If anyone asks, my nanny hacked my account and made this post

[lucymonster]

The other day I cheerfully wasted a whole day's allowance of downtime rereading The Ms Scribe Story, as I can't resist doing every now and then. As legendary fandom wanks go, it's probably my all-time favourite for the sheer amount of effort that went into the fuckery.

But despite its being a horrible story about horrible people, my main takeaway this time is a weird nostalgia for those days - I mean, the days when single-fandom archives, forums, and LJ were the main hubs of fannish activity. I coped well enough with the move to tumblr, but twitter is basically the perfect polar opposite of what I want from a fandom space (Speed! Impermanence! Overlap with the non-fannish world!); discord, doubly so. I don't think LJ was any more or less wanky than other platforms - it really just depends on who you hang out with, or I guess who you're unlucky enough to get noticed by. (I was a nobody, so most of the drama sailed right on by me.) But it was definitely better at fostering the kind of interactions I enjoy. I love it here on DW, but we're not exactly in the room where it happens.

Anyway, the upshot of this nostalgia binge is that I've wasted today's downtime tinkering with my icons, which I haven't touched in forever. I've found some I really like, and I'll whittle and adjust based on what I actually end up using. Today's is for great flaming wankstorms lol. Let's hope I don't need it.

Comments

[snickfic]

I've been thinking recently about where I do fandom these days, and honestly it's mostly in email and discord DMs. This is partly because my fandoms are so small these days, but if they were bigger, I still wouldn't end up actively doing fandom on twitter or tumblr. Like, I HAVE accounts for both of those, and in fact I'm very attached to my twitter account and my people there, but it's for casual stuff about my day (and cat pics), not for actively engaging in fandom. (Also it's locked, lol, and I will never, ever unlock it.) If I got into a fandom that had a bit more of a fannish presence, honestly I'd probably end up doing it on meme. 😂

I thought about maybe trying to do more fannish blogging here on DW, but honestly I don't know if it'd feel worth it. Talking about Oasis here mostly feels like yelling into the void, which is why I don't do it much anymore. I get a lot more engagement for my book and movie reviews.

In any case, new icons are always exciting, especially if having them motivates you to use them by posting more, which I enthusiastically support. :D

[lucymonster]

I used to do most of my Star Warring on meme, which was a surprisingly chill experience once you learnt to ignore a couple of easily identifiable trolls. But the parts of fandom I’m interested in died off after a while, and you honestly couldn’t pay me to Star War on most namespace platforms. So I just…stopped doing fandom, really, outside of exchanges and ao3. In theory I’d really like to get back in (maybe things have calmed down out there now that Kylo Ren’s been dead for a couple of years?) but I’m so out of the loop now that it just feels harder than it’s worth.

In any case, new icons are always exciting, especially if having them motivates you to use them by posting more, which I enthusiastically support. :D

You’re a gem. <3 I’m not saying I plan to choose my post topics for the next few weeks based on which icons they might suit, but the temptation is definitely there lol.

[liriaen]

Oh god yes. I remember those days. I entered fandom in 2004 as a lurker, and 2006 actively. Man oh man, there was quite the potential for grief. But! It was also such a vibrant creativity, community, sense of belonging.

I never moved, other than to insanejournal after Strikethrough, and then to DW when the Russians bought LJ. So yes, i do really miss the centrality… but on the other hand, different platforms engender different forms of communication and exchange, and that’s a good thing.

But yeah… there’s always a sense of nostalgia for the old days.

[lucymonster]

One thing I do really appreciate about the newer platforms is that they’ve brought fanart so much more to the fore. I remember it being a much more niche thing in the LJ days, because you had to go off-site or figure out complicated image hosting…now it’s so built in to the fandom experience that I can hardly imagine doing without.

But yeah, the nostalgia is real.

[osprey_archer]

Rereading The MsScribe Story is never a waste! Truly a classic. Someone should bring it out as a book.

MUCH AGAINST MY WILL I have slowly grown fond of Tumblr (it helps probably that it seems more chill now that the main hub of fandom is elsewhere), but I've never truly grasped how people fandom on Twitter. It moves so fast? It's so easy for fandom drama to break containment because there IS no containment? Horrible.

