Pen's Nest

Challenge #5

Talk about what has improved in your life thanks to fandom. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

1. Fandom has improved my writing. I've learned from beta readers, I've learned from commenters, I've learned from betaing for other people, I've learned from writing comms, etc. My very first fanfic is this one. It's not bad, but I can do better now, and I have a better understanding of how to write and how to leave things out. I still remember my very first beta - I asked Berkeley Hunt, a fierce and terrible person (!) to beta for me, and she was great. Where is she now?

2. Fandom has brought me enormous amounts of fun, online and off. From hilarious conversations at conventions to LJ interactions to Camp Sparkle, there have been so many laughs. Friendships which still make me smile, even the ones that have fallen away. The joy of shared obsessions.

3. I have learned to think. So many thoughtful and worthwhile discussions. So many different points of view offered to me freely. I dare say I might have come up with some of the improvements on my own as I've had years of living in which to do it, but it would have been so easy to be hidebound and to assume that my life was the only one I needed. Fandom broadened me.

A brief catch-up with Snowflake posts, mostly because I wasn't inspired to say anything particularly about any of them. Still, housekeeping. I do like the Snowflake Challenge, as a concept.

#1 Fandom info. I don't think anything much has changed since the last time I did this, so there we are. I'm pensnest on DW and AO3 (LJ too, but there's no point counting that any more). I have a blanket permission statement both here and on AO3. Anyone wants to remix, podfic, translate, illustrate or do something else to any of my stories, please send me a link!

I also have a website, very old school, and if anyone wants to see all my writing, there it is. Fanfic, smidgin of original writing, and essays from when I did A-Level English Lit. Occasionally I still get someone asking how they should cite me! Fanfic: ST:TNG stuff is organised by canon chronology; popslash is (a) chronologically in order of writing, and (b) by pairing, also includes the Dragon Challenge stories and the JuC swap stories (written by other people); Glambert is chronologically by writing, and sundry fics are in order of writing.

#2 Promo, manifesto or primer. Nah.

#3 Scream into the void... when I thought about it, there wasn't anything I could be arsed to scream about.

#4: add something to your fandom's canon/

Chris actually has a tail.

In your own space, create your own challenge. Leave a comment to this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I have a small challenge!

Now the Snowflake Friending Meme is ongoing, how about this: you are challenged to find up to five of your past posts which will tell new friends who you are, but without being an intro post. We've all written 'this is me' posts as part of a Snowflake Challenge before now, but the post(s) you pick should not be designed to introduce you to new readers. Just tell 'em who you are.

Any takers?
( Mine )

In your own space, celebrate a personal win from the past year: it can be a list of fanworks you're especially proud of, a gift of your time to the community, a quality or skill you cultivated in yourself, something you generally feel went well.


Um. It wasn't a good year, last year, and for one reason and another I slid mentally slough-wards for quite a lot of it. So finding something to celebrate is quite hard. Here goes.

I became Chair of my mixed barbershop chorus, and got us up and running again once we were able to meet outdoors.

I entered Yuletide for the first time, and won! Received a lovely fic and wrote one that was well-received. In another fic first, I wrote two stories in fandoms I'd never written before—one was my Yuletide story (Lord Peter Wimsey) and the other was a Mad Men story.

And because I have a feeling these things should be celebrated in threes, I also knitted a rather lovely grey and lavender shawl last year (actually finished it in February). It's here, but you may need a Ravelry account to see it.

Was it yesterday or the day before that I woke up happy, due to the news on Radio 4 announcing that the Gove creature was stuck in the BBC lift? Heh.

The drilling crew are *still* here, but have at last drilled and filled all the holes, and are now doing the trenches to take the pipes from the holes to the house. My back garden looks like a battleground, but at least there is only one machine there now, the digger. It will all be over.... soon....

I note that Snowflake Challenge #5 was In your own space, talk about an idea you wish you had the time / talent / energy to do.

