Silver Adept (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silveradept) wrote2022-01-13 04:15 pm
silveradept) wrote2022-01-13 04:15 pm
Entry tags:
Snowflake Challenge 2022 #7: Other Things You May Like
The seventh challenge asks us to divulge our sources.
Despite being a person who is paid to functionally translate between Human and Machine so as to pull information from collections arranged to best suit Machines, I don't have a whole lot of go-to resources for the things that I use for specific fannish activities. Then again, I don't dive a whole lot into my fandoms to where I end up going to places that need to use specialized resources only for a single fandom. Since I'm multifannish, my resources are going to be more general rather than hyper-specific.
Speaking of my professional associates, if you have an endpoint of the network of librarians and archivists near you, I highly suggest getting tapped into that network. Many librarians and archivists love crunchy, detailed questions that will help us keep our research skills sharp, and we'll also be able to teach you a thing or two about the resources available so that you can do other useful things when not asking the professionals about the differences between Edwardian and Georgian fashions so as to figure out whether or not a man would leave his outermost layer buttoned or unbuttoned. Many librarians and archivists in public service get asked essential and important questions about the operation of technology, the costs of making hard copy of things delivered by electrons, the necessities of civic life, and questions of fact that are often resolved by consulting "ready reference" tools. They do not often get asked questions that require a more in-depth consultation and summarizing of resources. So, as long as you have enough time for a library or archives person to do their work and get back to you (which can take a few days at the shortest), there's a lot to get from that world. (Materials requested from outside the library system may take weeks or months to arrive. Not great when you have deadlines looming and bears chasing you, but very good if you're stuck on a detail trust turns out to be critical to your plot. Or you're planning next year's cosplay and need to get started right now.)
More often than not, if there's enough information about a series to need keeping track of it externally, someone has developed a wiki or other collaborative knowledge base for that fandom, which is often hosted on some other place. So, sometimes a wiki gets destroyed when a wiki provider goes up or changes its name in a way that aggravates the people that are supposed to be enthused about it (looking at you, "Fandom") or has to cave to the pressure of advertisers and others that don't want their products and ads associated with age-restricted material. (This is a general wide-spread baleful eye which also includes "Fandom", but also there's so much fandom knowledge that's been destroyed or that had to move quickly, because there's very few forces in the world that generate as much ire as a parent who doesn't understand the ad ecosystem and believes the appearance of an ad is an endorsement of the page (or app) it appears on.) If there's a canonical bit that I would like to check upon, I generally trust these fan-created wikis to have accurate data, or at least accurate enough speculation based on the data. Bigger fandoms often have more developed wikis (Wookieepedia, Memory Alpha, Fanlore), but it's not always guaranteed.
There's one wiki that I do tend to consult more than others, though, for more general ideas about how to talk about and envision the characterization, settings, and plots of potential transformative works or fannish discussion. TVTropes is a wiki of storytelling devices and the media properties that use them. There is sometimes a rumbly disagreement about the use of trope language, feeling that analyzing media properties by their tropes is reductive or destroys the magic of reading a story by showing the devices working behind the curtain. ("I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL ID, I mean, OZ!") I think trope language is useful for communicating in a shared language (even if it might feel weird) and for highlighting the ways that a trope gets used and the ornamentation that gets applied to them, because a lot of times, when discussions of media properties happen, they tend to want to focus on the differences between things that are otherwise similar. As they say themselves, Tropes Are Not Bad, Tropes Are Not Good, Tropes Are Tools. And sometimes, knowing how the thing works doesn't take away any of the majesty of it, and it might provide a new dimension to admire. (At least, if all of those popular videos doing deep dives into aspects of various media are to be believed.)
On Dreamwidth,![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomcalendar is an advertising space for exchanges, prompt fests, big bangs (and smaller ones), and other opportunities to create, recommend, or enjoy transformative fandom. fictional_fans started as a community to help introduce people who are unused to the Dreamwidth style of content creation get oriented and feel more at home when they arrive from whichever shores last held them, but it's become a kind of pan-fandom place for people to put things, ask questions, and otherwise serve was a welcoming ground and community for new and old hands at fandom. This challenge, snowflake_challenge, has a summertime component, sunshine_challenge, that's more laid back in pace, although it shows our northern hemisphere bias by running them this way.
I admit, I'm probably not the person to get those really good recommendations from. I don't know what I don't know, and I already know I don't know a lot.