IMO DW is still the best place to talk about books and even for rare book fandoms, but the bigger fandoms have definitely passed on by.

[lucymonster]

Perhaps that’s the answer: I need to get invested in some rare book fandoms! (My kingdom to be able choose my fannish obsessions, lololol. I’d be into so many quiet, classy lit fandoms and so few loud wanky megacorp blockbusters.)

[osprey_archer]

My kingdom to be able choose my fannish obsessions

God, if ONLY. It would be so useful to be able to get obsessed on command!

[lucymonster]

My new fandoms are Ovid, a highly profitable subfield of computer science, and getting my chores done. Make it so.

[osprey_archer]

Excellent. I love it. Vacuuming will now me a high just like finding a fic with the perfect iron woobie characterization of Bucky Barnes back in the day. We've cracked the secret of adulthood!

[lucymonster]

…you jest, but in the privacy of my own head, I have been known to cope with having to do chores by daydreaming about my faves doing the same chores. Surely even supersoldiers and Jedi have to scrub the oven sometimes!

[pauraque]

What I learned from being on LJ in that era is that I don't want to be in the room where it happens. :P It burned me out and I don't miss it at all. It can be fun to look back on stuff and boggle, but I am so much happier on DW in 2022 than I ever could have been on LJ in 2005. That's just me, though.

[lucymonster]

You know, that’s a good point! I can look back at the old days now and say ‘thank goodness I was nobody’, but at the time I know I felt a lot more angst about not keeping up or fitting in - probably partly an age thing, but large social networks do have that effect ime. I’m probably happier overall with my quiet life on DW, even if I do pine for the days when content about my fandoms flowed free.

[theskywasblue]

I was fortunate never to have found myself embroiled in any fandom wank - though I witnessed some mild ones from the sidelines.

That being said, I do miss the old LJ days something fierce. Nothing quite like that experience exists now.

[lucymonster]

I found tumblr worse than LJ for avoiding wank, due to how easily content got distributed far outside its intended circle - though the results were sometimes pretty funny. I think my favourite was when a couple of Bleach friends and I were talking about Byakuya/Renji, and somehow a very loud and angry group of fans from the perpetual IchiRuki/RenRuki/IchiHime wars managed to a) find us and b) mistake us for RenRuki shippers. They spent a whole day heaping scorn and vitriol on us, and congratulating each other on their own blogs for “owning” those delusional RenRukis, while we were there like WRONG KUCHIKI YOU GUYS PLEASE CALM DOWN. It was pretty funny.

But yeah, the LJ fandom format was what worked best for me, and it’s hard to imagine anything similar getting traction now. People like to move faster, which is fine, but I just can’t keep up haha.

[theskywasblue]

Oh dear ha ha. How awful to be mistaken for a Ren/Ruki shipper (kidding, though I am a Byakuya/Renji person myself - ship and let ship, as it were.)

You're totally right. Over on Tumblr I see so much fandom wank for fandoms I have NOTHING to do with. I try and curate my timeline pretty closely but some inevitably slips through and I end up going "WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE AND WHY DO I CARE???? Oh yeah...I don't."

[lucymonster]

I never give a rat’s about canon-plausible het (Star Wars is an exception that should not be counted against me) so the Bleach shipwars were a source of much bemusement. All the options were so perfectly, equally harmless and bland.

But yay, fellow Byakuya/Renji shipper! Truly the connoisseur’s choice. :D

I think the last time I checked in on tumblr, everyone was wound up about Supernatural AGAIN and I just…gave up. I have never in my life knowingly followed a Supernatural fan, so how tf is my dash always covered in it? 😂

[theskywasblue]

I am a pretty dedicated Supernatural fan, but I am so far removed from all the wank in that fandom that most of the time I see only the vaguest posts about it and think to myself "Nope. Don't want to know. Ever."

I just want to read my silly stories and enjoy my trashfire show in peace.

