Meta Month 1 - Introduction
Dec. 2nd, 2011 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wallwalker posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
personalapocalypse[Yesterday was a busy day, so I missed the first post of the month. Stay on top of this, self.]
Okay, it's Meta Month for me! The first day is going to be an introduction, just so people know where I'm coming from.
I had a similar post to this on my old fandom journal, but it's out of date now, and I went into a lot of detail about pairings and specific fandoms and the like. If anyone wants to know, I'll go into that much detail later, but this one is a summary.
Fanworks:
I started creating fanworks long before I discovered fandom, online or otherwise, and learned that other people were doing it too. It was in either '94 or '95 that I started writing my first fic, which was the typical unfinished post-canon epic, complete with Mary Sues and villain redemption and the usual NEW THREAT. The fandom was Final Fantasy VI, and at the time I had no idea what I was doing. That's probably why I wrote as much as I did. It was never completed, although it was posted... which is partially why I hold the position that badfics and Mary Sues shouldn't be vilified too much, because they're going to happen no matter what, and I really think that most writers are going to get over the impulse to write them with time.
My first completed fanwork was some years later, and I've been writing ever since. I occasionally try to get up the energy to branch off into fanart, but I'm usually stymied by concerns about quality.
Fandom:
As I said, I discovered fandom after I started writing fanfiction. Back then it was pretty much online only for me, and I spent a lot of time in my late teens/college years on various forums and fanfiction sites. (I actually was the co-moderator of one for a while, which is when I first learned that I did not make a good moderator.)
After a while, when those sites lost their luster, I was active on Livejournal for quite a while, wrote a lot of fic, and tried to run a few more communities (which, again, didn't work out well; I only seem to be a competent mod when given a very specific focus, and even then for only a relatively short period of time.) I've been active on several fanfiction archives, trying to find one that has all of the features that I like (which I've found) and that has an active presence in my fandoms (which, let's be honest, I really haven't.)
Media:
My primary fandoms are and probably always will be video game fandoms. I grew up on them, I still enjoy them now, and they seem to have more empty spaces, as it were, for me to play in. The vast majority of other media types, for me, are too complete - they do a better job of explaining why this place is the way it is, or why this or that character did this or that bizarre thing, or whatever. Games tend to have more characters that are developed just enough to be interesting but who are still something of a mystery to the player, and so have more fic potential, for me.
...that's just my speculation, to be honest. In all frankness, I don't know why some media resonated with me and others didn't. I have started branching out, mostly in recent years and mostly in response to various challenges and prompt communities. But... well, go to my AO3 page and look at it. Long list of fandoms, but the vast majority of them are video game fandoms. Pretty much speaks for itself.
Genre-wise I'm especially fond of fantasy and science fiction, particularly the latter (or the latter with elements of the former.) Speculative fiction, in general. Partially for escapism's sake, to be honest, but partially because speculative fiction gives me far more freedom to play with certain tropes and plot elements than pure realism would. (See also, the posts about xeno and magic fun that I'm writing for later this month.)
My primary interest with just about any canon is the characters - whether or not their issues are compelling to me, whether or not they change and grow in the canon, how interesting their interactions with each other are (or even their potential interactions, considering how often I like to write about the interactions between characters who hardly ever even met in canon.) Then, for games, comes interesting gameplay - does it have some new, well-done mechanic that's unique to it, that isn't just a rehash of every other game in that genre? After that we have plot, then aesthetics - fancy next-gen graphics are fine, but if it doesn't have interesting story and characters, it's just window dressing. And a lot of my favorite games are still 2-D SNES-style games.
Current:
- My current primary archive is the Archive of Our Own - I might have doubts about OTW and their effectiveness as an actual organization, mostly based on the accounts of people who've had more experience with them than I, but I have to admit, their archive has pretty much every tool and widget I've ever wanted in an archive. Unfortunately, because of my fandoms and the fact that they don't have much of a presence outside of TV shows/movies/other largely Western media, what it doesn't have are a lot of readers for the vast majority of what I post.