Well. I want a crossover between The Administration and Dante's Cove. I thought about it, after that Camp Sparkle we spent in Brighton, when we watched a disturbing amount of Dante's Cove. Warrick is of course visiting the place in order to discuss installing a sim unit in the local inexplicable red room of sex. There have been complaints from the neighbours. Toreth considers this a grand idea—work for Warrick, sex holiday for Toreth. He sees the parade of man candy and is charmed, noticing with mild surprise that his shirts buttons are already undone. I dare say there would be a number of mostly-gratuitous sex scenes, and then Warrick—who is mostly immune to the shirt-opening effect—is seen in the hot tub with... somebody. Toreth is not pleased.

And so forth.

And if anybody would care to write such a story, I will read it with delight!

Reading other people's answers to the AU question, it seems to me that there are widely divergent ideas on what constitutes an AU.

For me, an AU is a different world setting. Whether it's real-world with Our Heroes working as entrepreneurs/farmers/roller derby professionals, or a fantasy world with peasants, wizards or dragons, or a futuristic world with spaceships or robots, that's surely an AU.

For me, something like magic does not *necessarily* mean an AU. In popslash, I've read plenty of stories in which there is Something Weird, but the story is based in canon, so I don't count it as an AU. If someone becomes invisible, or gains telepathy, or Wakes Up As A Girl, or swaps bodies—no, not an AU. Just* Crack. A setting where all of them are superheroes, or magicians, or have the ability to channel the colour green (I don't know, it's just an example), that's an AU.

But it's sometimes hard to tell where the line is. Is a gender-swapped story in which Character A has *always* been of the opposite sex an AU? I'm inclined to narrow it down more and call it a gender swap, and regard that as a separate category... yet mostly, the genderswaps I've read have been temporary, and usually crack, so maybe a "the world has always been this way" story is properly classified as an AU.

Is a canon-divergent story an AU or an 'Alternate Timeline' or some such? I'm inclined to call it a 'fork in the road' story, because it starts with canon and goes somewhere else, whereas to me, an AU does not start with canon. But there's a case to be made for calling such stories AUs.

Is an A/b/o story an AU or does it get its own category? (My opinion: the latter. So that I can avoid it, and the people who want to read it can find it.) Maybe it's a specific AU-there's a huge list of them on AO3.

A story in which there are vampires but within the canon setting - gets a 'vampires' tag but not an AU tag. To be an AU, the setting would have to be not-canon. If, say, Joey goes vampire hunting late at night while he and the guys are rehearsing for the next tour, that gets a vampire tag. If all the guys are vampires who live in Brooklyn and have elaborate lifestyles which enable them never to see the sun, that's definitely an AU. With a vampire tag. If Lance is impregnated by an alien, that's crack. If Lance and the rest of them are aliens and live on Planet Zooglecrab, it's an AU. Somewhere in between the two there is probably a line.....

Some people label as AUs what I would label as crack. Other lines are harder to define.

Opinions?





* Crack is not "just" at all, it is awesome, but perhaps that'll show up in later prompts.

Challenge #2

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

Hmm. Goals don't seem to have got me doing much last year, but perhaps this year will go better.

So.

1. I think something I could very usefully do is to spend less time at my computer, and at the same time make better use of the time I do spend here.

2. Having rediscovered the joy of feedback with my Yuletide story, I really do want to finish certain stories that I still have in my head. I want to write more. I want to get back my former belief that I can write and be paid for it.

3. I want to get back into a positive frame of mind. I think spending a bit more time being creative will be good for me, as I've always described afternoons spent crafting as 'good for the soul'.

4. I want to get my blood sugar back to a reasonable level, which the new medication should help with, as should the end of the Christmas period! No idea what goal is a reasonable one to set for that. I want to get back to the regular exercise timetable, which should help. This should not be too difficult, since Beast feels the same, although there are little snags, like having to make sure lunch is ready for Boy's actual lunchtime, since he is perforce working from home. The hip difficulties are not good, but I suspect strength and fitness will help with the hip, and trying to maintain as much as possible of the slipping flexibility cannot be bad.

