obstinatecondolement | Entries tagged with fannish 50

I've recently finished watching the CBS adaptation of Ghosts recently and I am now, to put it mildly, completely consumed with it, and with a particular ship in it (featuring the ghost of a standoffish and repressed aristocratic Gilded Age woman in her early fifties and the ghost of a douchey fratboy Y2K finance bro in with a heart of gold in his early thirties), and I want to do little more than make fanworks for it.

Over the past three(?) days I've written a fic and made a playlist and wrote commentary about it and uploaded both.

Details and links below, for those curious! (mildly nsfw and there are spoilers for season two of CBS Ghosts)

A screencap of Hetty gripping Trevor by the chin while they both sit on a bed which has been edited to resemble a damaged old photograph and captioned 'H-Money Can't Buy Me Love'

Fandom: Ghosts (2021)
Title: [playlist and commentary] H-Money Can't Buy Me Love
Relationship/characters: Trevor Lefkowitz/Hetty Woodstone
Time: 01:07:00
Word count: 3284
Rating: Teen and up (for language and non-graphic sexual refrences).
Warning(s): N/A, I think? I'm a bit jokingly mean about Hetty's emotional repression, if that's something you might be sensitive to, but it is not meant with sincere malice.
Summary: This follows closely along with how the characters got together in canon, with them initially hooking up to help each other out when they were both very sexually frustrated, which transitioned into a secret affair that Trevor was under the impression Hetty only wanted to be secret to make it more thrilling, but was devastated when he realised that she would really be embarrassed by people finding out when someone does find out and tries to blackmail them. They break it off, briefly, and then get back together when Hetty realises that she let go of a good thing and they tell everyone that they are together. They do also, subsequently, pretend to break up in a later episode and go back to being together secretly, but I think that's mostly so they don't have to go on double dates they find boring rather than out of a reluctance to have an emotionally committed relationship instead of a spicy affair.

Fandom: Ghosts (2021)
Title: La Petite Naissance
Relationship/characters: Trevor Lefkowitz/Hetty Woodstone
Word count: 3058
Rating: Explicit
Warning(s): (mild) unnegotiated kink, insecurity and anxiety about (consensual) sex due to sexual inexperience
Summary: In canon Hetty originally thinks that it is not possible for people of her anatomy to orgasm (or, seemingly, feel sexual arousal at all) until another ghost suggests she sit on an old, clattery washing mashine and she finds it somewhat revelatory. The inspiration for this fic came from an idea I had during a conversation with another author in the fandom, wytchwoods, in the comments of their excellent fic Human Contact where Hetty has her first orgasm with Trevor. They mentioned being disappointed that canon had later contradicted that, because Flower said that Hetty's first orgasm was on the washing machine, but I thought that didn't really count as being categorically jossed, because maybe Hetty had mistakenly thought she'd had an orgasm on the washing machine, but had just been very turned on and didn't know how to tell the difference, because it had never happened before. And once she did know better, that she just allowed Flower to spread that particular piece of misinformation without correcting it, so she didn't have to deal with the fact that it had been Trevor who'd got her there the first time and that, maybe, she wasn't entirely unmoved by his role in that. Or, indeed, think about the fact that he might mean more to her than being a convenient means of getting off. And then I immediately wrote a fic about that, lol.

Jump to: Likes
Jump to: Do Not Wants
Jump to: Requests, Fandom Specific Likes and Fandom Specific Do Not Wants

Dear podficcer,

I’m SweetPollyOliver/unmanlygrief/obstinatecondolement/obstinatecondolement. Thank you so much for offering one of my fandoms! I’m very excited to see what you make.

I don’t have a preference regarding podfics with or without effects and music, so feel free to do whatever you would prefer. I generally take a long time listening to podfics longer than 10–30 minutes, because I get antsy and lose focus unless I have something to do with my hands—I don’t want to discourage you from making something longer if you want to, but I thought I’d just let you know about this upfront, so that if you did make a longer podfic for me, you weren’t worried that I didn't like it if it took me a while to listen to it in full and give you feedback. Regarding other preferences:

TL;DR, except for DNWs, everything I’ve said in this letter is extremely optional and I’ve only included what I have to give people who like a jumping off point some guidance into things I enjoy. Feel free to ignore whatever you don’t vibe with and read as much or as little of this as you like.

I am very easy to please, so try not to get stressed worrying about what I would like or dislike as much as you can avoid it. I would much rather that you worked on something you really liked and enjoyed creating than that you were anxious the whole time worrying about my preferences. If I really don’t want something, I will DNW it, and other than that you’re golden. I will give some guidelines in case that’s what you’d prefer to work with, but they are just that: guidelines. Beyond my DNWs, I’m very happy for you to follow your own muse wherever it leads you. Also, I’ve structured this letter the way that I have so that you can jump around it easily and only read the parts that are relevant to you, so do not feel obligated to read the whole thing. I have only included so much and gone into so many specifics because I want to give you a range of options to use for inspiration if you feel stuck, or you want to have some insight into what I like before you started. I definitely would not only be happy with gifts that include the things I’ve included in my letter, and I do not want you to feel limited to things I have thought to include. I will also not be at all disappointed if you make me something that includes elements I didn’t mention specifically here whether it includes anything in my letter or not. I’m very happy to be given a gift that introduces me to new things to add to my list of likes! Like, really, I can’t stress enough that I am very easily won over by sincere enthusiasm from a creator and I love surprises, so I actively prefer when people create something for me that they’re really excited about than that they try to include things I’ve mentioned that they themselves feel meh about.

Minor bit of business here before we get started: please click on the spoiler tags to uncollapse the DNWs before you start reading the Likes section. You don’t have to read the DNWs first—basically, what’s going on is that I have a couple of anchor links from some of the things listed in my Likes to relevant exceptions I’d like people to steer clear of in the DNWs and those links only works if the DNW section is not collapsed behind its spoiler tag. The joys of HTML!

Likes

SFW likes (mostly—anything with additional elements that are NSFW is behind a spoiler tag and clearly marked as NSFW)

I went into a lot of detail for some of these, so I have added spoiler tags to cut for length where appropriate.

Fic that is largely canon compliant. Canon divergent AUs are great, fic that re-interprets or re-examines canon events with a different lens is also great. I am not especially reverent towards canon and non-canon compliant fic is not a problem, but I do really like fic that rattles the bars of its canonical confines while remaining within them (or stays within them for the most part). See also:

Post-canon fic and prequel fic—especially ones that are:

Character studies, especially of characters who are sparsely characterised or underutilised in canon.

Missing scene fic.

