Fandom misc
SSR Confidential is happening again this year - I think I forgot to post a notice here, but tag set nominations are open through March 12th. Here's a text list of all nominated characters and relationships currently in the tag set. Signups will open on *quickly checks* March 15.
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muccamukk is hosting a sprint of an AC episode rewatch, starting a couple of days ago and ending in early April, to fit in all the episodes with time left to write. Here's the rewatch schedule and the rewatch tag for episode discussion posts.
(I posted a couple of comments over there today before realizing fairly quickly that I was going to have to nope out. I kinda already suspected this was a show that's too close to my heart for me to be able to dissect its flaws without ending up in a downward misery spiral, and yepppp. It's no one's fault and nothing to do with the discussion, it's just that my mode on this show is very firmly set to "roll around in squee" and not "critically analyze". Anyway, it looked like the discussion was going well and had raised lots of interesting points, so I hope people enjoy it!)
On other topics, I have had a Tumblr post I made in support of lurkers blow up over the last couple of days - here's a reblog with some of my additional comments. It went from under 100 notes two days ago to around 1900 and still climbing. I'm drowning in notes! They're eating all my other notes! I wish it was possible to turn off notes on just one post on Tumblr, but I think you have to do it globally.
In spite of everything I dislike about Facebook, it has two features I really wish Tumblr would implement: the ability to hide just one specific post without unfollowing a person, and the above-mentioned ability to turn notifications on or off on a post-by-post basis.
muccamukk is hosting a sprint of an AC episode rewatch, starting a couple of days ago and ending in early April, to fit in all the episodes with time left to write. Here's the rewatch schedule and the rewatch tag for episode discussion posts. (I posted a couple of comments over there today before realizing fairly quickly that I was going to have to nope out. I kinda already suspected this was a show that's too close to my heart for me to be able to dissect its flaws without ending up in a downward misery spiral, and yepppp. It's no one's fault and nothing to do with the discussion, it's just that my mode on this show is very firmly set to "roll around in squee" and not "critically analyze". Anyway, it looked like the discussion was going well and had raised lots of interesting points, so I hope people enjoy it!)
On other topics, I have had a Tumblr post I made in support of lurkers blow up over the last couple of days - here's a reblog with some of my additional comments. It went from under 100 notes two days ago to around 1900 and still climbing. I'm drowning in notes! They're eating all my other notes! I wish it was possible to turn off notes on just one post on Tumblr, but I think you have to do it globally.
In spite of everything I dislike about Facebook, it has two features I really wish Tumblr would implement: the ability to hide just one specific post without unfollowing a person, and the above-mentioned ability to turn notifications on or off on a post-by-post basis.
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I mean, I mailed email feedback to the author of the very first fanfic story I found and read, all giddy about having found online fanfic fandom - and though I never got an answer to that, I joined a mailing list the same day and started posting almost right away even though my English was way less fluent back then. (I only ever used it in school, undubbed TV and movies were hard to get, imported books way more expensive pre-Amazon, and had only visited an English speaking country once at that time and only briefly - my English only became fully fluent because I wanted so badly to talk to fandom.)
So I'm not shy at all (though as with pretty much everybody, specific stuff will start me on avoidance that escalated in social anxiety ways), but at the same time I found lists I also found newsgroups and only ever lurked there. Same with message board based forums. I found fandom fine on those when fandoms were mainly there, but never posted or commented even if I read a lot. Tumblr is like that for me too.
And wrt fic feedback I think you're right that peak-LJ was the exception rather than the rule. I mean, one reason why I usually dropped a comment on all LJ stories I enjoyed is that as paid user who got their own comments mailed this got me an easy copy of the story saved in my inbox which was the fastest way to get a decently formatted save. Now I download longer fanfic to my e-reader and it takes an extra step again to do more than Kudo or like, more so than even emailing back in ML days because I have to switch devices and interfaces rather than doing everything in my email client like back then.
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I'm not even sure if I realized that you *could* interact with authors when I first started reading fanfic online. It was mostly on private websites and I was way too shy to email someone out of the blue like that. Though when I was cleaning out my inbox awhile back, I found a reply to an email I sent back in circa 1999 about someone's Stargate fic, so apparently I did do it sometimes!
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And of course, emailing people based on the addy they supplied with the text of their fic. I remember I once emailed someone about a fic they posted years earlier and I was like "you probably don't care, but this fic was sooo great etc etc" and the author replied! I remember thinking "wow, what it must be like to write a fic where someone will want to send you a comment years after it was published". Ah, the innocence of youth. XD
Though I did lurk on all the mailing lists, mostly because I was pretending that I was over 18 to be able to join stuff that had slash XD
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I did absolutely love it, though. It was the start of my continuous social involvement in fandom, as opposed to spending relatively brief times on mailing lists or message boards and then moving on, leaving those people behind, when I'd get into a new fandom. These days, when I move onto a new platform (tumblr, say) one of the first things I do is look around to see who else I know is there, and follow or otherwise link with them, which was something I never did back in the late 90s/early 2000s; I just assumed I wouldn't know anyone (and was usually right). And I still really miss having everyone all together like that.
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I think you made some good points both in the original post (which I reblogged) and in your additional comments, but what I really liked about it was the pushback against all those scolding "You must leave feedback!" posts that have been circulating on Tumblr lately. They just make me so uncomfortable because nobody owes anybody anything! (Except obviously in the case of a gift exchange, where it's polite and expected to say thank you for a gift.) Expecting and demanding that kind of response - basing your fannish engagement on it in some posts I've seen! - just really rubs me the wrong way.
