rheaitis

Day 14: In your own space, talk about what you think the future holds for fandom.

I think fandom needs to be intersectional and federated. cesperanza's entry for today discusses the technical side of this far better than I could, so that, basically.

On the other side, I think fandom is deeply and historically Western, in ways that have led to incredible idiocies in the past (RaceFail, yo). In part this is because the Global South doesn't do fanfic etc in the same ways; in India at least the fannish impulse for films and books mostly discharges itself in the same way as it does for sports: fanclubs and events and cheering and legit temples I kid you not. Every Indian fanwriter/artist I've found online has been middle-class and upwards, and found their way into fandom through a love of Western sources.

(This is not to say that there aren't fanworks being produced in India, but they're not (by and large) locked into fandom in any recognisable fashion. One of the coolest remake-groups functions out of a tiny, ex-industrial town in Maharashtra, where they take Hollywood and Bollywood films and adapt them to their own circumstances: their best-known is a Superman adaptation.)

But I digress. I would love for fandom to be more accessible, and OTW's translation movement is a very good beginning to which I wish I'd contributed more. But also a space for fandom in other cultures and languages, which is one of those things that tumblr was really good for, because you could just go through the tags and not have to know the people involved, because a shared love for Bollywood or Indian history or (worse) mythology doesn't actually indicate that you'll like each other. Which... brings me back to the need for federated fandom, I guess.

Day 12: In your own space, create your own challenge.

Communicate with your corner of fandom, and with fandom at large. Leave kudos, comment on fic and journal entries, reblog posts on tumblr. Just... acknowledge your own presence in fandom, let others know you agree with them or enjoy their work or are glad they're around.

Fandom isn't a place, it's people. Make them feel seen by letting yourself be seen. ♥

Day 10: Create a fanwork.

dravati (2001 words) by toujours_nigel
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Draupadi & Shatrunjaya
Characters: Draupadi (Mahabharata), Shatrunjaya (Mahabharata)
Additional Tags: Sibling Bonding
Summary: The problem with the Panchalans was that there were thrice as many of them as their father could use and they rode around Bharatvarsha making nuisances of themselves.

Prompted by, and for allegoriesinmediasres who asked for Mahabharata, Any, Gallivant. Still taking ficprompts here. Counting it for Snowflake because I'd had no intention of writing another fic so soon after the previous one.

Day 7: Stretch yourself a little and try something new.

One of the suggestions was to make a reclist, which I have never done in all my years in fandom. So, something new it is.
When I started reading fic, some decade and half ago, there were about half-a-dozen writers I found who seemed to know each other, and wrote across fandoms, including fandoms for which I had not only never consumed the canon, but didn't know of the canon's existence at all. But I was a wee and fic-starved Rhea, so I read everything they wrote, and when they moved onto a different canon I read everything there as well. I still do this when I find a new author I trust. I'm still reading fic they write, so these are a few of my all-time faves from my all-time faves, which are very likely to also be fandom classics, because I am a predictable sheep.


Harry Potter

House Proud, one of Astolat's recent Harry Potter fic, and one of my favourite iterations of Draco Malfoy, and one of few fics where I actually ship Drarry. this is a pattern with astolat
Seven Things That Didn't Happen On Valentine's Day At Hogwarts, Or Maybe They Did by Rageprufrock, which is a stunner and early example of the X+1 things genre. I just reread it after five years, and I still love it every bit as much.
Copperbadge's Stealing Harryverse, which consists of 12 stories (including an unfinished PoA and notes towards later books) where Harry is raised by Sirius and Remus. It shot him into BNF-status and cemented my fannish love for Potter when I first found it on FictionAlley.
The Black Knight by Musesfool, in which Sirius becomes Batman. No really.


MCU

4 Minute Window, Cesperanza's lovely, life-affirming series, currently in its fourth year of Steve/Bucky domesticity. I reread the whole thing every few months, and the podfic is its own perfect thing.
Greetings to the New Brunette, where Steve and Bucky get a baby, because Musesfool is nice to us.
Magazineverse, Copperbadge's duology of Peter Parker's longform articles about The Avengers.
Reconstruction, Rageprufrock's stunning w.i.p about Stephanie Barnes, because I adore genderbenders.
Revelations, where Thor dies, Loki and the Avengers travel to Valhalla to retrieve him, and Thor & Loki have a baby, in that order. Astolat brings her terrifying A-game of making readers ship stuff they may not have been shipping.


