sarcasticsciencefictionwriter asked:

šŸ’¢: What was the first fandom you ever got into?

and

šŸ’”: Tell me a sad headcannon you have for James Watson.

Just found this! Sorry šŸ˜¬

What was the first fandom I got into?

I always debate being honest when this question crops up because I was 11 and it was more wanting someone to be nice to me, than any actual personal passion for the show. Anyway! It was The Royal/Heartbeat. Thatā€™s been off the air for a long time now but Heartbeat was something of a British institution for 20 years or so. Set in the 1960ā€™s, sort of a slice of life drama I guess. It was more ā€œepisode of the weekā€ shenanigans than a pure soap.

When I went to high school I immediately found myself in the library. Friendless 11 year old. I started helping out with shelving books, checking them out etc. The librarian my first year was a very nice lady, sadly she left and her replacementā€¦ but thatā€™s another story. Anyway there was a 15 year old who also volunteered and they were trying to write fanfic for The Royal. I think they might have been dyslexic because even though I was a lot younger I beta read for them. Then they wanted to make a fansite and I already knew how to code basic websites so I helped them with that, which led to being a mod on the forum, and eventually I started writing my own stories. Iā€™m a writer and I wanted to be included so it follows.

The experience ended poorly. The forum got members and one of them ended up becoming a mod as well, and they didnā€™t like me. They were in their thirties I think and I canā€™t imagine treating an 11 year old like they did me, but I admit I likely didnā€™t help myself – I was 11 and so obviously not likely to make the best choices always.

I had moved on by then to other fan spaces on the internet. I had started writing for Without a Trace. I then discovered fanlistings and got really heavily into making little fansites. I did some graphic edits, a few music videos. Do people still do those? Set show clips to songs? I quit everything fandom-wise when I was 19. I didnā€™t start back up again until I was 25.

A sad headcanon for James Watson

I donā€™t know why but I have just always thought that his father died when he was a child. I donā€™t recall any basis for this in the show but it was the background I think I wrote inĀ Choosing Fate. Once I have something that works I tend to keep it as a headcanon. Like thinking that originally Helen was given the source blood by an abnormal she helped one day. I canā€™t remember if I specified an age but I think it was maybe 6-8 years old. Old enough to have a few memories but young enough for the image of his father to be more idealistic dreams and impressions.

Thanks for the ask ā¤ļø sorry about the delay. It was hiding.

kelyon asked: 

Are there any fandoms/ships that you support in general but don’t really consume or create fanworks for? Any particular reason why? What, if anything, might inspire you to start?

Hey! Did you mean to send this to me? Iā€™ve not reblogged an ask meme in ages. Itā€™s no matter as I love questions and I love rambling heh, so I am going to answer anyway. So thanks for sending it even if it was accidental ā¤ļø

The question confuses me a little bit as I support fandom as a general concept. Go forth, be happy with what you love, you know? I have watched and read lots of things, so so many, and I have produced fanworks for comparatively few. But when it comes to supportā€¦ as I said I donā€™t really understand. There are things I like obviously that I am not drawn to create for. But support feels like it implies more interaction than just ā€œI like the thingā€. But if I interact then thatā€™s creation?

I get a feeling I am misunderstanding this.

I have a handful of NoTPs but even with those I respect that people like them. I donā€™t want to see it because it is the opposite of sparking joy. But if it sparks joy for someone else then good for them. So that goes back to my general support for fandom.

To be honest these days Iā€™m not consuming many fanworks at all. I have a stack of fanfics I need to read and I havenā€™t got round to it. I want to shower love on them but I have been so tired and stressed. I reblog art on tumblr, and try and say nice things, but thatā€™s about it right now.

As for what inspires me to create. Love is always at its core. Some spark that is just magnetic. I wasnā€™t initially drawn to creating for The Librarians because I was happy with it but then I discovered prompt month. The more I thought about it, the more questions I had, and then I wanted to fill in some missing pieces. Frustration and spite is a good motivator, a need to fix things. Most of my ships arenā€™t canon so I give them the happy ending that doesnā€™t otherwise exist. The final piece is whatever idea I want to make manifest, the desire to draw/write in itself. Sometimes I want to make art, I want to get my markers or pencils or paint out etc. I want the image in my head to be realised.

