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Fandom ... stuff ... things
I am almost certainly not signing up for Heart Attack after all; I realized that with the current state of my to-do list, I was getting more stress than joy from the idea of having to write 10K the last week of the month.
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prisoner_exchange, however, is definitely a go. It's only 1K! There's lots of writing time! I also really want to treat in h/c-ex. BIGGLES! ♥
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In other news, I was just reading about how Netflix is ending its DVD-by-mail service this year. What an end of an era that feels like. I still remember my roommate getting a DVD player and some DVDs for Christmas in 1999, the first DVD player either of us had ever used, and how we had to watch all the special features and extras because we were so fascinated by the whole idea of having them at all; VHS tapes were only ever just the movie. And being able to pause and skip scenes and go back and forth! It was very much the same "and we never looked back" sea change that trading cassettes for CDs was.
... Interesting now that I'm thinking about it how video seems to lag at least 10 years behind music for that kind of thing, actually. The technology exists, but it takes longer for it to really kick off on the consumer market. I got my first CD player in high school (so early 90s) but never used a DVD player until 1999. And digital music was just starting to come in at that time and had eclipsed CDs completely within 5-10 years, but digital video had to wait for large hard drives and widespread fast internet. I first started buying digital video files when iTunes started having TV shows available for download the same night they released, with season subscriptions so it would download automatically; that was about 2007-08 or so. Now I think all the TV I've watched in the last few years was made for streaming, and most of the movies I watch these days are via digital renting. I think the only media I perma-bought in the last couple of years was Falcon & Winter Soldier, mostly because I wanted high-quality files for vidmaking.
I was going to say that I wonder if the concept of buying it at all is what'll feel anachronistic in 10-20 years. But then I realized that I have changed almost nothing about how I buy and listen to music since I made the CDs-to-digital leap in the first few years of the 2000s, aside from now using my phone to play it in the car. I still buy most of it off iTunes and use iTunes to manage it, occasionally buying files off Amazon or individual artists' websites if I want something that iTunes doesn't have. I listen to streaming music sometimes, but honestly it's not really that big for me. And it doesn't seem to me that the concept of buying and owning music is nearly as much in flux as buying and owning video. That all seems to have kind of stabilized after physical media (mostly) went away, and now iTunes and other storefronts coexist with free and paid streaming services, and none of it really seems to be in *too* much danger of either going away or completely monopolizing the marketplace; individual services might come and go, but it doesn't really look to me like it's in nearly as much flux as it was early on. So maybe we're just in the final throes of the physical-media-to-digital transition for video, a rough equivalent to what music was going through 15 years ago, and it'll stabilize similarly over the next couple of decades as everyone develops a specific preference for watching in a certain way, the way that a lot of individuals have a preference for owning vs. streaming music, or for a particular site to manage their music library with.
prisoner_exchange, however, is definitely a go. It's only 1K! There's lots of writing time! I also really want to treat in h/c-ex. BIGGLES! ♥--
In other news, I was just reading about how Netflix is ending its DVD-by-mail service this year. What an end of an era that feels like. I still remember my roommate getting a DVD player and some DVDs for Christmas in 1999, the first DVD player either of us had ever used, and how we had to watch all the special features and extras because we were so fascinated by the whole idea of having them at all; VHS tapes were only ever just the movie. And being able to pause and skip scenes and go back and forth! It was very much the same "and we never looked back" sea change that trading cassettes for CDs was.
... Interesting now that I'm thinking about it how video seems to lag at least 10 years behind music for that kind of thing, actually. The technology exists, but it takes longer for it to really kick off on the consumer market. I got my first CD player in high school (so early 90s) but never used a DVD player until 1999. And digital music was just starting to come in at that time and had eclipsed CDs completely within 5-10 years, but digital video had to wait for large hard drives and widespread fast internet. I first started buying digital video files when iTunes started having TV shows available for download the same night they released, with season subscriptions so it would download automatically; that was about 2007-08 or so. Now I think all the TV I've watched in the last few years was made for streaming, and most of the movies I watch these days are via digital renting. I think the only media I perma-bought in the last couple of years was Falcon & Winter Soldier, mostly because I wanted high-quality files for vidmaking.
I was going to say that I wonder if the concept of buying it at all is what'll feel anachronistic in 10-20 years. But then I realized that I have changed almost nothing about how I buy and listen to music since I made the CDs-to-digital leap in the first few years of the 2000s, aside from now using my phone to play it in the car. I still buy most of it off iTunes and use iTunes to manage it, occasionally buying files off Amazon or individual artists' websites if I want something that iTunes doesn't have. I listen to streaming music sometimes, but honestly it's not really that big for me. And it doesn't seem to me that the concept of buying and owning music is nearly as much in flux as buying and owning video. That all seems to have kind of stabilized after physical media (mostly) went away, and now iTunes and other storefronts coexist with free and paid streaming services, and none of it really seems to be in *too* much danger of either going away or completely monopolizing the marketplace; individual services might come and go, but it doesn't really look to me like it's in nearly as much flux as it was early on. So maybe we're just in the final throes of the physical-media-to-digital transition for video, a rough equivalent to what music was going through 15 years ago, and it'll stabilize similarly over the next couple of decades as everyone develops a specific preference for watching in a certain way, the way that a lot of individuals have a preference for owning vs. streaming music, or for a particular site to manage their music library with.
