to my rare fandoms, my chances of getting a gift are pretty slim.

So, I thought. There's the great autumn exchanges coming up. I won't sign up for shipoween and trickortreatex, but I've pinch hit for the latter before and I could always write treats! I want to write something for people, feel the excitement of being part of an event! And now that's happening. I don't even know what "that" is, but it feels kind of like a follow-up to the multifandomdrabble meltdown, although don't ask my why I get that feeling. I honestly don't know. Both of those happening so close together, maybe. And the shoddy modding.

I just wish exchanges were a bit more robust, I guess. Better modding, people communicating their decisions well in advance and listening to the community, exchanges not relying on one person doing everything.

I don't want to jinx it, but at least there's always Yuletide. Although with my current luck, who knows?

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Random #16

2009-12-09T01:23:46Z

☞ My Yuletide beta (I had to write to a second person, who actually answered) promised me she would be done by Monday or Tuesday, so I am now glancing anxiously at the mail symbol of my browser every few minutes while I wait for the weekly party downstairs to quiet down a bit. I'm really nervous because I still have to look for a Britpicker and won't be in LE for a few days. My mother and I are visiting the relative of a relative of a relative in Göttingen for a few days and I don't think my mother will book a hotel with internet access.

☞ In other news: Chuck ate my brain. I only watched it because I was a bit bored, it stared Adam Baldwin and because I caught an episode on TV a while ago. I love it. Chuck is adorable and Casey is like Jayne only more clever; I like Sarah and Ellie and Morgan and Captain Awesome. Also: Awesome likes to run around half naked. Overall, the show is sweet and funny, even though it hits my embarrassment squick sometimes.

☞ I actually found a decent story on ff.de. Weird things do happen. Half of the stories that I have to look at as an OP are Mary Sue stories or stories with canon characters as Sues, though. No idea why people over there think the fandoms are overrun by slash. Do het fans have a persecution complex? Is everything about 15% slash more than acceptable?

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Someone's being mean on the internet

2009-10-06T12:17:18Z

Does it really make me mean and elitist that I think that Sturgeon's Law applies to fanfiction? Even my own? Because it's wrong and insults the average fanfic writer by calling them incompetent (which, btw, I didn't, I was talking about stories, but apparently story = author).

I really, really should stay away from the internet for a while, or at least certain parts of it. It's just making things worse for me at the moment. Because whatever I try, if I'm feeling even remotely positive about it someone else comes and tears it completely apart.

The only problem is: I don't have anything better to do at the moment.

*whiny post is whiny*

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Random #5

2009-08-02T16:53:46Z

☞ Please remind me to never try an old fandom ever again. I just finished the Hornblower TV series and was desperate for fic. Well, I looked and found a number of promising rec lists, an archive and a very long list of stories. The very long list of stories, unfortunately, contained no useful information beyond title and author. The archive had no fics that interested me, but at least it wasn't frozen in 2002 and about the rec lists ... at least half the links were dead. The others led to stories that I had no interest in. It's especially sad because the first link I clicked on seemed to be exactly the kind of story I was looking for. The author seems to have deleted all her fics, of course. I tried ff.net too, but the Sues put an end to that. *sigh* Never again.

☞ PS: Has anybody any idea how the ancient file size label translates to word count?

☞ Why the translation exchange post on ff.de is doomed to fail: People offer to translate from English to German and authors offer stories to be translated from German to English.

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Random #4

2009-07-22T22:21:43Z

☞ I'm officially tired of kink meme fics. Am I the only one? Am I weird? I see everywhere at the moment, and I'm really longing for plotty fic with romance and non-explicit sex scenes. Or no sex scenes at all! I think I overdosed or something.

☞ I really hope ficathon_de will decide for DW. I decided not to post fic on LJ anymore (my stupid principles tend to be very persistent), so I wouldn't participate on LJ and I don't think using both would work.

☞ Rec: Captive Prince by freece. Summary: Damen is the true heir to the throne, but when his half brother seizes power, Damen is captured, stripped of his identity and sent to serve the Prince of a rival nation as a pleasure slave. It doesn't sound like much, but I am very much in love with the story. So I rec in, even though it has been recced a lot already.

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Fandom, Zines & Profit

2009-05-28T22:40:17Z

Yesterday, someone posted a rant on fanficrants. The ranter's point was that a) the fandom doesn't need fanzines anymore and that b) the prices on them are very unreasonable, especially considering that you can post/read fanfic online for free. This post is the tl;dr version of my not very organized thoughts on the post and the discussion:

I am rather new school when it comes to fandom, but that doesn't mean I don't understand the appeal of zines (even though I don't own a single one). In fact, I wish I had the money to buy them, because zines have some advantages. Fanfic on the internet disappears very fast, compared to non-net standards. Give it five years and many URLs will be invalid, the authors decided the fics were crap, or the fandom suffered from a wave of cease and desist letters. When you buy a zine, you get to choose how long you want to keep it, not the person hosting and/or publishing the stuff.

( Cut for length )

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Languages & Fandom - A Poll

2009-05-07T22:36:07Z

First of all: This is all lian's fault. And the fault of the anonymous person who so generously gifted me with two months of paid time (&hearts). This is also a follow-up post to my last post about fandom and language, in a way. It's also my first poll, so please tell me what I could have done better.

Note: For the purpose of this poll, I won't define "fandom" or "(language) fandom". I'll leave that up to you.

( On to the very long poll— )

PS: I would appreciate it if you would pimp this poll.

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Living Two Lives – A Story of Bilingual Fan-dom

2009-04-20T02:20:34Z

The topic of this post is one that has been on my mind for years, and this certainly isn’t the first attempt to write it all down. This post is about my very subjective experience in fandom, which, I believe, is not quite normal. I suppose all of you who are multifannish know at least to some degree what I am talking about, because essentially, I am talking about being in two fandoms at once. But while most people experience two fandoms as two different things they’re interested in, for me, it is the same thing, in two languages.

So I suppose this is where I should introduce myself: I am a German and German is my first language. I didn’t really start learning English until I was ten (so I am not really bilingual). I started writing fanfiction when I was seven. I discovered fandom when I started reading the AnimaniA when I was fourteen. I doubt more than a few of you ever touched that magazine, but I loved it. Buying the new issue was more fun than Christmas. I discovered online fandom when I was nineteen, googling Harry Potter and finding Animexx. A few months later, somebody posted the translation of this really great Harry Potter fanfic (or so I thought at the time – it was the Draco Trilogy), and I started reading it in English.

( That was five years ago, and since then, I spent time in English and in German fandom. )

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