Fic with a strong ensemble cast.
AUs that are a completely different setting to canon, especially fusions with other canons such as Pacific Rim AUs or The Last Unicorn AUs (see DNWs for exceptions).
Dramatic irony, especially when it’s comedic.
- That said, I love sincerity that is entirely unembarrassed of itself and does not try to deflate itself with irony.
Witty or otherwise humorous dialogue.
As you can probably tell from the last two listed likes, I prefer fics with a comedic tone, or at least a comedic tinge (which can be ironic and/or bitter, in fics that skew more towards the dramatic side of the comedy-drama spectrum). I like pretty dry and understated humour, but I am also just a fan of Funny more generally.
Bittersweet or melancholy fics are also wonderful. I am always a sucker for regret and missed opportunities/wasted time.
Quiet, domestic stories that have a sense of contentment about them.
Exciting, dynamic stories that have a sense of uncertainty about them. I particularly really love stuff where I don’t know what’s going on for 85% of the fic and then it all clicks into place in the last 15% as reveals that were set up earlier start to fall like dominoes.
Found family.
additional details
Characters can have any kind of relationship to their family of origin in these kinds of fics—I am equally happy with fic about or featuring found families where the characters haven’t spoken to their parents in years and never intend to again and fic where one of the characters called their mom to talk to her about sourdough starter yesterday. Mixing and matching between these two extremes can be fun too!
Queer platonic partnerships.
additional details
The character(s) can be aro and/or ace, and/or be sexually and/or romantically attracted to a different gender to their QPP, or they can just be queer platonic partners because that is the kind of relationship that suits them and not due to a mismatch/mutual incompatibility of sexual and/or romantic orientation.
References to queer culture and history. This can be in conjunction with one or more queer ships, but can also be in a gen fic featuring one or more queer characters.
Pining.
additional details
I especially like this when the character in question’s feelings are actually requited and they’re just unaware (especially-especially if the reader is aware before the character is through clues given but not explicitly stated in the narration) but also when their feelings genuinely are one-sided.
Rarepairs.
additional details
In most of my fandoms, I usually end up getting more and more niche over time. I love when my first reaction to seeing a ship tag is, “Huh?” but then when I read the fic I’m completely sold by the execution of it because it feels true to the canonical characterisation of the characters and the evolution of the relationship (or invention of it, if they’ve never met before in canon) is a natural extension of that, so feel free to include ships that you really love that I have not mentioned in my fandom specific likes, as long as I haven’t mentioned actively disliking them. Also, this probably goes without saying, but just in case: I am using an interpretation of “rarepair” here includes ships that involve more than two partners.
Polyamory/non-monogamy, very much including forms of non-monogamy other than polyfidelitous triads, such as vee arrangements, polycules or open relationships etc.
additional details
Your fic can be primarily about X/Y and have it as a background detail that this relationship is non-monogamous, if you like. I really like fic that is about X/Y, but X’s canonical relationship with Z also exists in the fic without anyone cheating or getting jealous. For examples of the kind of thing I mean, cosmic_llin has some great fic where Deanna Troi is dating something who is not her canonical love interest Will Riker, while also being in an open relationship with Riker.
Emotionally intense and tempestuous co-dependent relationships, which can either get healthier over the course of the narrative or remain very much a "don’t try this at home" kind of depiction.
Unironic “issuefic.”
additional details
This is a term that turns up in DNWs rather than likes in a lot of fandom exchange letters, in my experience, but I genuinely love reading about The Issues™. This can include, but is not limited to, things like disability theory adjacent themes, trans headcanons, depictions of characters being very deliberate and careful about respecting consent, unironic depictions of characters talking like they’re trying to get a good grade in therapy (maybe He Would Not Fucking Say That, but if we’re going to limit ourselves to what he would fucking do and say why not just call it quits on fandom and stick to canon, lol), examinations of the broader social context of the settings of various fandoms, middle aged men trying to be kind.
Kid fic.
additional details
I prefer if the kid seems broadly realistic for the age they are depicted as being, but what is typical at a certain age varies a lot (I certainly had a very spiky developmental profile myself as a child) so don’t stress about it.
Knitting or other kinds of crafts, especially from authors who are crafters and especially-especially when it includes technical or jargon-y details.
Speaking of jargon, I love STEM-y things being featured in fic.
additional details
An example of what I mean is things like the stuff about mathematical proofs in astolat‘s Rodney McCay/John Sheppard fic Time in a Bottle. You don’t have to go into enormous depth here to get a lot of bang for your buck in terms of how much it will please me. I nearly swooned when I read the main character of the novel Hold Me by Courtney Milan mention something about something being three standard deviations above the mean.
I also love wildly unrealistic and campy fake science escapades.
additional details
Things à la this Karate Kid fic I wrote where a CEO character’s R&D department creates a super soldier who he falls in love with or this fic trinityofone wrote for the same ship where the CEO character uses fake science, again from his R&D department, to babytrap his love interest. Basically though, if a bubbling, neon green liquid housed in a beaker that is smoking profusely appears in your fic then you are on the right track!
Things relating to ageing.
additional details, some NSFW.
Including, but not limited to: moments of wistfulness or melancholy about it, older characters having active and fulfilling sex lives, broader themes about ageing, or matter of fact inclusion of details about changes brought about with age. In terms of that last one, I once wrote a fic where a character’s wrist started clicking after he fingered the woman he was having sex with for a long time, so stuff along those lines is great. That fic also had some sci-fi age-related stuff about the Phase where post-menopausal Betazoids’ sex drive quadruples or more, so feel free to include speculative/sci-fi stuff about ageing too if it fits the setting of your fic!
Stuff about (wanted) pregnancy. I have some pregnancy related DNWs at the link here, so if this is an option you’re attracted to, please click through to see what I do not want from this kind of story.
additional details about what I do like (some NSFW)
Including, but not limited to: cloyingly fluffy family fic, breeding kink (and/or risky sex) and overly specific and/or scientific details about pregnancy itself. These details can relate to real pregnancy or speculative/sci-fi pregnancies featuring alien physiology or artificial wombs, etc. Speculative/sci-fi pregnancy does not have to be realistic for me to enjoy it! Depictions of real pregnancy would ideally have a higher degree of realism though, as pregnancy has been a long standing special interest of mine. I don’t mean, by this though, that you have to give someone a difficult pregnancy because they’re over 36 and that’s “more realistic” or something (also, fwiw, my aunt had her first baby at 48 and she had a very healthy and active pregnancy with both of her children), just that I would prefer that any specifics that you mention are accurate (so no feeling the baby kick before 16 weeks, for example). If you want to write about someone having a difficult pregnancy, or complications like gestational diabetes, though, go right ahead! I would ask though that if you go this route that it’s more along the lines of h/c than something that ends tragically. Regarding abortion, where termination is discussed (if, for example, the pregnancy was unplanned and the potential parent is thinking about options) I would strongly prefer that it was in a pro-choice context, unless you really feel that one or more of the characters would be pro-life and the overall narrative itself did not endorse them on this. I’m totally open to angsty fic about infertility that does not end with the character becoming pregnant, however.
Notes regarding mpreg and people other than cis women getting pregnant
Cis mpreg heavily depends on execution for me and I am generally not that interested in it—when I do read it, I prefer cis mpreg where pregnancy is not the norm for cis men in that universe and it’s contextually a fake science or magic-related thing. I am okay with trans mpreg, especially written by other transmasculine authors, and with other AFAB trans people getting pregnant as long as it is a wanted pregnancy and any depictions of dysphoria are not extremely graphic. If you would like to write a story where a trans woman or transfeminine or other AMAB trans person gets pregnant, then I’m totally open to that and my preferences for that align more closely to the ones I’ve mentioned for speculative/sci-fi pregnancy than to my preferences relating to cis men being depicted as being pregnant. Rather than wanting the pregnancy to be depicted as unusual or unique, as is my preferance for cis mpreg, I would prefer a fic where transition related healthcare has progressed or is on the cusp or progressing far enough to allow this kind of pregnancy to happen. Also, despite what I just said about preferring this kind of pregnancy not to be depicted as being singular in-universe, if you want to write fic where your character has gotten pregnant after being granted a wish by fairies, set in a universe where transition related healthcare has not, and will not in the near future, allow for AMAB people to get pregnant, go right ahead! This is relatively uncharted territory, fic-wise, to my knowledge, so go forth and be fruitful, as it were 😉 My only truly strong preference here would be that your character is pregnant due to wanting to be pregnant rather than for another reason.
Since I mentioned it briefly in the above bullet point: speculative or canon alien physiology in settings where this is relevant.
additional details (mildly NSFW?)
Can be related to non-human typical genital configurations like Spock’s various fanonical space!junk, or more along the lines of Spock’s heart being where a human’s liver would be, and him having copper based blood.
Inclusion of sensory and sensual details (which may or may not be erotic).

NSFW likes

Getting together and/or stuff with a first kiss (I know, how NSFW, lol) or first time having sex. I particularly like if first time sex scenes (and sex scenes generally) aren’t Perfect™ and things are a little awkward in a way that the characters can laugh about.
- First time bottoming and, more generally, first time doing X sex act or kink and/or characters realising that something they hadn’t given much thought to, or had assumed they wouldn’t be into, is something they’re really into. I’d prefer they go into it with a “Sure, I’ll try anything once” attitude rather than an “I’ll suffer through it for you 😥” attitude.
Friends with benefits/platonic sex. This can turn into fuckbuddies-to-lovers, but it doesn’t have to. I am particularly partial to a character who wingmans for their fuckbuddy and gets them together with another love interest (whether or not the two friends continue to have platonic sex afterwards is fine either way).
Non-penetrative sex.
additional details
The characters can be actively choosing not to have non-penetrative sex specifically because of practical concerns, such as them don’t want to risk pregnancy, or them wanting to fuck right the fuck now and not wanting to wait for an opportune time for anal, or a character having vaginismus, or one or more of the characters just not really liking penetration. It can also just be something with non-penetrative sex without the need to justify that choice in-text. I really like when fics don’t make a distinction between penetrative and non-penetrative sex in terms of what is considered to be “real” sex, e.g. things like characters referring to a time they had oral sex as, “When we fucked” in dialogue, or similar casual nods to non-penetrative sex also being sex.
- Intercrural sex specifically. This can transition into penetrative sex or not.
- Oral sex of all varieties. I don’t particularly care about erotica being historical accurate or not (or, indeed, about erotica being strictly realistic in general—it can be fun to write realistic sex, but if you want to write impromptu anal fisting, go for it! I have, lol), so feel free to include it in a setting where it would be unlikely, e.g. the Golden Age of Piracy.
Virginity kink, especially if the fic itself doesn’t buy into the social construction of virginity as a concept.

Re: the above, I really it like, in general, when a work winks at the idea that kinky elements are just roleplay and not Real. Not for moralistic reasons or anything, I just think it gives a nice atmosphere and feel to the relationship and dynamic between the characters to imagine them being kinky together on purpose, as opposed to fics that play to the kink, but are not explicitly written to portray the characters as kinky, if that makes sense. I don’t mind if this is not something in play though, and I can definitely tell the difference between id-heavy smutty fan fiction and writing intended to be taken as a strictly literal account of how things are or should be.

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DNWs

I don’t mean to imply any judgement with any of my DNWs and some of them are things that I do enjoy from time to time in some contexts, but aren’t things that I’d like as part of a gift work/that I’m in a headspace for right now.

