![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradept![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
snowflake_challenge would like us to take a moment, for challenge #12, and appreciate the people who make life better for you in your fandoms.Challenge #12
Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song… whatever moves you!
Despite having come into community in the era of LiveJournal and some of the mailing lists, and fandom forums, and the beginning parts of the Internet before the corporations completely took over, I don't have all that much of that community left over. Little bits here and there, on Discord and IRC and the like, but for the most part, about the only things that have survived over the years that I've been in fandom have been the creators of the works that I've been a fan of, and even then, they've changed from one project to another, because stories do have ends, even if their fandoms may live on for significant amounts of time afterward. (And sometimes you get to see creators do important things with their lives, supported by their fans, friends, and families, so that they can create under proper names and live their correct lives. Even in the face of the hostility that non-fannish spaces show them for it.)
A small piece of art worked its way to me recently, as my parents continue to clear out the things that their children had left behind and now should have in their own places. One of my first in-person fandom groups was the local anime and manga society, who I accompanied to various convention trips and to the watching parties that they did when we had a place to watch things. A local bookstore let us use their space to watch various episodes and have discussions. At least, until the proprietor died, long before we would have thought his time was, and our meeting space in person vanished. At that point, I was also satellite member in the college town, and would then go on to be satellite member very, very far away from there. (The group itself probably hasn't officially disbanded over all this time, but it's gone very, very dormant.) As that satellite member very, very far away, the local artist made a logo for me, that involved the club mascot character atop the local monument, King-Kong style and shaking her fist at the world. That was the art that came back to me most recently, and it reminds me that if it weren't for some people deciding that I was okay, even after one of them and I had a short altercation in middle school, then I probably wouldn't be as far along my fannish journey as I currently am. So, even though there's not much evidence that remains of that early part of my fannish life, it's still important to my development, as much as the old collections of works and imaginative play sessions were, too. Without those beginning spaces, I don't think I would have expanded as well as I did into the greater space of fandom. And without them, and going to conventions, I think I wouldn't have been able to do as much as I have about learning the difference between good and bad behaviors at convention and in other fannish spaces.
(Because sometimes we learn what not to do by observing what other people do and the consequences thereof.)
I have never really used LiveJournal or Dreamwidth for explicitly fannish purposes, instead as more of the journal part, with the occasional participation and interest in communities, but I know that there are people who did, and who use other sites explicitly for fannish purposes and interactions, even if the works themselves are also stashed on the Archive. Since I was more peripheral to fandom interactions in the apparently golden era of LiveJournal community interaction, I don't have the same nostalgia and loss for communities that others do, but I recognize them as important, and I hope that the people who are trying to get Dreamwidth communities moving again and keep them full of content get the critical mass of people they need to make things lively and happy. (It may take a few more exoduses from other sites before it happens, but community maintenance is an important thing, and almost all of the exchanges and challenges that I participate in are hosted here, so there's definitely enough people to make them run.) So, honestly, you could think of me as a post-AO3 fan, more than anything, at least as far as my major output that other people can see goes. And I definitely appreciate the Archive, itself, and all the people who try to keep it up and running. I may have issues with their decisions, sometimes, but I am much better for being part of the post-AO3 part of fandom, rather than trying to figure out how to hang on to things in the pre-AO3 era, especially in the eras where certain morality police believed it was their duty to get rid of things they didn't personally like.
My convention attendance is much more regular, for having escaped a bad relationship and getting into better ones with people who understand that convention attendance is important for me, if for no other reason than to drool appreciatively at art that I may never actually buy. So, for all the people who put on panels, and have artist alley tables, and volunteer and run conventions, you are appreciated. I've met a lot of neat people who were at the tables of the convention, and collected a goodly amount of art and books from there, too. Everyone who runs exchanges and does the work of getting them set up and properly managed, and pinch hits handled, and all of the business of this, you are also appreciated. Even though my participation in the event is usually just "sign up, write thing, post thing, comment on things" rather than anything else on the backend. It is appreciated to have that space to make my creativity go, and to have a few pieces of limitation to get the infinite down to manageable, so all the other people who did signups for exchanges, so that I ahve something ot work with, you are also appreciated.
And so are all the gifters! I have cherished all the gifts, and the podficcers who made things with works that I did because of the transformative works statement that I left in my profile. I like doing exchanges, both because it gives my creativity an outlet, and also because it means that I get to see some really neat things from other people, who get to take fragments of ideas that I had about something and turn them into neat completed works. (And that means I appreciate the people who put together primers and reference works so that when I need to remember a detail, it's present, if it's something that I need to remember and use.)
It's not quite "I love everyone in this bar" when it comes to fandom, because there are definitely some people who think they're fans who behave in ways that I find anathema to my own idea of good fandom, but I do love a good portion of the people in this bar, for all the things that you do, the people you help, the things you create, and the general attitude of camaraderie and solidarity that you show to each other regularly.
Finally, I say this almost every time I talk about it, not because I believe that she'll ever come across it, but if that moonshot ever does happen, I want her to know it with certainty: Caroline, if you're still out there, we love 9th Elsewhere. And while we hope that maybe you'll pick it back up and bring it to a close, what we really want you to know is that the journey that Eiji and Carmen have taken holds a special place in all of us, so thank you for what you've done. I hope that knowing you have people who are fans and who have found this particular journey meaningful helps you with your own life, wherever you may be, and whatever you might be doing right now. I would love the opportunity to discuss umbrella-related poses with you again at some point.
