Kind of open-ended, I know. But I ran across a mention of the original Homestuck flash animations tonight, and that made me think about the whole experience of spending three or four solid days bingeing it back in 2010 or 2011, whenever that was - when the series was unfinished, when it was kind of a niche thing that was starting to snowball rather than overhyped to the point where there was such a thing as having a "Homestuck phase" in fandom, and basically just the whole experience of discovering it as this unfolding, non-sequential multimedia experience that wasn't quite like anything I'd ever read before.
I'm never going to do that again, for a variety of reasons. You basically can't without the Flash (though apparently there are archives that replicate the Flash animations), but also because there is no way I'm either devoting several solid consecutive days of my life to rereading a webcomic, or sustaining a reread of something that dense, convoluted, repetitive, and occasionally downright stupid over the number of weeks or months it would take to read it at a sane pace. Not to mention that half the fun of it the first time was having literally no idea what new bonkers tangent it was going to go off on, and I don't know how much enjoyment I'd actually get out of it without the element of surprise, now that I know where it's all going and how disappointing some of it was.
It's not even that Homestuck was ever influential or life-changing for me, because it wasn't. At all. I never even got into it in a fandom way, aside from watching some vids. I was just struck by the complete unrepeatability of that reading experience, which was probably the only time I'll ever read it from the beginning and might even be the only time I read it at all; I don't know if I'd even enjoy it if I read it now. But at one point in my life it fascinated me enough to spend the better part of a week doing literally nothing else but reading it.
There are probably a lot of experiences like that in most people's lives, and I know I have others - those times when you find a book or movie at exactly the right time in your life, when before or after wouldn't be the same, or the times when the actual surrounding experience of the thing is the special, unrepeatable part. You can always reread or rewatch, but you only ever get one first time with any show, book, or movie - and yet, sometimes the special, unrepeatable time isn't even the first time; it's some other aspect that makes it that way.
What are some of yours?
This entry is also posted at https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1402464.html with comments.
And a very October day too, cold and rainy, with most of the leaves gone from the trees.
October means:
- Inktober! I'll be posting them at my Instagram (and probably also on Tumblr, but with the instagram you just get the pictures and not the other stuff).
- Whumptober! I'll post the first of those snippets shortly. I've only written a few of them so far and have absolutely no doubt that I WILL fall behind eventually (I'll play catchup in November), but there are still quite a few prompts open and if you'd still like to claim one, you can do so here. (It's also okay to double-claim one - though I'd rather not have more than two claims on any given prompt - and claim a second one if you already did one. I have, by the way, done a bit of shuffling for people who gave me multiple options when the one I said I'd give them turned out to be harder to write than the other one.) I think unclaimed prompts will be either written by me for fun for whatever characters I would most like to write h/c about, or will be used as catchup days to work on the others.
Anyone who would like to join me in doing the prompt-claims thing at your own journal with your fandoms, or just writing snippets for the different prompts (or drawing, whatever your art form is) - PLEASE DO. The more the merrier!
- spook_me! For which I WILL have a fic this year; I actually finished the extremely rough draft of that last night. It's 22K of Ward's undead ghost dad tormenting him. >_> It may quite possibly be one of the most indulgent things I've written for this show, which is really saying something.
- Writing Rainbow: Orange! This is the October manifestation of the color-themed flash exchanges. Signups will open tonight and matching will be based on fandom and maybe on freeform tags (this part is still being decided) and the writing period is over the weekend. Tagset here, ask if questions; I mean, I'm not running it, but I've done several of the flash exchanges so I think I have a pretty good handle on how they work (with the caveat that it does change a little depending on who's running it) and will probably be doing this one, if that's an enticement!
Speaking of inspiration, trickortreatex is doing a community challenge this year as usual, and their list of challenge prompts is marvelously inspiring for Halloween/autumn fic ideas. (It's really not so much a prompt list as a list of things that, if tagged for in works in the fest, will get everyone a little closer to "winning" the challenge. And some things are fairly, er, specific. But overall it's actually quite a nice list of prompts!)