SFW DNWs

First or second person narration, unless that is canon typical.
Mundane/modern AUs (e.g. college or coffee shop AUs, etc.), Harry Potter AUs/fusions, AUs or pre-canon fic where the characters are aged down.
random tangent about Scooby Doo
Although, come to think of it, I’d love to see a fic, AU or post-canon, where characters were depicted as much older than they appear in canon, e.g. something like the gang from the original 1969 Scooby Doo cartoon in the modern day as 70-somethings … in this purely hypothetical Scooby Doo fic that nobody will ever write though, Scooby is obviously still alive, typical 8-10 year lifespan of a Great Dane be damned.
(return to where you left off in Likes)
Pregnancy related DNWs:
- Unwanted pregnancy.
- Fic where a character is coerced or tricked into becoming pregnant, even if they come around to the idea and/or are not upset by it (babytrapping from the side of the gestational parent isn’t a problem for me, because it’s a bodily autonomy thing for me mainly and also I’m a hypocrite).
- Fic where the overall narrative explicitly promotes a pro-life sentiment.
- Pregnancy fic where the pregnancy ends in abortion (re: the apparent contradiction with the last bullet point, for me this is like “there was only one bed” fic where they resolve it with someone sleeping on the couch, because I like pregnancy fic and the kind I seek out start from a premise that the pregnancy is wanted, even if unplanned).
- Fic where the pregnancy ends in miscarriage, unless the character does manage to carry a pregnancy to term (or after 12 weeks, with the implication that they will carry to term) by the end of the story and the miscarriages are not depicted graphically. (return to where you left off in Likes)
Dark fic. I’m fine with angsty or bittersweet fic or with stories that are framed as tragedies, but I do not want something that is primary intended to be disturbing, or that is unrelentingly miserable with no reprieve and no catharsis at the end.
More than passing depictions of bigotry. You do not have to engage in historical revisionism or erase bigotry that exists in canon or the real world and I do enjoy fic that engages with the broader social contexts of various fandom settings, but I do not want a fic that is centred primarily around experiences of bigotry.
Fetishisation or romanticisation of a marginalised group.
additional details
For example: race play, fetishisation of trans people, fat fetishism, fetishisation of physically disabled people’s bodies, romanticisation of mental illness, etc. One exception is that I do have a weakness for clueless class privileged characters who are poverty tourists, à la the song Common People, so I will say that I’m generally neutral-to-positive on this one, provided the character whose socioeconomic circumstances are being romanticised explicitly thinks that the poverty tourist is being a privileged dick (regardless of whether they also still have, or want to have, sex and/or a relationship with them).
Intimate partner violence or other related forms of abuse.
additional details
I do like some specific ships where the characters are unhealthily obsessed with each other and mutually destructive, but I do not like fics where a character is primarily a victim of their partner rather than someone willingly walking into a lake of bad decisions with their partner and drowning, hand in unlovable hand. N.B. I don’t mean by this distinction that I think that anyone in a real life abusive relationship is culpable for the abuse they suffer in any way.

NSFW DNWs

Kink related DNWs:
- Consensual non-consent or other rape fantasies.
- 24–7 D/s relationships.
- Master/slave relationships.
- Humiliation kink. Non-kinky humiliation is fine.
- Desperation kink.
- Edging.
- Chastity belts/cages, etc.
- Degrading or insulting language in a kink context.
- Erotic asphyxiation. Non-erotic choking is okay.
- Heavy pain play. Light impact kink or discomfort from restraints is fine.
- Sadism.
- Sounding.
- Things likely to edge near a hygiene squick.
Non-con or dub-con.
Characters consenting to sex they think they won’t like, whether they turn out to be right about this or not.
Detailed descriptions of sex that is painful or unpleasant.
additional details
While I love badsex where it all goes pear-shaped in a way that’s funny to both the reader and the characters, and I love fic where characters get better at communicating what they enjoy sexually and their sex life improving as a result, I really don’t want to read long or in-depth depictions of characters being subjected to sex they absolutely hate with a partner who is either unaware that they don’t like it, or doesn’t care, that never gets any better.

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Requests

Requested Fandoms (be wary of spoilers!)

Leverage

This can include the new show, Leverage: Redemption, or not depending on your preference. I ship Eliot Spencer/Alec Hardison/Parker, Alec Hardison/Parker, Nate Ford/Sophie Devereaux(/Jim Sterling), Sophie Devereaux/Harry Wilson, Breanna/literally any cool woman, and I am also a big fan of character studies and gen fic.

Fandom Specific DNWs

Sophie Devereaux/Parker
Sophie Devereaux/Eliot Spencer
Eliot Spencer/Maria Shipp (unless it’s not endgame)
Completely unironic implications that the cops/the System are a force for justice and good.

Willow (2022)

Ngl, I am still absolutely devastated that this show was not only cancelled, but taken off Disney plus and I am Not going to get getting over it any time soon. I think it was so disrespectful to the young actors who put so much into their roles and to Warwick Davies who had returned this this role that he played at 19, because he cared so much about the character. But. Anyway. I really, really love all the characters in this show and there is no wrong move here. I love Kit Tanthalos so, so much, because she is so messy and intense and vulnerable in a way that you don’t often get to see female characters be—she is Blorbo. I love her canonical romance with Jade Claymore and also her intense Whatever with Elora Danan. If Jade weren’t in the picture, I would ship Kit/Elora to hell and back, but I also love seeing it as a sibling rivalry kind of thing? I am also very much in love with the other characters and I sigh happily over all of them on the regular, so if Kit isn’t calling to you then feel free to cast a wider net!

Fandom Specific DNWs

I don’t NoTP it or anything, but I haven’t been especially drawn to any of the Elora/Jade/Kit fic I’ve seen
Non-canonical character death

Sense8

I’m possibly in the minority in that I really loved how Amor Vincit Omnia fit so much plot into the runtime of a single movie. I don’t love that it was necessary, but I really enjoyed the implications of the result, where the various sensates loved ones had to be looped in (often offscreen) and were immediately ride or die. Love that! Devotion is never not going to get me. Along with what seems like the majority of the fandom, I am obsessed with Kala Dandekar/Rajan Rasal/Wolfgang Bogdanow and I really, really love how neat Rajan and Wolfgang think the other is when they meet. All those scenes where Kala is having a crisis about how she could possibly choose between them and the sad necessity of breaking the heart of a good man no matter what she does and Rajan and Wolfgang are staring dreamily into each other’s eyes in the background and skimming stones across a lake while holding hands are just *chef’s kiss*

Fandom Specific DNWs

A League of Their Own (2022)

Another show I am still spitting mad about the way it was treated by the streaming service it was produced by. Support the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and SWG strikes, guys! I love this show so much. The main canonical ships are all amazing, but I also really love the gen relationships and the comradery and solidarity that the characters have (or fail to have) for each other. I love Lupe García/Jess McCready, and both of their relationships with Esti González
, but there really is nowhere you could look in this show that I wouldn’t love.

Fandom Specific DNWs

Fic that portrays Bertie Hart as a GNC cis woman
Jess/Esti
Lupe/Esti
biphobia or bi erasure

The Karate Kid/Cobra Kai

I have been very intense about this franchise for a few years now and I don’t see that stopping any time soon. I love Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence (which is far and away the biggest ship in the fandom), but I also love John Kreese/Terry Silver, Tory Nichols/Sam LaRusso(/Miguel Dias/Robby Keene), Daniel LaRusso/Amanda LaRusso(/Johnny Lawrence), Johnny Lawrence/Carmen Dias, and others. I really like how this fandom lends itself to fic about the cycle of violence and trauma, but also can be extremely silly.

Fandom Specific DNWs

Imitating Mr. Miyagi’s accent.
Anything that takes the idea that Daniel was “the real bully” or that he was (even partially) responsible for being bullied in the first movie. It’s okay from an IC POV, but not as something endorsed by the narrative itself.
Teen ships that are not Sam/Tory or a polyship that includes Sam and Tory
Contact mods for a sensitive DNW that I don't feel comfortable listing publicly

The Tick (2017)

This show is incredibly charming and I love it to distraction. I ship Arthur Everest/the Tick, but I am also a huge Dot Everest/Overkill (aka Esteban aka Straight Shooter) shipper.

Fandom Specific DNWs

Arthur Everest/Dangerboat
Overkill/Miss Lint (aka Janet) (except as backstory)
The Tick’s suit coming off/molting off and him just having a normal human body beneath, to faciliate a sex scene. Weird xeno sex or bust!

Succession

I was hesitant to watch Succession for the longest time, because I saw a lot of self deprecating jokes from fans of the show about stanning 1%er business majors and was like “Eh, pass” but then I heard that there is a canonical kinky affair between a younger (late 30s) man and an older (mid 60s) woman and was like oh okay, now this I gotta see! I just … love these terrible people so much. They suck (affectionate) (derogatory). I obviously ship Roman Roy/Gerri Kellman, but I am also a fan of Shiv Roy/Tom Wambsgans (I am of the opinion that she really does love him, which is very inconvenient and embarrassing for her) and gen Roy sibling family feels (of both the endearing and the less endearing kinds).

Fandom Specific DNWs

Tom Wambsgans/Greg Hirsch
Kendall Roy POV

Singin’ in the Rain

I love this movie so much! I am such a sucker for movies (and musicals, come to that) that are about ~showbusiness~ and take place behind the scenes for a lot of the action. I find it such a fun framing device and it’s a way to play with the fourth wall that I really like. I hardcore ship Don Lockwood/Kathy Selden/Cosmo Brown (and any pairing within those three, honestly) and I love how much fun they have together and the affectionate way they poke fun at each other and support one another.

Fandom Specific DNWs

I do love Lina Lamont, but anything that paints her as a tragic victim of patriarchy who did nothing wrong is a bit eyeroll-y to me.

Community

This show is really important to me, as I think it’s the first time I’ve seen a character who is coded autistic who really maps very closely onto my experience of latching onto narrative to understand the world. Abed Nadir is the Blorbo of all time. In terms of ships, I really like any variation on the theme of Abed Nadie/Annie Edison/Troy Barnes (both shippy and gen), and I am constantly five seconds away from dropping my TED Talk about how Jeff Winger/Shirley Bennett is criminally underrated. I also quite enjoy Jeff Winger/Dean Craig Pelton and I do think that queer sex might fix Jeff. Or at least be fun!

Fandom Specific DNWs

A focus on Britta Perry/Jeff Winger, Britta Perry/Troy Barnes, Jeff Winger/Annie Edison, or Britta Perry/Annie Edison
Britta Perry POV

Only Murders in the Building

I love this intergenerational crime fighting friend group so damn much. I haven’t read a lot of fic, so I don’t know what is out there to pod, but I really ship Mabel Mora/Theo Dimas, Charles Hayden Savage/Oliver Putnam (I can really see them both being closeted up til now with varying degrees of self awareness about it, from Charles being like “Well, I’ll just not think about that” to Oliver never really thinking twice about it because he thinks everyone is a bit bi). I also like Mabel/any of her canonical love interests. I think this is a great fandom for a gen fic though, because it’s a mystery show about friendship. It would also be a fun one to pod, potentially, since it’s centred around the character’s creating a podcast!