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And yeah, same, with those "you must leave feedback!" posts. I mean, feedback is lovely! I thrive on it! I should try to leave more of it! But scolding people for doing fandom wrong if they don't ... that bothers me a lot. I'm glad to see the post going viral (as weird as it is to have it happening to one of MY posts ...).
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You can hide a post on tumblr without unfollowing as a feature of new xkit. I nailed all the money cat ones later.
ETA: Would it be helpful to have a section reserved for positive comments? Like the spoiler thread?
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As for talking about AC, I just don't think I can discuss this show in a critical, flaws-and-all way without making myself unhappy. It's too close to my heart. But that's just a personal thing. Other people are obviously welcome to discuss any aspects of it in any way they like!
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Hmmm. I appreciate the thought, but I feel weird about having people cater to my snowflakish sensibilities. (As noted in the comment above, it's not other people, it's me!) I'm fine with sitting out the rewatch or doing it on my own.
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Tumblr has gone so far beyond what its original creators had in mind (I listen to one of them on a podcast, so...yeah. Way beyond) that the functionality is weirdly bolted on. They've come a long way, but it still feels like everyone's not quite got the hang of it.
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I "know" more people on Tumblr--I have more followers there than I ever did on LJ and folow more as well, but I have yet to make strong connections there like I did in the olden days. Part of it is me--my anxiety is awful at times and hampers talking--part of it is the platform and broader culture there. I was talking about it with friends over the weekend and we've found it increasingly exhausting and are now largely on Twitter, which is awful for fandom but weirdly better for communication and connection for us.
It's funny: my default for anything is critical analysis but I avoid Tumblr these days because it's almost all that and no squee at all and I need a balance! Which just has led me to avoid fannish talking online almost entirely, even here. Like I got toxic levels of critical stuff and just can't deal anymore.
New X-Kit does allow single post notification hiding. I have been tempted when I have accidentally gone viral to use it, but as my accidental viral post is of the sort that has hilarious tags, I haven't pulled that trigger. Though the notes do slow down eventually. I swear.
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It's interesting that you put it like that because I feel the same way! I suspect many people do, actually. I have no social anxiety issues and I enjoy a good critique, but the currently popular approach of critiquing. everything. to death. just leaves me exhausted and depressed.
I simply nope out as soon as I see that happening to the fandoms I love. I feel like lately mainstream fandom is so interested in tearing down canon (canon which, obviously, I love otherwise I wouldn't be in fandom in the first place...) to show what they didn't like (especially the Issues) that there's no space for just enjoying canon as is. Even people who like the canon put disclaimers like "I'm garbage for liking it but..." Which just makes me feel so sorry for that person who can't even accept themselves enough to say they like the show without putting themselves down. I feel like they're saying "you must be garbage to like this". And I'm like...uh get away from me with that kind of sentiment, no. I don't feel any guilt about liking things that I like. And I'm not used to that kind of discourse, I think.
I don't remember it being quite that critical on LJ in the golden days of fandom. I think people mostly got together to squee and were just thrilled to find like-minded fans. Like I don't remember more than a couple of discussions of -isms in Harry Potter fandom. Clearly, they happened, but they were overwhelmed by the squee and the "let's talk about that one sentence on page 344 and what it all means for the next week" type discussions. That fit me much better, because I watch tv shows and read fictional books to emotionally connect with the characters, to live and die with them.
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See, THOSE are the discussions I want to have. Those are the discussions I can basically have until the cows come home. I want to spill 10K of meta on the one particular look that Character X gave to Character Y in Episode 93, or discuss the (probably nonexistent XD) significance of the colors of characters' shirts in 50 consecutive episodes.
I know that a lot of people think these discussions are silly or dull. I get that. I understand that fandom has moved past that to different kinds of discussions now. But that was what got me into fandom in the first place, because finally I managed to find other people who wanted to talk in detail about those things!
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I actually haven't found it TOO difficult to stay in the squee parts of tumblr, mostly by sticking primarily to gifsets. Unless the gifmakers editorialize in text underneath (... I hate that), gifsets are largely shaped by the context of the show, so it's really just like rewatching a scene in the show over and over, and following gif sideblogs has managed to keep me away from the more toxic elements, for the most part. The meta, though. AUGH.
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That is me, yeah, except I have noped out of Twitter because of all the political stuff right now, just out of self-preservation. I know most of the fannish stuff is happening on Tumblr right now, but damned if I can find a lot of it.
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Checking out the character/pairing tags periodically, and then clicking on the notes for any interesting-looking text post, has also helped me find the people who are particularly chatty in my fandoms, who tend to be the most responsive and fun to talk to. I figured this out in Agent Carter fandom - lurk on the tags, then explore the blogs of the most interesting-seeming people who tend to pop up most often in discussions - and found that it was equally effective in Flash fandom and helped me figure out who to interact with in a fraction of the time it took me to get a feeling for the Agent Carter Tumblr fanosphere, when I was still learning these things.
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That does sound neat, but I use xkit to block the sidebar suggestions because they were usually so off. /o\
Sideblogs! I don't know why I never think of those. Maybe because a bunch I did find seemed to be dormant....I really didn't look as hard or thoroughly as you're suggesting, tho. (I find both Tumblr and Twitter kind of overwhelming in their endlessness. You can't ever get to the end, there is no end to get to, there's no way of being caught up really.)
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But yeah, Tumblr is just so fast-moving. It's HUGE, and finding things again is such a pain.
The other thing I've done over there is created a private tumblr sideblog for reblogging things I don't want to put on my main tumblr. (Though people keep finding it. >__>) So I have that for stashing shiny, funny, and/or interesting things that I don't quiiiiite want to reblog to the tumblr that people associate with me, mainly so I can find them again later.
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