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I'm still really big on physical copies of movies and TV shows--I've got three three-shelf bookcases overflowing with DVDs/Blu-rays, and if I enjoy something, I want an actual copy of it; I don't like relying on streaming services to keep specific things in their catalogs. I watch a lot via streaming and have a lot of subscription services! But physical is still what I want in the long-run. On the most basic level, I really like being able to cast an easy eye over what I have, and I like the sense of curating a library. (It's my MLS manifesting!)
You can tell I don't have as deep a connection to music as I do to books and movies/TV, though, because while I listen to a lot of it and have my favorites, etc., I'm fine with Spotify and iTunes and don't feel the same need to make sure I have permanent copies of all my favorites.
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pairingagreement made it possible that those shows were going to disappear completely online. But honestly, I think part of why I haven't is because there just hasn't been anything lately that I've been dying to have. I'm certainly not rushing to get rid of my DVDs anytime soon, and having them around also reminds me of old shows and movies I haven't watched in a really long time that I might like to see again.But the real comparison for me is books. I burn through a *lot* of digital books, but if there's anything I like enough that I know I'm going to reread it often, I want a physical copy. And a big part of this is so that I can have it with my other books on a physical bookshelf. Ironically these days it's actually easier and more convenient for me to read on a Kindle; it lights itself for reading in bed, and you can take it everywhere. And it's not even that I don't like it as much (exactly) ... but when I love a book, I want to physically own it.
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Same. There are a handful of exceptions--there are some short story anthologies I love that are too bulky to be very pleasant to hold, so I'm fine with having those just on Kindle--but in general, I'd ideally love to have hard copies of all the books I really love. (Why can we not all have TARDIS-like libraries that are bigger on the inside? Think of all the shelf space!)
This is especially true with books I feel fannish about. I want to be able to pick up a Biggles book and flip through it and double-check things! Having them on Kindle is lovely, of course, but someone really needs to reissue nice mass market paperback versions.
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Yes, exactly! I've noticed that it is *way* easier to check canon details or reread favorite scenes in a hard copy.
Honestly, the lack of in-print editions of Biggles is really surprising to me, as much of a cultural touchstone as they are in Britain. I'm really surprised they aren't easier to get hold of. Especially the ones that seem to have gone out of print almost immediately and were never reissued. Copies of Biggles Looks Back go for upwards of $200 on Ebay!
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I did get a paper copy of Looks Back for a more reasonable £30, I'm not sure people actually buy it at those collectors' prices that you see on Ebay. It has illustrations and everything :-D
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That's so interesting. I find it so much easier to find things in an ebook because I remember the phrasing so I can just search for it with ctrl+f versus knowing exactly where it comes up in a book.
I would buy (some of) the Biggles books just to own the physical copy *pets*
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There are a few things I've gotten on DVD because they aren't streaming on a service I have or want to subscribe to.
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You know, it's funny, I'm increasingly moving away from physical books even though I prefer them, and this is largely due to (a) space constraints (...we still have A LOT of books) and (b) poor Arabelle the minimalist filled with horror at the thought of inheriting all this STUFF. (She's the only grandchild on both sides, has an aunt on my side and an aunt/uncle on Joe's side neither of whom have kids, and ALL OF US have tons of books/stuff...yeah. I told her to just throw money at a dude to take everything to the dump.)
I prefer most fiction in ebook (because lack of illustrations = fine for Kindle or whatever) UNLESS it is A Book I Love, in which case I will still hang on to the hardcopy. (This is me and Cherryh generally, haha, and also some of her older stuff doesn't seem to be available in ebook anyway.) Nonfiction (especially if I need to make notations or it has pictures) or comics/manga? Hardcopy, although you'd think comics/graphic novels would be really nice to read on an iPad, I just have never figured out HOW you read e.g. back issues of X-Men on my iPad because I suck at tech.
With most music I'm fine with buying it off iTunes, but there's this one kpop group I follow where I religiously preorder their CD sets AS WELL AS buying their music on iTunes because I LOVE THEM and I want to support them. I used to buy DVDs for shows when I was vidding a long time ago, but I haven't acquired anything since, like, Code Geass (...yeah), the Evangelion movie reboots, or Star Trek: Discovery...
Also, I had no idea Netflix's DVD-by-mail thing even still existed! I'd vaguely assumed they'd gotten rid of it years ago. That was how I was introduced to Buffy ca. 2004, with no idea about anything. Fun times. XD Joe and I generally stopped acquiring DVDs when (a) streaming became big (especially for anime) and (b) we realized that we almost never rewatch anything. (Code Geass is one of the things I rewatch every so often, haha.)
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I am the only person I know who still gets DVDs by post, though not from Netflix. We only recently got fast enough broadband that streaming worked well, and by that time streaming services were so fragmented that there was no way I wanted to pay for half a dozen of them to watch everything. Waiting for everything to come out on DVD and watching it that way used to work fine, but now a lot of things aren't getting DVD releases at all. But I like a lot of much older TV dramas and they're usually available on DVD and not on streaming services, so that works out.
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I'm sorry to lose Netflix DVDs. I heard or read an article on what we're losing: a lot of old movies and some shows just never make it to streaming.