Fandom Specific DNWs

I don’t know how likely this is, but nothing where anything bad happens to Winnie (Oliver’s dog)

Our Flag Means Death

I really feel like my life is now divided into pre-OFMD and post-OFMD, because apparently now blatant queer subtext between the main characters in a mainstream show that hasn’t been marketed as an LGBT show is like … not automatically queerbaiting? Sometimes it’s actually going to pay off??? That said, while I do absolutely adore Stede Bonnet/Ed (Blackbeard) Teach, I am really besotted with the ensemble cast and I love gen fic about them as well as shippy fic about other ships. I went completely hog wild writing Frenchie/Wee John fic when season one came out, but I also really like Jim Jimenez/Oluwande, Oluwande/Frenchie(/Wee John), Lucius Spriggs/Black Pete, Jim/Lucius and I feel like I could definitely be convinced of some sad post-S1 finale Frenchie/Jim fic. I also ship Izzy Hands/Lucius on principle and, again, I think that queer sex might fix Izzy. I feel like he is pretty unambiguously in love with Ed in canon, and I am not averse to him getting in on the main ship in Izzy/Ed/Stede fic.

Fandom Specific DNWs

Imitating Jim’s accent.
Imitating the way Black Pete’s cleft palate affects his speech.
Killing Lucius for real.

Good Omens (TV)

I’m a lifelong fan of the book, but I was an avid lurker in the GO fandom in the early to mid–2000s, but I have only gotten into the TV fandom after the second season. Similarly to what I said about OFMD, again, truly it is a brave new world out there! I love Aziraphale/Crowley, but I have also fallen—nay plummetted, no vaguely santering about it—into shipping Beelzebub/Gabriel and I sigh dreamily over them several times a day. I also ship Newton Pulsifer/Anathema Device, fwiw, but I don’t know how much fic there is out there for them. I know that when I was doggedly looking in the early 2000s there wasn’t a lot, haha.

Fandom Specific DNWs

She/her or he/him pronouns used in narration to refer to Beelzebub, Muriel (the 37th degree angelic scrivener from S2), Pollution (the horseperson of the apocalypse who took over from Pestilence), or other characters who canonically use they/them pronouns. In-character mistakes are okay.

Return to beginning

To anyone else reading letters to look for people to treat, hi there! I have gifts enabled on my AO3 account, so treat away if you so desire, and thank you for the kind thought.

Current Mood: excited

I've been signing up for a lot of fandom bingo stuff and feeling Very Bad about how many bingo cards I have signed up for in the past and then never finished (or, in many cases, started), so I guiltily took a look at my 100fandoms bingo card (never updated since I signed up in January 2019 until now) and filled out what squares I could from fic that I have posted since I signed up. Technically, it's not against the rules to use fic you wrote before signing up, but I wanted to limit it to what I've done since then. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to fill out 23 squares even though I hadn't been actively working on it. Like, sure, it's nearly been five years, but it's certainly more than I expected given how all-consuming Cobra Kai was for me for a hot minute of several consecutive years there, lol.

I think I am going to keep chipping away at it, because going through my works on AO3 for all these various fandoms where I only ever wrote one (or a few) fics made me realise how much I like those works and how good I think a lot of them are. I said this in my update to the post I linked above, but I have often felt inhibited from writing in certain fandoms either because I think No One Will Care outside of Yuletide season, or because I only have 1–3 ideas in me for that fandom and I don't want people to be disappointed if I just breeze through, drop a few things they like, and then leave forever. But, like, that's very silly. I should write things because it's fun and because I like them before I worry about My Public. I am not a professional writer whose livelihood depends on having a wide readership and nor do I have to tie myself down to a specific Brand Identity to avoid confusing or alienating readers who liked my X books but then hated my Y books. It's just for fun! So I should have fun! Which I do, when I let myself, so I think I'm just gonna take this as a sign to give fewer shits and just write the damn thing if I have an idea I am compelled by.

So I have dipped into a lot of non-fic fanwork creation of various kinds—fan crafts, playlists, graphics, vids, podfic, icons, typesets and books of fic—but I am generally not super prolific in any of them. I started vidding in 2019 and have since only made 14 vids, which is not not due to tech issues, but it's still not a great innings, especially when you consider that the first four were all posted within the 21 days of each other, because I started off on a hot streak that then immediately cooled to a rate of two and a half vids a year after that. I also have been orbiting fan binding spaces for like... three years and have only gotten started actually binding books this year, and it also almost didn't happen for me again because of tech issues (my dad's printer and the imposition process joined forces to ruin my life, but luckily a renegadepublishing mod held my hand through troubleshooting the issues I was having.

this got very long, lol

I am doing better with podfic, likely due to the lower barrier for entry. I posted my first pod last year towards the end of May, and as of now I have six completed podfics posted publicly on my AO3 account (plus one WIP, plus one that's in the Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology IV collection and will be revealed on September 30th and, if I'm being a bit cheeky, plus a fraction of (one of) my

pod_together partner(s),

semperfiona's Discworld pod: [Podfic] Radio Killed the Semaphore Star, because I read the footnotes for the podfic version).

This still isn't amazing compared with my fic output,^* and that is also in large part because I have also had tech issues that have held me back with podfic. My microphone is, by all accounts I've seen online from audiophiles, Very Good and an exceptional XLR condenser mic at its price point, and I haven't read any horror stories about the audio interface or XLR cables I use, but consistently it has recorded incredibly quietly for me, even with the gain on the audio interface set as high as it will go. I have kind of improved that as of this evening, because apparently some versions of Windows set the input audio levels very low by default and you have to manually change them in settings, so that was a big part of the issue, but I still have to set my gain up higher than I'd like to get the audio to a place where I don't have to drastically change the volume when I normalise it to between 19 and 16 LUFS, because I lose a lot of the audio quality with huge changes from very quiet to very loud, but if I set the gain as high as I think is appropriate then I get a hiss that I have to take out with two rounds of noise reduction that, to my ear, takes a lot of the warmth out of the tone of my voice and makes me sound a little tinny.

I have gotten some feedback on this, though, and someone else said that they felt one round of noise reduction made the hiss inaudible unless they turned the volume up uncomfortably loud, so they at least would not notice it if that was what the final edited version of audio sounded like. I do think I will ask for an inline preamp for my mic for my birthday, just so I can set the gain as low as it will go. I have heard good things about the FetHead Phantom (I need to get one that allows phantom power to flow, since my mic needs 48V phantom power) and at €75 plus fifteen quid delivery, I would not feel outrageous asking my siblings and parents to chip in on it for my birthday present.

However! I have also recorded the last two pods I've done (plus the footnotes of the one I guest-voiced on) on my phone, which is like... definitely more than adequate! It's 1000% not a hobby that requires top of the line microphones and I would never recommend someone starting out get a mic before they've recorded a few pods on their phone or their laptop's in-built mic, or whatever they already have, and edited on an open source DAW like Audacity to see if they enjoy the hobby.

I did not, I hasten to add, run out and buy expensive equipment on a whim to try podfic. I ran out and bought expensive equipment on a whim, because at one point I had plans to do a Star Trek podcast with my friend that we kind of lost momentum on when we were Going Through It. So, basically, all the advice I had come across, when I was researching what to buy to start a podcast was aimed at people who were trying to make podcasting or other kinds of Content Creation™ a side-hustle. And, in that specific context, the getting highest quality audio you can afford out the gate is good advice,^** because good audio is a solid investment for someone who makes their living creating audio(/audio-visual) stuff online. If you buy something that isn't going to give you the kind of audio that people have come to expect from Content Creators™©® it's often just a false economy that will slow the growth of your career and you will have to replace it much sooner than if you'd even gone one tier up from the absolutely ground level of the budget options on the market.

But for podfic? Literally do not spent a fucking penny if you have anything at home already that can record audio, which you almost certainly do if you are in online fandom. Plenty of very prolific podficcers record on their phones (or on headset mics, or laptop mics, or whatever they had when they started out) for their entire tenure in the podfic fandom. And that's not only literally fine, it is a lot more typical than having a set-up comparable to someone whose job involves recording and editing audio just for podfic. And actually? Mics on smartphones have great audio quality that can sound better than a higher quality mic that someone who doesn't really know what they are doing (*raises hand*) is recording on, because they can be extremely sensitive to the point of picking up a pin dropping in the next room, while phones are literally designed to exclude outside sound. Because they're phones.

And like, I think I kinda know what to do with my set-up now, but it has taken a lot of trial and error and Google/YouTube/Reddit/Discord have turned up a lot of dead ends or told me to do things I've already done/not to do things I am not doing. If I hadn't already owned a mic and had just started out on my phone instead, I might have already recorded and posted a lot more podfics and I likely would never have felt the need to get a microphone. And, you know, it's very nice to know that I have the option of just using my phone when I don't feel like taking out all my equipment and setting up my mic stand and all that shite and it will be Fine. I'm not unhappy that I have such a nice mic and I do want to make it work as well as it can for me, given that I did buy it for that podcast that never happened, but I am glad that I don't feel like it is the only option available to me that is up to my own standards for audio quality (which aren't even my own standards really, but those of some dads with YouTube channels, and I have been known to be very forgiving of pretty questionable audio quality when I've been listening to music or whatever in the past). And even if I get good enough at wrangling my mic that the quality is unequivocally and objectively Much Better than what I can achieve on a phone, I feel like I'm finally starting to escape from the prison of perfectionism and I'll be able to say and actually believe that doing something imperfectly is better than not doing it at all, because I don't feel up do doing it The Best That I (hypothetically) Could. I am feeling this in other parts of my life too, which has been great, but it is a very welcome change here.