Iā€™m not sure if that answers your question or not. If you wanted to know about support for a specific fandom or ship please say šŸ™‚ or if you wondered if I would create for something specific.

I just made the mistake of trying to see if anyone out there is thinking like me about Picard.

This is really Once Upon a Time all over again.

Are we watching the same show? I feel like we must be existing in different realities. How did you get what you got from what I saw? Does not compute.

If the Seven spin-off happens and it turns into the Seven and Shaw show then I am out. I wonā€™t be watching that. That is a step down the rabbit hole I just canā€™t make.

Is there a word for a person that when they like something they like it forever?

I mean there are seasons for things. Sometimes I am obsessed and all in, and then there are times it isnā€™t such a thing, but I never dislike it and Iā€™ll go back to it repeatedly over the years. There can be gaps of years but I will still swing back around. Itā€™s like itā€™s always part of me or something.

Just thinking thinky thoughts today as I am listening to Hamilton. That was such a huge thing and now not so much. The world moved on and I did not.

Me and my decade old fandoms. There has to be a word for that. Stickability or something. Flavour of the month? Not me.

tinknevertalksĀ said:Ā Ā Maybe a perennial like? Cause a perennial plant is something that lasts longer than two years, and how you mentioned a season for things is how I feel about my fandoms so yeahā€¦ Perennial would be my word for it. šŸ˜Š

galactic-piratesĀ said:Ā Ā @tinknevertalks ooooh I like that thank you ā¤ļø good idea!Ā 

Anonymous asked: 

hello! i am your gift exchange partner for the bering and wells holiday gift exchange 2023! i would love to know what you would like to receive. i am happy to write fic if you have any prompt suggestions and also make some gifs. i would love to make gifs that are based on songs, quotes or poems that remind you of bering and wells but am happy to follow your lead regarding fic prompts

Hello!

Great to hear from you. I am super excited about this šŸ™‚ šŸ™‚

As I always say with these types of events what I want most is for you to be happy. I want you to have fun making whatever it is. So if I ever say anything and it does not spark joy just ignore. Your happiness is my #1 priority.

That being said. I also make gifs sometimes but time and spoons are elusive am I right? I have had this gifset on my list to make for months and havenā€™t got round to it so I would be thrilled if someone else ran with it. But if you donā€™t vibe with it then no worries.

The song is ā€œThat Would Be Enoughā€ from Hamilton (yeah I know the craze for that is a few years ago but I donā€™t move on from things. If I like it then I like it).

The part of the lyrics I had copied out to do (something?) with was:

The worlds you keep erasing and creating in your mind
But Iā€™m not afraid, I know who I married
So long as you come home at the end of the day
That would be enough

If I could grant you peace of mind
If you could let me inside your heart
Oh, let me part of the narrative
In the story they will write someday

Let this moment be the first chapter
Where you decide to stay

And I could be enough
And we could be enough

That would be enough

Now obviously thatā€™s a chunk and too much but you know when something tickles at your brain, and you are like ā€˜thereā€™s something hereā€™ and it sort of needs working at to blossom into something? Well I never got to the ā€˜working at itā€™ part. So feel free to do whatever with this as inspires you, and if it doesnā€™t inspire you then do something else. I repeat please just have fun.

In my scratched notes I think I thought there was more than one project to be inspired by this. As obviously some of it is more relevant to canon than other parts, like the whole ā€œI know who I marriedā€ line doesnā€™t work during canon (post-canon maybe haha but thereā€™s no gifs for that). So I donā€™t know if it might spark something for a fic.

But yeah just do whatever you want, whatever makes you happy.

Speaking of happiness I know Bering and Wells is also sometimes known as ā€œangst and painā€ but if you are going to break my heart, please leave it on a hopeful/happy end šŸ™‚

I hope this is an ok response. If you wanted me to say something different, then shoot me another message. Iā€™d like to support you in any way you wish. It is always a fine line I find when I am in your shoes between the giftee being too specific, and also not offering enough direction. I know one year I didnā€™t get any prompt at all from the person I was making a gift for and I was petrified they wouldnā€™t like what I made. Please never be petrified with me because I will shower love over whatever you do, as I just appreciate the effort, aaaand I am rambling now.

