Snowflake Challenge #1
Jan. 1st, 2020 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pensnestI've introduced myself before, so I'm putting some of this under a cut to spare my regulars!
I'm a quiet sort of person, mostly, rather indolent, but irritated by things being done badly.
I'm older than I think, I'm a straight, white, cis woman, I'm a wife, I'm a mother (1F 1M). I'm very English indeed.
I'm a singer, formerly involved with amateur theatre, currently a member of two barbershop choruses.
I am a writer. I think I have to say that, for myself.
I'm artistic but untrained: I knit, I make cards and suncatchers, I do various visual crafts and get a lot of pleasure thereby. Used to make a lot of icons/userpics, and for a while ran an icon challenge called![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
severalplums (also on LJ).
As a journaller, I'm erratic and usually trivial. If you want lots of thinky thoughts, this isn't a journal where you'll find them, or at least, not very often. There may be outrage, either over politicians or misuse of the English language; there will be delighted fawning over Lance Bass; there will be cat pictures. I have two beautiful little cats, Sable, and Princess Fluffykins.
I'm liberally inclined, which for me means that I think people are people, and it's wrong to herd people into definitions of Them. It also means I have been increasingly unhappy with politics local and global since June 2016. I've been donating to causes, and attending occasional marches and rallies, during the last two years.
My fannish history starts in the early 1990s, when I became addicted to Star Trek: The Next Generation, and a compulsive Dataphile. I discovered the IDIC newsletter, and soon after that, the existence of fanfic zines. I got onto the internet in about 1995 with the primary purpose of getting to read more about Star Trek, and I posted a few stories on the alt.startrek newsgroup. I created my own zine, focusing on Data, and also published a twice-yearly reviewzine for a while. It was called An Idiosyncratic Review, and contained ads as well as mini articles and zine reviews, and one of these ads, regularly, was for Redemption, a convention for Blake's 7 fans.
Well, I eventually fell out of ST:TNG fandom and wandered, lost, for a while—loved Buffy and Angel, couldn't write them, might well have written Firefly if it had gone on a bit longer; wrote a Harry Potter story (too racy for The Sugarquill, gracious me), but couldn't quite find a fandom to love. But I did go to at least one convention during that time, because I remember watching an awesome cosplay competition in which The Mudders' Statue of Jayne would have been a well-deserved winner… had it not been for the Wash-o-saurus which brought the house down. Alan Tudyk was *enchanted*.
It must, I think, have been at that convention that I picked up a flyer for a convention which rang a faint bell. Redemption in 2005 was going to be for Blake's 7, which I didn't really know, *and* Babylon 5, which I did know, and love. Slightly to my surprise, my Beast decided to come along to that. We had pretty much entirely separate conventions—he won the paper aeroplane competition and went to physics talks, I spent most of my time in the fanfic discussions. I also volunteered to do face painting at the Zocalo. Which is where I metnopseud, who explained to me that the fandom I needed to get into was something called popslash, inveigled me into giving her my email address, and sent me a carefully curated selection of story recs.
And that is how I got to the fandom of my heart. Popslash brought such a lot of fun and hilarity into my life. There were sparkly weekends withnopseud and other UK popslashers, which grew into the splendour that is Camp Sparkle, an annual get-together which still continues and will be in its 14th iteration next summer. There isn't much actual popslash left in Camp, although our boys in doll form do get into mischief throughout the week. There were trips to concerts, and even a trip to NYC when I wished to see Lance Bass on stage in 'Hairspray'—this didn't actually happen because of the stagehands' strike, but I did get to hug the lad, so. I've loved the creativity this fandom brought out in me, and the friendships, and the fabulous fiction I've been able to read.
Popslash doesn't seem to have been a 'thinky' fandom, though probably there was soul-searching about the evils of RPF before I arrived, but LJ was a great medium for fannish discussion, and I have learned so much from fandom about things that matter. I still miss MetaFandom.
Popslash has, of course, faded into not-quite-oblivion, which makes me sad. I read quite a lot of other stuff—generally restricting myself to things I have at least glanced at/through, but I don't consider myself part of a fandom unless I write in it (and sometimes not even then). I am still bereft at the demise of Shakesville, I read Pharyngula most days, and Tom & Lorenzo, and Captain Awkward….