Byakuya/Renji is like a fine wine, or a well-aged whiskey. Truly the choice of those with discerning tastes.

[lucymonster]

I just want to read my silly stories and enjoy my trashfire show in peace.

You are singing the song of my people, friend. But I guess that’s just one more reason I like it better here on DW than elsewhere - no one ever tries to yell at me about how the angel guy is gay in Spanish or how Kylo Ren is an actual real life school shooter.

[lucymonster]

Also OH HEY I just poked your ao3 profile, and I remember reading (and loving) your ByaRen fic way back when! Think I need to go on a nostalgic rereading binge - the anime is giving me all sorts of fresh feelings about them.

[theskywasblue]

Aw thanks! I wrote precious little Byakuya/Renji back in the day, but I always enjoyed doing it.

[walgesang]

I like the icon! I like nostalgia for nostalgia but then I remember how there was a very uncomfortable lurking transphobia in the LJ days of people spreading rumors of guys on LJ who were "really women." It wasn't a good time and I feel for anyone who had to come out during that time, because sometimes it was really fucking awful. :/ I think I could maybe count one person who was able to be androgynous and not get too much flack, but that was rare.

There are things that I think back on fondly but for the most part I like where things are now on DW. Maybe my flist isn't as active, but it's certainly active enough and that's all right by me.

[lucymonster]

people spreading rumors of guys on LJ who were "really women."

Oof, that’s ugly. :( Definitely puts the rose-tinted memories into perspective.

I guess one big strength of the tumblr/twitter ecosystem coming to dominate is that it kind of forcibly blasted us out of the clique-based fandom social structure that was so cushy for unexamined bigotry. I know a lot of important social justice conversations were happening on lj, but without things like the reblog/retweet function, they just didn’t have the same reach. (Despite being active there during the relevant period, I never even heard of Racefail until years later - on tumblr.) I have gripes ranging from petty to major with some of the new mass social media-based fandom norms, but it’s definitely done a lot of good in terms of handing the mic to marginalised people.

[walgesang]

I certainly have my share of rose-tinted glasses and believe me, there's a lot I loved about some of those old days but yeah. I was definitely seeing it through my still cis tho privilege. :/

It is interesting that a lot of people are using terms that people were blasting as things "those tumblr kids" do. My kid was already ahead of the curve by going to a high school where kids were coming out as ace or nonbinary. I don't know if they'd be as solidly in their orientation and identity if it wasn't for that, so for that I am grateful.

Weirdly enough, there's a post in me about trans sensitivity betas where I still don't feel qualified to be a sensitivity beta because the umbrella is sooooooo big.

[lucymonster]

My sister works with teens, and she says it’s really common for them to be openly experimenting with gender and sexuality - like, common to the point of being cool, at least within certain circles. It makes me so happy! Sure, some of them might turn out to have been “going through a phase”, which is absolutely fine (no conservative - or gatekeeper, for that matter - has ever adequately explained to me what the harm is supposed to be) but so many queer kids are getting the chance to figure themselves out early and avoid some of the trauma and confusion that previous generations have suffered. And yeah, no, definitely not just a tumblr thing.

FWIW, I think your awareness of the size of the umbrella would be an asset to a sensitivity beta, not a disqualifier. Though I can understand feeling hesitant. I’ve gotten tied up in knots about my authority on far, far less fraught topics.

[rhoda_rants]

I deeply miss the forum days! Most of the time. They had their own drama, but it was so much easier to avoid if you wanted to. I've managed to avoid much of the drama in most of my fandoms, honestly, partly by not being prolific enough to notice (like you, I guess), but also by being extremely selective about which parts of it I decided to participate in.

I did have to leave a couple forums behind because they just didn't mesh well with my personality, but I do miss the specificity of those days. Just a bunch of people all there for the same interests. It was a good time.

[lucymonster]

I had that experience with the very last forum I was on - just Did Not mesh with the mod in charge of the board for my ship. It was actually one of the main things that pushed me to transition to tumblr as my primary way of doing fandom. But by that point, I think forums were already on the decline - if there’d been another active forum for that fandom, I’d probably have moved there instead.