Merlin
Drastically Redefining Protocol by Rageprufrock is one of many takes in the fandom on the modern royalty trope, and has an Arthur who's... well, he's Arthur, he's a berk and beloved and just absolute sunshine. And Merlin's still magic, and the prettiest princess.
Astolat's The Beltane Cycle is on the other end of things, deeply invested not just in the magic of the show, but the deeper magics into which it rarely ventures.


SGA

Bell Curve by Rageprufrock, a series which starts with Rodney McKay meeting John Sheppard in a strip club, and just really *commits* to the prof/TA thing.
Written by the Victors, which I had actually forgotten was by Cesperanza, is this sprawling stunning history project that is just a masterclass in craft.
Ordinary Life, a Cesperanza and Astolat coproduction where Rodney and John are back on earth and everyone makes the usual assumptions.
Story of a Girl by Seperis, because I'm weak for genderflip stories that take into account the difference it makes even when it may not be supposed to, and also because, well, it's Sep, the story is stunning.


Smallville

Conflicts of Interest is Rageprufrock's stunning portrayal of Lex Luthor as a biological fugitive, whose son is mold (but good mold). Please, please read the series, because it's got one of the best child characters I have ever read, *and* his transition into adolescence is also entirely believable.
Reconciliable Differences also features Lex as a father, but Astolat gives us canonical Kon-El, grown in a lab and not easy being anyone's son, any more than Clark is easy being a father. Also the fic that made me interested in Tim Drake, tbh.
Seperis' Somewhere I Have Never Travelled is a story where Clark decides to give up his powers and become human, and things go from there. Skip the last couple stories if you don't wanna cry. A lot.
Now one of Rageprufrock and Seperis' co-written fic, This, Too, which I absolutely read at a formative and possibly too-young age, because back when I was a wee fanchild, I knew to click the 18+ button and keep my mouth shut.


Supernatural

Down to Agincourt, Seperis' fic set in the post-apocalyptic verse we catch a glimpse of in Season 4... except not really. Just go read: this fic has its own fandom, incredible art and metafic, and the slowest of slow-burn dystopic domesticities.
The Other Side, by Astolat et al, which is a 25 minute SPN fanfilm with genderfuckery. And dragons!
Wayfinding, by Rageprufrock, which is a w.i.p but I do not care, read it anyhow, it has the best genderflipped Dean Winchester I've ever read.


Star Wars
I love all of Musesfool's Star Wars fic, even the ones for which I don't have canon knowledge, but her On the Day series is my current fave.
to the sky without wings, meanwhile, is proof that Leupagus' shipping game has the gravitational pull of a planet, because I'm fairly sure none of us shipped Luke/Poe before she manifested it, and it is now one of my forever OTPs.

_____________

I mean, I love a bunch of fic by these people in other fandoms: copperbadge's White Collar stuff, or rageprufrock's Sherlock fic, and astolat's insane ability to drag us all into fandoms we don't know or like (Transformers, obscure video-games, Game of Thrones). I had forgotten that musesfool had Renault fic, so that's me set for staying up half the night. And I love fic by other people in these fandoms: it feels very strange to not rec dira and dragonlady7 when I read so many of their stories on pretty much a weekly basis, but.
This reclist is the fannish gestalt which I grew up reading, and I'm trying to use Snowflake to also talk about my fannish self.

Day 5: In your own space, promote three communities, challenges, blogs, pages, Twitters, Tumblrs or platforms and explain why you love them.

This is difficult because I haven't been active on dw for ages, and a lot of the communities I used to follow have gone quiet. But let's try anyway. I assume this doesn't include fanwork pages of any sort, because that's what I can gather from the people who've done it already. All of these are multi-fandom clearinghouses.

bestthingever and fancake are multifandom reccing communities, of which the former is focused on amazing new stories, while the latter allows thematic recs across fandoms.

das_sporking2 sporks original fic and fanfic alike, and to devastating effect. I'm currently following gehayi et al's sporking of the Mists of Avalon, and it is ab-fab at bringing out the many many issues with the novel.

fan_flashworks runs thematic challenges thrice a month, and welcomes fic, art, and other fanworks in your fandom of choice.

Finally, dw_community_promo is, as the name suggests, the place to go to if you've got a community to talk up; it is also therefore a very good place to hang around if you want to find out about new communities or challenges. It's always relatively active, and fairly hopping right now.