So. Hi.
I'm a quiet sort of person, mostly, rather indolent, but irritated by things being done badly.
I'm older than I think, I'm a straight, white, cis woman, I'm a wife, I'm a mother (1F 1M). I'm very English indeed.
I'm a singer, formerly involved with amateur theatre, currently a member of two barbershop choruses.
I am a writer. I think I have to say that, for myself.
I'm artistic but untrained: I knit, I make cards and suncatchers, I do various visual crafts and get a lot of pleasure thereby. Used to make a lot of icons/userpics, and for a while ran an icon challenge called
severalplums (also on LJ).As a journaller, I'm erratic and usually trivial. If you want lots of thinky thoughts, this isn't a journal where you'll find them, or at least, not very often. There may be outrage, either over politicians or misuse of the English language; there will be delighted fawning over Lance Bass; there will be cat pictures. I have two beautiful little cats, Sable, and Princess Fluffykins.
I'm liberally inclined, which for me means that I think people are people, and it's wrong to herd people into definitions of Them. It also means I have been increasingly unhappy with politics local and global since June 2016. I've been donating to causes, and attending occasional marches and rallies, during the last two years.
My fannish history starts in the early 1990s, when I became addicted to Star Trek: The Next Generation, and a compulsive Dataphile. I discovered the IDIC newsletter, and soon after that, the existence of fanfic zines. I got onto the internet in about 1995 with the primary purpose of getting to read more about Star Trek, and I posted a few stories on the alt.startrek newsgroup. I created my own zine, focusing on Data, and also published a twice-yearly reviewzine for a while. It was called An Idiosyncratic Review, and contained ads as well as mini articles and zine reviews, and one of these ads, regularly, was for Redemption, a convention for Blake's 7 fans.
Well, I eventually fell out of ST:TNG fandom and wandered, lost, for a while—loved Buffy and Angel, couldn't write them, might well have written Firefly if it had gone on a bit longer; wrote a Harry Potter story (too racy for The Sugarquill, gracious me), but couldn't quite find a fandom to love. But I did go to at least one convention during that time, because I remember watching an awesome cosplay competition in which The Mudders' Statue of Jayne would have been a well-deserved winner… had it not been for the Wash-o-saurus which brought the house down. Alan Tudyk was *enchanted*.
It must, I think, have been at that convention that I picked up a flyer for a convention which rang a faint bell. Redemption in 2005 was going to be for Blake's 7, which I didn't really know, *and* Babylon 5, which I did know, and love. Slightly to my surprise, my Beast decided to come along to that. We had pretty much entirely separate conventions—he won the paper aeroplane competition and went to physics talks, I spent most of my time in the fanfic discussions. I also volunteered to do face painting at the Zocalo. Which is where I met
nopseud, who explained to me that the fandom I needed to get into was something called popslash, inveigled me into giving her my email address, and sent me a carefully curated selection of story recs.And that is how I got to the fandom of my heart. Popslash brought such a lot of fun and hilarity into my life. There were sparkly weekends with
nopseud and other UK popslashers, which grew into the splendour that is Camp Sparkle, an annual get-together which still continues and will be in its 14th iteration next summer. There isn't much actual popslash left in Camp, although our boys in doll form do get into mischief throughout the week. There were trips to concerts, and even a trip to NYC when I wished to see Lance Bass on stage in 'Hairspray'—this didn't actually happen because of the stagehands' strike, but I did get to hug the lad, so. I've loved the creativity this fandom brought out in me, and the friendships, and the fabulous fiction I've been able to read. Popslash doesn't seem to have been a 'thinky' fandom, though probably there was soul-searching about the evils of RPF before I arrived, but LJ was a great medium for fannish discussion, and I have learned so much from fandom about things that matter. I still miss MetaFandom.
Popslash has, of course, faded into not-quite-oblivion, which makes me sad. I read quite a lot of other stuff—generally restricting myself to things I have at least glanced at/through, but I don't consider myself part of a fandom unless I write in it (and sometimes not even then). I am still bereft at the demise of Shakesville, I read Pharyngula most days, and Tom & Lorenzo, and Captain Awkward….
So. Hi.