Snowflake Challenge #12 is In your own space, resurrect an old meme. Have fun with it! Which is the goofiest meme you can think of? Put on your party hat and be silly!! Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Hmmmmmm.

I used to do a lot of writing memes, but that was back when I used to do a lot of writing.

I did find a general, all-purpose meme that I completed on 3rd August 2020, and to my amusement discovered the same meme (well, there are differences, mostly in the numbering of questions, which is logical in the earlier, uncorrupted version) back in 2011. Despite being in a completely different house, the answers are very much the same.

*

Perhaps a more generally interesting one is actually snipped from a bigger writing-themed meme:

Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas)

My offerings:
1. The guys are rival knitwear designers who secretly adore one another's stuff but are not allowed to say so in public. What?
2. Someone's cat is called Magic (short for Magic 8-ball) and can talk and predict the future. It dispenses advice, but only in short, cryptic, cat-larynx-friendly phrases. It's not as helpful as you might think.

I would be charmed to see any other AU suggestions!

*

corvidology suggested this one, and I thought I'd have a look. Post the summaries of your top 10 works by kudos
( Answers cut to protect the uninterested )

In your own space, write a love letter to Fandom in general, to a particular fandom, to a trope, a relationship, a character, creator, episode, or it could be your fandom friends. Share your love and squee as loud as you want to.


Dear Fandom

You've taught me to think. So many interesting discussions, so many smart women sharing thoughts and principles, wisdom, analysis. About feminism and what it means to be an independent woman; about queerness and not-straightness in so many forms; about what it means to be a writer; about race, prejudice, and how to do better.

Thank you.

*

Dear Trek Fandom

You brought me in! When I first became addicted to my late-night ST:TNG binges, I would sneak into the local W H Smiths and Waterstones and sneak out with official Star Trek Magazines and books in brown paper bags, feeling as embarrassed as if I'd been buying Playgirl. Through them I found the IDIC newsletter, through that I found my way to fanfic—home!

I had a lot of fun with you. I had about a dozen penfriends, back then before we got our first dial-up modem and I found my way to the alt.startrek.creative newsgroup. I had stories published in zines. I went to my first Convention, in Cardiff, and met some like-minded people. Spent a very memorable Saturday night in the bar talking Data and Picard and having some wonderful laughs. I went to Glasgow for a con with John DeLancie as the main guest, and to London where there was a wedding going on at the same time—I retain the memory of a bride who thought this was delightfully funny, and her parents who were very unimpressed, and also, my gorgeous dragon earrings which I bought in the dealers' room. I owe my first visit to the USA to my Trek fandom, for I wanted to see Brent Spiner as John Adams in 1776, which I did, four times. And I even had the courage to go to MediaWest, back then when zines were still a thing.

We haven't been close lately, though I am rediscovering the pleasure of that series I loved so much back then, and people are still writing for it, so, maybe we might have another twirl.

*

Dear Popslash

Dearest fandom of my heart. What can I say. I approached you with deep suspicion, but I fell in love practically at once. I spent six weeks seeking out every scrap of you I could find on the internet—it felt like every waking moment, but it can't have been because not only did I have a husband, two children in school, and consequent laundry and ironing to do and meals to cook, I was also in a show at the time, as a minor principal, even. But the joy of finding a new fandom to love, after five years between fandoms, oh, that was something so precious. You gave me back my creativity—I'd produced a story or two, during that barren interim, but in my first year of Popslash I wrote more than thirty stories, and oh, the rush of the feedback, and the fun of being encouraged to create by all the fannish love going on around me. LiveJournal, to which I was introduced at the same time, was a big part of why I felt so at home, and remains, to my mind, by far the best way of 'doing fandom'.