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 feels like being asked to decide one'a favourite family member... which my father does often and only about 80% jokingly, which is why he's Not It. Anyway, taking strength in the indefinite article and my recent review for Yuletide, let's say The Charioteer, which is a novel set in 1940 and centres on Our Protagonist (a posh Oxfordian who's half-Irish and traumatised and disabled post-Dunkirk) finding his feet in the queer circles of fictionalised Bristol, and his way in a love-triangle with a Conscientious Objector somewhat younger than himself, who he thinks is unaware and chaste, and the older and self-aware man on whom he had a schoolboy crush. I love it for N number of reasons, not least that I used it to charm my SO of eight years into becoming friends with me when we first met.

And now, a bit from the novel that unfailingly wrecks me:
Does me in every single time, and not just because of the devastating elegance of that "Afterwards", though I'll absolutely admit that Renault's insouciant obliquity about sex is something I find incredibly appealing.

I've always loved those lines, since first reading the novel--huh, ten years ago nearly--and it's not quite possible to overstate how much. They come after some eight pages of fighting about whether or not to break off a relationship that has crept up on Our Protagonist (Laurie/Spuddy) and swept him off his feet in a moment of emotional vulnerability. Ralph's spent those pages arguing his side of things (they're in love, why the hell not), accepting--with rather good grace under the circs--that Laurie loves someone else, and agreeing to polyamory with some astonishment at the idea that he wouldn't be accommodating. (The reader, and Laurie, have met one of his exes who tends to sleep around a lot so I mean, Laurie is more surprised and irritated by Ralph's acceptance of The Other Man than I was even the first time I read the novel.)

But anyway, all to no avail. It wouldn't work, Laurie says, he'd feel bad, and The Other Man would know, and Laurie would rather deprive himself of a shockingly compatible relationship than hurt His feelings. No rational or emotional argument Ralph puts forward is convincing enough, and I've gotta tell you, I'm extremely gay and if a dude said all the things to me that Ralph does to Laurie, I'd be buying my trousseau. Laurie however, is made of sterner stuff.

Okay, then. Ralph, horribly practical, interposes the last thing he's got between Laurie and the door: his body. How d'you convince a 23 y.o. whose libido is just reawakening after a terrible injury and resultant PTSD to not leave you in favour of chastely pining for The Other Man? You fuck him into submission.

Yeah. Ralph Lanyon is his own set of warnings, as lilliburlero keeps saying. He's not a particularly nice man, but he does know what will work, and he does know that Laurie won't like him for it, but he will stay--for a while, but it's 1940, for a while is longer than most people have. Of course it's not as though Laurie is particularly nice in the moment either because he doesn't mean to keep staying with Ralph and all the high-minded chastity doesn't last longer than a popsicle in May when he's around the boyhood crush who's grown into a generous lover.

A n y w a y. Right, so. I love this bit because of the craft of it, but mostly because of the way it exposes Ralph's awareness of his sexual appeal--or the appeal of his sexual availability, at any rate--and his absolute willingness to exploit it. Being the sort of person who likes breaking her own heart, I also love it because of their mutual cruelty. A substantial section of the (minuscule) fandom also accepts that Ralph was briefly a prostitute, which makes this Worse Not Better, because of course he knows his appeal, but Christ does Laurie have to like him most for that?



...I promise I don't always like it when people are angsty and fucked-up.

Day 1: In your own space, talk about your Happy Place—the things that give you joy, calms you or keeps you sane.

• Fandom. I'm not kidding, not even a little bit. I have read about five different stories just today, and today has actually been a pretty easy day all told. I have weeks and months, even years when I can't be an active participant in fandom, when even commenting is difficult, and actually creating something is beyond me. But I can always read, and I do, and I read fast and often to the exclusion of anything else. It has kept me happy, and sane, and connected, and I have a feeling alive. It's one of my tumblr tags!

 

• Reading in general, especially and increasingly sf/f written by women and queer folk. I'm looking forward to having a job so I can afford to buy books, but there are plenty of free-to-read magazines and they're full of lovely visions of other worlds, other times, other lives.

 

• Cooking! This has grown on me in the last couple years, and I'm not very good, but it's a soothing thing to do, and often my one concrete achievement of the day.

 

• Photography. I have an instagram account that is usually updated daily, and while most of it is food photos, sometimes I photograph books, plants, people.

 

• Talking to filia_noctis. Well, her in general, but it feels like objectification to call my partner a thing that gives me joy. But definitely she's my Happy Place, and definitely conversations with her often do the heavy lifting re: keeping me going.

(five things make a list)