* The Defenders Prompt Fest is still going on! I left a big pile of new prompts on both posts yesterday, and there have been some new fills added as well.
* I seem to be one of the rare people for whom the Good Omens miniseries wasn't particularly to my taste; I mean, I liked it, but there was also a lot of "... this isn't my Good Omens" when I was watching it. However, watching people's delighted reactions and the subsequent giffing/vidding/meta has been really delightful, and I think it's made me like the show better than I did before, seeing it through the lens of people's squee. I like it when that happens.
* I signed up for kidficexchange, but there is a tragic lack of signups so far, and it's going to make people hard to match. Anyone tempted? :D It's for any kind of fic (or art) involving kids: characters' canonical childhoods, characters raising kids, characters getting turned into kids, etc. So if you are, say, squicked by de-aging but would like fic about your faves getting married and having kids, you can easily tailor your signup for that option.
* And I've mentioned this already, but kingofexchanges is a new Stephen King exchange, run by rachelmanija, iknowcommawrite, and me. Nominations/signups will open in late July.
UGH I need to write my other assignments! I've currently got open ones for MCU Exchange and Just Married. I did get my Not Prime Time one finished, yay. And then I went and signed up for Multifandomdrabble, the Defenders exchange on Tumblr, and the kidfic one (don't have assignments for any of those yet), and I'm planning to sign up for AU Exchange as well. (I did manage to talk myself out of Rare Pairs and Hetswap, because I had to draw the line somewhere.)
I also haven't managed to read anything at SSR Confidential yet, except my gifts (which were absolutely lovely! ♥). I need to go get some reading in before creator reveals, which are happening on Friday.
It's only 2 weeks (give or take a bit) 'til the new season of Stranger Things comes out. So many of my ongoing shows have been cancelled; I think that and the next season of Umbrella Academy are the only things I'm really looking forward to right now. But I really can't wait to get some new episodes of STh. Please don't kill Steve, show.
... oh, and I'm absolutely loving the "post about all the books you read in June" initiative that rachelmanija has been spearheading! It's been lovely to see so many book posts on my reading page. ♥
1. The Spring Equinox Vidding Exchange archive is now open. Their theme: "Sources from the 90s." (I had other things I was going to do with my afternoon than watch vids, but you know how it goes ...)
2. The Space Swap archive is also open for reading! I have a fic in there, because I picked up a pinch hit for it awhile back.
3. Signups for Not Prime Time, a midsized-fandom exchange, are open. I am probably going to sign up for it, but haven't gotten there quite yet. All the Netflix Marvel shows, Agent Carter, Stranger Things, Umbrella Academy, and Schitt's Creek are all eligible and have tags in the tagset, just to name a few.
4. I have not yet stopped being completely gone for Iron Fist, as my latest fanfic offerings no doubt reveal.
Me in chat to sheron earlier: "I SWEAR the next thing I write in this fandom is a) going to have a plot other than "random goons kidnap people for h/c purposes", and b) is going to involve characters other than Danny and Ward."
... You wouldn't think getting tired of h/c would be a thing for me, but I'm really starting to get the urge to write something with an actual plot that's not just 5K of feels. That being said, I think the last fandom that made me go this head-over-heels for just writing endless words of h/c and feels was White Collar. I'm also slightly amazed that in just 6 months, or so, this fandom has jumped up to #3 on my AO3 stats page for most fics written. (Though technically it should be #4, because I haven't ever gotten most of my SGA fic onto AO3 and there is A LOT OF IT.)
Since I linked someone to this on AO3 today - for anyone who wants to be dragged kicking and screaming into this fandom join me in my current shiny place, allow me to refer you back to my so you wanna watch Iron Fist? post from last year, a.k.a. a guide to getting past the first few episodes for people who bounce off them. (I understand that not everybody likes or is going to like this show. I don't expect you to. But you know, just in case you were interested ...!)