I also post a lot to this DW community, which... well, it doesn't get a lot of hits either. The sad fact of the matter is that there isn't much of a presence for the things I love on DW, or if there is, they don't tend to congregate and do things together - with a few notable exceptions, of course (i.e.newgameplus.) I've essentially isolated myself by more or less leaving more established sites like LJ and ff.net, but considering the hassle of using those sites, and their occasional annoying security risks in some places, I feel like I'm better off in the end.
- I wanted to include my current internet hangouts, but to be honest, aside from my personal DW page, I don't really have one. I have a couple of social networking sites, but they're either under tight lockdown or I rarely interact with them. Part of me wants to change that. Part of me would prefer to keep my head down and just... not be out there and visible, for various reasons. Sometimes I wonder if changing my username to something new would help my confidence. Anyway, though, I wouldn't mind finding a new hangout or two if someone had any to recommend....
- I am the sort of person who should not, under any circumstance, run a fan community. I have learned this over the years. I can't maintain a community for longer than a couple of months, if that, and so the community just languishes. (I've been a co-mod on a short-term basis once or twice, and that seemed to work out!) This doesn't stop me from being tempted to create new ones when I want to see something that doesn't seem to exist -feedback_fest was created for just that reason. And you'll notice that I haven't done a damn thing with it since then. (The problem is the feeling that if I don't create it myself, it won't exist. But if I do create it myself, then unless I find help in moderating it, it still won't exist in any meaningful way. I've got to try to keep that in mind when I'm tempted to do something like that again.)
So, yes. I have lots of ideas! I just have trouble carrying them to their logical conclusion. Or maybe my attention span is to blame. It's hard to say. Now, I like participating in fan communities when I find one that's active. I'm just very rarely the person who's going to revive a dead comm, or keep a community going in the absence of other posters, or find new members for a community that needs them. I've tried before; it seems to work very rarely.
So that's me. I haven't decided which post I'm going to make next, but it'll be here by the end of the day!
Okay, it's Meta Month for me! The first day is going to be an introduction, just so people know where I'm coming from.
I had a similar post to this on my old fandom journal, but it's out of date now, and I went into a lot of detail about pairings and specific fandoms and the like. If anyone wants to know, I'll go into that much detail later, but this one is a summary.
Fanworks:
I started creating fanworks long before I discovered fandom, online or otherwise, and learned that other people were doing it too. It was in either '94 or '95 that I started writing my first fic, which was the typical unfinished post-canon epic, complete with Mary Sues and villain redemption and the usual NEW THREAT. The fandom was Final Fantasy VI, and at the time I had no idea what I was doing. That's probably why I wrote as much as I did. It was never completed, although it was posted... which is partially why I hold the position that badfics and Mary Sues shouldn't be vilified too much, because they're going to happen no matter what, and I really think that most writers are going to get over the impulse to write them with time.
My first completed fanwork was some years later, and I've been writing ever since. I occasionally try to get up the energy to branch off into fanart, but I'm usually stymied by concerns about quality.
Fandom:
As I said, I discovered fandom after I started writing fanfiction. Back then it was pretty much online only for me, and I spent a lot of time in my late teens/college years on various forums and fanfiction sites. (I actually was the co-moderator of one for a while, which is when I first learned that I did not make a good moderator.)
After a while, when those sites lost their luster, I was active on Livejournal for quite a while, wrote a lot of fic, and tried to run a few more communities (which, again, didn't work out well; I only seem to be a competent mod when given a very specific focus, and even then for only a relatively short period of time.) I've been active on several fanfiction archives, trying to find one that has all of the features that I like (which I've found) and that has an active presence in my fandoms (which, let's be honest, I really haven't.)