Yeah. Happy Holidays if you celebrate and hope you had a good weekend if you donā€™t.

Excuse me while I ramble for a second.

Iā€™m having a ā€œyour fandom is not my fandomā€ moment. And that is ok.

I first started posting fanfic over 20 years ago. Iā€™ve done the fandom thing on a variety of platforms, and in different ways, and there are still many parts of fandom Iā€™ve not done. For instance Iā€™ve never been to a convention, or met up with other fans in real life.

When somebody says they are part of fandom I think that can mean different things, and it can also mean different things over time. To varying extents I have always thought fandom = community. Like I can do fan activities but if Iā€™m not engaging with the community somehow, then thatā€™s just me being a fan and not fandom. But YMMV and itā€™s all good. Circle back to what I started with. Everyone is different and that is ok.

I think what Iā€™m rambling towards is that people want different things from their fandom. Like Iā€™m a creator, a storyteller. So for me fandom is all about art, or about deep analysis and thought-provoking debate. For others I think perhaps the shared interest is what brings them together, and then itā€™s just more about chatting and other social things. There gets to be in-jokes and other community type activities. Iā€™m not talking about fandom events, itā€™s something community-based. I think Iā€™m struggling to define it because I donā€™t understand it. In fact itā€™s something of that nature which inspired me to ramble like this.

Iā€™m always torn. When I join a fandom I want to feel like Iā€™m part of it and yet I forever feel like an outsider. Iā€™m awkward and I struggle with anything social, which is why I like fandom because of the shared interest – the creating, and analysis – but then I feel like my interest in that remains strong but the rest of the community sort of drift off that into the social part. I donā€™t engage well socially so I only have myself to blame for feeling like if I vanished nobody would notice. I get grumpy when I see these big community in-jokes as they seem ridiculous and I wish we could focus back on the thing that brought us together in the first place – the thing that weā€™re fans of – but then thatā€™s quite unfair of me.

As I said above ā€œyour fandom is not my fandomā€ and I would be a total jerk if I complained. Sure I can feel disgruntled quietly to myself (and Iā€™m rambling here) and I donā€™t know I think Iā€™m losing my point. Iā€™m just saying that fandom means different things to different people and I still havenā€™t found my place. I quite often say I can wear anyone out with my enthusiasm, and I think perhaps thatā€™s true. Iā€™m laser focused on the source material, and then creating from it. I want people to talk with about it, but they need breaks, and I donā€™t know how to cope without a focus for the interaction.

So yeah, itā€™s quite a lonely place to be šŸ™

racethewind10:

cerseiscrown:

one of my favorite things about fandom is that the exchange of intellectual and creative property is a legitimate form of gift giving. like ā€˜iā€™m so enchanted by you, i love you, let me tell you a storyā€™

one of my favorite parts of bering and wells fandom  ā€œwhat a fantastic piece of art. let me write you a storyā€  ā€œwhat a marvelous story. let me make you some art for itā€  ā€œi adore your post. let me flail eloquently in the tagsā€ ā€œyour tags are amazing and deserve to be part of the post. let me add them as commentsā€  ā€œyou made me get incredibly emotional. let me return the favor by making it worseā€  itā€™s like the loveliest and most appreciative game of fandom escalation   iā€™ve ever had the privilege of participating in (via Rev)

(via deathtodickens)

#fandom is a magical place#fandom can’t ever die because you can’t kill an idea#something is always new to somebody and it will have seasons of harvest and fallow seasons but there’s always life#because there is love and when there’s love there is life#really I do have such feelings about fandom and how people from all over the world from all walks of life come together#people that wouldn’t otherwise meet but they have a common interest and then that leads to so much good#I mean yeah there can be a dark side too but that’s just life there can’t be light without shadows

Doing things involving other people is so scary!!

Just sent out the bingo cards for the Saffi Bingo and Iā€™m sitting here devolving into abject paranoia that I made a mistake somewhere.