Incidentally ... over the last year or two, I've mostly stopped crossposting fic or even fic notifications here, unless it's for an exchange, and just putting it on AO3 with notifications posted at sholiofic. I am writing a lot more fic than you'd know from reading my journal. I think I kinda just got out of the habit during a time when I wasn't writing a whole lot, but I've been fairly prolific lately. Lately it's been largely focused on Iron Fist and/or the Marvel Defenders shows, with some Agent Carter, Stranger Things, and various other stuff I'm into. Should I start posting those here again? Actually, because everyone loves clicking little boxes ... let's do a poll.
There are no right or wrong answers here, and I'm not going to feel bound by the poll results. I'm just curious if there is still interest in reading fic here or not.
Why is it so common for so many series (TV shows, books, movies) to have a strong opening installment and then put their most dismal one as the second one? Whether it's merely bland and boring, or actively offputting in some specific way, I can think of so many that do this.
I expect some of it is narrative drop from the usually higher-budget and more action-filled opening installment, and some of it is the writers wanting to try something a little more daring after a crowd-pleasing opener. BUT STILL. Maybe you might want to wait a little while before dropping the book in which everyone dies gruesomely of yellow fever (Ben January) or the episode in which your only female character is sold into sex slavery (SG-1) or the episode that is every 80s mental hospital cliche ever (Iron Fist) or just the most comparatively generic and boring episode in the entire season (White Collar and so many others).
(This post brought to you by me getting so bored with the second episode of the show I'm watching as background-arting-TV on Hulu that I went and found an episode guide and skipped ahead to the next one that looked interesting. So far it's a lot better.)
There's a small Iron Fist exchange running this week, and I could not be more thoroughly delighted with my gift, the color purple, a teamy genfic about board games and banter and friendship that is EXACTLY what I was hoping for from my prompt about characters hanging out and doing friendship-type things. ♥
Another thing from the exchange I really loved was this Luke/Danny high school AU fanart (includes the supporting cast from both shows and Defenders), which is ADORABLE and full of delightful details. I love how readily recognizable all the characters are and how their personalities/styles are translated to their high school selves. I also look forward to finding time to read as long as we're together (does it matter where we go?), a long between-seasons Danny/Colleen fic that looks really good.
I wrote Sunflower, a Defenders fic for my recip's prompt about Danny collapsing after healing someone and needing to be looked after. Like most of my Defenders fic, it includes a lot of grouchy-concerned Jessica because she's far too much fun to write.
--
Signups are running 'til April 13 for Marvel Femslash Exchange. I am still in dither mode on signing up for this; in the interests of not completely overloading myself, I was thinking I'd leave it up to how far along I'd made it by that point on my other exchange assignments, and, uh. I still have a LOT of unfinished (*cough* unstarted) assignments. Still, I'll see how things are progressing before signups close.
Not Prime Time (medium sized fandoms exchange) is taking tag nominations 'til the 15th: Tagset | Nominations instructions | Eligibility instructions. Most of my current/recent active fandoms are eligible (Agent Carter, Iron Fist, Punisher, Defenders, Stranger Things, White Collar, Umbrella Academy, etc). I'm optimistically hoping that by the time signups open for this one, I will have made more progress on the other stuff I'm currently signed up for, because I would like to get in on this one!
It's particularly interesting seeing NPT come around, because back in the day, I used to be really excited about this one - it was the only non-Yuletide multifandom exchange that I knew about, and often the only chance at ALL to get an exchange fic for non-Yuletide-eligible fandoms that weren't big enough to have their own exchanges. There are just so many more exchanges now, it's interesting to look back on how excited I used to get about NPT when it was the only one of its type.
ETA: Oh, and Gen Prompt Bingo is running again! Because I totally need another source of prompts. AAAAAAAA someone stop me.
