(no subject)

[mistressofmuses]

Today's big accomplishment was cleaning Broccoli Cheddar Bomb's habitat. It's been... very overdue, so I'm glad it's done! Hopefully he's glad, too.

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Challenge #4: Wishlist for fandom

Add me to the absolute chorus of people who miss low-key community spaces for discussion. Dreamwidth is way better suited to that than most other spaces (except maybe discord, but in my experience it tends to move too quickly for me to engage in MUCH discussion). I've found a nice number of friends on here that I talk to in comments on our respective journals, and there are also some pretty active writing communities where people comment back and forth, even if we only share fandom-y stuff in a broad sense, rather than specific fandoms themselves.

And well, Snowflake is one of the events that best fulfills that wish already!

In general (though also personally) I'd love fandom to foster a more feedback-oriented culture again. Sometimes all you want to do is passively enjoy some fic, and I get it. But when comments and kudos and such are the only "payment" a writer gets, it's nice to get that! Sure it's not owed, but it IS nice to feel like you aren't posting to the void.

No real wishlist for me or my stuff - I hate asking for things. :P

Comments

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it's best to be able to vibe check certain types of groups before joining ... or chat before becoming DW mutuals. I've done some... awkward unfriendings over the years. Having chill spaces is so much better for community building or finding fandom friends I think.

I spend too much time on twitch, but also it's a decent social outlet especially with the world the way it is.

I'd love to have a writing group. I've tried to start one a few times, but no luck. The ones I tried to join were, uh, not good vibes. Also, I don't want to tell rando wannabe novelists that I am working on fanfic projects.

[mistressofmuses]

Absolutely! I've definitely run into people who seem interesting based on profile or a single post... but turns out I do not vibe well with them in a broader sense. That sort of chill space seems to be more analogous to how most people make friends irl, at least to me.
Like... you may have come to this club because you're interested in the theme, so you know you have something in common with the other people who showed up... but hanging out on the patio to just chat for a bit lets you find people you connect with better.

Anything that can act as a good social outlet is a good thing right now. I think one of our local DJs has been doing twitch streams on some of her usual club nights so that people can still at least partially participate from home.

Same here. I never actually joined the local NaNo group, but... my previous experiences haven't been great. Definite bad vibes, or just wildly steamrolled by one or two people, or not-so-subtle hate for fanworks or genre fiction or queer fic...
(This was way back in high school, but my "favorite" piece of "constructive criticism" that I ever got from a writing group was on a silly little rom-com short story about a teen trying to get his oblivious friend to realize he was asking him out. I'm sure it was not a great story, but the "concrit" I got on it was that I should stop copying Brokeback Mountain and come up with my own ideas. :| )

[olivermoss]

The only good writing group I was ever in was when there used to be December Yuletide write-ins in my area. I don't do Yuletide, but I went to the write-ins anyway.

That sucks. That isn't con-crit, that is a failure to understand things outside your interest.

[mistressofmuses]

Just having a good write-in group would be neat. I've never done anything with Yuletide... for as enormous a fandom thing as it's been, I always existed kind of peripheral to it.

Right? It's pretty funny now - like... a recent-historical western tragedy and a contemporary high school rom-com are clearly identical because they... both feature gay characters? Lol. I will say that taught me that not all con-crit has value, though honestly at the time I couldn't brush it off quite as easily.