mostly void, partially stars

1. What fandom(s) do you follow on Dreamwidth? I think DW as a whole is more about "fandom as a fandom" now, but I still compulsively subscribe to all the communities that talk about media/ships I'm into (e.g: steve_and_eddie and kjc_fans among others). I've often wondered what it'd take to turn back journal sites into the primary fandom hubs they were pre-2010s, although obviously I'm still fine with them existing as they do (although I wish we'd make use of communities a bit more). That might just be impossible in a post-reblog internet landscape, also. I do enjoy meta/pan-fandom talk quite a lot, anyway, so what I'm most excited to keep up with is more in the camp of meta_warehouse and fancake rather than my regular fandoms.

2. Where else do you follow those fandoms? I'm on tumblr + discord and I get to know about the interesting stuff on twitter/tiktok (which is unfortunately a lot according to my taste, particularly when it comes to fanart) via discord servers, which is a sweet deal as I never have to experience anything else coming from those websites. Tumblr often tests my limits but I'm too attached to it to properly let go - it's shaped such a chunk of my humor and aesthetics, plus I might have been way less left wing and way more cisgender without it, so! An improvement on all fronts.

3. Have you ever met up with fannish friends? I routinely get a bit melancholic over the fact that I didn't strike up strong fandom friendships when I was younger and now it's probably not going to happen. It sort of feels like a thing that has to happen by a certain age threshold and I only ever had fannish close acquaintances (which I obviously deeply appreciate). And then I see some drama happen in fandom spaces about friendship groups disbanding over problematic ships and think it's probably for the best, given that the space I would've made friends in was discourse-era tumblr.

4. When there's a question on a 'find a fic' community, are you likely to help find the fic or do you hope someone else will know it? My days of being so well-read in my fandoms I could be help find fics are way behind me, especially since I spent the last few years in juggernaut slash ships holding grudges against established fanon. I used to be so good at this with frerard, though.

5. Did you customize/tweak your DW home page or are you using one of the basic options? Got too excited for a second before realizing this meant my journal style, whoops (although I could fidget with my DW home via Stylus but I have too much theming on the back burner already, starting with my personal site). And yes, it's sort of customized: I started from a style I liked and tweaked it a bit so that it wouldn't look so much like a preset, as my nostalgia goggles never extended to the basic themes you find on journal sites I'm afraid. I tried to use one of those very tumblr-looking ones coded by the relatively small graphic community you can find on here, but something feels wrong about having a journal site that has post-2013 graphic design ideas. I'm still not too happy with what I have right now, though, particularly my profile code (open to suggestions of codes you enjoy).


questions @ thefridayfive 

Which he felt the need to talk about on the Pinboard official account

new year, new resolution to start posting more

fandomtrees - gifting fest where people write out their preferences and receive fic/art/recs in return - still has a few people with less than the objective of two gifts per participant, in case any of you had some free time available. I'm very bummed about not finishing the one-shot I wanted to write for this one but I managed to catch both the regular flu and likely-covid during the holidays on top of everything else because that's just my luck. Also, like every year, snowflake_challenge is upon us! It's a low-stakes blogging (mostly) challenge focused on fandom positivity and engagement and especially if you're a DW newbie it's a great way to get posting, so I recommend checking it out.

snowflake_challenge #2 In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Alright, the more I think about it, the more I actually do have some goals for this year:

• Engage in fandom more meaningfully instead of doomscrolling so much. I need to stop leaving my headcanons and meta to languish in my drafts and start prioritizing writing and discussions instead of the quick dopamine shot of scrolling through Pinterest or hate-reading someone's Twitter.
• Make my profiles more accessible. I should finally learn how to write good image descriptions in different situations! I'm mostly interested in properly researching how people want fanart captioned, because I feel like regular accessibility guidelines aren't really geared towards something like fandom.
• Talk to people more. I'm awful and I leave fandom and irl friends on read all the time, then wonder why I'm the one who struggles making connections the most. Not something that will be fixed in a single year, but still.
• EDIT I knew I'd forget the most important one: Stop waiting too long before commenting on fics! You know if you wait too long you're just going to forget about it forever!!!