Letā€™s hope not eh.

purlturtle:

Happy Bering and Wells day, everyone! 

Next year is 2023. You know what that means.

image
image

Thirteen years of Bering and Wells!

image

How about we gather our apples celebrate that! A get together? A fanworks extravaganza? Themed, even? Someone suggested ā€œBering and Wells thirteen years later: where are they now?ā€  and I think that sounds fun – but hey, right now this is only an idea. What do you guys think? 

(gifs not mine, but from the awesomely talented gifmakers @pagets – all the kudos and thanks!)

Yes!

We definitely need some kind of fanworks extravaganza.

The theme does sound appropriate but I donā€™t know, it doesnā€™t feel quite big enough. Like this is Warehouse 13 and itā€™s the 13th anniversary – that will only happen once.

What about something crazy like a huge fandom event? Big Bang maybe? Itā€™s like it would be so cool if there was a deluge of love on that day, like a nice pile of presents for us all to enjoy.

Does that make sense?

logicheartsoul:

ao3commentoftheday:

ao3commentoftheday:

tumblr mobile wonā€™t let me upload a voice recording, so I guess youā€™re all spared hearing about my thoughts that people (some of them at least) arenā€™t actually desperate for comments. What theyā€™re actually missing is community

screw it. I put it up on drive. Iā€™ll try to figure out tomorrow if it actually makes sense or not- and Iā€™ll transcribe it if no one else beats me to it

community.m4a

GOOGLE DOCS 

TRANSCRIPTION:

Itā€™s not about comments, itā€™s about community. Iā€™m lying here at 1:36 in the morning and I canā€™t sleep and that keeps going around and around in my head. Itā€™s not comments, itā€™s community. I dunno if this is an epiphany or Iā€™m an insomniac and Iā€™m not making any sense. 

But Iā€™ve been running this blog for three and a half years now and seeing the things that spark joy in authors, and seeing the insecurities, and seeing people saying, ā€œI need comments, I want comments, I have to have comments, if I donā€™t have comments then I just feel like I need to give upā€ ā€“ and I try and understand as best as I can but I donā€™t think I actually get there. And I think the reason why that is, is because Iā€™ve always had some form of community.

When I joined my last fandom, I knew a couple of people who were interested in it on tumblr, but I threw my first fic out there not knowing what Iā€™d get. The fandom was still small at the time, andā€¦the show was on hiatus, and there wasnā€™t a lot of fic going on AO3, and soā€¦when I put my fic out there, I actually got a response and it was pretty cool. And because I got online in the 90ā€™s, when people commented to me, I commented back in a conversational tone, and because the fandom was full of people of a similar age to me
ā€“ who also got on the internet in the 90ā€™s ā€“ they also responded in a conversational tone. And next thing you know, weā€™re making friends, weā€™re following each other on tumblr, weā€™re having a grand olā€™ time.

And soā€¦for me, when I go into a stats spiral, itā€™s more about comparing myself against myself, and ā€œwhy am I not doing better with this story than this other storyā€, and ā€œwhy do people like that story? That was just a joke. This one thatā€™s serious, nobody is paying attention to and why is thatā€? But itā€™s not so much about people and the comments or the lack of comments, itā€™s more about me and, you know, trying to understand my own writing and you know, what works and what doesnā€™t and relying on other people wonā€™t tell me that and I know that.

And then I remembered the one time when I actually was upset that I didnā€™t get comments. And it wasā€¦I had organized this fandom event type of thing ā€“ not really an event ā€“ I was doing this thing, and anyone who wanted to participate or support me or encourage me was welcome to do so. I wanted to do a thing. I didā€¦I, um, called it a ficathon, it was a March Madness kind of thing, where 64 prompts went in, and 1 prompt came out. And I was writing 64 fics at the same time and people were voting on them and it was great. And when we got to the final fic, and I wrote it and posted it on AO3, after ā€“ I dunno, a month? ā€“ of fanfare ā€“ I was getting 50 votes a day on these things, so like people were reading. I didnā€™t get comments. I barely had hits or kudos and it was a huge let down. And it wasnā€™t about the comments, even though I remember I wrote some kind of post and put it on tumblr that I was upset and whatever, and I remember writing about comments and kudos and hits.