But anyway, obviously I want to be empowered in non-fandom parts of my life by this, but I also am kind of excited to get more vids/books/etc. done because I'm gonna stop waiting to be able to whole-ass things that I can absolutely get done to a Good Enough standard with 45% of my ass. Like, I mean, I went from having recorded A podfic in January this year, and seven in the span of eight months, to having (at least contributed to) three in one month and honestly I think [podfic] Death with Dignity by Thebiwife is maybe my best work to date.^***

I think that I have this very warped idea of what I Should be able to do, because I am very, very productive and can perform to very high standards... sometimes. And over short periods of time through small bursts of effort that are not sustainable to do All The Time. I can't reasonably expect the same level of "productivity" and "quality" non-stop. It's like saying that Usain Bolt would be the fastest marathon runner in the world if he'd only stop giving up after 200 metres. And also... sometimes, it is Bad, Actually, when I am working that fast and that much and to such a high standard, because it means either I have put myself under too much pressure by overcommitting and/or procrastinating, or that I'm Doing A Hypomania, or all of the above, and then I crash hard and can hardly function on much more basic and essential level for however long it takes me to recover. Which is not good!

On the other hand, I do very much hesitate to say something like "I should just be Steady and Consistent and Never do things over short, intense sprints" here, because I don't really think that's realistic given how many times I have tried really hard to do that and it doesn't seem to be how my brain works, but also it's not always bad that I get bursts of energy where I do Lots of things to a very high standard. I don't think that I should expect it of myself as a default, and I don't think I should ignore when it can be a red flag or the result of a bad decision, but I don't think it's a bad and pathological thing that I need to ruthlessly stamp out. I remember when I was writing reams of Cobra Kai fic while incredibly depressed (or, I guess, having a mixed episode) and not being able to do various basic self care things that are pretty much non-negotiables like showering, but I don't think that I would have suddenly been able to do those things if I had cut myself off from my sole source of happiness because I wasn't allowed to have fun until I could Be Healthy.

So, yeah, it's a pretty multifaceted thing, I guess. I think it would be healthy for me to let myself off the hook for not running the marathon in 01:07:28, and not basing my plans for the future around being able to do that, or thinking that it's something I Could do but am just being too lazy to apply myself to achieve because I'm a bad person who hates hard work, but I also have to allow myself to be happy when I can run 200 metres in 19.19 seconds and it's not hurting me in other areas. And I shouldn't hate myself for being a bad marathon runner no matter how fast or slow I can sprint right then. I can work on my marathon end time without being self-loathing about how I've Frivolously decided to be good at sprinting instead, because it must mean I'm a show off and have no stamina. I don't know if this metaphor is still working, but you basically get the idea.

^*Which is like, to be clear, not a problem. You don't need to focus completely equally on all the different things you do in fandom and it's not really surprising that a skill I've been working on almost ceaselessly since childhood that involves absolutely no technical skills involving hardware or software that are unfamiliar to me anymore, and only requires a machine (not saying computer here for a reason—I wrote a lot of fic on my phone that I posted to AO3 when my laptop was not cooperating for literally months) that has a word processor and an internet connection to create that kind of fanwork, and that I started doing in fandom years before I tried making other kinds of fanworks, is something that I generally do more of compared with my other fannish hobbies.
[return to paragraph]

^**Honestly, given that I did not want to monetise this podcast, I don't know what my excuse is. I think I got rather carried away and went mad, because I am extremely susceptible to dogmatic didacticism from people on the internet telling me the Best way to do things that Everyone should do and how Only A Fool would do the much more accessible and inexpensive thing. Don't let me near salespeople, basically.
[return to paragraph]

^***Which I say not because it was the first one I used effects on, but the one where I flubbed the fewest number of lines while recording it. I usually end up with raw audio that is ten times as long as the finished run time will be after editing, but I got this one out pretty fluently. And I think what made the difference there was that I used a (free) teleprompter desktop app when I was recording and tweaked my script a bit ahead of time instead of making decisions on the fly about whether I was going to add dialogue tags to make it less ambiguous who was speaking or to leave it as written. Literally a game changer and I strongly recommend it to anyone who records podfic hasn't tried one. I used to have the fic open on my phone and I'd be squinting at a tiny screen and trying to juggle a thousand bits of hardware at once and it was Rather Hard. I much prefer just reading off my laptop screen as it scrolls down a teleprompter with multiple font sizes that I can pause, speed up, slow down, and page up and down the playback of while I read into my phone. Fucking luxury compared to how I was living before, lol.

And, speaking of making small changes to the text like adding dialogue tags, I also started to be a bit more judicious about replacing descriptions of sounds (laughing, snorting, etc.) with just... doing that sound myself and changing the dialogue tag to "[they] said" and so on.

But, I mean, while I very much would still think this was my best work if I'd done any sound effects or not, I am also very proud of the soundscaping I did in that pod—in particular the section I did where Deanna's empathy overwhelms her in a crowd, which I tried to make a Stressful Listening Experience that evoked sensory overload in a way that would, hopefully, not just tip over into being too stressful to listen to for 100% of listeners (although I did make a version without sound effects and added warnings and timestamps, so that it was a completely opt-in experience). I got a lot of lovely feedback about that from people over last weekend during pod_together's listening jam where a bunch of us listened to and read stuff in this years collection and commented on it, keeping track of our comments and amount of time we spent listening over the weekend.

Collectively, I think we got to a very impressive 70+ hours and 150-ish comments. I was in the top five listeners and top five commenters, which I'm very pleased about, because historically I have had an awful habit of just... not looking through collections of events that I particate in very extensively, because I get overwhelmed and put it off. And then forget. Having a weekend long group thing, which included some communal listening hours hosted on the Discord as well as us doing our own thing, really helped me make it a priority.

Also, by the end of the weekend there was nothing left in the collection that didn't have any comments! This was a first for the exchange, as they've often had years go by before a particular years collection had comments on every work and this year we got to everyone within a week of the end of the event. Obviously people (and especially podficcers) aren't just creating their art to get praised, but it can be a bit of a bummer to work on something for an event and then not hear any feedback at all about it, and I think with podfic (which doesn't get a lot of love directed towards the creator at the best of times) it's disspiriting because it can feel like "Oh wow, even when I'm making something for a podfic-centric event, there are not going to be a lot of people who like or care about what I do, and the few who do don't tell me about it." In my case, I went from having no (0) comments on Death with Dignity (which, as I mentioned, I think is my best podfic to date) to having six very generous and thoughtful ones in a few days, and I'm very glad that I got to pay that kindness forward to other participants.
[return to paragraph]

Anyway, TL;DR, if there's something that is genuinely pretty accessible you want to try, but there are barriers to entry that you are actively opting in to by expecting that you have to be an expert or have expensive specialist equipment right away, then you have my permission to be a beginner and to have fun half-assing things with whatever you have that'll get the job done. And, although this is not at all the point of hobbies, you will ultimately get better by half-assing lots of things than you will by dreaming of what you could accomplish with your whole ass and not doing anything. And some day 10% of your ass and Tony Stark's figurative pile of scraps will be able to accomplish what your whole ass and all the expensive tools in the world could not even hope to right now. But also, while it's not bad to want to do things well or to care about craftsmanship, it is very, very important not to let anxiety about the quality of what you can produce at your skill level, and with the tools available to you, ruin the fun you could have with the process of getting there.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: perfectionists of the world unite: you have nothing to lose by your shame
Current Music: also fandom is not your job and you do not have to do the job of a professional

To try and get me more on track with my podfic goals for the year, I signed up to

podfic_bingo 2023.

Read Quietly	Crack	Female Character	Unfamiliar Genre	Higher Pitch Effect
Read While Laughing	Lower Vocal Range (for you)	No Editing	Non-English Language	Art & Craft
Use a Speed Effect	Femslash	FREE SPACE	Read Sleepily	Record in Bed
Read Slowly (for you)	Gen	Read Sexy	Read with Breaths	Yuletide
Read A Friend’s Fic	Collaborative/Multiple/Gang	Harlequin	Radio Play Style	Boy slash

After having a quick review of the fandom goals I made as part of my new year's resolutions, I had a bit of a scout around to see if there were any podfic related comms I could join to help with that portion of my goal.

To that end, I've signed up for communal_creators which has a number of tiers for committing to creating different kinds of fanworks between September 15–October 15 (participants celebrating the High Holidays can start 7 days early or end 7 days late to make up days they will be taking off for religious observance)

I signed up for... a lot of different commitments, because my touching optimism in my own ability to follow through on things remains untouched by years of evidence to the contrary.

Here are some thoughts I've had about the tiers I signed up for, which I've copied and pasted from my intro post on the comm.

Time tier 1: 15 min/day averaged over a week

So this one is fairly self explanatory. I want to make sure that I'm keeping my hand in in general.

Craft tier 2: A moderate project completed

I was thinking of maybe making a little doll based on a character from one of my fandoms along the lines of Star Trek dolls I have made in the past—that link just goes to one set of such dolls (Jadzia and Worf), by the way, I've made some others too (Seven and Sarina Douglas; Worf and Data; Kira and Kimara Cretak).

But I may end up working on finishing one of my (many) non-fandom UFOs instead, depending on how I'm feeling closer to the time.