The Not Prime Time fics are revealed (still anonymous) and I got this absolutely lovely gift:
take a step that is new (Steve & Nancy & Jonathan, 1100 words, post-2x09) A hospital waiting room isn't the best place to deal with emotional fallout, but you don't always get to choose your moment.
It's warm and wonderful and fun and very them. I loved it. ♥ Also, I have a fic somewhere in there.
auexchange is still taking signups 'til Sunday. I keep adding things to my requests and offers as I spot new things in the tagset that look like fun. (I just added bookshop/library AU to my Punisher requests, for example, because who doesn't want Frank Castle: Librarian.)
Last spring there were plans to run a gen fanworks exchange through collarcorner, which I then flaked out on running, but it has found renewed life with the lovely sapphire2309 and nywcgirl as the mods. There is a poll over on LJ if you're interested, to determine dates and fanwork types. It'll be run through the LJ comm, but people without LJ accounts can still participate anonymously if you like, with a mod posting your assignment for you.
fandomlovespuertorico benefit auctions end today at 6pm eastern time. If you want to bid on anything, last chance!
I think I had some other things to mention, but now I've forgotten them ...
Leave prompts! Fill prompts! Leave me prompts for my OT3s!
(Heads up, it's on LJ, which I know doesn't work for some of you. I could post a prompt for you, if you want me to?)
... unrelatedly, I cannot BELIEVE how loud the biker bar up the highway is. It's about a mile/mile-and-a-half away, and when they're having an outdoor concert, as tonight, you can actually make out the lyrics in the music. IT'S A MILE AWAY!
SSR Confidential assignments are due tonight at midnight(ish). I'm not going to be too much of a hard case about the deadline, but I'll be going through in the morning and assigning pinch hitters for anything that doesn't have an assignment or extension. So get 'em in, or contact me to ask for an extension!
I was just putting in nominations for rarepairfest, which I'm probably going to sign up for. With a couple of obvious exceptions, nearly all of my current fleet of ships are small enough to qualify for the fest rules (under 200 complete works of 1000+ words on AO3) - including some I didn't think would be, like Peter/Gamora (there's relatively little fic for it!) and Neal/Sara. It's a minimum of 3 fandoms with minimum 1 ship each to sign up, just in case this is relevant to anyone's interests! Signups aren't 'til later this month.
Still planning on running a GotG exchange (probably going to be called "Hooked on a Feeling"), but I haven't done anything about it yet, especially since I am currently flattened by a spring cold. Blargh. This week appears to be falling down a black hole of Accomplishing Nothing Much. I really, really need to get my garden put in, but trying to muster the energy to go out there and run a rototiller doesn't seem to be happening.
Still hip-deep in Guardians of the Galaxy thoughts and feels, which is doing wonders for my productivity this week, let me tell you. /sarcasm
Anyway, a few other things:
Rebel, the next book in rachelmanija and sartorias's Change series, is out now! I'm linking to Rachel's post because it has useful links to All The Books. This is book 3 in the series, and I'm a book behind, so I can't read it yet! BUT I WANT TO! These are post-apocalypse YA with a large diverse cast, many different types of character relationships, and creative worldbuilding; they're a lot of fun.
There is a multifandom Harlequin Big Bang taking signups now. I was actually kicking around the idea of signing up for this (the minimum is only 5K!), but I am firmly refusing to let myself sign up for anything new until I finish more of the things I'm supposed to be working on ... SSR Confidential, MCU AU Fest, etc. But it does look fun. Wah. My life is hard.
Does anyone know if intoabar is happening again this year? I actually have enough different fandoms I'm into right now that I could do it -- the problem in the past has always been that I tend to be a serial fandom monogamist, but I seem to have turned multifannish when I wasn't looking, and I have always kinda wanted to try that one. Just my luck, this will be the year it dies ...
