Sense, Nonsense, and Not-Sense

Fandom is both long-remembering and always distracted by the new shiny. Shows and media properties stay in our lives for a while, some leaving because the viewership isn't there, others because they've reached the end of their story and now it's time to go. Some creators love their fans and are happy to share the space of their creations with others. (Some only if no money is made from the transaction.) Others are okay with fans, but only if they keep their distance and observe.

More than a few come to the fandom because their media failed to show they existed, and those stories needed to be told. Some came because their media had managed to populate itself with plenty of people like them, and lots of other diverse people, and posted invitations at the boundaries for anyone to come in. Others came because they loved the show and were certain a couple were destined for each other, and it never happened. So clearly there has to be a point where it does happen.

And then it gets stranger from there. Some come because they think characters should be subjected to new and strange scenarios, like being part of an apocalypse, or all members or patrons of a coffee shop (or a bar), or entwined in ways that transcend death and reincarnation. Some have built an elaborate universe of social functions that are enforced by instinct so deeply ingrained that they couldn't break it even if their lives depended on it. There's idfic, crack pairings, and plenty of Plot? What Plot? to go around. The enthusiasm of fandom in its excesses and opinions, and the diversity of those opinions, is quite the thing to behold and appreciate, even when those opinions differ.

Fandom takes care of its own (a lot of the time, anyway.) There are plenty of stories of people meeting, whether for drinks or romance, people providing aid to each other to meet bills, provide happiness, and even sometimes help with long-distance moves. That protectiveness can sometimes get in the way of things. Some people use fandom to cloak their beliefs and prejudices. Others use it to take advantage of others and behave poorly and disrespectfully, counting on fandom to be too afraid of getting rid of one of their own to discipline them or demand improvement of their behavior. Sometimes we succeed at getting them gone anyway, sometimes they turn out to be not a single entity but a small (or large) group that wants to speak for fandom and normalize their own behavior. Sometimes they turn out to be trolls, sometimes that turn out to be just intent on hurting anyone they can get within their sights, sometimes they want to burn the place down and replace it with their own version of it, whether for good or for ill. Those things cause disruptions, but they are either handled and sent back to the darkness from which they came, or welcomed and listened to and integrated as best as possible. (At least on the fannish side. Creators and studios often are hostile to ideas that request diversity of characters and avoiding retreads of problematic tropes and storylines.)

Fandom is vast, it contains multitudes. Whether for gen, het, slash, femslash, multi, poly, or any and all of the pronouns, identities, and ways that characters and creators identify themselves, it's a great way of making connections and sharing creativity and the things that make art artistic and enjoyed by those who experience it. Long may it reign.

In your own space, write a love letter to Fandom in general, to a particular fandom, to a trope, a relationship, a character, or to your flist/circle/followers. Share you love and squee as loud as you want to.

And that's it for another year. I hope this has been an enjoyable journey through fandom.

In your own space, post a rec for fannish spaces and resources - comms, challenges, twitters, tumblrs, etc. Tell us where you hang out.

My fannish space, such that it is, tends to be on Dreamwidth and the Archive Of Our Own. I don't hang out in a lot in fannish communities, and I tend to be adding in exchange communities to do writing assignments. For that, I might mention there's fandomcalendar, which has a lot of exchanges and events posted.

Much of my fannish presence is in linkspam and in the comments sections of other people's spaces. So, if you would like fannish commentary, you should probably talk about fannish things in your own space and see if I get wandered over there and say hello.

So, yes, hrm, I guess that using tag searching and the fandom calendar is really all I've got. Ah, well.

In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. (More than one is okay, too.) Tell us about it, tell us why you love it, give us some examples and recs.

I don't know if it's a specific trope, but I seem to be very much on the path at this point toward liking media that subverts or averts their tropes. And not just in a way that makes it painfully obvious that it's really a horrible story Recycled IN SPAAAAAACE, either.

For example, one of the most fearsome foes of the Final Fantasy franchise (Added Alliterative Appeal) is the Tonberry. Tonberries are slow, they don't attack quickly, but odds are good that the first time you encounter one, it's going to one-shot a character, if not the entire party. Because Tonberries usually have a move that deals damage to a character based on the number of other monsters and creatures that have been killed. Or the amount of steps the party has taken. Or some other hidden counter that springs forth in vengeance and then has to be dealt with on a regular basis. If you play the game the way the designers intended, retribution arrives.