Podic tier 1: A complete podfic (or combo) of at least 5 minutes

I think that I'm probably going to try and record another chapter of my long dormant WIP, which is a repod of

sqbr's Mary Bennet/Anne de Bourgh Pride and Prejudice fic: Wedding is Destiny; and Hanging Likewise (content warning: period typical depictions of sexism, ableism and homophobia (internalised and externalised)—although it is also a pretty atypically optimistic take on a lot of things relating to being a disabled Regency lesbian, by the standards of most fic with those tags, which I enjoy a lot). I started this pod very soon into my ventures into podfic and hadn't really realised that posting things as WIPs was not the usual practice. I've also had a lot of set backs in working on podfic between equipment issues and not having a lot of quiet time to record, so I'd love to get more forward momentum on this project.

Vidding: A completed vid(s) of at least 1 min up to 2 min

So I realised that the idea I had is probably too long for tier one, but I do have A Lot of things on my to-vid list, so I will not be stuck.

I've also had a lot of setbacks with vidding since I started out (I began in 2019 and have posted all of 14 vids since then 👀). I really didn't understand the specs necessary for video editing software when I started vidding, so I very innocently started out with my just-under-4GB RAM laptop and perpetually almost at capacity SSD with all my source on my drive instead of external storage. This has been Challenging, but I have managed to bully Vegas into working within those limitations. 14 times anyway. I've been threatening to get a new laptop for literally years at this point and I am going to really, really try to actually do that within the next week. I basically need to transfer money out of my credit union account and into my current account, which involves going to the credit union in person because I keep forgetting my PIN for online banking immediately after I have it reset, so as you can see: it's basically a near-insurmountable barrier to entry I'm dealing with here 🤣

Writing: 3000 words (fic or meta)

I am currently posting a chapter of a Good Omens WIP every Sunday (content warning: fic linked contains depictions of depression and pregnancy (which is unrelated to the depression)). The last two chapters will be posted within the time span of this event, so those may well count towards/make up my writing goal, but I have also been writing quite a lot recently and I have a few ideas that I've been itching to write, so I don't think I'll be stuck.

So! I have been incommunicado on here for Some Time now, but I thought I'd swing by and write a quick update.

RL stuff involving workplace bullying and mental illness

I've been having kind of A Time of it with my mental health and various RL things—I was bullied very badly at work by a supervisor and eventually let go at the end of the probationary period^*, which has been a blow. I will be starting a 1–2 year accountancy technician course soon though, so onwards and upwards.

In more fandom-y news however, I participated in

pod_together for the second year, and had a great time. I was in two teams: one as a writer and one as a podficcer. I also contributed some line readings to the team I wrote for, because it was a Discworld fic and I thought that having a second reader for the footnotes would help mitigate potential confusion.

I wrote Radio Killed the Semaphore Star which

semperfiona adapted to audio in the podfic version of the story. It's a post-canon imagining of the invention of radio on Discworld (full credit for this premise to

semperfiona! I thought it was such a great idea for this event) in the form of various connected vignettes featuring different sets of characters interacting with and reacting to the new medium. The podfic is very creative and

semperfiona did a great job with it.

The podfic I made for the event was [Podfic] Death with Dignity, based on a fic by

Thebiwife's fic Death with Dignity. The story is s an examination of the social model of disability through the lens of Deanna Troi's backstory and the extent to which she experiences extra sensory abilities having been aritrarily pathologised both on Betazed and Earth depending on what's considered the "default" where she happens to be at the time. In the final part of the fic, she interacts with everyone's favourite ex-Maquis Betazoid murderer, Lon Suder from Star Trek: Voyager, whose lack of empathic abilities have also been pathologised and problematised throughout his life. The fic is very poignant and I think it hit it out of the park.

There is a fully soundscaped version of the audio version I made featuring some intro and outro music, in addition to many bells and whistles as I could ~~jam in~~ artfully integrate from a combination of sound effects available on TrekCore and Free Sound. This was my first time experimenting with audio effects beyond just trying to get the raw audio of my own recording cleaner with noise reduction and the Audacity de-esser plugin etc., and I had a lot of fun with it.

For people who prefer less busy audio in their podfics, there is also an effects light version that is mostly vanilla audio with the exception of a little echo and reverb added to telepathic lines of dialogue—there are time stamps for the above lines in the work itself as well as information and time stamps for specific sound effects I thought could trigger misophonia in the soundscaped version. I will try and add a completely vanilla version in the near future!

^*Possibly these are somewhat related, but it was also just... a mess there for various reasons that I don't think were my fault and I frankly think that it was a terrible management decision to let me go and they didn't know what a good thing they had with me, but you'll have to take my word for it. I also got fired almost immediately after disclosing my disability, so. Lol. [click to return]

To preface this with the disclaimers that:

No one is obligated to comment on my fanworks or leave a kudos on them no matter how much they liked it or how many times they have revisited them
No one is obligated to comment on my fanworks or leave a kudos on them just because they mentioned to me somewhere other than AO3 that they really liked them
No one is obligated to even tell me if they discussed and enthused vocally about my fanworks in Discord servers, or elsewhere, whether I'm in them or not

That being said,

I am, however, completely bewildered with the Tumblr-moving-into-Discord-era of transformative fandom and how its culture is evolving with regards talking about fanworks, both with the creator specifically and in general.

Often, people, who do not kudos or comment on things I post to AO3, who I know have accounts (and the works aren't archive locked anyway), will either privately DM me or @ me on Tumblr or in channels of Discord servers we're both in to say they really loved my newest fanwork. Often giving me really generous praise and thoughtful insights they had when they read/saw/listened to it when they do so! I talked to a friend about this and she said that she's had people draw fanart for her of fics that they didn't kudos or comment on. And that's like... obviously that's not sinister or something they are doing wrong that they should feel obliged to correct, in favour of some alternative that's more in line with what I personally prefer/find less surprising, but... it feels pretty self evident to me that it's nice for creators to have comments to look back on, all in one non-ephemeral place, which is also ideally on AO3/wherever they posted the work itself? And that Discord servers move quickly and the nice things you say there will be quickly be buried and hard to find again, which makes it unlikely for creators to be able to easily do that, unless they screenshot and archive every nice thing someone says to them about their work there, which few people would think to do in the moment, I think, except maybe in the context of a group vid-watching party or something. Also, kudos and comments bring the work further up the page when people sort by number of kudos or comments and that is helpful for the creator because it makes it more likely that more people will see it and say further nice things to them about it if they like it too.

I don't think this trend, as I have experienced it, is a "I do not want to be seen publicly liking this" thing, which, in fairness, I do think also happens a lot in this moral panic era of fandom we're in where people get call-out posts written about how they commented on or kudosed Reprehensible Fic that the call-out post author specifically sought out so they could read the comments and see who kudosed it with the intention of smearing them as a bigot and/or sexual predator on social media platforms that their AO3 profile was linked to.

Instead, I think that, when this has happened when I posted fanworks in the past, it's just because it does not occur to the people saying the nice things to me that the I would maybe also like to have the exact same nice things written in a comment on AO3. Or similar things! I'm really not saying that you can only comment on AO3 to say something to someone that they thing they made was good. Or that squeeing about it elsewhere Does Nothing to Boost Engagement™ and is therefore useless at best and Greedy Exploitation of My Fandom Labour™ at worst, as I have seen some people arguing.

Again, you can enjoy my stuff and never say a goddamn thing about it to me, or to anyone, and I will defend to the death your right to do so, no matter what your reasons are or how often you return to these works! You do not have to pay for your enjoyment of my work by Engaging Meaningfully with it in the way that I most prefer: I am not your grandparent passive aggressively asking if you forgot to send me a thank you note about the birthday present I sent you and do you need new stationery to send thank you notes? Should I send you that for your next present?

But... Idk, exactly. I guess, to me, it's kind of emblematic of this move to considering only new fanworks and fandoms of recently released/currently airing properties to matter? So if the nice things you say about them are ephemeral and hard to archive, who cares, because the creator will obviously only ever want to hear nice things about their newest work and anything else is a waste of time, and maybe even invasive and creepy à la fans of celebrities who stalk and/or harass them because they "love" them so much. Also, that fanworks and fannish interactions are disposable and trivial, and preserving them is not ever a priority or even a consideration.

Something I was surprised about when I started posting fanworks in multifandom comms on Dreamwidth was that people commented on them at all. Often when they don't even know the fandom! The culture here seems to be much more old school in that way than what I have become accustomed to post-LJ, which has been a nice thing to discover.

I do think that this bemusement I am having is not, like, something that I should fashion into a call to action or anything, in large part because I am extremely put off by the people who scold lurkers—or sometimes even people who don't comment effusively enough, or leave long enough comments, or who comment and then don't also kudos (the nerve! 🙄)—for "taking the gift of their work and giving them nothing back in return as thanks" because fuck that bullshit. That is not what is meant by the phrase "fandom is a gift economy" you ignorant, entitled dicks. Is commenting on AO3 a nice thing to do? Yes. But it's not obligatory and nor should it be. At least be honest about what you expect from people and start a fucking private Discord server where you link people to your Google Docs, in return for what you consider to be good feedback if you think you should be to be compensated for your fanworks—kick them off your private island if they fail to live up to your standards, for all I care! But do not put words in my mouth by saying this fucking shit on behalf of all creators who post things to AO3.