New community: fanifesto, for fandom manifestos (fandom/ship/character/etc). In case it is relevant to your interests! There's nothing there yet, but it's very new.
I'm torn between the urge to rec some of the things that I'm into, and the awareness that most of the things I'm into are actually not that good, objectively speaking. XD
SSR Confidential signups are still open - the signup period ends Saturday evening, March 25. You know you want to! :D So far we've got 18 people (not including me - I haven't gotten mine done yet. BAD MOD) - fic, art, and vids are all accepted. Since I'm running this, just ask me if you have any questions.
ETA: Also, if whichever anon promoted it at ffa is reading this, thank you! <3
FK_ficfest (Forever Knight fic exchange) is currently taking signups as well. This is a really pleasant, small-fandom fic exchange with a great mod.
Another thing currently going on is Muse Fusion at Torn World, a shared-world SFF project. Participants in Muse Fusion leave prompts for writers/artists to make a creative work in the shared world setting.
Ah yes, that mildly braindead point in a novel rewrite when I start making incredibly cryptic notes to myself as I try to keep details straight from 50,000 words ago. "Remember to mention the state of his car." Whose car? In which scene? Thanks, self.
Today is the 20th anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy was never a watershed show for me -- too old to be its target demographic, I finally started watching it in season six (giving in at last to my younger sister's urging; she'd been watching since the beginning). But I loved it enough to go back and marathon the rest of it, and watched it through to the (bitter?) end, even though it was never really one of "my" shows. Here is an interesting article on Buffy's influence on later TV (discovered via umadoshi) - I'm not sure if I entirely buy the thesis that Buffy did all of these things with commercial success before any other show, but I don't disagree that it was hugely influential on TV that came later, especially on complicated female characters in genre shows, and on the shift from mostly episode-of-the-week TV to mostly serial-arc TV that happened in the late 90s/early 2000s. It seems so weird now to look back on a world where DVDs didn't exist, season-long plot arcs existed only on soap operas, and while actors regularly abandoned TV for movies, respected movie actors almost never turned up on TV, because TV was a cheap, disposable medium where washed-up movie actors went for their careers to finish dying.
(Random side note: I first encountered Sara Michelle Gellar on the soap opera All My Children, which I used to watch obsessively in the early '90s. I was absolutely primed for getting hooked on serialized TV; I've always loved that kind of thing, first in comics and soaps, then in anime, finally in Western prime-time TV when it finally got there.)
Chocolate Box is live! I didn't officially participate, but I picked up two pinch hits. See if you can guess which ones.
For Valentine's Day (Friendship Day in Finland), a multi-fandom friendship commentfic fest (art also welcome). Go leave some prompts! ♥ I really would like to write something sweet and simple to get my head out of the gloom spiral it's been stuck in lately, so prompts for Agent Carter, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, or White Collar might have a pretty good chance of getting something written for them. Just saying.
The Google doodle for Valentine's is A PANGOLIN DATING GAME. (Sort of.) You roll your little pangolin and collect items to bake a cake, sing a song, etc. for your pangolin sweetie. There are also adorable little pangolin courting animations, all involving pangolins of unspecific/neutral gender, because pangolins.
Commentfic prompt fest on DW! Leave prompts or fill prompts; all fandoms welcome. Leaving a prompt in one of my fandoms will produce a likelihood, though not a guarantee, of getting a fill. :D (Thanks to recessional for the link.)
I had a table at Senshi-Con this weekend, and then I had family, and then I drove almost 400 miles cumulatively today. Excuse me while I fall over. I am, however, doing Inktober this month, for the first time. My contributions are shared on Facebook here (it's public, so you don't need to have me friended, but you might have to be logged in on FB to see it). Nothing spectacular, just a quick ink sketch per day - and not fannish or Kismet-related; so far it includes things like an otter and a child dressed as a unicorn. I need more drawing practice!
And I also have a glass of blackberry honey wine, which is very tasty and I'm sure will not put me instantly to sleep at all.