In your own space, tell us about 3 fandom resources, spaces, or communities you use or enjoy. (One or two is fine, especially if you're in a smaller fandom!)For the people who were going for active communities on Dreamwidth, hopefully you'll be able to read the replies to this challenge and find an active space (or decide to generate one).
Despite being a person who is paid to functionally translate between Human and Machine so as to pull information from collections arranged to best suit Machines, I don't have a whole lot of go-to resources for the things that I use for specific fannish activities. Then again, I don't dive a whole lot into my fandoms to where I end up going to places that need to use specialized resources only for a single fandom. Since I'm multifannish, my resources are going to be more general rather than hyper-specific.
Speaking of my professional associates, if you have an endpoint of the network of librarians and archivists near you, I highly suggest getting tapped into that network. Many librarians and archivists love crunchy, detailed questions that will help us keep our research skills sharp, and we'll also be able to teach you a thing or two about the resources available so that you can do other useful things when not asking the professionals about the differences between Edwardian and Georgian fashions so as to figure out whether or not a man would leave his outermost layer buttoned or unbuttoned. Many librarians and archivists in public service get asked essential and important questions about the operation of technology, the costs of making hard copy of things delivered by electrons, the necessities of civic life, and questions of fact that are often resolved by consulting "ready reference" tools. They do not often get asked questions that require a more in-depth consultation and summarizing of resources. So, as long as you have enough time for a library or archives person to do their work and get back to you (which can take a few days at the shortest), there's a lot to get from that world. (Materials requested from outside the library system may take weeks or months to arrive. Not great when you have deadlines looming and bears chasing you, but very good if you're stuck on a detail trust turns out to be critical to your plot. Or you're planning next year's cosplay and need to get started right now.)
More often than not, if there's enough information about a series to need keeping track of it externally, someone has developed a wiki or other collaborative knowledge base for that fandom, which is often hosted on some other place. So, sometimes a wiki gets destroyed when a wiki provider goes up or changes its name in a way that aggravates the people that are supposed to be enthused about it (looking at you, "Fandom") or has to cave to the pressure of advertisers and others that don't want their products and ads associated with age-restricted material. (This is a general wide-spread baleful eye which also includes "Fandom", but also there's so much fandom knowledge that's been destroyed or that had to move quickly, because there's very few forces in the world that generate as much ire as a parent who doesn't understand the ad ecosystem and believes the appearance of an ad is an endorsement of the page (or app) it appears on.) If there's a canonical bit that I would like to check upon, I generally trust these fan-created wikis to have accurate data, or at least accurate enough speculation based on the data. Bigger fandoms often have more developed wikis (Wookieepedia, Memory Alpha, Fanlore), but it's not always guaranteed.
There's one wiki that I do tend to consult more than others, though, for more general ideas about how to talk about and envision the characterization, settings, and plots of potential transformative works or fannish discussion. TVTropes is a wiki of storytelling devices and the media properties that use them. There is sometimes a rumbly disagreement about the use of trope language, feeling that analyzing media properties by their tropes is reductive or destroys the magic of reading a story by showing the devices working behind the curtain. ("I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL ID, I mean, OZ!") I think trope language is useful for communicating in a shared language (even if it might feel weird) and for highlighting the ways that a trope gets used and the ornamentation that gets applied to them, because a lot of times, when discussions of media properties happen, they tend to want to focus on the differences between things that are otherwise similar. As they say themselves, Tropes Are Not Bad, Tropes Are Not Good, Tropes Are Tools. And sometimes, knowing how the thing works doesn't take away any of the majesty of it, and it might provide a new dimension to admire. (At least, if all of those popular videos doing deep dives into aspects of various media are to be believed.)
On Dreamwidth,
fandomcalendar is an advertising space for exchanges, prompt fests, big bangs (and smaller ones), and other opportunities to create, recommend, or enjoy transformative fandom. fictional_fans started as a community to help introduce people who are unused to the Dreamwidth style of content creation get oriented and feel more at home when they arrive from whichever shores last held them, but it's become a kind of pan-fandom place for people to put things, ask questions, and otherwise serve was a welcoming ground and community for new and old hands at fandom. This challenge, snowflake_challenge, has a summertime component, sunshine_challenge, that's more laid back in pace, although it shows our northern hemisphere bias by running them this way. I admit, I'm probably not the person to get those really good recommendations from. I don't know what I don't know, and I already know I don't know a lot.