Really, I'm not sure what my point is here, exactly. I am having thoughts and feelings and these are what they are, I suppose? Or, I guess, if you find yourself wanting to reach out and say nice things to a fanwork creator anyway, it's potentially a nice gesture to do it on AO3/where they posted it, in addition to saying it on Discord or other ephemeral fandom platorms. Copying and pasting exactly what you said is absolutely fine by me, if you find it a struggle to re-phrase the same sentiment. I suspect it would be by other fanwork creators too, although, per what I said earlier, I can only speak confidentally for myself, because other fanwork creators' expectations and preferences vary considerably. You can add something like "C&P-ing from Discord for posterity" at the start of the comment if you feel shy about saying literally the exact same thing twice.

me: *stays up all night overhauling the rules post, profile and tags of a community that, so far, I am the second person to ever post to and the only person who has posted to it in the last two years*
me: if you build it, they will come...

But anyway, yeah, come join

cobra_kai_snake_pit! I've been posting pretty frequently so far this year. Some fic, quite a few icons and graphics, a few haiku. A goodly proportion of what I have posted there is currently only available on Dreamwidth, so get it while it's hot! Also: please feel free to post stuff yourself! Fanworks, discussions, you name it! If it's relevant to The Karate Kid and/or Cobra Kai, then it's got a home at

cobra_kai_snake_pit. As pits full of snakes go, it's terribly cozy.

[Edit: Probably over-egged it by promoting the comm on three separate promo communites. But, eh, maybe I'll get a few bites and at worst people will be mildly annoyed and scroll past my three near identical posts on their reading page.]

[Edit 2, Son of Edit: I hope it is not monumentally gauche to invite people to join communities because you searched for users with relevant interests listed on their profile and they were the ones who had updated within the recent past, because I certainly have done that. If I have committed an unforgivable breach of DW etiquette, then, on the off-chance they are reading this, I apologize unreservedly to any of the people I bothered. I am now going to step away from the computer and tape my hands into oven mitts lest I get any more bright ideas.]

[Edit 3, Edit's Revenge: So, if not a runaway, then at least a moderate success so far! The comm has two new members since this morning, one of whom was someone I sent an invitation to and the other presumably saw one or more of the promo posts.]

I wrote a Succession fic for Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia!

Title: howling outside your door
Fandom: Succession
Rating: Explicit
Category: F/M
Ship: Gerri Kellman/Roman Roy
Word Count: 3476
Additional Tags: POV Gerri Kellman, Something Made Them Do It, Psychic Wolves, Psychic Bond, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Dubious Consent, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, inspired by A Companion to Wolves, Gerri Kellman Has an Orgasm

Content warnings: The dubious consent tag relates to the people bonded to psychic wolves getting caught up in their mating instincts and being compelled to have sex with the person bonded to the wolf who their wolfsibling is mating with. Gerri sees this coming a mile away months before it happens and her general feelings about it is "I will never recover from this professionally" but she also does not avoid it by taking another job and when they do have sex she's very into it. Additional content warning for a reference to animal cruelty and emotional abuse (Logan gonna Logan).

Summary: Gerri had never expected, when she lost Baird, that his wolfbrother would bond with her, but it was manageable... until Roman fucking Roy came back from L.A. at the heels of an alpha female wolf whose strut was almost as cocksure and arrogant as his, turning every lupine head in the building.

Read at AO3

So I belatedly got around to uploading a de-anoned version of my

festivids 2022 assignment for

dee_laundry yesterday (or, technically, very early this morning). Here it is!

Watch on Vimeo

And here it is on AO3

All in all I had a great

festivids this year. In addition to matching on a new fandom I really love, I got four lovely gifts that I am utterly thrilled with:

Get This Podcast Started, a hilarious Only Murders in the Building vid centred around the main trio by findmeinthealps, which was set to "Get the Party Started" by P!nk
I Can Cook Too, a gorgeous Big Eden vid about Pike and his courtship of Henry by tafadhali, which was set to "I Can Cook Too" from On the Town, performed by Alysha Umphress
Fun, Fun, Fun, an extremely fun (fun, fun!) Lower Decks vid by cosmic_llin about Beckett and her relationship to Starfleet (and her mother/captain), which was set to "Fun, Fun, Fun" by The Beach Boys
Be OK, a heartbreakingly beautiful A League of Their Own (2022) character study vid by cosmic_llin about Shirley and her struggle with OCD, which was set to "Be OK" by Ingrid Michaelson

Truly an embarrassment of riches! I am so grateful.

In other vidding news, I hope to register for attending

vidukon_cardiff within the next week (which I also intend to submit a premiere to) and sign up for the

womansplace exchange once sign ups open on the 8th. I am still weighing up what to request and offer (and, tbh, I will probably edit my offers based on what people are requesting towards the end of sign ups, because there is no point offering something that no one ends up requesting and if someone is requesting something that no one else is offering and I think I could vid for that fandom I'd like to offer that if I can).

Title: Carmilla Has Nothin' on Me
Fandom: Cobra Kai (TV)
Rating: Mature
Category: F/F
Ship: Samantha LaRusso/Tory Nichols
Word Count: 1975
Additional Tags: House Party, Menstruation, Bisexual Disaster Samantha LaRusso, Enemies to Friends to Lovers (Sam hopes), Sexual Fantasies, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Tension, Menstrual Sex (but only in Sam's imagination), described by my beta as being funny‚ horny and gross (complimentary), Femslash February

Summary: In which Tory pulls Sam aside to ask her for sanitary protection and Sam is only slightly disappointed that she isn't about to get fucked by her ex-karate rival at a house party.

Read on AO3

the chosen one	jazz	humor	BAMF	the girl/boy next door
mentor	hero	romance	happiness	trickster
duet	female vocals	vidder's choice	blorbo	slow song
meta	colors	cover song	sadness	action
science	90s music	80s music	multifandom	villain

Challenge #15

In your own space, opine on the future of fandom.

This is an interesting one, because I feel like my ability to guess at future fandom migrations has never really been amazing. I bet against AO3, I bet against Tumblr, I bet so hard against Twitter that I never conceded and started being fannish there. I bet on Pillowfort, at least insofar as paying them the necessary $5 to create an account, and then never posted a single thing on it. But, as much as my guesses are any good, I think that the next phase of fandom will be/may already be primarily based on Discord, which I guess is kind of a return to form for me in the sense that when I arrived on the scene a lot of what went down happened in Livejournal communities.

I think that there are plusses and minuses to Discord as a platform for fandom. On the one hand, you have to know someone to know where to go, so it can be inaccessible in that way. But that can also be a positive, because it is possible to be have more private moderated spaces than is possible on Tumblr (or, as far as I know, Twitter). The big drawback for me is the difficulty of archiving things for fandom posterity. There are reams of thoughtful and insightful meta that will never be posted outside a Discord server and will probably die with that server. There is art that is never posted anywhere else. Some people are linking people to Google Docs to share their fic rather than archive it on AO3 (or elsewhere). And that's, like, obviously well within the rights of the people doing this, if that's what they want, but I think that many people who particpate in fandom through Discord would like for certain conversations and fanworks to be able to survive past one single, ephemeral fandom space.

My perspective on this is pretty limited, because there are so many pockets of fandom I have never gotten into and I have no idea what the people who hang out there are likely to want out of a future fandom home. But this is what my current thoughts are. Tumblr seems to have a near death experience every 3-5 years, so it's easy to simultaneously think of it as being incredibly precarious and also invulnerable to harm, so it is hard to say if and how long that will last as a fandom hub. Dreamwidth, as far as I can tell, has a dedicated base, but not a broad one and I don't necessarily see that changing in the near future, despite it being (from my mid-2000s to early 2010s Livejournal-reared perspective) a much better platform for fandom than Tumblr, Discord or Twitter. But I guess something being well built for fandom has never been a good predictor of where we flock to. Give us enough time and we'll probably start a fandom presence on LinkedIn.

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner with image of a hollow ice ball sitting on ice crystals on a dark blue background. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.

Challenge #14

In your own space, do the Fandom Wrap Challenge. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

( Read more... )

In your own space, create a quiz or a poll (or tell us your thoughts about answering quizzes/polls)

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine today where we butted up against a difference in understanding we had about what to "ship" something actually meant in practice. Specifically, I was said the following about a ship:

"Yeah, like, I do not ship this! I think it's a fascinating kind of... deconstruction of teen crushes on authority figures? Or people who they think are safe outlets for burgeoning sexual feelings who turn out to be not that? But I think it's repulsive. And my reading of [movie] is that [character 1] had a crush on [character 2] and the betrayal of him turning out to be literally manipulating him as part of an elaborate revenge plot shut down [character 1]'s tentative exploration of bisexuality for years. Also, I have never thought it was reciprocated, lol. Like, I don't get people who ship it in a fluffy consensual way, and I find the way that I think it is actually plausible to be repellent, but I do get it? Idk"

which they found interesting, because their feelings on the ship and reading of the canon was pretty much the same as mine, but they felt that they did ship it. So we clearly meant different things when we said "I ship this" or "I don't ship this" and we teased out what we meant specifically by this shorthand.

I am not aware if there is any agreed upon Definitive™ meaning, but I thought it would be a fun subject for a poll! So, here goes:

Poll #28319 Shipping

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 20

View Respondents

So like... what does "I ship this" mean to you?

View Answers

I want this to be canon
2 (10.0%)

I think this is an aspirational relationship dynamic
1 (5.0%)

I find this interesting, but I don't necessarily want it to be canon or think it would be a good idea in real life
15 (75.0%)

I find the characters very attractive
5 (25.0%)

I find the dynamic between the characters very attractive
16 (80.0%)

I actively want to engage with this ship (via fanworks, meta, just thinking about them) in a more than incidental way
17 (85.0%)

I think this is a plausible interpretation of their canon relationship
10 (50.0%)

I think this is a plausible extrapolation of their canon relationship's potential evolution
12 (60.0%)

I don't like the relationship in canon but the fanon/what it could be is great
2 (10.0%)

Other I will explain in comments
2 (10.0%)

The responses are check boxes, so tick as many as apply!