But that wasnā€™t why I was upset. I was upset because I had created a thing for my community and it felt like my community ignored it. It wasnā€™t the case and everything was fine, and you know, I had posted it on a Tuesday afternoon or something stupid and nobody saw it. It was, you know. Iā€¦probably overreacted, I dunno. But that was how I was feeling at the time. It was an intense disappointment for me.

But it wasnā€™t about the numbers, it was about the relationship and the community.

And when I read some of the asks that I get or the tags on posts ā€“ oh my god, the tags on posts ā€“ when I see these things so often, it feels like what people want isnā€™t a comment, itā€™s a connection. They want people to talk to about their writing. They want people to talk to about stories or about the canon, the characters they love, they want to have a conversation. And for whatever reason, the way social media is set up, we expect that conversation to happen in a certain way or we donā€™t realize it can happen in a different way, andā€¦I dunno. AO3 isnā€™t even social media. But it looks like it in a lot of ways. And so I thinkā€¦I dunno, people look for community in their comment section. And itā€™s hard to build a community there. 

If you have friends on tumblr, or twitter, or discord, or wherever else, if you have relationships with people outside of your fic, at least for me, the comments are less necessary but also, the comments come because ā€“ I mean, god knows, I was not the best writer in my fandom by a long stretch ā€“ but I knew a lot of people. And I liked them and they liked me, and I think that really helped make people want to read my stories. Because again, itā€™s that community piece. Iā€™m looking for connections with them and theyā€™re looking for connections too. And if they know me as a person, and they see a story with my name on it, they might think, ā€œOh, I really like Pi! Iā€™m going to click in and see what her storyā€™s about.ā€

And so, itā€™sā€¦it comes down to community. Like am I crazy here? Am I wrong? I mean, obviously this isnā€™t the case for everybody, not everyone is looking for this community, butā€¦yeah. Thatā€™sā€¦justā€¦it feels like it comes down to that. For me. Thatā€™s the piece thatā€™s missing. Thatā€™s the piece that people crave, the thing theyā€™re looking for. Itā€™s not about the comments, itā€™s not about the numbers, itā€™s about connections and relationships. And thatā€™s the part thatā€™s missing.

You arenā€™t crazy.

Writing is a lonely gig, or art, creating in general really. Itā€™s hours of unseen effort that is consumed in a relative instant.

We put ourselves into what we create. By that what Iā€™m meaning is all that time and effort, we put a portion of our lives into it. What I make matters to me a) because I care about the subject material but also b) because I cared enough to spend all that time on this story/art/whatever.

I said in my last comment regarding rarepairs and comments/kudos that it can feel a bit like screaming into the void sometimes. I said basically (TLDR) that I enjoyed writing those stories, drawing that art etc. so everything else is like the icing on the cake.

But that screaming into the void feeling does bite. Itā€™s lonely. I know I can be a bit overly enthusiastic/too much and can probably wear out even the biggest of fans. But still I would love to have someone to bounce off. I was in a bigger fandom once (Rumbelle) and my fondest memories of that was the conversations I had on occasion with other fans. Weā€™d dissect something that happened, or weā€™d have this long reblog chain swapping fic ideas back and forth. It didnā€™t happen often, like maybe a handful of times in a couple of years.

(I mean it wasnā€™t all good. I have terrible social anxiety even on the internet and so a lot of the interaction ended with me going round and round in my head for hours, about how dumb I was and how everyone wished I would shut up and go away. Community can be a double edged sword.)

But when it was good, it was really good. I miss the enthusiasm of other fans. I miss being able to talk to someone about what I love and get a response (rambling essentially to myself isnā€™t the same). Kudos and comments are cool but Iā€™m not looking for compliments. Donā€™t get me wrong itā€™s nice but yeah I miss the shared enthusing over the ship and show.

I have tried a bit for my current obsession (the rare OT3). Thereā€™s a gen discord for the show. But as previously mentioned I can be a bit ā€œfull onā€ which is likely off-putting. So community not so successful for me. Means I totally get what you are saying though, as it would be nice.