ETA: I am on my third glass of wine now, and I'm not asleep; instead I'm posting tons of prompts in most of my different fandoms over at the commentfic prompt fest linked above! *tempts*
... so I went and signed up for avengersfest, since Agent Carter is an option. I'm not entirely sure what the state of the fest is right now, because ... there was a notice two days ago that the mod was going to be closing signups? And then signups don't seem to have been closed? So maybe you can still sign up but I'm not sure. (I mean, this isn't meant to be mod-pokery, it's just that I hadn't mentioned this because I didn't think you could still sign up, but it's possible that you might be able to.)
I've mostly managed to talk myself out of signing up for genex, a gen relationship exchange. (Signups close July 23.) On the one hand - gen relationship exchange! That is totally my thing! But the dates are really NOT the best considering my current travel plans; it's bad enough I'm going to need to turn in my Avengers Fest assignment by Sept. 10, but Genex fics are due on Sept. 3, which would give me just a couple of weeks to write both of them when I get back in August. Genex also requires at least 3 different fandoms requested and 4 offered, and while I can do it, I'm not sure how enthusiastically I can do it.
(Plus there's my rather conflicted relationship with gen, of late. I feel like it's probably ridiculous to spend too much time fretting over whether writing gen is ethical, or I should say whether writing the kind of smarmy friendship stuff I like to write is ethical ... but I do worry about it, and while I am absolutely not going to beat myself up for writing a little idfic from time to time, I probably don't need to sign up for a ficathon that's going to encourage me to write even more of it.)
Today's my last day at home before I'm gone for a week and a half, then back for a couple of days, then gone again for almost three weeks. I feel as if I should be using my last day at home more usefully, but aside from proofing Kismet book files (AMAZON, PLZ STOP MAKING ME RE-UPLOAD THESE STUPID ENORMOUS FILES XD) I don't really have anything left to do urgently, and I kinda just want to chill online and maybe write another h/c bingo square.
MCU AU Fest is open! And the fic that was written for me is wonderful. <3
Traveling Companions (3500 wds, gen or pre-ship, Peggy & Jack & Daniel, modern-day/mundane AU)
Absolutely delightful modern-day AU in which Peggy is a pseudonymous mystery writer who gets into an argument about one of her books with a stranger (Jack) on a train. This is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for when I left modern-day/mundane AU prompts: the characters are distinctly themselves, but filtered through a different set of experiences, and all kinds of new possibilities are opened up. I love Peggy's relationships in this fic with both Daniel and Jack, similar to canon, and yet different. I think I'm going to be rereading this one a lot.
In other news, starwarsflashmeme is still going on (we are now in week 19!) and this week's challenge is Documents and Letters. Come on, you know the Empire's incident reports must have been amazing. (What's the form for "Jedi Master killed, body appears to have vanished"? Whatever it is, it probably has to be filed in triplicate on 12 different planets ...)
Today (well, tonight, midnight AK time) is the deadline to turn in SSR Confidential assignments. I am so excited about this. :D We've got fic, art, and vids; we've got gen, F/M, F/F, and M/M. We will have need for at least a couple of pinch hitters, it looks like, but I'm going to wait and announce the open pinch hits at ssrconfidential/ ssrconfidential in the morning, when I have a better idea of what's still missing. The archive will be opened on June 8, give or take a day or two depending on how the pinch hits come in! So far, though, about 2/3 of the assignments have been turned in, and a few people have asked for extensions, so there aren't very many unaccounted for.
Over in White Collar fandom, we're doing something different at collarcorner this month: a commentfic lightning round. (Art fills also welcome!) Instead of the usual detailed prompts, this month will be for short simple prompts lending themselves to quick fills, and I'm hoping to get a few more people involved. Go take a look if it sounds like your kind of thing! (Quick note for new people: It's a gen prompt community, so prompts and fills should be gen.)