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner with image of crystal snowflakes on green leaves on a dark blue background. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.

Title: Poly What Now?
Fandom: Cobra Kai, Karate Kid
Characters/Pairings: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence, Miguel Diaz/Robby Keene/Samantha LaRusso/Tory Nichols (mentioned), Carmen Diaz/Johnny Lawrence (mentioned), Amanda LaRusso/Daniel LaRusso (mentioned), Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence/Ali Mills (mentioned), one-sided Daniel LaRusso/Terry Silver (mentioned)
Word Count: 1100
Rating: Teens and Up

Summary: Daniel and Johnny are discussing a newly formed polyamorous relationship between Sam, Robby, Miguel and Tory when Johnny, seemingly not realising that it's a big deal to suggest this, says that they should have given that a whirl in high school. Daniel spirals.

Read at AO3

Challenge #13

In your own space, rec three fanworks that you did not create.

Okay! So, in no particular order:

turn a little faster; the world will follow after by katiemariie—hands down my favourite DS9 fic of all time. It has it all! Not one, but two cultural revolutions! Deconstructions of fanon post-canon tropes! Alexander Rozhenko as a midwife! Honestly, I am extremely picking about Garak/Bashir fic, as I find that often it is written in a way that is not to my tastes compared with how it's portrayed on the show, and katiemariee is one of the few authors whose take on the ship I gel with. But Garak/Bashir is by no means the only ship nor is it the main ship! The story is roughly half and half two parallel narratives that feature Lenara Kahn reunited with (now Ezri) Dax on DS9 and the two of them fighting against the Trill reassociation taboo, which is amazing and is probably the reason I am more likely to read Lenara/Ezri than Lenara/Jadzia, and Julian reuniting with Garak on Cardassia as an aid worker-cum-spy (as Kira remarks in the fourth chapter: "Frontier medicine by day, spy by night. Sounds like your dream job."). There is nothing about this fic I would change and I re-read it at least twice a year.
Profit & Growth by trinityofone—A John Kreese/Terry Silver fic in the Karate Kid/Cobra Kai fandom. This is the (intentionally) problematic kinky mpreg fic of my dreams! I usually am not a cis mpreg fan, but truly nobody is doing it like trinityofone! A guy babytrapping his boyfriend who won't commit by using mad science to knock himself up?? Sign me up! This fic was, to my knowledge, the first fic that used the Dynatox R&D tag which tragically is not yet a filterable tag on AO3, which is used on stories where Terry Silver's company Dynatox's R&D department is the jumping off point for various mad science premises. So far it has just been Kreese/Silver stories, but who knows! Maybe one day the Silverussos will join us in the lab!
Wedding is Destiny; and Hanging Likewise by sqbr—this is a post-canon Pride and Prejudice fic about Anne de Bourgh and Mary Bennet falling in love. It's... you guys, it's the best P&P fic I have ever read, and I am including the pro-novel Longbourne by Jo Baker in this. Mary is such an insufferable prig and I love her and Anne is such an unbearable snob and I adore her! The premise of the fic is that Mary chooses to go to Rosings Park to be Anne's live-in companion, largely out of a sense of anxiety about her role within her own family of birth after the marriage of three of her sisters. When I first read this fic I went on a liveblogging spree on my Tumblr, which you can read here in chronological order, but I'm also going to c&p one such post here, which includes a passage from the fic itself:
“You have impure thoughts about me?” asked Mary. “You would like to–do–sinful things? With me?” Her eyes were very bright and Anne could still taste the memory of her kiss. Anne had to look away, sure the answer to Mary’s question was written all over her face.

“I am sorry,” said Anne. “Knowing your disinterest I would never consider…”

“I would be willing,” said Mary. “I had not considered the possibility before, but it solves everything. As your friend, I would be willing to help you resist temptation by lying with you. I have spent some time considering the method, and it does not sound disagreeable.”

“No,” said Anne, horrified. This was like some strange, shameful dream. “No that is…Mary, that is perverse. How is that any better than me simply taking a lover in the first place?”

“Because…” Mary frowned in concentration, seriously considering the question. “Because nobody should touch you that way but me,” she said, in a wondering tone, as if it was some great truth that had just been revealed to her. “They will not love you as I do. It would be impure and sordid. With me it would be a pure, transcendental expression of friendship and love.” She sighed happily and lay back on the pillow, closing her eyes. “We would be like Diana and her acolytes, bathing naked together after a hunt,” said Mary. “How agreeable it would be…”

“Oh my God,” said Anne.

Outstanding heterosexual Mary Bennet smashed on punch after a ball proposing to Anne de Bourgh that they be the closest of chums and kiss and hug and make love with each other the better to help Anne avoid having inappropriate and sinful relationships with women who are not Mary. What’s better than gals being pals?
This fic is also extremely disgaybled and I would recommend it especially to people who are queer or disabled or both. Obviously Anne and Mary are in lesbians with each other, but additionally Anne's canonical chronic illness is wonderfully represented and Mary Bennet's canonical preoccupation with morality and propriety is given wonderful dimension and life that pings extremely autistic and/or OCD to me (an, admittedly, autistic and OCD person, lol).

It is everything I could ever want from a rarepair fic, a Pride and Prejudice fic, a femslash fic, a post-canon fic, a fic that touches on disability and canon typical cultural attitudes towards women, queer people and people in different social classes. It, as I have so often said, has it all.

In the words of Shane Madej and Ryan Bergara: that's the list! I would have loved to have recced some of my favourite vids or podfics, but when I went to my bookmarks to see which ones I revisited most often, these were the three. And I feel they are very deserving of that honour!

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner with image of three snowmen and two robins with snowflakes. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.

I used to get very preoccupied with the idea that I was personally responsible for increasing the representation of f/f and f/m fanworks through my output, largely because of moral scrupulosity OCD brain. I don't feel the same way anymore.

That said...

However, I do think, "I just coincidentally only ship m/m ships ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" can be a cop out and attempts to explain m/m's overrepresentation in the works posted to AO3 as, "male characters are typically the only ones given the depth and dimension which lends itself to shipping" is, in my opinion, disingenuous when you consider how ready, willing and able fandom is to invent characterisation out of whole cloth for minor male characters and shippable dynamics between male characters, who may never share screentime together or reference each other in dialogue, that just do not exist in the source material. I would like to clarify: I do not think this kind of transformation of the source material is sinister! I just think that since we can do that and we often do do that, we can, as a community, also do it for characters who are not male and ships that are not m/m more often.

I think it's worth thinking about how and why we ship what we ship and if we might have unconscious biases that make us overlook characters who are not men or ships other than m/m ships. Just so I'm not misunderstood, I'm certainly not saying that any individual has to ship things they are not enthused by or that they are obligated to Blorbify characters who do not speak to them. I'm also not saying that individual fans have to meet a quota of different ship categories or that they are personally responsible for increasing the representation of a diverse category of ships on AO3. Additionally, I'm not saying that the answer to the question, "Why do I mostly ship m/m?" is always, "Because I overlook and undervalue characters who are not men." Sometimes it's, "because I am primarily or exclusively attracted to men and ships featuring characters I am not myself attracted to do not interest me" or, "because I mostly read/write explicit fic and explicit fic about women makes me dysphoric" or, "because the kinds of characters I tend to be drawn to are seldom not male" or any number of other perfectly valid reasons. Again, this is a big picture issue, not a problem with individual fans' preferences. Note: the focus of this post is gender, but there are obviously many other forms of diversity that can be represented in fanworks. I took this as my primary focus mainly because the default ship categories make it easier to look at numbers for this particular kind of diverse representation.

[EDIT Jan 22 2023: I think that I could have expressed myself better in the above here. For one, I think that my use of the word "we" implies that I think everyone reading this post is primarily an m/m shipper or someone whose favourite characters are all men, which is obviously not the case. I meant "we" in the sense of "transformative fandom on AO3 collectively" which does disproprortionately favour m/m and male characters. I think I also neglected to say that people should create for and engage with ships and characters that they like! I said that no one is obligated to create for or engage with things they don't like, but that still leaves room for the interpretation that it would be a good thing for them to prioritise increasing representation at the expense of having fun anyway even if they chose not to do it. That's not at all what I want! I think that we could all be having even more fun, basically, and that people who primarily or exclusively like m/m ships and male characters are potentially missing out on fun that they could be having. Also, that people who like ships involving characters who are not men or fans of non-male characters are potentially missing out on friends, community and fanworks that they could have if transformative fandom as a whole was less weighted towards m/m ships and male characters.]

( So you said something about a self audit? What do you mean by that? )

A final note: I in no way would expect anyone to examine their fannish output in this level of detail I have here, or at all, and I don't think that I'm being morally virtuous by doing so myself. I'm just really fascinated by data and this kind of thing is interesting and fun for me. Also, to reiterate, shipping is not activism and your fannish output is not necessarily a reflection of your politics or values. While I would personally like to diversify my output in the future, and I think that as a community transformative fandom would be better served by a more diverse offering of fanworks, I don't think that anyone is bad or wrong for liking what they like.

Psst, if anyone's interested, I wrote a short sequel to that Gerri/Roman fic I linked to yesterday in which, a year after the first fic takes place, Roman accidentally mixes up his mother's Mother's Day card and the one he got for Gerri. Hilarity (and angst) ensues.

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