I also like games like Undertale, where the player has to make real choices with consequences and players with Genre Savvy often find themselves strongly in the category of Wrong Genre Savvy. It's good to have your expectations shifted.

Witty banner also helps. Whether Beatrice/Benedick, Laharl/Etna/Flonne/Mid-Boss, or Vash/Wolfwood/Millie, a character group that can sustain some zippy remarks without falling too far into "that's what [x] said" sorts of territory, things are usually going well.

The early Big Bang Theory had gestures of this, but with increasing Flanderization, is become apparent that instead of setting out to write a properly geek sitcom, they decided to write a generic sitcom and then apply various geek flavorings on top. Contrast, say, Welcome to Night Vale, where the weirdness is so thoroughly cemented into the world that is not possible to tell the story without it being there.

I guess that's why it's a little harder to write Dear Author letters - because I'm not looking for specific storytelling tropes that characters can be slotted into. I'm looking for stories that grow organically and can't be separated from their characters and settings. So I'm thinking in plots instead of tropes.

I don't think I'm the only one, either.

In your own space, create a fanwork. Make a drabble, a ficlet, a podfic, or an icon, art or meta or a rec list. Arts and crafts. Draft a critical essay about a particular media. Put together a picspam or a fanmix. Write a review of a Broadway show, a movie, a concert, a poetry reading, a museum trip, a you-should-be-listening-to-this-band essay. Compose some limericks, haikus, free-form poetry, 5-word stories. Document a particular bit of real person canon. Take some pictures. Draw a stick-figure comic. Create something.

I cheated, slightly, and instead posted a thing that I had already created, but was willing to let sit in my file for a while. So you get this:

The Gold Curse (1193 words) by silveradept
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Once Upon a Time (TV), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Hermione Granger, Luna Lovegood, Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold
Additional Tags: Crossover
Summary:

The curse hit Hogwarts, and only Hermione knows anything about what happened. So she goes to confront the source. Not that Gold is telling anything.

Enjoy!

In your own space, post recs for at least three fanworks that you did not create. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

These are the first three that I can recommend in the Yuletide collection. They will not be the last ones, but I'm crunched for time, as usual.

The Devil Went Down To Georgia...and for a lot more than what he bargained for.

Some Who Or Other explains, in Seussical verse, how the Whos discovered their missing Christmas, and then convinced a Grinch to return it all.

Mage #24 is all about what happens when your campaign actually goes well enough that the expendable squishy wizard doesn't bite it before you get to know them.

Of course, you could just read the Yuletide collection and get these and many more recommended works all at once. Especially with the influx of new people to Dreamwidth, there's a lot of space to go exploring.

Most media is consumable and forgettable. Episodes often spend their time driving to a single line or action that is the point of the episode, the single memorable and emotional part that carries through into the next episode or season. Some things only get one of those events, some get several, and some try to build entire shows on that premise and the idea that ordinary people, when put on camera, will do all sorts of heinous things. (Pay no attention to the casting director who deliberately set the mix of people to be the most volatile and explosive one the game gets going.) In any case, as the presence of the shirt of spoilers indicates, there are plenty of memorable elements to our media properties.

In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul.

A life-changing media work, one that stays with me even as I progress in life? High praise, indeed, for something like that, considering the accelerated pace and multiple distribution channels for media these days. I could talk again about formative adventure games or a book that helped stick some fantasy tropes on their heads, but all of those things are parts and pieces and not soul-branding experiences.

It could turn out that RWBY is going to be one of those media properties, but it's not done yet and has the potential to go splat on that attempt.

I think I'm going to go with Bone as a work that had a strong impact on me. Fone Bone, Rose, the Red Dragon, and the stupid, stupid rat creatures are all well developed characters, and the story does what a lot of memorable stories I have do - start with comedy and light situations, and then strike hard with the serious and ride that to the end. I realize, after writing that sentence, that many of my memorable media experiences do this - Trigun, Brigadoon, RWBY, Eureka, even Calvin and Hobbes does it. It's clearly an effective storytelling trope. It doesn't necessarily mean that's the way I like my media (still an Arkos fan, thank you, and I like silly Vash and the Insurance Girls more than Knives and Legato), but that's apparently the way to get me invested. And also, possibly, very, very upset at the showrunners when they make that turn for the dark.