Media:
My primary fandoms are and probably always will be video game fandoms. I grew up on them, I still enjoy them now, and they seem to have more empty spaces, as it were, for me to play in. The vast majority of other media types, for me, are too complete - they do a better job of explaining why this place is the way it is, or why this or that character did this or that bizarre thing, or whatever. Games tend to have more characters that are developed just enough to be interesting but who are still something of a mystery to the player, and so have more fic potential, for me.
...that's just my speculation, to be honest. In all frankness, I don't know why some media resonated with me and others didn't. I have started branching out, mostly in recent years and mostly in response to various challenges and prompt communities. But... well, go to my AO3 page and look at it. Long list of fandoms, but the vast majority of them are video game fandoms. Pretty much speaks for itself.
Genre-wise I'm especially fond of fantasy and science fiction, particularly the latter (or the latter with elements of the former.) Speculative fiction, in general. Partially for escapism's sake, to be honest, but partially because speculative fiction gives me far more freedom to play with certain tropes and plot elements than pure realism would. (See also, the posts about xeno and magic fun that I'm writing for later this month.)
My primary interest with just about any canon is the characters - whether or not their issues are compelling to me, whether or not they change and grow in the canon, how interesting their interactions with each other are (or even their potential interactions, considering how often I like to write about the interactions between characters who hardly ever even met in canon.) Then, for games, comes interesting gameplay - does it have some new, well-done mechanic that's unique to it, that isn't just a rehash of every other game in that genre? After that we have plot, then aesthetics - fancy next-gen graphics are fine, but if it doesn't have interesting story and characters, it's just window dressing. And a lot of my favorite games are still 2-D SNES-style games.
Current:
- My current primary archive is the Archive of Our Own - I might have doubts about OTW and their effectiveness as an actual organization, mostly based on the accounts of people who've had more experience with them than I, but I have to admit, their archive has pretty much every tool and widget I've ever wanted in an archive. Unfortunately, because of my fandoms and the fact that they don't have much of a presence outside of TV shows/movies/other largely Western media, what it doesn't have are a lot of readers for the vast majority of what I post.
I also post a lot to this DW community, which... well, it doesn't get a lot of hits either. The sad fact of the matter is that there isn't much of a presence for the things I love on DW, or if there is, they don't tend to congregate and do things together - with a few notable exceptions, of course (i.e.
newgameplus.) I've essentially isolated myself by more or less leaving more established sites like LJ and ff.net, but considering the hassle of using those sites, and their occasional annoying security risks in some places, I feel like I'm better off in the end.- I wanted to include my current internet hangouts, but to be honest, aside from my personal DW page, I don't really have one. I have a couple of social networking sites, but they're either under tight lockdown or I rarely interact with them. Part of me wants to change that. Part of me would prefer to keep my head down and just... not be out there and visible, for various reasons. Sometimes I wonder if changing my username to something new would help my confidence. Anyway, though, I wouldn't mind finding a new hangout or two if someone had any to recommend....
- I am the sort of person who should not, under any circumstance, run a fan community. I have learned this over the years. I can't maintain a community for longer than a couple of months, if that, and so the community just languishes. (I've been a co-mod on a short-term basis once or twice, and that seemed to work out!) This doesn't stop me from being tempted to create new ones when I want to see something that doesn't seem to exist -
feedback_fest was created for just that reason. And you'll notice that I haven't done a damn thing with it since then. (The problem is the feeling that if I don't create it myself, it won't exist. But if I do create it myself, then unless I find help in moderating it, it still won't exist in any meaningful way. I've got to try to keep that in mind when I'm tempted to do something like that again.)So, yes. I have lots of ideas! I just have trouble carrying them to their logical conclusion. Or maybe my attention span is to blame. It's hard to say. Now, I like participating in fan communities when I find one that's active. I'm just very rarely the person who's going to revive a dead comm, or keep a community going in the absence of other posters, or find new members for a community that needs them. I've tried before; it seems to work very rarely.
So that's me. I haven't decided which post I'm going to make next, but it'll be here by the end of the day!