Through Popslash, I made so many friends, and got to know quite a lot of you in person, mostly through Camp Sparkle, which has been a source of enormous joy and fun through the years. I hope we can do it again—maybe not till next year. I've been a tourist in all sorts of spots in my own country as a result, and there have been so many laughs, from the first time when we were expecting lumberjacks/axe murderers, to playing Cards Against Humanity (With Added Boybands), to being flashed by a passing hen-partier in Brighton, meeting the emo ponies, cooking together, picking up Campers from the airport in a Barbie-pink limo, having Christmas in June, and probably most memorably of all, the live-action late-night Lava Lamp Reading. So many Afternoon Teas, so many stately homes. Backstreet concerts. Alas that I was too late arriving to have the chance to see JC on stage.

I've loved writing you boys, and because of the challenges and encouragement of other fans, I've produced *so* many stories, many of them things I would never have imagined I would write. You have the BEST canon: someone who grew up so poor he had to sleep in laundry to keep warm, someone who won a beauty contest before he entered adolescence, someone who grew up gay in Mississippi and then went to Russia to learn to be a cosmonaut. You could not make that shit up. There is dwarf canon, and dolphin canon, and diamond canon, and I am sure there are demons, and though I have not yet found canon dragons (except maybe the inflatable one Lance had in his pool) I bet there are some. I've written you as space fighters and quasi-mediaeval knights, as advertising executives and strippers, dragons and chefs. I've loved reading you in so many, many wonderful stories. And, Lance, dear Lance, you have not let me down.

I wish I could revive you. There are plenty of stories available to tell about the five or ten, but fandom has left you behind. I can't give you up, and it's hard to imagine that another fandom could give me the satisfaction, the fun, and the inspiration. Maybe one day. Meanwhile, I'll be here, quietly finishing the stories I still want to tell.

I <3 you, Popslash.

So, if you enjoy a little schadenfreude,
this twitter thread is hilarious. There is another, filmed by the guy next standing to the guy who did the first one, with commentary and gleeful song, here, but I like the comments on the first thread. The star of the show is whining about being called a terrorist and not being allowed to get on a plane. It does rather look as though he was at the Capitol last Wednesday.

I like the utter indifference of those sitting around in the airport.

*

Back to my usual.

Challenge #6

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

I'm picking recs from smaller canons (with one exception), and which have such awesomely authentic voices that I loved them at once.

Rivers of Ankh-Morpork by melannen
Peter Grant gets into Ankh-Morpork and is delighted. Seriously, it's like Pterry was having a bit of fun on his day off. Absolutely delightful story.

That Greek Thing by Luthien.
I've been listening to a bunch of Georgette Heyer novels over the last few weeks—not, as it happens, Friday's Child, but plenty enough to recognise that the tone of this story is spot-on. The comic sidekick friends in Heyer stories are the ones who annoyed me back when I was a teenager and reading for the romance, but nowadays fill me with love and a desire to see them happy and taken just a little bit seriously. This story does just that.

Still in a Heyerish vein, but an entirely frivolous one, The Birds and the Bees by Lbilover is like a delicious fairy cake, or possibly a Chantilly Basket. Lord Legerwood is not certain whether his heir is, hmm, au fait with certain marital necessities.

Moving away, far, far away, from Georgette Heyer's world, Sprezzatura by Queue takes 'Much Ado About Nothing' and extrapolates a perfect Beatrice. Wow. This one. It's in iambic pentameter: voice-wise, I wouldn't call it Shakespearian, but it is as clever, as stuffed with meaning and innuendo and truth. It's Beatrice the modern woman, Beatrice confronted with the news that Benedick will soon be present, Beatrice deciding what she wants. It's really, really good.

Once upon a time, American Idol was a fandom of very respectable size. Physics Makes Us All Its Bitches by cjmarlowe. Well, it's probably not fair to talk about the authentic 'voice' for RPF, so I'll just say that this author knows how to write. This is Adam Lambert, Kris Allen and Brad Bell, and bodyswap. I'm very partial to a good bodyswap story. This is a good bodyswap story.